The Sound of Deindustrialization

Abstract

This chapter explores how music serves as a mediator for societal transitions, highlighting its role in expressing the emotional impact of economic change. Through qualitative analysis of musical production in European industrial cities during the late 1970s and early 1980s, it reveals music’s ability to foster resilience and community amid industrial decline. Music doesn’t play the function of memorializing individual stories or narrating cities shrinking, factories closing and communities imploding like, for instance, cinema and photography have done. Music can partially transcend the visual dimension and its tropes in representing a particular socioeconomic change. Therefore, its role in deindustrialization becomes at the same time more elusive but also more important. ‘Deindustrialization music,’ such as punk and post-punk, represents in truth a mediator of a temporary condition and indicated a ‘way out’ able to depart from the industrial city and its imaginary and, in the process, to translate identities and meanings to a possible post-industrial society. Additionally, it touches on the revival of ‘crisis music’ practices in response to ongoing socioeconomic challenges. The chapter suggests that studying music alongside visual and textual mediums provides a comprehensive understanding of deindustrialization’s effects on communities and societal dynamics.