This file is to be used only for a purpose specified by Palgrave Macmillan, such as checking proofs, preparing an index, reviewing, endorsing or planning coursework/other institutional needs. You may store and print the file and share it with others helping you with the specified purpose, but under no circumstances may the file be distributed or otherwise made accessible to any other third parties without the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan. Please contact [email protected] if you have any queries regarding use of the file. Proof 1 2 Introduction: Listening 3 in on the 21st Century 4 5 Richard Randall and Richard Purcell 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 This anthology is the result of a scholarly collaboration we started in 15 2011. Thanks to the generosity of the Center for the Arts in Society 16 and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon 17 University we were able create Listening Spaces, an interdisciplinary 18 project to examine the variety of ways people listen to, consume, and 19 produce music in an increasingly digitized world. It was an attempt to 20 combine the methodological and analytical approaches of music theory, 21 musicology, and psychology with the historical materialism of cultural 22 studies. We also conceptualized our project as a way of bridging a 23 practitioner’s emphasis on musical performance with a humanities and 24 social science focus on the objects, cultures and politics human beings 25 create out of music-making. Our approach is not entirely new. This set 26 of concerns is broadly understood as the province of ethnomusicol- 27 ogy, which attends to the above set of interlocking concerns with an 28 anthropological thrust. Since the early 1990s these concerns have also 29 been addressed within the field of sound studies, which, as Jonathan 30 Sterne writes “takes sound as its analytical point of departure or arrival” 31 (Sterne 2011, p. 2). While music is not the central focus of sound stud- 32 ies we were drawn to it precisely because it represented a way to concep- 33 tualize the study of music that truly embraced many mediating formats 34 and scholarly disciplines. 35 Making music the center of our project did expose us to some meth- 36 odological and analytical challenges. The most significant was our 37 attempt to approach music without translating the “classical music 38 ideology” into the very materialist domain of musical inquiry we set out 39 to explore (Taylor 2007, pp. 4–6). The study of popular music within 40 cultural studies can fall into such traps and reify the political and mar- 41 ket derived ideology behind the ideas of “genius” and “masterpiece” 1 99781137497598_02_intro.indd781137497598_02_intro.indd 1 111/13/20151/13/2015 88:54:00:54:00 AAMM Proof 2 Richard Randall and Richard Purcell 1 (Taylor 2007, p. 4). We also acknowledge that with the rise of the 2 “Californian ideology” we have increasingly fetishized the devices, 3 software platforms, and other disruptive technological innovations 4 that are increasingly associated with music delivery (Barbrook and 5 Cameron 1995). In other words, given the unprecedented availability 6 of file formats, storage capabilities, mobile devices, and web-based 7 platforms geared towards music playback and production, it would be 8 easy to focus our inquiry on the objects geared towards delivering music. 9 At first glance, such an object-oriented approach makes sense because our 10 interactions with media are often the most recognizable kind of sonic 11 engagements. It is easy to conflate music’s elusive ‘objectness’ with the 12 reifications required for production, distribution, storage, commodifica- 13 tion, and performance. Similarly, it is also tempting and perhaps disci- 14 plinarily convenient to reduce music and the associated experiences to 15 sound and psychoacoustics. The Listening Spaces project revealed to us 16 that even in our increasingly digital world, music remains not a thing, 17 but a lattice of affordances, experiences, and actions that are specific to 18 music. We began to focus on listening as a choice that is either made 19 by us or for us for reasons that span transgressive empowerment to 20 hegemonic oppression. Scholars such as Jacques Attali, Peter Szendy, 21 and Susan McClary have discussed that to listen to music is to make 22 real the promises and qualities it embodies. The project wove together 23 threads from a variety of disciplines and the resulting fabric revealed that 24 musical “listening spaces” are everywhere and each comprises a complex 25 of cultural, psychological, political, and economic meaning. 26 In order to approach these listening space we first needed to under- 27 stand who or what is listening as well as how and why they are listen- 28 ing. Listening is not an idle activity. We are saddled with responsibilities 29 and, as Szendy tells us, rights as listeners (Szendy 2008, p. 4). Listening 30 expresses subjectivity as well as creates it. It also suggests or at least 31 necessitates a certain level of active attention, especially when it comes 32 to music. There is of course the “furniture music” of Satie or the smooth 33 arrangements that play to you while you shop. Style, composition and 34 intent aside, these background musics demand a listener to listen, but 35 at a different threshold of engagement. Yet they all are intended, to 36 borrow a phrase, as forms of accompaniment to activities that for all 37 intents and purposes we think about outside of the musical realm. But 38 what is music? We do not ask this as an empty rhetorical provocation. 39 Rather, taking seriously the activity of listening as accompaniment 40 requires that we become part of an ensemble with our bodies as literal 41 and figurative accompanying instruments. 99781137497598_02_intro.indd781137497598_02_intro.indd 2 111/13/20151/13/2015 88:54:00:54:00 AAMM Proof Introduction: Listening in on the 21st Century 3 1 Here, we looked to Christopher Small’s term “musicking” as a guide 2 to understanding the potentially infinite array of activities that define 3 musical engagement (Small 1998). Central to Small’s argument is that 4 we move away from fetishizing the musical object, whether that be 5 the CD or the musical score, and instead appreciate the rich variety 6 of human musical activity, such as tapping on a table, listening to a 7 portable music player and singing lullabies to soothe a child to sleep. 8 Digital technology has come to mediate many of our intensely personal 9 and communal accompaniments with music. Many have gone from the 10 labor intensive, analog, tactile and at times intensely emotional experi- 11 ence of making a mixtape to dragging and dropping files onto playlists. 12 File-sharing has replaced handing over a piece of vinyl or even burn- 13 ing a CD. Impersonal machines and equations are doing what friends, 14 acquaintances, DJs and record-store owners once did: recommending 15 music for us to listen to and enjoy. When Small wrote Musicking: The 16 Meanings of Performing and Listening (1998) he could not have foreseen 17 the fundamental shift of music’s digital medium from binary codes on 18 a compact disk to discreet file formats on hard drives and servers. There 19 is, of course a very long history of physical formats and copyright to 20 look back on as a guide to our own digitized age. Yet, we also believe 21 that the digital age has presented a set of new activities and questions 22 to what musicking embodied as listening means. 23 We are reminded of Kate Crawford’s call to consider the ways we pay 24 attention online as “practices of listening” (Crawford 2009, p. 525). 25 Of course, when we use music online, whether through the variety of 26 commercially available streaming services, production tools or the files 27 on our physical drives we are obviously engaged in such a practice. Yet, 28 unlike a piece of sheet music, vinyl LP or cassette tape, these new musi- 29 cal objects are actively listening to us, too. Some of this functionality 30 is built into the networked devices and platforms we use. Dedicated 31 services like Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Music and many others are 32 designed to make sharing playlists, individual tracks and DJ sets easier. 33 These functions are also built into social media platforms that are not 34 dedicated to music sharing like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Vine, 35 which make embedding music into web pages or feeds a very simple 36 affair. The corporations that design these proprietary services are also 37 listening in through the metadata we generate through our musicking 38 activities. And as Edward Snowden has also revealed to us: so is the U.S. 39 Government. 40 By now we also know that the information we both push and pull 41 through our mobile devices and into the Internet also creates a kind of 99781137497598_02_intro.indd781137497598_02_intro.indd 3 111/13/20151/13/2015 88:54:00:54:00 AAMM Proof 4 Richard Randall and Richard Purcell 1 musical subjectivity; one that is an aggregate of all of our musicking and 2 listening metadata. In turn, algorithms summon this musical doppel- 3 ganger in the form of banner ads, promoted tweets, and recommenda- 4 tions for purchases, Facebook friends, and YouTube videos – all of which 5 demand our musical attention even when or if we log off, or sleep 6 (Crary 2013). This is all to say that as we sought to think with the musi- 7 cally inclined subject positions Szendy and Small offer – listener and 8 musicker – we know that both have to jostle for ontological position 9 with the user; who at least in terms of the commercial Web, is beholden 10 to legally binding contracts and terms of service (not unlike those we 11 implicitly agree to when we purchased vinyl records, cassette tapes or 12 compact disks in the past) that clashes with the “rights” of the listener.