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Manchester, 1976: Documenting the urban nature of Joy Division’s musical production

2012; Intellect; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1386/punk.1.2.139_1

2044-3706

Benjamín Fraser, Abby Fuoto,

Music History and Culture

Whereas the band Joy Division (Unknown Pleasures, 1979; Closer, 1980) is widely recognized as one of the foundations of the style of music known as post-punk, their music speaks also to the nature of contemporary urban life. Melding both cultural analysis and urban theory, this article first unpacks the urban readingof the band presented in the recent underappreciated documentary Joy Division by director Grant Gee (2007) – whose emphasis on the band’s connection to and representation of Manchester has gone relatively unnoticed by critics. Subsequently, following Gee’s urban contextualization of the band (evident in both the documentary’sform and content), the article then approaches Joy Division’s musical productionitself through a range of urban theories (Georg Simmel, Henri Lefebvre, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Friedrich Engels, Andy Merrifield, Marc Augé, Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, Guy Debord/the Situationists, Jacob Riis). In the end, while undoubtedly of interest also for frontman Ian Curtis’s epilepsy and tragic suicide, Joy Division’s music speaks more broadly to the influence the modern city has exercised over contemporary life and cultural production and to future reconciliations of music sociology and urban studies.