Cultural Industry and Urban Creativity in North America: A Comparative Evolution of Live Popular Music in Mexico City and Montreal

Abstract

After sketching an overview of the North American live music industry in the digital age, this article discusses the link between urban creativity and the live music industry in two cities: Mexico City and Montreal. At an early stage, the two cities privileged a modernist and monumental vision of live music. Their local music scenes developed mainly in the wake of de-industrialization and of certain economic-political crises. In the case of Montreal, it became a real pillar of the conversion into a "creative city", while in Mexico City it remained mainly relegated to the underground, crushed by hegemonic actors and structural problems (corruption, drug trafficking, inequality), except in the initial context of digital social networks.