'Singing Songs, Making Places, Creating Selves:' Football Songs & Fan Identity at Sydney FC

Article Sidebar

PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/tfc.v4i1.1057
Keywords:
music, football, songs, place-making

Main Article Content

Ian Collinson

Abstract

The Australian A-League soccer competition was established in 2004. The creation of a new national soccer league precipitated many changes within Australia’s football culture. These changes were particularly difficult for the supporters because, with a single exception, all the A-League teams were completely new ‘franchises’. The reinvented competition required soccer fans to adopt a new team, to develop new loyalties, new rituals, new places, and consequently a new fan identity. Vital to this act of re-creation has been the collective authorship of a ‘new’ repertoire of football songs. Football songs and communal singing are central to the traditions and performance of soccer fandom. Football song plays a key, perhaps even determining, role in the creation of fan identity. In this paper I examine the way football songs are used create a fan identity for Sydney’s new A-League side: Sydney FC. I argue that the result of Sydney fans’ conscious act of cultural creation is a repertoire of songs and chants that, although derived from an increasingly globalised and commodified football culture, is able to articulate a local identity. Moreover, these songs may even be thought to articulate a local and a global fan identity simultaneously, as fans connect local and distant spaces within global soccer culture.

Article Details

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2009): Music and the Production of Place

Section

Articles
Authors submitting a paper to UTSePress publications agree to assign a limited license to UTSePress if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication. This license allows UTSePress to publish a manuscript in a given issue. Copyright is retained by the authors who assert their moral rights. Authors control translation and reproduction rights to their works published by UTSePress. Downloads of specific portions of the Transforming Cultures eJournal are permitted for personal use only, not for commercial use or resale. Requests for permission to reprint or use any materials should be directed to the Author.

Author Biography

Ian Collinson

Ian Collinson teaches at the Department of Contemporary Music Studies, Macquarie University and the Learning Centre, UNSW.

References

Allon, F. (2000) 'Nostalgia Unbound: illegibility and the synthetic excess of place', Continuum, 14(3): 275-287. https://doi.org/10.1080/713657730

Anonymous (2007) This is Sydney Magazine, The Cove: Sydney.

Armstrong, G. & Young, M. (2008) 'Fanatical Football Chants: Creating and Controlling the Carnival', Sport in Society, 2(3):173-211.

Augé, M. (1995) Non-places : introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, translated by John Howe, London, New York: Verso.

Baumann, Z. (1990) 'Modernity and Ambivalence', in Mike Featherstone (ed.) Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization & Modernity, London: Sage. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327690007002010

Back, L. (2001) 'Sounds in the Crowd', in Bull, M. & L. Back (eds) The Auditory Studies Reader, Oxford: Berg.

Brottman, M. (2005) High Theory/Low Culture, New York: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403978226

Crawford, G. (2004) Consuming Sport: Fans, Sport & Culture, London: Macmillan.

Dabscheck, B. (2007) 'Moving Beyond Ethnicity: Soccer's Evolutionary Progress', in Stewart, B. (ed) The Game's not the Same: the Political Economy of Football in Australia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Dunning, E., Murphy, P. & Williams, J. (1986) 'Spectator Violence at Football Matches: Towards a Sociological Explanation', The British Journal of Sociology, 37(2):221-224. https://doi.org/10.2307/590355

Easthope, A. (1990) What a Man's Gotta Do, Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Giulianotti, R. (2002) 'Supporters, Followers, Fans & Flâneurs', Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Feb:25-46.

Giulianotti, R. (2005) 'Sport Spectators and the Social Consequences of Commodification: Critical Perspectives from Scottish Football', Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 29(4):386-410. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723505280530

Giulianotti, R. & Finn, G. (1999) 'Old Visions, Old Issues: New Horizons, New Openings? Change, Continuity and Other Contradictions in World Football', Sport in Society, 2(3):256-282. https://doi.org/10.1080/14610989908721855

Giulianotti, R. & Robertson, R. (2004) 'The Globalisation of Football: a Study in the Glocalisation of the Serious Life', The British Journal of Sociology, 55(5):545-565. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00037.x

Gosling, V. (2007) 'Girls Allowed? The Marginalisation of Female Sports Fans', in Gray, J. et al (eds) Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, New York: New York University Press.

Hassett, S. (2008) 'With Undesirables Now off the Menu, Marinators Left to Stew', Sydney Morning Herald Weekend Edition September 20-21.

Hills, M. (2002) Fan Cultures, London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203361337

Hobsbaum, E. & Ranger, T. (eds) The Invention of Tradition, London: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107295636

Long, C. & Williams, J. (2005) 'Football and Music Cultures in Liverpool', Esporte e Sociedade, 11.

McLeod, K. (2006) 'We are the Champions': Masculinites, Sports & Popular Culture', Popular Music & Society, 29(5):531-547. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007760500238551

Maffesoli, M. (1996) The Time of the Tribes, Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Maguire, J. (1994) 'Sport, Identity Politics, & Globalisation: Diminishing Contrasts & Increasing Variety', Sociology of Sports Journal, 11:398-427. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.11.4.398

Mosely, P. (1997) 'Soccer', in P. Mosely et al (eds) Sporting Immigrants, Sydney: Walla Walla Press.

Marsh, P., Rosser, E., & Harre, R.(2005) 'Life on the Terraces' [1978], in Ken Gelder (ed.) The Subcultures Reader, 2nd ed., Routledge: London.

Skinner, J., Zakus, D.H. & Edwards, A. (2008) 'Coming in from the Margins: Ethnicity, Community Support and the Rebranding of Soccer in Australia', Soccer & Society, 9(3):394-404. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970802009007

Small, C. (1998) Musicking: the Meaning of Performing & Listening, Middleton, CT: Weslyean University Press.

Smith, G (2000) Singing Australia: A History of Folk and Country Music, North Melbourne: Pluto Press.

Sydney FC Online Fan Forum (2007) <http://sfcu.com.au/>

Theodoropoulou, V. (2007) 'The Anti-Fan within the Fan', in John Gray et al (eds) Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, New York: New York University Press.

Willis, P. (1990) Common Culture, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.