A few more thoughts about the London_vs_Provinces thing.
Interesting to map it onto other countries:
Jamaica:
Roots Reggae famously the rise of the country boy. Treasure Isle/Early Studio One very metropolitan Kingston-centric but the innovations which blew Reggae wide-open came from the country/provinces: Lee Perry, country bwoy number one, though practising in Kingston. Burning Spear, though he voiced the tracks for the "Presenting" and "Rocking Time" LPs at Coxsone's another true provincial, indeed with "Marcus Garvey" and "Man from the Hills" he returned to Willie Lindo's studio in Ocho Rios. Also the hardcore Rasta communities perched in the Blue Mountains saying up yours Babylon. Lloyd Bradley good on this.
Germany:
Krautrock not just globally "decentric" but recall that Faust retreated to a barn in Wumme to record their mind-melting classix. I'd foreground here the need for creativity to not be blanched in the white-hot energy of the city. Which leads me to wonder if the provincial is by definition the square-root of the "Bohemian" (with all it's attendant suggestive overtones of the free-range and alien)
Brasil:
The creative wave of rootsy Brazilian music of the seventies was anti-Rio. Milton Nascimento was a proud native of the Minas Gerais region and Gilberto Gil of Bahia. Both did work out of their respective regions too.
The USA(?):
Dom Laruffa had this to say as whether the same applied to the US:
"As regards USA, whatever may be said to afflict US music, it certainly is not NYC hegemony. Look first at hip hop, East Coast, West Coast, Altanta, New Orleans, Memphis, St Louis.
Then look at dance music, Detroit's still a center, Chicago's still a center, Miami still has its own thing, New York-Philly house music (even if majorly trapped in the past), the left coast scene...
Then consider indie rock, bracketing the merits of the music (which as we know is damn near meritless), you have NYC, Seattle, Detroit, San Franciso-LA, Wash DC, Boston, Chicago, Memphis, all of which operate as centers..."
Oh OK!
Posted by Woebot at September 20, 2003 04:48 PM