Reflection on "a day in the life of a listener"

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Из курса от партнера Universiteit Leiden

The Importance and Power of Music in our Society

42 оценки

Universiteit Leiden

The Importance and Power of Music in our Society

42 оценки

Music plays an important role in our daily lives and is woven into the fabric of society. We listen to music while alone or in company, in a dance club or at home, through simple headphones or via high-end speakers, as background or as foreground, after we get up or before we go to bed. Music accompanies us when we are traveling, doing sports, shopping, working or relaxing. This omnipresence of music raises several questions: how does music affect our lives? What is the relation between the society we live in and the role, function, and position of music within that society? How is music influenced by and does music influence social, political, economic, technological, and multiple other developments? Do these questions trigger you? Music and Society provides a thorough introduction to the various ways in which music and society are connected through engaging lectures, insightful interviews, challenging assignments, interesting readings, and of course a lot of musical examples. The course aims at increasing your insights on where, how and why we listen to music, how music contributes to shaping our identity, how music forms, expresses, and subverts political ideas, and how music affects our norms and values.

Из урока

Music and Atmosphere

What do you think about background music? Does it disturb you or does it create a nice atmosphere? Do you think there is too much music played all day long? And why do people play music? In this first module we will basically discuss and reflect on three interrelated items: (1) How and why music is omnipresent in our contemporary society; (2) Music's influence on the specific atmosphere of a space; (3) How music affects and is affected by other societal developments.

"A day in the life of a listener"3:36

Reflection on "a day in the life of a listener"8:02

Познакомьтесь с преподавателями

Marcel Cobussen
Prof.dr.
Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Faculty of Humanities
Hafez Ismaïli M'Hamdi
PhD
Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Faculty of Humanities

Hi, I assume before you going to watch this video you have first looked at and

listened to the mini documentary "One day in the life of a listener." If not,

please do so now as in that video we kind of simplicity touch on all

topics that we'll discuss in this whole course.

How music affects and is affected by politics.

By all kinds of norms and values, by collective as well as individual

identities, and how music creates and is created by specific atmospheres.

In this video we will discuss two things, the omnipresence of music and

music's role in society.

One day in the life of a listener, the first video in this module,

is perhaps a bit of a funny, slightly exaggerated little movie

about the omnipresence of musical and sometimes less musical sounds.

However, I hope it also evokes some recognition,

some awareness of how music is all around you everyday.

From the moment you wake up,

until the moment you fall asleep, your ears are exposed to music.

Consciously or unconsciously, deliberately you're imposed in public or

in private spheres.

Loud or soft, foregrounded or backgrounded.

Years ago back in in 1971 to be more precise,

go through philosophers George Steiner called this The Musicalization of Culture.

Steiner talked on the negative terms of this musicalization.

You want for unknown psychological damage because of musics increasing volume,

its monotony and its repetitive rhythms.

And of course he was mainly talking about pop music here.

Negative or positive, I think that's time to predict that right.

Our contemporary society is not only characterised by an overload

of visual information.

We simultaneously live in an auditory culture in which almost all music

is available at any time of the day.

Thanks to internet, iPods, Spotify, and many other technologies

Let's see now what role music plays in our contemporary society.

I already said that this musicalization of culture has partly become possible

because of all kinds of more and less recent technological developments,

iPod, Internet, Spotify New, cheaper, and smaller devices, etc.

Listening to music is most often made available by technology.

Listening takes place through these services and devices, contrary

to previous centuries, when people had to go to concerts to experience music.

Besides technological developments, other societal aspects

do influence the way music is produced, distributed and listened to.

A society's economic, social and political situation.

As well as its norms and values also have an influence on which music we can

listen to and how, where and when we can experience it.

A prosperous or poor society, an open or restrictive political system,

a social homogenous or heterogenous community.

This all influences our encounters with music.

However, and this is an important issue, the fact that music depends

on technological, economic, and social developments does not mean

that it is simply and solidly an effect or result of these developments.

As we all see, as we progress three lectures, music plays an active and

dynamic role in the formation of a society.

Each society is constituted by and

through many different practices, and music is one of them.

Hence we could say music co-creates our society.

Through music we get certain experiences.

Bach's Matthew passion might invoke religious or spiritual feelings.

Music gives us access to specific emotions, from sad to pleasant ones.

It influences our behavior, think of how DJs can make us dance.

It can express and distribute certain ideas about politics,

about gender, about sexuality, about religion, etc.

It can create communities but

also destroy them as we'll see in the module of Music and Identity.

Precisely in this way music plays an important role in our society,

either positive or negative.

But there's more.

Music influences our daily lives even though this influence often goes

unnoticed.

Let's go back to our video, One Day in the Life of a Listener, once more.

Our main character wakes up with music.

In a way, the music is controlling his daily rhythm,

telling him he has to get up in order to be at work or at school in time.

At the same time, the music might help him not to be too grumpy.

It is influencing his mood.

And while watching the football match, he notices the chants of the supporters.

The songs they sing create a sorting group identity.

We are supporters of this specific team and you the rest do not belong to us.

The singing also demarcates the space.

We as supporters occupy this space and

you non-supporters, or supports of the opponent, should leave that space.

Music in stores by buskers, in trains and bars also demarcate spaces.

So music demarcates spaces.

And it creates specific atmospheres.

It is these roles and

these functions of music which we will investigate in this course.

So to wrap up.

What many people notice is a musicalization of culture which started

somehow in the second half of the 20th century.

Music not only reacts to developments in society,

it contributes actively to how we design the society.

Except it expresses in musical ways our ideas, ideals, worries, and

our way of living, and thinking.

And finally,

music influences many aspects of our daily lives by creating specific atmospheres.

To some, if you'll attract it others are repelling, others again,

are quite neutral.

Or we have simply accepted them and don't question them any more.

In the next two videos, I will interview Anahid Kassabian,

a scholar who has written several books on the omnipresence of music, and

Thomas van Straaten, an expert from the field.

A representative of Consumatics.

We will find out what their ideas are about the roles that music plays in our

everyday lives.

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