Music as a Third Space: Clubs, Coffee, and The Control Room

Today, I’m exploring an aspect of our identities as musicians, engineers, producers, and artists. It’s obvious that we all come from different backgrounds, work in different genres, have different workflows, and carry different identities, but I want to explore where our identities intersect. How do we see mirrors of ourselves when we’re singing at the same show? When we’re streaming the same album? When we find ourselves collaborating in the same studio?

In short, I believe that many of us arrive in music spaces (both metaphorical and physical) because of diaspora, alienation, and a shared desire to find a place where we can belong.

Music has functioned as a gathering force for people who feel unheard or disconnected. Within history and within culture, it’s been observed that art often flourishes where people are navigating migration, marginalization, or rapid cultural change. In these moments of struggle and uncertainty, music becomes more than expression. It’s a social anchor. It’s stability when systems feel fragmented. It’s a shared language when other words fail. And most importantly, it gives us a place to exist without needing to justify our presence.it becomes infrastructure. It becomes a place to gather, a place to find yourself, a place to exist.

The Chicana/o movement is a clear example. Chicano art and music emerged in response to cultural erasure, labor exploitation, and forced assimilation. Murals, lowrider culture, and Chicano rock scenes were not just aesthetic choices, they were acts of reclamation. Music and art created a third space between Mexico and the United States where identity could be asserted without needing to fully belong to either.

Hip-hop followed a similar path, it starts in a different area, but is connected by similar conditions. Born from systemic exclusion, redlining, and urban displacement in the Bronx, hip-hop culture transformed streets, parks, and community centers into creative safe havens. DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti weren’t simply art forms, they were rebellious and they claimed spaces, and asserted visibility. Hip-hop didn’t just reflect marginalization, but it showed resilience in building a place where culture could thrive.

These movements share similarities in bold sound and iconic style, but it demonstrates how a new space is cultivated. “Third place” is a term coined by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe spaces that exist outside of home (the first place) and work (the second place). These include cafés, barbershops, parks, and community halls, places where people gather voluntarily, without obligation, and without the rigid expectations attached to productivity or status.

I’ll use the terms third place and third space interchangeably here. Both refer to environments where people can relax into themselves, where hierarchy softens, and where social connection is the point rather than a byproduct.

Third spaces are often light, playful, and emotionally permissive. You don’t have to earn your right to be there. You don’t have to perform competence, success, or professionalism. You simply exist. In many ways, homes away from home.

So how is music a third space?

Music itself (the recordings, the files, the finished products) is not inherently a third space, but it is the center of actual places: concert venues, rehearsal rooms, record stores, clubs, and of course, recording studios.

Take a look at queer club culture. Having been excluded from mainstream social and cultural spaces, queer communities created their own third spaces in underground clubs and ballroom scenes. These places weren’t just nightlife venues, they were a place to connect with chosen family and a space of radical self-expression. Iconic aspects of our culture today, house music, voguing, and ballroom culture, emerged because queer communities dared to survive.

Studios have inherited the same lineage. These are spaces where vulnerability is expected. People bring unfinished ideas, uncertain identities, and emotional risk into a shared room. That kind of exposure requires trust, not professionalism alone.

Anthropologist Victor Turner described “liminal spaces” as transitional environments where normal social rules loosen, allowing for experimentation and transformation. Studios function exactly this way. Inside them, identities blur: artist, engineer, producer, friend, confidant. Authority shifts moment to moment. Emotional intelligence and flexibility becomes as important as technical skill.

In these spaces, people bring unfinished ideas, uncertain identities, and emotional risk into a shared room. This kind of exposure goes beyond technical skill, it requires trust, vulnerability, and a sense of safety.

This idea of liminal space shapes the social dynamics of music by breaking down fixed hierarchies. It reveals the reciprocal relationships between artists and audiences, engineers and performers, and reminds us of the diasporic music that has long shaped the industry through community.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Vietnamese diaspora produced what’s often referred to as VinaCafe EDM. It’s a fusion of traditional Vietnamese pop vocals layered over beats inspired by Eurodance, trance, and house. These tracks circulated through cassettes, CDs, clubs, and community gatherings.

This music wasn’t trying to be “authentic” to either traditional Vietnamese music or European EDM. It was hybrid by necessity. It was born to allow young Vietnamese listeners to hold multiple identities at once, modern and traditional, displaced and connected, it offered a way to honor all parts of themselves as they navigated identity and life after war.

If you’ve ever raided our coffee and tea bar at the studio, you’ve probably noticed the VinaCafe packets. We have it available for everyone as a quiet acknowledgment of our multi-genre space and our diverse team. It’s our way of saying we see you, we honor where you come from, and you’re welcome to bring your whole self into this room… Also, it’s really good coffee.

And at the end of the day, this is all about what that coffee represents. We don’t keep it around just to be kind, it’s a signal of our values and how we understand this space. In diasporic and marginalized cultures, hospitality is often how safety is first communicated. In the studio, a cup of coffee is our way of saying, “You’re safe here.” These small rituals lower defenses and soften the unspoken dynamics that expectations of professionalism can bring.

Studios are often described as workplaces because they involve money, schedules, and deliverables. And yes, labor should be respected and compensated fairly. But treating studios only as workplaces misunderstands their cultural role.

Creative work depends on conditions most workplaces are not designed to support. It requires uncertainty. It requires emotional risk. It requires permission to fail publicly. It requires recognition.

When studios become over-formalized, something subtle but important disappears. Artists grow guarded. Performances tighten. Risk-taking shrinks. The space may become more efficient, but it becomes less alive.

From an anthropological perspective, studios are sites of emotional labor. Artists are not just producing sound; they are negotiating identity, memory, and self-concept in real time. Without emotional safety, the body defaults to self-protection rather than expression.

Cultural theorist Bell Hooks wrote about the importance of spaces where people feel a sense of belonging as a prerequisite for honest expression. While she was not writing about studios specifically, the connection is clear. When people feel scrutinized, tolerated, or evaluated, they perform defensively. When they feel held, they explore.

In this sense, trust is a production tool. Comfort is not a luxury, it is infrastructure. And it matters more than ever.

As music becomes increasingly digitized and remote, physical third spaces are disappearing. Rising rents, shrinking venues, and platform-driven culture have made it harder to simply be together around music. Studios, when they function as third spaces, become even more important. They are one of the few remaining places where people can gather around sound without needing to optimize themselves for visibility, metrics, or monetization.

Understanding studios as third spaces allows us to protect what makes them culturally valuable. Not just as sites of production, but as places of belonging.