Frith, Simon - Music and everyday life

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SIMON FRITH
Music and everyday life
In the House of Commons on L5 March 200Q Robert Ke1', the Conservative
MP for Salisburv, begged to move'That leave be given to bring in a Bill to
prohibit the broadcasting of recorded music in certain public places'.l
Key introduced this bill as a rnusic lover. He had sung u'ith the Academv
or-Stlvlartin in-the Flefdshnd-the Mohleverdi Choir. He remarkEd that
'ir4usic is an intenselv personal thing. Ir4uch as I love Mozart and Handel,
there are moments urhen I crave Ella Fitzgerald, Queen or, just mavbe, All
Saints.' \Arhat he resented rt'as 'being trapped u'ith no choice of escape from
someone else's choice of music'. 'Pipeci music, muzak or canned music', he
areued, is increasingll' disliked and despised. 'All music is devalued if it is
treated as acoustic rvallpaper.'
l(s1' r,r,as speaking on behaif of Pipedon'n, the Campaign for Freedorn
trom Fiped Music (patrons: Alfred Brendel, Sir Peter Maxrt'ell Davies,-Spike
Milligan), but suggested there rn'ould be rn'idespread public support for the
measure. He cited a 7997 Suncinrl lirnss survev u'hich ibund piped music to
be numlrer three in the list of things most hated about modern life. He noted
that follor+ing a sunrev of its users, Gatrvick Airport had stopped plaving
canned music. He dreu' on medical findings. 'All uninvited noise raises lhe
l.lood pressure and depresses the irnmune s_vstem.' He added informaiion
irom the Chartered Lrstitute of Environmental Health. 'The commonest
ivpe of offending noise is not pneumatic drills, cars or aircraft, but music.'
The bill rt'as greeted enthusiasticallv in the media, perhaps because
€\;€r1,9ns knelt' it ra'ouldn't get anyu,here. But as a solution to the problem
of public music Key's bill rt as actuallr; quite mociest. He didn't seek to ban'
piped music from places rnhere people choose to go (shops, hotels, sports
clubs). His measure $ras meant to regr.rlate involuntan' listening. It covered
irospitals and surgeries, local authorit.r' su'imming pools, bus and railq'ar.'
stations and jor,rrnevs, the streets. He dicin't propose, as he might have done,
This paper is based on rnt inau-qural iecture as Proiessor of Film and l{edia Studies at Stirling
Universiir--.
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36 Critica! Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1
that in the future no one should listen to music except in premises licensed
for that purpose.
It is not as if private places are free of musical pollution. Horr many
people nott' travel b), .ut in silence? Who nou' doesn't shaye or bathe to
music, cook or iron to music, read or rtrite to music? Thanks to the radio
and the record plal'st and the tape machine, music is nort' the soundtrack of
everydal' life and no la$' is going to change that.
Let me guote an American journalist, J. Bottum.
The first time an1.6ng openlv acknor,,,ledged music as a \^reapon rnay haye
been rluring the i989 invasion of Panamal r,',hen US soldiers bombarded the
Vaiican envov's house u'it} rock-and-roll in an attempt to chivvv out the
fugitive l'{anuel Noriega. But the truth is that u,e are ali terrorized-bv music
noi,,'adavs. lt's not so mlch the high school kids parading dou'n the strlet n'ith
boom boxes, or the college stucie"nts par$'ing ,i^,ur, " S"aturdav afternoon, orthe insomniac in the next apartrnent pacint up and dovr.n to Beethoven at
3.00am. It's, rather, the merciless stream of 1960s golden oldies drenching
suburban rr,alls, the disco-revir.al radio thurnping oui Donna Summer in the
back of a taxi all the *-av io the airport, tfie iinnr' N4uzak 'bleating from
storefronts as y.ou,.rr"alk along the sider+.alk, the tastefully muted Ancirer,r'
Llovd Webber seepinE; from recesseci speakers above the ,.riinuls in the men's
room. America is drou'ning rn sanctioned music - an obiigatorv orcheskation
cramming everv inch of public space. [...]
Perhap_s it n,r35 flslh^,,vood that taught us to expect life to come .r.r'ith back-
ground music, a cgnstant melodic commentarf on the movie:of our lites. [. . . j
Of course, the movie sort of soundtrack never quite lvorks because in real life
it's delivered entirehj' in snippets, as we cross f-rom one steieo zone to another.
t .l In a Washington, DC, office building I .n'as recentil' subjected firsi io a
stomach-chuming fifteen seconds of Rimsky-Korsakor"s tnig.hi of the Bumble-
bee' as the elevator rattled up to m)'floor, then to fir'e ianglliseconds of guitar
in the Beaties' 'Can't Buy Me Lovet from a deli'ery man'slidio dou,n thE hall,
and then, as I stood bv the receptionist's desk, to i minute and a half of one of
those insane seventeenth-cenrury Scottish folk tunes vvhose purpose u,as to
make the tartan clans seize their hve'handed battle srvords ani wide throush
English blood, hon'ling like the sea. We've all been ciamned to a perpetJ'ai
quarter-final round of Name That Tunc.
And !t's not just in public spaces. Private life in .America is eguallv iittered
n'ith ciissociaied musical frag-ments, from the momeni the clock iudio tr*r nr.,
in the moming until the'sleep' function turns it off at night. you can snatch
fir'e minutes of Copiand's Appalachian Spnng r,r'hile yo" -g"ip your firsi cup
of coffee, take in the second act of a lvlussoigskv op'era d'uring the momine
commute. slip a cD into the office computer and squLeze in a litile \.rilla-Lobol
betv'een departrnent meetings, recognize a scrap of Holst's The planeis in lne
theme song for the evening neu's, and fall asleep afier dinner in the middle of
Dvoi6k's Net World Syntphonv.
Children at summer camc, college students in-iheir iibrar-r' carrels, solciiers ai
r,r''ar in the desert: Americans seem incapable of going u'ithout music. It pours
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Music and ever)'dav life 37
from the open n indor,r's of the apartment house across the sffeet and the car in
the next lane at the stoplight. 'Let us rather spend our time in conversation,'
the doctor En'ximachui tells Socrates as he dismisses the after-supper flautist
in Plato's Synposiwn - but u'hen dld you lasi go to a dinner Parh' at rn'hich the
stereo didn'i rumble through the e'r'ening?-
As Bottum makes clear here, our ears are as likely to be assaulted these davs
bv classical music as by pop. It's not just that music is everyrn'here but that
all music is even'where. \{orks composed for specific secular or religious
occasions - marches, masses - in specific places - Thailand, Texas - can furn
up as if at random on TV commercials and restaurant tape loops. There's no
Ionger an\r necessary connection betvveen the cccasion for making music
and the occasion for listening to it. .A song or lament may once have been
used to mark out distinctions of class or belief'or nation; now it is just part of
the amorphous.everyday. Its qualities as music - its position in the hier-
archv of high and iorn' culture; its ritual authoritv or personal sinceriN - are
irreler.ant to its emergence and dissipation in the ceaseless flor.r' of back-
ground sounds.
Hence the peculiaritv of our pre,sent situation: if music \^'as once that
organisation of sounds that could be distinguished from noise, it has
become the epitome of noise itself, more offensive, if Robert Kev is to be
believed, than the sound of pneurnatlc drills.
One theme of twentieth-centu!-\' composition rnzas to make music out of
noise, to reclaim the evervda\'' for art, as it u'ere, to vr'rite r,r'orks /or pneu-
matic drills. Noise-as-music has as many instances as music-as-noise. Cage
and Stockhausen $'rote rn'orks incluciing 'live' raciio (Intaginaru Latrdscape
No 4 and Kurzcuellen (Short Waoe-s)). Avant-garde composers took up Pierre
Schaeffer's and Pierre Henr1"5 idea of nrttsiquc concrite in a varietv of genres.
Eric Satie, follorn'ing a different strateg)', proposed 'ntusique d'ameublement',
furniiure music n'hich n'ould be unnoticed in the everydav hubbub, an
idea follorryed up much later bv Brian Eno in his Masrc for Airyort,< (r.thich,
in its actual airport tryout turned out to be all too noticeable to nen'oustravellers after all)." And, of course, mant' rock musicians - in heary meial
bands and their offshoots, in the posi-punk industrial and noise scenes -
have made electronic amplification and the distorting effects of high
r'oiumeandfeedbackacentralpartoftheiraesthetic.
But vvhat concerns me here is another of john Cage's questions: what ncrn'
is silence?
Trn'o points are striking here, I think. First, silence is so rare that it has
become. in itself, increasingh' r'aluable. We live novr- not just ra'ith the
permanent sense of traffic roar, the rouiine interruption of sirens and car
alarms and mobile phones, bui also rn'ith the ongoing electric hum of the
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3E Critical Quirterly, vol. 44, no. 1
fridge, the cenkai heating, neon lights, the digital clock. Silence has become
ihe indicator of an unusual intensity of feeling - emotional intensifv in the
Holll"wood film; public solemnitf in the two-minute silence on Remem-
brance Dav, the one-minute silence before kick-off in r,r'hich to honour
someone's death. It r,"as, presumablv, this that prompted the ITC to censure
ITN for broadcasting a 'sick and tasteless' selluence of nert's in rt'hich 'the
collapse of the World Trade Center in Nevv York u'as set to music'. The
music (from Charles Gounod's ludex) may have been, as ITN claimed,
suitable, rfith 'a sombre, funereal tone', bui the very attempt to show these
images in time to rnusic 'rt as inappropriate and breached the programme
code'.4
And silence, as something valuable, to be bought, means not complete
siience, but the absence of human or electronic or artificial sounds. Nature -
the country reheat, the unspoilt beach or bush or jungie, the mountain
n'ilderness - is the most precious holidal' resource. I can still remember the
shock of Western travellers arriving at the foothills of the Himalavas to find
that this mountain fastness r.r'as, for local fam.ilies, a picnic spot, a place to
unr'r'ind and carouse, radios and tape-players blasting.
Because rri: seen to value silence, to col'et it, it is perhaps suiprising that
silence is aiso norry sonething io be feared - on raciio, in seminar.s, on the
ielephone. Here silence becornes somethir.g tobe.fiIied,'aud music becomes
not that rr.hich isn't noise, but thai n'hich isn't no noise. As long ago as 193E,
Theodor \4r. Aciorno suggesteci that the rise of music as the necessan:
accompaniment to all forms of entertainment,
seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, '.he dving out of
speech as expression, the inabiiiW of peopie to communicale at all. It inhabits
the pockets of silence that develop between people moulded by aDsisf)', lvsrl
and undemanding docilitv. fq'sn'n'here it takes over, unnoticed, the deadlv
sad role that fell to it in the time and the specific situation of the silent iilms. It
is perceived purell,as background. If-nbbodl.'can anv ionger speak, then
certainly nobodv can anv longer listen.
Popular music, something once used to dro'iryn out other souncis - on the
streets, in the music hall and variefi' theatre, in the pub and parlcur
singsong - is novt used to ensure that there is never no sounci it all. b the
BBC u'ere tc' reiniroduce Lord Reith's rule that programmes should be
follovved b,v silence, to allort listeners to refleci on ra'hat they'd heard, I have
no doubt that the sn'itchboard u'ouid be jammed u'ith compiaints: has
something gone u,rong?
in the llouse of Commons, Rober', Kev su6;gesied that there vr'as an
important difference behveen choosing to lisien to music in pubiic places
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Music and everydav life 39
and hai.ing to listen to it, and grven people's apparent need to fill their
lives u'ith music the implication is that the problem is u,hat we have to hear:
other people's music, not our ou'n. And certainll' the routine use of the
term 'muzak' to dismiss a certain sort of light instmmental arrangement
suggests that r,r,hat's invoh.ed here is a matter of taste. But this mav be
misleading. People are equally upset by rvhat seems to be the inappropiate
use of music they do like: ivlozart as we r,r'ait for a plane to take off;
Credence Clearr,r'ater or the Clash on a commercial; Miles Davis in a bank.
I don't knorv of an,y systematic research into u'hat most offends people
about dre use of music in public places, but an unscientific sunr€I of frienCs
and neu'spaper columnists suggests that what is played matters less than its
ci rcurnstances.6
On the one hand, people seem less offended by live music: children
singing in-a pl-avground,*d biastbhnd or clbir in the paik, ari Andean
trouFe or reggae guitarist in the shopping mall. A busker singing
'l{ondem'all' or 'He1'! Mr Tambourine Man' badly is less offensive than
the originai record. John Sloboda and Susan O'Neill suggest that 'one
phenomenon u'hich desen'es $reater studv and theorising is the unique
position of the street musician in the affections of even the most hardened
opponents of music in public places'. Respondents to their questionlraire
sun'e,v spontaneousll, exempied br,rskers from their cii$like of public music
and s}'recificaiil' distinguished live from pre-recorded music:
This to nre is musical entertainment in its purest fornr. The jol' of busking is its
spontaneitr,. Your audience is free to come and go as it u'ishes, to pa). or not
pa1,, to listen or not listen. There is a beautiful freedom about busking that
i love, and I hope we never lose street entertainment.;
Adorno once remarked that 'the man ',uh3 in the subvvay triumphantll'
r,r'histles louciiy the theme of the finaie of Brahms' First is already primarilv
invoh'ed r.r'ith its debris', but the issue here is not aesihetics but sociabilitl'.s
Live music is rnusic as a social er,ent, an aspect of a social sifuation - play,
display, celebration, begging. It is an organic, a iiving aspect of public life
(hence the terrn - live music) u'hatever its technical or aesthetic qualities.
Canned music, piped music (terms aimost alu'avs used with negative
corurotaticns of the mechanical) has been removed from its social origins.
Like some aUen force it moves relentlesslr.. foru'ard regardless of an1' human
responses to it.
On the other hand, anecdotal polling suggests that there are particular
experiences of public music that are offensive rn'hatever the music involved.
Music r,''hile a telephone is on hold;1\alkman leak on trains and buses; the
bass boom fronr a car at traffic lighis; the endless loop of Christmas songs in
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40 Critical Quarterly, r'ol. ,14, no. 1
December; the sound of other people's parties. The offence here is against
one's sense of one's own space - it is being inrraded; but reflects too, I think,
resentment, resentment at being so obviouslv excluded by other people.
Music, ihat is to say, has become a defensive as rt'ell as an offensive vveaPon
(just as it has become a \,\'av of negotiating shared space, as in the club or on
the dance floor).
The question of hor,r' - anci why - music got implicated in our sense of
personal space is iascinating and little explored. It is not just a matter of
music in pubiic places. Gilles Deleuze and F6lix Guattari thus approach the
question from the opposite direction in theorising the modern concept of
the home. For them {home' does not pre-exist. It r,r'as necessarv to drau'
a circle around that uncertain and fragiie centre, to organize a limited space.
t.. l Sonorous or vocal components are verv important a r.r'all of sound, or at
least a r,r'all r.r'ith some sonic bricks in it. A child hums to summon his sirength
for the schoolr,r'ork she has to hand in. A housen'ife sings to herself, or listens
to the radio, as she marshals the anti-chaos forces of her work. Radios and
teierrision sets are like sound rvalls around every household and mark
territories (the neightrour complains n'hen it gets too loud). [...] Theterritor'1',
and the functions performed vr'ithin ii, are products of territorialization.
Territorialization is in act of rhvthm thai has b-ecome expressi.e [. ..Je
From a sociological perspective, that is, \^re can better understanC the
domestic relations of intinac-v and distance, por,\'er and affection, b!-
mapping patterns of musical use than '!\'e can expiain musical tasies trr.
reference lo social variables.la Hor.r, is familv space regulated musicallri?
Familv members (teenagers most notoriously) mark off their ou'n space
r,r'ith their music - volume as a barrier. But rn'hat happens in communal
spaces - the kitchen, the car? \Arho decides what plal's? \Alhat music is ruled
out iorf court and rr.'hr'? In mv early chiidhood rn'e had a single radiograrn in
ihe living room. The onl,v time I felt quite free to put on rt'hat I rn'anteci n'as
n'hen I n'as il!, off school. ir. *y memory these iiinesses are still imbued
u'ith musical pleasure. The transistor radio and the Dansette transforrned
my domestic life, and I doubt if there's anvone nort'ada1,s'r,r'ho coulcin't map
the historv of family' reiationships along musical lines. It's a moot point
n'hether changes in domestic ideologt'meant ner,t' markets for new kincis of
domestic eleckical goods, or r'vhether it was the new musical possibilities
that changed families. I have no doubt that a sociologv of contemporary
courtship, romance, sex and friendship coulci start n'ith the roie of music
in these relationships: the exploration of each other's tastes, the shifil-rg
degrees of tolerance and intolerance for other people's recorcis, the import-
ance of the musical gi-ft, the attempts to change other peooie's music habits,
to resist changing one's o\r'n.
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Music and evervdav life 41
I'll come back to this. First I u'ant to digress into some brief remarks about
the role in all this of music radio.
I believe that radio vvas the most significant twentieth-century mass
medium. It r,.'as radio u'hich transformed the use of domestic sPace,
blurring the boundan'betn'een the public and the private, ideaiising the
famill.- hearth as the site of ease and entertainrnent, establishing the rhythm
of everydavness: the Children's Hour, Breakfast Time, Fridall Nighf is Music
Nighfl It rras radio r,"hich shaped the new' r'oice of public intimacy, ra'hich
created the nation as a meciiated collectir:ity, r,r'hich gave ordinaq' people a
public platform (creating the concept of 'ordinary people'in the first place).
It lvas radio rl.hich made sport a national svmbol, rryhich created the ver-v
idea of 'light enteriainment'. Where radio led, television sirriply followed.
And it'n'as radio (rather than film, as Adorno and Bottum suggest) that_
esiatdished the po-ssiliili[; Of musia a- an e-vei-pi-.i'irg sounafi;ck to our
lives.il
If tele'r'ision in all its varieties rtere to be abolished it rn'ould make little
difference to a classical music rt'orlci that is, though, almost entirely
dependent on radio not just for broadcasts, bui for the support of orchestras
and concerts, for commissions and record sales. And u'hile the pop rvorld
rt'ould iiave to adapi its r{'a1's if television no longer played a part in star
making, radio is still the :nost important source df popular musical
discourse, ciefining genres and genre communities, shaoing music hision
and nostalgia, determining r.r'hat 11'e mean bv 'popular'music in ihe first
place.
It n'as radio u.hich created the musical map n'hich rre no1\' use to dis-
tingui-sh high and lou'music (Radio 3 r's. Radio i), youth and older people's
music (RaCio 1 r's. Radio 2). the specialist musical interest and the main-
stream (daytime vs. e\:ening programming). Radio is important not ieast
as a means of access to music otherra'ise inaccessible, rt hether in the
BBC's svstematic policv of musical education or in the furti.i'e teenage use of
Radio Luxembourg, the American Forces nefn'orl<, pirate raciio siations as
r.r'indorvs on another ra'orld. Ii as I believe (probabiv r,r'rongly) mv life n'as
transformed as a child r.r'hen I heard Little Richard's 'Tutti Frutti', ii is
certainh' the case that pre-Beatles:radio (when there u'as supposedly littie
music to choose) plaved a kev role in the reordering of even'dav teenage
iife.
But here I u'ani to use raciio to .address another issue: the question of
musical choice. ln the earlv days of tJ're music industn' ii rvas assumed that
the phonograph and the radio !1'ere competing for domesiic attenfion, and it
is often suggested that the US record industrl' onlv sun'ivei the Depression
vears of the 1930s because of the success of the jukebox (an interesting
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42 Critical Quarterly, vol.44, no. 1
example of a technological device for imposing private musical choices on
a public). It seemed a matter of common sense that if someone ort'ned a
record that thev coulci pla;' at rt'ill, thev u'ouldn't turn on the radio to hear
it. Or, alternativel,v, if the-v knerry the radio u'ould be routinely playing the
latest hits, rt'hy u'ould thel' 5p""6 monev on getting the records for
themseh,es?
In practice, though, this is not hon' radio choice rn'orks. From the rise of
top 40 radio in the USA in the 1950s to the 1990s British success of Classic
Flvl, it has become accepted industry ',r'isdom that people are more likely to
stal' 1.rt',"0 to a radio station the more likelv it is to play music that is
familiar to them, recordsla'hich thel' already o\^'n or have just bought. It is
much harder to maintain listening figures for programmes or stations that
routinelv plav the odd or unfamiliar. And radio remains, of course, the
essential tool for selling music of all sorts: the more a track is played, the
more likely that listeners r,t'ill buy it.
What seems to be involved in radio listening, then, is a constant move-
ment between predictabilitv anC surprise. Cln 'our' station u'e exPect to hear
our kind of music,'itithout erter being quite sure r,r'hat r,r'ill come next. It's as
if r,r'e're hupp)' io let someone else have the Lrurden of choice. And radio is
also a 'n.av of suggesting a broader taste communih. Our personal nrusical
likes and dislikes are publiclv confirmed, and deejays and presenters hat,e a
particularly important role in treaiing music as a form of social communi-
cation- The onlv kind of radio u'hich acquires the conciition of muzak is that
deejayless ambient format in u'hich no voice is heard (unless it is seliing
something).
Radio has also been important in developing the skili of switching
attention, mo\ring back and forth.between hearing music and listening to it,
treating it as background or foreground. It's a skiil that is taken for granted
bv film scorers, that r,r'e exercise eve4; dst r,r'ithout though.t as we rr'alk
dou'n the skeet or sit in the pub. Public music irritates, one could sa1', r,r,hen
r,r'hat should be in the background forces itself on us as foreground, but the
question that interests me, and to rn'hich I n'ill retum, is u'ir,v it is, u'hen r,r'e
are nol\' so skilled at screening out music that cioesn't much interest us, that
some songs or voices or melodies or beats just reach out and grab our
attention an\'\A'a\'.
For Adorno 'all contemporarv music life is dominaied bv the comrnoditv
character' and it is the resulting 'fetish characier in music' that explains 'the
regression in listening'.
Music, u'ith all the atiributes of the ethereai and sublime n'hich are generoush'
accorded it, sen'es in America toria'r' as an advertisement for coinmodities
r,"hich one musi acquire in order to 6e r,i'ie to hear music.lz
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I\{usic and everyday life 43
Or, as u'e'd sat these daYs, music is a matter of brand and lifesf ie. Take
this reportfrom the music industry trade paper, Music lNeek.
There w'as rurther good nen's for Classic FM last ureek'n'hen its T\Ladvertised
Time to Relax entered the compilation chart at number nine. 'Getting iisteners
to buf into the Classic trrand is at the heart of rshat r','e do,' savs [Roger] Ler'r'is
[Classic FM programme controllerJ. 'As rtel] as the albums u'e harre t}e
magazine, a credit card and even a dating agency. We are seeing a Slassical
music phenomenon in the UK, as suddenly it's cool to be classical."'
Bui underlving such brash commercialism are. two broader transformations
in hon' music nor,r' q.orks in societl', the transformations r,r'hich Adorno
means in part b1- 'commodih' character'. On the one hanci, we primarih,
thjnk-ot.-.rnusie.in-terrrts-of .its-.ase; on the other hand, usefuiness meanstr
*uiieidua|-ase.
- The-use o-f muSrc-to u'hich we mostly-bjecithese dal's Ir as a commercial
tool: its use to manipulate us in the market. Adrian North and David
Hargreaves, u'ho have done the most systematic research on this in Britain,
repgrt, for example, on a studv of the 'influence of in-store music on u'ine
selections'. \{hen French music r.r'as plaved, French n'ines outsold Germaa
r,r'ines; rahen Gerrnan music r,"as played, German nines outsold French
r.r'ines. Questionnaire data shou'ed that 'customers \^rere unar.\iare of these
effects on their product choices'.ia
There is, b1' non', consicierable similar research reported in the marketing
and psychology journals, and fer.r' people are una\ iare of how music is used
by a6h,s111r.rs and retailers. But it is equally important to note that people
nowadal,s routinely use music to manipulate their moods and organise
their actir.ities for tlrcmselves. The pioneering researchers of music and
even,dav life iruBritain, the sociologist Tia deNora and the psychologist
John A. Sloboda, both emphasise the extent to u'hich people no\^r regard
music as a personal tool, something to be used, in DeNora's terms, for
'emotional self-regulation'. As a 'technologl' of self', music has become
crucial tc the u'avs in r,r'hich people organise memor\', identitr', their
autonomt'.
Seen in this light, the stud'r' of hon' music is used i;r dailv life helps io
illuminate the praciical activi6' of casting ahead and rurnishing the social
space n'ith material,cultural resources for feeling, being and doing. This is nart
of hor'r' the habitat for social life - its support svstem - is produceci and
sustained. .And aesthetic reflexive action, that is the reference to aesthetic
materials as a means for generating agenc)-, is a crucial aspect of structuration.
It is a kevstone for the project of knou'ing u.hat to sa\', how to move, hor,r' to
'feel. In short, music is i resource for proiucing sociai life.]5
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44 Critical Quarterly, vol.44, no. 1
For Sloboda,
Primarv functions of music in contemporarv evervdav life appear to include
the enhancement or distraction of attention from a mundane domestic task, the
stimulation of emotionallr-oriented reminiscence, and the use of music to
enhance states of relaxatio'n.16
Both.rt riters suggest that the driving force of people's everydav use is the
need tc' be in control, and that today this means iniegrating emotional and
aesthetic control: creating the setting for the appropriate display of feeling
(ra,'hether to oneself or to others). Sloboda's research also shows that people
are more likely to use music to accompany chores than pleasures, tasks
done as duties rather than enjoyed for their own sake. Joggers routinelv
u'ear l{alkmen; r,,"alkers do not. Once the dinner partv conversation ccmes
to life no one bothers io put on a ner,r' CD.
Once upon a time ethnomusicologists described the functions of music in
almost exclusively social terms: music'q'as useC in games and for dancing,
to organise rvork and u'ar, in ceremonies and rituals, to rnark the momenis
of birth, marriage and death, to celebraie harvest and coronation, to articu-
late religious beliefs and kaditional practices. People might have enioy'ed
music individuali,v- bui its puroose r.rras not to make thern feel good."
Compare assumptions no1,,r about the rrse of nrusic.'In a suntev of 210
u'orks on 'the po\\'er of rrrusic' (commissioned by.- the Performing Right
Societ-v), Susan Hallam notes hoq'contemporary research is focused on the
use of music for therapl' and meciical ireatment, for enhancing chiidren's
learning abilities, for influencing individual behaviour. Among her 'ket'
points' are these:
. Music can promote relaxation, alleviate anxiety and pain, promote
appropriate behaviour in vulnerable groups and enhance the qualih- of
life of those u'ho are beyond meciical help.
. People can use rhusic in their lives to manipuiaie their moods, alle'r'iate
the boredom of tedious tasi,.s, and create envi;onrnenLs appropriate fo;
particular social events.:.. The easy availabilih' of music in even'dat life is -e^ncouraging individuals to
use music to optimise their sense oi u'ell-being.tD
And she concludes her sunev of research bv suggesting that
There is also need foi more s\,stematic investigation of the n,avs that music can
impact on groups of people in social settings. To date, research has tendeci to
focus on commercial and n'ork environmenis. The n'ay that music mav affect
behaviour in pubiic places has been neglected. Such research, for instance,
might exoiore u'hether particular tvoes of music mighi stimulate orderil' exits
from large public functions, reduce the incidence of disorder in particuiar
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Music and e'i'en'da), life 45
settings, increase tolerance n'hen people have to gueue for'relatively long
periods- of time or engender feeiings of n'ell being and safel,v in public
Dlaces. ''
There are, in fact, alreadl, reports of music being used for such social
engineering - classical music plaved in raiivr'a)t stations to make them
unsuitable as youth hangouts, for example - and r"hat I 'tr.ant to note about
this is less dismay that music shouid have become a technology of discipline
not delight than that it marks a sigrrificant shift in our understanding of hoa,
music is porverftrl. \{hile the Taliban ban music v"ith the kadiiional anxietv
that it is a source of collective disorder, a challenge to religious authorif;', in
rnodern societies discipline is internalised. \Ari:ratls at stake is not l'hat
people r,r'ant to do but usuallv (until released by music) cion't, but r,r'hat they
can't'rvant to do in the first place. Music remains 'a por,r'erful medium of
social order'buf its por^'er i-.-erereis€il-lCs--tfirougl{ gritup pFl'c-hoaog}tth?
orchestration of crorn'ds, than through individual psychologr,, the articu-
lation of self-
Tia DeNora concludes her book on A4irsic ir Et'e1lday Life by obsen'ing that
There is a significant difference betvr'een ernploving music that one makes
oneself (performing or compcsing) for this purpose and emplor.jiir6; music that
just happens to occupv a social setting; that difference consists of the degree
to u'hich one may negotiate the aesthetic parameter-c of action. [...] the;e are
times rthen ttre iU;liir. io control o.ne's iesthetic environment i-. cruciai to
individuals - in intirn;ie settings, at times of stress, 16 sffsrrd conceniration, to
r,ent aggression, to avoid pairrful music. Tb the extent that music can L,e seen
to get into or inform subjectivily'and action, the issue of aesthetic contro! and
its relation to the constitutjon of agencv is serious, particularlv a-q organisations
and marketeers are becoming increasingly sophisticateri in their depiovment
of music, Further explorations of music as it is used and depioved in daih' life
- in relation to agenc)"s configuration vvill onl,v sen'e to highlight ruhat Adorno,
and the Creek philosophers, regarded as a fundamental matter in relation to
the polis, the citizen and the configuration of consciousness; namelr', thatmusic is much more than a decorative art; that it is a porrerful medium of
social order. Conceived in this rrav, and documented through empirical
research, music's fesence is ciearh' political, in even. sense thai the poiitical
can be conceirred.
I r,r,ant to dralv this paper to a conclusion bv reiterating DeNora's sug-
gestion that music is mucir more than a decoiative art. In The Sociology of
Rock, published in 7978, I began u'ith the obsen'ation that, n hile recorded
music was usualh' included in a list of the contemporar\r mass media in
textbooks, it vr'as rareh'othentise examined- Tvr'entv and more vear-s on anC
the situation hasn't reallv changed. The cinema, television, the press and
magazines and advertising are still regarded in the academt as more
sociallv and politicalli' significant than records.
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16 Criticttl Quarterly, r'ol. 44, no. 1
And so it needs stressing that u'hat people listen to is more important for
their sense of themselves than what they watch or read. Patterns of music
use provide a better map of sociai life than'i'ieu'ing or reaciing habits. Music
just matters more than any other medium and this brings rne back to my
starting point and the r^rays in u'hich music is nou' heard as '.rffensir.e. It
is because music is norn' used to mark out prirate territory that it can also
'invade' it; it is because music has become so deeply implicaied in people's
personas that it can be 'misused'; and it is because music is no!\: so rt'idely
enploved as an emotional tool that its misuse is genuinely upsetting.
But there are tlvo further points I rn'ant to make. First, DeNora and
Sloboda tend to refer musical meaning to its emotional function for indi-
viduals, but rnusic remains equallv important as a rnearrs of comnrunication
a!-rd as a form of sociability. Most acaciemic research on everydav music
focuses, as I have focused here, on music lisiening. But H'hat is equally
remarkable is the sheer amounl of music makittg in u'hich people are
engaged, and my point here is not just that people do, in large numbers, join
choirs, form rock and pop groups, plav around u'ith record decks and set
up horne studios, but also thai these rnusical actlr'ities are central for their
understanding of r,r'ho they are. Jr4usic making provides, as Ruth Finnegan
argues, critical 'pathu'avs'thrcugh liie.2i And music making is less about
rnanaging one's o\^rn emotional life th.an about enjoving being together in
groups, real and imagined. As i argued in PerTonning Rites, in this context
aestiretic judgements (u:hat music matiers) can't be disentangled from
moral judgements (rn'hat music is good).
Future research in music and the eveq'ia)' needs to integrate the study
of music making r,r'ith the studv of musical use. To mv mind, ongoing
i.nr.estigation of people's tastes and the current research focus on issues
of identity are much less interesting proiects than an ethnography'n'hich
n'ould trv to map in detail people's tintetable o1t engagentalf, the reasons rn'hy
particular music gets particular attention at particuiar moments, and hovr'
these moments are, in turn, imbricated in people's social netr,,t'orks.
Second, and-to-register finalh' mv unease at treating music in simple
functional terms, we need to balance accounts of hor,r' people use music to
manage their emotions tvith accounts of horv music still has the unexp'ected
nourer to disrupt us emotionallv. The ancient mYths of musical pou'er'- lfe
stories of the Sirens, Orpheus, the Pied Piper - have a continued force not
primarilv because of advertisers' ceaseless attemDts to iead us astra,ri, but
because of the much more m1'sterious pol^rer o; music in itself. Hor,n' is it
that a voice suddenlv reaches us, out of the background, r,ryhether we are
paving attention or not? \\ihaiever the strength of those commercial and
iechnological forces that tum the kanscencieni into the kiie, I don't think
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1
2
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Music and even'da)'life 47
$,e've lost the sense that music, the musical experience, is special, that it's a
n,ay of one person reaching another n ithout deceit. There's still no better
vvav than through music to be surprised by life.
Notes
Hansard (Parliamentarv Debaies) Sixth Series, 1.999-?000, t ol. M5, 326-:i.
J. Bottum: 'The Soundtracking of America', Atlaniic Monthly, March 2000, 55-8.
This is recounted in Tia Der-ora: Ir4usic in Eoerytlay L{c (Cambridge;
Cambridge Unir,ersit], Press, 2000), i4. (Her source is Jos,eph Lanza's Ebootor
Mtrsic: A Sun'eal Historrl o! Mtt-*l:, Ensy-Listening and Otlte.r Mood.song (London:
Quartet, 1994) 195. The ai:-porr. r.r'as Pittsburgh.).1 See lr{att Wells: 'lTN censured over tasteiess neh.s 5ps6i2l,' , Gunrdian,
12 Ncvember 2001,7.
5 T. l\:. Adorno: 'On the Fetish Character in Music a-nd the !.egr_esqjoln -of
Lislening', niTha Cultire fridul-lrv: Seiicted Essavs on Mass Ctilture, ed. J. lvI.
Bernstein, (London: Routledge, 1991),27. (First published in German in 1938.)
6 For some pror.isional resear-ch, see Tohn A. Sloboda and Susan O'Neill,
'Emotions in Elervdav Listening to Music', in P. N. luslin and-1. A. Sloboda
ieds), Music and Etitotiol: Theon! itid Research (Oxford: Oxford Unjversitv Press,
2001), 415-30, and Tia De|.iora, 'Music as a Technology of the SeIf', Poetics, ?7
(r999),31-56.
Sloboda and O'Neill, 'Enroi;ons in Eve:-r'ciat, Listening to Nlusic', 421.
Aciomo,'On the Fetish Character in Musicl 35.
Quoted (from z1 Titousat:d Plaieo.,.ts - Capitnlistn and Scitizopltrer;rc) in ler.oen
de Kloet, 'Red Sonic Trajectories: Popular Music and Youth in Urban China',
PhD thesis, Amsterdam School for Social Siience Research, Universitr, of
Ar,rsterdam, 2001, 140. De Kloet uses Deleuze and Guattari's argument.heie as
the basis for a subtle, iascinating and persuasive studv of vouth and popular
music in China in terms of 'music zones'.
See, for a good examp)e of the latfer approach - and its limitations - T. Bennett,
lr,[. Emmison and J. Frort, Accountitg.for Tasles: Australian Ecentdatl Cultures
(Cambridge: Cambridge Universitl' Press, 1999), ch. 7 ('Music Tastes and
\4usic Knon'ledge').
I take mv lead (and inspiraiion) in making such sn'eeping assertions from
Paddv Scannell. See, for instance, his Ra,ilc, Telctision sfi(i Mo(icrr. Lifc (Oxford:
Blacku'ell, 1995).
Adomo, 'Oir the Fetish Character in ]r4usic', 33.
Quoted in Steve Hemsier', 'Events oi September 11 cloud figures, lrut "brate"
Radic 2 continues to r.r'in iisteners', MusicWeci:,3 November 200i, 11.
A. C. North, D. l. Hargreaves and J. McKendrick, 'The infiuence of ln-store
l\4usic on \Arine Selections', iaunini of Applied Pst1cholog11, 81:2 (1999), ?71-6.
15 DeNora, It4ttsic iti Evenldau Liic,129.
16 See J. A. Sloboda, S. A. O'Neill and .A. Ivaldi,'Functions of Musjc in Even,dav
Lii'e: An Exoloratorl' Studl' Using the Experience Sampiing lvlethodologr't,
Musictrc Scimtiac, 5:1 (2001), 9-32.
17 Foi a useful summan' of etirnomusicologicai assumptions about music and
socieh', see Andrer,r- H. Grego:r., 'The Ro"les of Musi'c in Societr.: The Ethno.
a
f,.
c
10
i1
12
1-l
l.j
18
i18 Critical Quarterly, r'ol. 44, no. l
musicological Perspective', in D. J. Hargreaves and A. C. North (eds), Thc
Socinl Psychology of Music (Oxford: Oxford Universitv Press, 1997), 1%4A.
Susan Hallarn, The Power of Music (London: The Performing Right Socie{v,
2001),1.
Ibid.,19.
DeNora, Music in Everyday Life,163.
See Ruth Finnegan, Hidden Musicinns: Ir4.usic lt4ai:ing in en Engiish Tou,tr
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For a more recent but equally
inspiring reflection on even'dav music making, see Walme Booth, for the Loae
of It: Anutauring and its Riitals (Chicago: Universitv of Chicago Press, 1999).
And for a rich discussion of u'hat it means to be a 'music lover', see AntoineHennion, Sophie Maisonneuve and Emilie Gomart, Figures de I'nmatettr: Formes,
oblets, pratiqrrcs de I'anour de la musique auiourd'htti (Paris: La Documentation
Franqaise, 2000).
79
20
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