Something in the Water: On the Minneapolis Music Scene

Abstract

Minneapolis is a paradoxical place. Despite its rich and vibrant arts community, the city has some of the worst racial disparities in the country. It’s also cold and it’s isolated, and an unlikely location for one of the best music scenes in the United States. My claim is that the tension between the city’s forward-seeming politics and its conservative reality helps to foster new and eclectic music scenes in Minneapolis year after year. I also argue that its music community remains one of the only threads keeping the city together, especially as it still recovers from the protests after George Floyd’s murder. Studying the history and the impact of Minneapolis’s music through its artists, songs, and venues reveals a traceable lineage from one music scene to the next. This reciprocity helps to explain Minneapolis’s improbable place in the larger history of modern music. I will incorporate my own experiences, living as a musician in Minneapolis from 2002-2018, alongside the experiences and the songs of other Minneapolis musicians including Bob Dylan, Prince, The Replacements for an exploration that’s both introspective and retrospective. This reveals how the indefinable “sound” of Minneapolis continues to evolve through its fluid movements and scenes, rather any stagnant periods in its history.