Why Music Matters

Why Music Matters investigates and assesses debates about the social and political significance of music: not only the social and political significance of particular genres, styles, and exponents of music, but also of music in general, as a medium of communication in modern societies.

Using various kinds of theory (social, political, cultural, musical) to understand and analyse the politics of music, the volume also employs a range of empirical resources— the author’s and others' own fieldwork data; what journalists, musicians, fans, and others have written and said about music, and government policy discourse— to attempt to bring theory 'closer' to sound and sense.

Case studies, boxes, graphs, and other pedagogical material help to highlight for students particular pieces of music, genres, and musical movements, and explain how the political tensions, problems, and debates covered in the book are manifested in concrete social situations and in particular musical forms. Throughout, the aim is to discuss how particular texts and genres matter musically as well as politically.

Organised under general, generative rubrics— communication, rebellion, community, commerce, creativity, the public sphere, and politics— Why Music Matters spans musical performances and debates of the last eighty years. However, the book also draws on other musics and what people have written about them, including 'traditional' and 'folk' musics, popular musics of the non-western world, and the European/North American canon of classical/serious/art music.