Surfin’ U.S.A. or Surfin’ California?

This paper suggests and tests a ‘place-based aesthetics model’ in order to show the importance of place in the process of retrospective cultural consecration. By studying place as a social construct, two important dimensions of place are distinguished: ‘sense of location’ and ‘sense of locale’. In contrast to the more practical approach towards these dimensions of prior research, this study treats these dimensions in a ‘symbolic’ manner, in the sense that it makes the shift towards the social meanings and values attached to locale or location. In order to study this, a surf music dataset of 2.548 surf tracks was used. While taking into account the effects of more general predictors of retrospective consecration, the paper includes both dimensions of place in one model. The results suggest the existence of a ‘California-aesthetic’ in the genre of surf music, while associations with locale, or the material setting of social interaction, seem to be unimportant. By controlling for different forms of concurrent success, the paper concludes that this importance of ‘location’ cannot only be credited to the economical and production side advantages of the vibrant music scene of California but should partly be ascribed to certain symbolical effects of ‘place-based aesthetics’ in surf music.