Noise - the social structures of music

One of my favourite books is Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali published in the 1970s. It was mentioned in one of my university lectures, I loved the ideas and chased a copy down two years later.

Attali relates the development of music and the social structures around the function, consumption and creation of music to the social history. He thinks that the social and economic structures regarding music foretell the coming social structures and the form that society will take. Importantly he feels that changes in the way we make music precede changes in the way society works.

He thinks there are four different sections to the role music takes within our society -

• ritual - music as part of the Church and state, musicians are servants
• spectacle - the "star" rises - both the composers and performers feted in their own right (think Beethoven and opera singers compared to the servitude of Baroque church composers)
• repetition - the music industry, music as a commodity, the ability to stockpile so much music it really doesn't matter anymore (how many hours of music do you have on your ipod?)
  
• composition - a swing back towards doing things just because you want to, just because of the experience
  

I feel he is onto something, and more and more I see music as a social phenomenon as much as anything else. Also, I feel we are beginning to see a sea-change with regard to fairly passive consumption - more opportunities to keep learning new things rather than just go shopping, the green movement clearly part of this. Within music there is now such a diy emphasis - myspace, open mic nights, easy access to recording equiptment are all part of this. Roll on the new era....