NASSS 2018 Conference - Vancouver

In her work Demonic Grounds (2006), critical-race and feminist theorist Kathryn McKittrick argues that musical expressions are in fact deeply geographic forms of knowledge which upend traditional academic hierarchies (p. 139). With this in mind, this session provides a space for scholarship that may engage with/draw on a musical lens to critically reflect on geographies of sport and physical culture. In what ways do spaces set the tone for different bodies to move through, interact in, and occupy the sporting arena? How might musicality speak to or provide a vantage point from which to consider disruptive or reorienting strategies to transform these spaces? Papers should seek to examine how these geographies/places/spaces of sport are not simply neutral structures or landscapes but are embedded within greater projects which work to maintain/reorient/challenge exclusions and inclusions within sport.

“A Melody that Sets You Free”: Venice’s Mythical Sporting Sounds

Music and sport occupy temporal-spatial specificities grounded in performance, spectacle, and myth. The mythologies of music and sport are constructed, in part, through mediated representations that recall storied pasts and produce highly-colored visions of the future. This paper examines the intersection of music and sport in Venice Beach, California, a vibrant Los Angeles enclave recognized globally for its free-spirited ethos and famed boardwalk. Home to the legendary Muscle Beach gym, oceanfront basketball courts, skatepark, and Breakwater surf spot, Venice is central to mythical representations of eccentric California life. Sports films, such as Skatetown USA, White Men Can’t Jump, and Lords of Dogtown, foreground Venice; at the same time, artists like Brian Wilson, Snoop Dogg, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (re)activate Venice’s sonic geographies through music videos and lyrics that highlight these well-known sporting spaces. Venice thus presents a dynamic locale for interrogating how music and sport alert us to the cultural distinctions of a particular region, and how political and economic shifts impact its inhabitants. Through a multi-methodological approach, including archival research, field observations, and interviews, we consider how authenticity, identity, access, and belonging are constructed and challenged through the sporting sounds and spaces of this fabled place.