The Allure of the Metropolis

His move to London, although difficult at first, ultimately gave him a new life, new music and a new crowd. Nick Cave is in many ways an avant garde artist: he writes songs, he writes books, is an actor and a poet. The city is a place where his art is heard and appreciated. Wark (1999: 93) eloquently suggests that, “His songs were not representations of violence, death, eros and chaos, they were expressions of a kind of inchoate experience at the threshold of subjectivity. They were not meant to be performed for an audience but with one.” Cave is an artist who grew out of the city. He lived in cultural exile, and through sheer hard work implanted his music upon the people of London. He performed “with the audience” and represented themes in new ways. The city is a place where avant-garde ideas can be easier expressed and where artistic change and development is often more easily facilitated.

Nick Cave is just one example of a musician producing pioneering, “new” music in the city. In fact, there is a definite link between new genres of music and the city. Blues originated in New Orleans and it is where classic Blues Clubs still are; Nashville is the home of country music; Chicago and New York are the two key cities in jazz music; New York has also been the focal point for new styles of rock and roll; and lastly, Los Angeles and New York are the home cities of hip hop and hip hop culture. Artists and fans stick together in the city; they form clubs and open specialized bars.

In this sense certain cities attract certain artists. For example, if you play country music you will find a welcoming and appreciative audience in Nashville. Gaye et al. (2003: 109) suggest that, “the city has long been an inspiration and site for musical expression, whether as a metaphor in classical composition, a source of rhythms and sounds in jazz and electric music, a stage for street performance or the cradle of a walkman generation.” The modern city is a place of headphones and mp3 players.

Music is an integral part of the city and city life. Musicians are attracted to the city because of the many bars and pubs available for performance, the culture, the inspiration and the friendship of like minded musicians.

One of the new genres that emerged out of New York and Los Angeles in the 1980s was hip hop. The majority of hip hop musicians came out of the ghettos and expressed the difficult life and racism Negro-Americans often had to face. It was new music combining elements of rock, funk, jazz, and blues. The effects of life in the ghettos and the need for expression largely influenced the development of hip hop. It represented, in a sense, the new modern life, or the late modern life. Hip hop musicians were replicating what Baudelaire and Dickens were striving to do a century before. They were trying to express one particular form of modern city life. Hip hop created a culture of its own. It expressed the oppression and focused on the inequalities of city life. N.W.A (Niggaz With Attitude) exemplified this approach; their lyrics were so anti-establishment and so offensive and violent that the FBI actually sent a letter of concern to their record company (Cave et al. 2004:82).

“Niggaz start to mumble, they wanna rumble
mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo…
Here’s a murder rap to keep you dancin
with a crime record like Charles Manson
AK-47 is the tool .”(N.W.A 1989)

This extremely violent style of hip hop was later termed, “gangsta rap”, as it portrayed the violent lifestyle of those living with gangs in the ghettos of Los Angeles and New York. The rappers as artists and musicians lived and breathed the city. Hip hop was their music, graffiti their paintings and the city their inspiration. The poor sections of cities, the gangs, the pollution, the warehouses, and the run down housing is vividly seen in their lyrics as they aim to show the wider world the reality of their situation.

The Beastie Boys, a three piece hip hop act from New York, also dwell on city life in their songs. However, unlike “gangsta rap” they focus on the positives of city life. In their latest album they wrote a song called, “An Open Letter to NYC”. This song demonstrates their connection to the city and city life. The city has been a major part in the making of themselves and their music. It is a home; a place of inspiration and a place were the majority of their audience are found.

“Dear New York this is a love letter
To you and how you brought us together
We can’t say enough about all you do
“Cause in the city we”re ourselves and electric too “(Beastie Boys 2004).

The Beastie Boys express a great fondness towards the city. It brought the band together, and it is the one place where they feel comfortable. Their lyrics focus on the diversity, the art and the culture.

“Brownstones, water towers, trees, skyscrapers
Writers, prize fighters and Wall Street traders
We come together on the subway cars
Diversity unified, whoever you are.” (Beastie Boys 2004).

The city is portrayed as a welcoming and unified community. The Beastie Boys’ contentment in the city can be seen as what Park et al. (1967: 41) suggests is the “attraction of the metropolis”:

Every individual finds somewhere among the varied manifestations of city life the sort of environment in which he expands and feels at ease; finds, in short the moral climate in which his peculiar nature obtains the stimulations that bring his innate dispositions to full and free expression.

The city is a place where musicians and other artists alike can find the sort of environment which they feel relaxed in. This might be in a community group with similar interests, or in a bar where a certain type of music is played, or a gallery where a certain type of art is displayed. The city accommodates multiple and varied communities and groups that can encourage artists and support their work.

Although city life offers so many possibilities for the artist there are some restraints and problems for artists who reside in the city. For example, it is becoming more difficult for artists to actually live in the city center due to rising property prices. The costs of inner city living can economically pressure the artist.

Commercialization and the huge corporations that base themselves in many cities can also encourage artists to commodity their artwork. For example, hip hop in Los Angeles has become so commercialized that many original rappers have distanced themselves from the current hip hop scene. Fishman (1987: 485) argues that a new city is emerging in which advanced communications technology has completely superseded the face-to-face contact of the traditional city. New media technologies have connected the world beyond spatial boundaries.

Phenomena like “virtual communities” break down the need for artists to live in artistic communities in the city because they can interact with similar communities on the Internet. For example, a hip hop fan or musician in Melbourne can communicate with a hip hop musician in New York; there is no need for a geographically fixed community in the city.

Castells (2002: 132) argues that, “on-line networks become forms of “specialized communities;” that is, forms of sociability constructed around specific interests.” This new technology, in a sense, breaks down one attraction of the city for artists. Geographical boundaries are broken by new technology. Special interest communities on the Internet link artists that could only be linked previously if they worked and lived in the same city.

New media technologies may diminish the need for an artistically linked community in the city. However, the city has been and will continue to be the site of modern life and the site were artists get glimpses of this life and represent it through their work. Gaye et al. (2003: 109) suggests that, “whether a pleasant stroll or a mundane commute, being in the city involves dynamic creative improvisation.” The modern city may be the center of economical, political and technological production but it is also the center of “creative improvisation” and new artistic movements. A broad range of artists from Baudelaire to N.W.A have found inspiration and motivation from city living. Pike (1981: 243) suggests that, “the central fascination of the city, both real and fictional, is that it embodies man”s contradictory feelings – pride, love, anxiety and hatred – toward the civilization he has created and the culture to which he belongs.’ The city is a place of contradicting feelings, of paradoxes and ambivalence. Both the negatives and positives of the city life are expressed through art and the contradictions of modern life inspire the artist.

Ultimately the artist reconstructs a version of reality – no matter how dark and pessimistic – to generate awareness, tolerance, appreciation and a brighter future for all.