Music from the end of the land: reflections on the Pembrokeshire Music Network

Abstract

Focussing on a creative network in rural Pembrokeshire (rather than a wider ‘scene’ juxtaposing creativity and ‘fandom’), this chapter examines music as emerging from – and representative of – the people, developed within bounded locales, and involving traditional practices and cultural reproductions, investments and self-reflections (Williams, 1961; Miles, 2019). The research examines an extant, fluid, and occasionally incongruous musical collective dissociated over time and genres, but not necessarily geographical spaces of locale and venues, highlighting a contrast between rural and urban creativity, the strategies of self-empowerment, collective ambition and personal satiation, and the distinctions between what are termed ‘embedded’, ‘parallel’ and ‘ephemeral’ strategies of music-making that highlight both the longevity of the scene and the omnipresent geographical, social and economic forces that continually threaten its existence.