There's music to play, Places to see! An Exploration of Innovative Relational Spaces in the Formation of Music Scenes: The Case of The Hague in the 1960s

It was not so much Amsterdam, the cultural capital, but The Hague which had the most vibrant Beat music scene in the Netherlands in the 1960s. Part of the explanation for this lies in the presence of a sizeable group of youngsters who were born in the former colony the Dutch East Indies and who were already well acquainted with contemporary American popular music. This laid the foundation for the city’s musical eff ervescence that contributed to placing it fi rmly on the map of the country’s popular music history. We analyse the social and networked dimensions of this local music scene by departing from Howard Becker’s concept of art worlds and relating this to concrete places where key actors could meet. We show how abstract agglomeration economies touched down in The Hague and, to be more precise, in a selected set of venues and clubs. We thus present a micro geography of innovative relational spaces where musicians, managers, gatekeepers and a motley crew of hangers-on met, exchanged knowledge, inspired and pushed each other to become (in cases even internationally) successful artists.

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