Wall, Raine & Smith/The Northern Soul Scene, 2. Welcome to Dreamsville: A History and Geography of Northern Soul

This chapter, first published in The Place of Music: (eds. Leyshon, Matless & Revill 1998, Guilford Press), addresses debates about place and identity, and the relationship between local musical scenes and global musical cultures. It explores four main concerns: the ‘northernness’ of northern soul; rarity, exclusivity, and commodity exchange; the relationships between contexts of production and consumption; and the importance of place and pilgrimage within the northern soul scene. This chapter aimed to highlight how the northern soul scene produces a sense of identify and belonging, and in doing so hoped to offer a different way of conceptualizing identity and the production of ‘community’ in musical cultures from that offered by subcultural theory. As one of the earliest academic considerations of the northern soul scene, this publication inspired subsequent studies which extended and critiqued this analysis.