Introduction: Setting Popular Music in Motion

The purpose of this collection is to shed the light on the relations between music and place. Of specific interest to its editors and authors is the idea of relocation of popular music, which can mean many different things: transporting music from one place or historical period to another, hybridising it with a different style, placing it in a new context or furnishing it with a new meaning. On many occasions, this involves discussing music in relation to visual media, most importantly music video, but also film, graphic arts, fashion, and architecture. In our introduction we will present this approach against a background of the existing body of research on place and space in humanities at large, and popular music in particular. This steadily growing research can be seen as a reflection of what we propose to label a ‘spatial turn in humanities’ and a ‘spatial turn in the study of popular music’.