Space and place in world music production

- World music venues create a particular atmosphere that includes segments of population and, consciously or not, excludes others.
- The people who run and shape these venues are tastemakers in the field of music production and consumption.
- There is a relational constitution of venues and social agencies in London's world music scene.
- Space and place become a dialectic that provides relevance for world music as a choice in night-time economy.

Space and place are central to understanding the conditions of world music production. This article examines how three world-music venues generate particular imaginaries, identities and expectations for those involved: performers, consumers and promoters. These venues form part of a city's nighttime economy and as such they are replete with and reenact the spatial-cultural dymanics of their location. Drawing on interview data and participant observation I show how live performances create new tensions between the global and the local, in part, through spatialized interactions among social actors, representations of world music, and constructions of place and identity through the venues themselves.