Tunes and transitions at the tearoom - Emily Baker and Freya Jarman

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference.

Please note: since this recording, one of the speakers, Emily Baker, has sadly passed away. Emily was a cherished member of the Academic Archers community: generous, witty, and intellectually sharp. Her contributions across many conferences and conversations enriched us all, and her presence is deeply missed. This episode stands as part of the legacy she leaves with us.

This episode explores the music of Ambridge’s tearoom, the role of playlists in public spaces, and the subtle ways that background music shapes social life and character development.

Tunes and transitions at the tearoom - Emily Baker and Freya Jarman 

Apart from the Hollerton Silver Band at the summer fete, the most reliable place to find music in Ambridge is the tearoom. Whether with Victoria sponge or carrot cake, Fallon has always soothed her customers with culinary and auditory delights. But Natasha’s new regime threatens the soundtrack as well as the furniture.

Under Fallon, the tearoom soundtrack—Perry Como, Doris Day, dance band classics—conjures the BBC’s Light Programme and speaks both to the room’s cosy character and to the shifting lives of its patrons. It has functioned as Ambridge’s therapeutic backdrop: a place where life’s transitions can be digested with a cuppa and a muted trumpet.

Playlists are, of course, essential to ambience. From Starbucks soundscapes to classical music in bus stations, scholars have noted how background music shapes behaviour and mood. What happens, then, when Natasha replaces Doris Day with Dido in an effort to “upscale” the tearoom’s soundworld? Will the playlist still act as the unconscious of Ambridge, or will it jar with village life?

This paper asks how music mediates the tearoom as a social space, reflecting both nostalgia and change.

About the speakers

Emily Baker (University of Sussex) was - and will always be remenbered as - an insightful and creative researcher whose work spanned music, culture, and everyday life. She was also a warm and generous presence within the Academic Archers community, inspiring others through her intellect, humour, and friendship.

Dr Freya Jarman SFHEA is Reader in the Department of Music at the University of Liverpool. Their work spans popular music studies, gender and queer theory, pedagogy, and music in everyday life.

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