“Music/City is a resounding success. The book is elegantly written, combines multiple methods, and joins sociological imagination with musical insight… Academics, musicians, and city leaders will all learn from Wynn’s sensitive analysis of the promise and pitfalls of festivalization” –American Journal of Sociology
Music/City focuses on how cities’ ‘entertainment machines’ (i.e., a network of municipal agencies, cultural institutions, community groups) collaborate to re-conceptualize the city’s spatial and symbolic economy through music festivals. This study is a multi-method, three-city comparative study, which examines well-established festivals in Nashville, TN, Austin, TX, and Newport, RI. Using multiple methods in each site, including participant observation, survey of festivalgoers, and interview data with festival organizers, members of chambers of commerce, musicians, owners of music venues, and record label executives, I show how in an era of heightened inter-city competition for tourism and corporate relocation, festivals have become a vital and complex strategy: liquid urban culture. Music/City is available from the University of Chicago Press.
“Jonathan Wynn’s Music/City provides important new insight into the role of music in shaping the culture, economy and attractiveness of cities. Combining a sociologist’s eye with the ear of a musicians, Wynn shows how music festivals have become increasingly important platform as much for cities and their economies as musicians’ careers. Wynn’s book is a must read for mayors, economic developers, downtown leaders and urbanists who endeavor to build and live in more attractive, vibrant and economically successful cities.” -Richard Florida, Director of the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, author Rise of the Creative Class.
“It’s common knowledge that festivals are increasingly important to the music business, but before Wynn, no one had really examined their full impact and potential. With Music/City, his innovative, street-level research gives us new ways to think about the culture, community, and economy of our large-scale, high-volume gatherings.” –Alan Light, former editor-in-chief, Vibe and Spin magazines
“Fyre debacle shows how small acts get burned in the modern music festival economy,” (with Alexandre Frenette) The Conversation, March 4, 2019
“Gentrification? Bring it,” (with Andrew Deener) The Conversation, October 11, 2017 (in CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Business Insider)
“Are there too many music festivals?” Washington Post April, 2017
“Pop Up Culture,” Australian Broadcasting Company’s Future Tense November, 2016
“For Economic Development Gold, Listen to the Music,” Governing Magazine October, 2016
“Festivals,” WAMC National, The Academic Minute, July 25, 2016
“Death to Concrete Culture,” WGBH Boston/PRI’s Innovation Hub, June 24, 2016
“Why cities should stop building museums and focus on festivals,” The Conversation, May 12, 2016 (reprinted in the Associated Press’ The Big Story, New Statesman‘s CityMetric, The Des Moines Register, and Raw Story)
“How Music Festivals Shape Cities,” The Atlantic’s CityLab, February 3, 2016
“Welcome to Austin, Don’t Move Here,” The Guardian, March 14, 2016