This book, which builds on a three-year immersive ethnographic study,
argues that what scene participants do and say within the northern soul
scene constitutes a claim to belong. For younger members, making claims
to belong is problematic in a scene where dominant notions of
authenticity held by insiders are rooted in a particular past: the
places, people, events, and soundscapes of particular venues during the
1970s. In order to engage with this past, young men and women
participate in a range of discursive practices. This book argues that
these practices, and the ways they intersect and deviate from dominant
notions of authenticity, represent shared and individual negotiations of
the 'true soulie'. In doing so, it reveals the rich experiences of the
younger generation of this multigenerational music scene, and the ways
they establish a claim to belong to a scene first formed before they
were born.