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Music in Everyday Life

Tia DeNora

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This book is in copyrigfut. Subiec't to statutory exception
agreements'
and to the provisins of relevant collectire censing
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e rvritten pemission of Cambridgs Univrsity Press'

Firstpublished 2000

Fiftbptuins2006
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DeNorarTia, 1958-

Music in everyday li& /

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Tu Del'{ora.

Cm.

Iniudes bibographical reference ad index'

issN o z r 62106 9 - IsBN o 52r 62732x (tb)
f.-lfutcanso"iety. 2. Msic-Psychology' I' Title'

M13795D34t 2000

?81'.11-dc2l

0n.452646

ISBN O 521 62206 t hdback

ISBN 0 521 62?32 X PaPerback

Tbrryparmts
tohn DeNora and ShirleyVood Smith DeNora

Contents

pageviii

Iistofrteures

ix

heface and rchrauled,sencnts

I
2
3
4
5

Formulating questions

the 'music and society' nexus

Musicalaffectinpractice
Music

as a

technologyofself

Musicandthebody
Music

as a device of social

Music'ssocialpowers

I
2l
46
75

ordering

109

t5l

Bbliagrapry

t64

Inde

177

vr

nog

Musicandthehdy

a gound for self-perceptisn of the body, and by providing en6airulrent

evice and prmetic technologies for the bod': How' then' are these

struc$ring properties of music appropriated within institrtionsr ofggnizados * St*tio* to,as to have organizing effects on social and
embodied action? And how does music wok at the interactfte lwel where
institutions, organizations and occasions are sustained and rqlroduced
overtime? These iszues are explored in the following chapter'

I
;

ll

;t

Music as a device of social ordering

.Pools of ordet', writes

John Law,'are illusory, but wen such illusions are
the exce,ption. They do not lastfor long. They areprettylimited. And they
are the product, the outcome, or the effect, of a lot of work - work that
may occasionally be more or less successfully hidden bhind an appearance of ordered simplicity' (L994:5).Lw is miting about a research laboratory at a time of s6ess, but his obsenations perfectly in6oduce the

concept of social order as an achiwetnent, an effect of temporal action,

and as his description of scientific work makes clear, such action draws
upon (and is in nrrn shaped by) media and materials of all kinds - obiects,
discourses and technologies.
In daily life, as we have seen, music is one of these materials. This
chapter considers music's role as a device of collective orderingr how
music maybe employed, albeit attimes unwittingly, as a means of organizing potentially disparate individuals zuch that their actions may appear
to be intersubjective, mutqally oriented, co-ordinated, entrained and
aligned. This social calm and the conductivity for social narrigation that it
facilitates is akin to Iw's notion of order's 'pools'. This notion captures
the temporal and achieved dimension of ordering. It gives sociological

conceptions of order a tilt towards the ethnomethodological focus on

order as an effect of work. At the same time, it creates an imrortant space
for culture as a medium of and for this work.
Adding music to the catalogpe of culnral materials or devices of order-

ing contributes a whole new dimension to the focus of human-nonhrnan interaction. It dispenses with the notion that society is merely
.people doing things'. It brings into relief the expressive and aesthetic

dimension of ordering activity, a topic too often ignored in favour of cognitire and dissrrsive'skill' (Lash and Urry 1994; Mesuovic 1999)' It
highliebe agency as consisting of feeling, as a corporeal and stystic
entity, and as something that may po3sess cremonial feares (Strong
l,g7g). This vision of action bas b9e6 taken up recently within social

theory @yerman afi-d Jamteson 1998; Melucci 1996a;

Hetheringrcn 1998; Tbta lggg)r\phere questions of aesthetic beine and

morom,nt

109

lt

l0

Mrsic as a device of,social ordering

non-propositional paradigms f,or action have been broached. These issues

ae discrssedbelow.
Suoh an approac,h orbits arornd action-aspractice.

It is'less concorned
with depioting actors as 'knowing', that is deliberate or instrumentally
rational subiects, and more concerned with exploring the matter of how
forms of social life are established and renewed, albeit at the often sub.
conscious levels ofpractice, habit, passion and routine. In so far as cultural forms are, within this perspective, seen to get into or inform social
action and social relations, the production or cteation of culture is politicized (Ilobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Fyfe and l-aw 1992;Zolbery 1996).
Aesthetic materials may provide paradigms and templates for the construction of non-aesthetic matterr styles ofproductive activity in the paid
workplace, potics and statectaft" for example.
Chapter 2 made the point that sociologists hare been reluctant to consider the aesthetic dimensions of social organization and that aesthetic
materials can be understood to afford modes of action, feeling and
embodiment. Chapters 3 and 4 developed this argrment by showing how
music is a device of emotional, biogaphical and corporeal regulation. It
was neoessary to begin with these topics in order to theorize agency in a
way that brings to the fore feeling, body and energy. Accordingl5 in this
chapter, the qitt' is to advance that perspectirrc by considering music's role
as a resorce for social ordering at the collective and collaborative levels.
Focus is on materially and aesthetically confuured spaces that are cteated
- by actors themsehes or for those actors by other actors (zuch as retailers, social planners or employers) - prior to and as part of action's scenes.
Concern with rhis topic leads to the matter of music's role in the production and structuring of agency in real time. It articulates with a panoply of
'postrrodern'issues - interactional or micto-potics, the construction of
subiectivity, intersubiectivity' co-subiectivity, the virnal and ttre tacit.
Such matters emphasize the ric.h domain of the precognitive, embodiedt
emotional and sensual bases of social action and order as it is produced by
reflexive aesthetic ordering activity. These iszues are broached by considering actors themselves as theymaybe seen to mobilize musical materials
in an attempt to define the panmeters of social soenariosr to provide cues
for orafting agency in real-time social settings. lramining this issue helps
to shorrhow music is a device of social occasioning how it can be used to
regiullte and structure social encountns, and how it lends aesthetic
texture to those encounten. Music provides, in otherwordso a resouce for
establlehing the frospective parameters of agencxr's aesthetic dimension.

One of fhe clearest illustations of this iseue lies in individuals'

withi" the domestic sphere and among friendship goupsi to
create musibal'pre-texts'for action. To this en{ it is worth returning to
attempts,

Music and intimate culture

lll

the in-depth interview data discussed in chapter 3, to consider how the

women interviewed drscribed their efforts to set the sosial scene \pith
music. Through the prism of this data, it is possible to see music being
used and working as a device for clari$ing social order, for structuring
subjectivity (desire and the temporal parameters of emotion and the
emotive dimension ofinteraction) and for establishing a basis for collaborative action. In particular, we san see music as it is used as a resource or
template against which styles and temporal patterns of feeling, moving
and being come to be organized and produced in real time. Chapter 3
considered music's role as a part of routine identity work, and how it provides a means for the regulation of feeling, moo{ conceneation and
energy level. So, too, music operates on an interactive plane, and so, too,
music can be used to regulate the parameters of collaborative and collective aesthetic agency. Atboth individual and collective levels, these parameters encompass feeling mood, eners/, comportrrent and styles of
awareness (for example, cognitive and propositional, embodied and

tacit).

Muslcal prescripdon? Muslc and lndmate culturre

Daily, all around the world individuals anempt to 'orchestrare, social
activity. As discassed below, at times this rlr6k resembles the activities

of

marketing professionals who seek to strucrure conduct in public and

commercial senings such as tenrrinals, restaurants and shops. It is aimed
at the creation of scenic specificity, at rendering places and spaces hospitable to some types of action, inhospitable to others. Through these forms

of musical 'work' (and certainly many other forms of work), actors

produce the aesthetic texnres ofsocial occasions, situations and action
styles. The audio-environment is thus part of what acrors refer ro in their

reflexive monitoring of situation$ it is one of the things that acrors may

consider to determine what is, should or could be going on. To address
this issue I begin with music's role as an acrive ingredient in close relationships and intimate settings. Such relationships exhibit collaborative
action at the face-to-face level and in an emotionally heightened form
where two actors are mutually engaged in producing an intimate mode of
communicative, embodied expressive action --.
For erample, Melinda is a fwenty-year-oldAmerican srudent, completing a description of music as it had featured in her life on the day before
the interview. In the following extract, she describes how the end of the
day involved going to her 'new petrson's' house (she had been 'going out,
with him forrougNy a week), and how theyhad chosen music to lisren ro

inhisroom:

l,l2

Music

as a device of social

ordering

Melinda: I think, last night, it was really funny, it was like 'mood setting' in a way.
ochick music'
'Cauge he had Enya on, and as people call that
lthat is, 'womenls'
usic that young men may cboose to play when effertainfug women because they
rhin! it iB what women preferJ . . . and he was trying to produce a relaxed attrosphere and I think in a way it does promote phy.sical, or iust intimacy in general
because it's iuet like certain music's more calming and, I remember . . . t think
Stigma or Hyper came on and we were ke,'No no no, we don't want thatt'and
we tried to get this piece, like I had hirn play the .&na Nlgr soundtrack, which I.
lore, and there's ke, a love songl, there, that'B so beautifulrbut everything else is
liker'bu bu debah' [she sings here atripletfollowed by a whole notethe intenrl of
a fiffh higber than the triplet figurel and I'm ke, 'No, no, \is is not good'but I
do, Ithink it was iust very, it's very calming, very intimacy . . .
Q. So it's pan ofcihat creates an intimate amosphere?
Melinda: Yeahrdefinitely. Ithinkit's. . . setting isveryimponant, and musicis
a very big part of that
Q. Now, do you choose the music, also for those settings, or does he tend to
choosethem?

Melinda: I think he originally chose them but then I sai4 rlrnr w heard Enya
and then I was ker'All rightrlet's change it'and he was ke, whateverl wanted,
hewas iustke'Sure', so weboth picked outsome snrff. He's got a ffteen million
CD chqger. I'm like'I didn't know they existedt'

Melinda's account of how she and her 'new person' negotiated the
musical backdrop of their time togeth6 highlights not only her understanding of what is musically appropriate to the occasion, but also her
apparent equality, perhape even leading rolq in aniculating the aesthetic
parametrs of the occasion, that is, for specifying fhat occasion's scenic
specificity. Certainly, her friend who was also her host (they were in his
room, listening to his CD collection, oo his machine), was concerned
with pleasing Melinda musically ('he was ke, whatever I wantedr he was
oSure''). Melinda perruades him, for examplg to change the
iust ke
music when it seems owrong'. She refers to Enya as 'chick music'because
she perceives it as a generic form of seduction mu$ic within the university
scene. She reiects Stigma and Hyper, prwiously cued up (we were like,
"1.[o no no, we don't want thatl") in favour of a 'love song'from the Fzrca
Nig&r soundtrack ('I had him play the Firs Nig&r soundtracls whicb I
love). She also then rejects a louderand energeticnumber ('andI'mlike,
'1.[o, no, this i8 6 good') that wag characterized, as she illustrates by
bursting into soqg in the intervieq by a'fanfare'figure (not relaxedr
calming or beautifirl, but pubc, miliuristic, enereized).
Giren that Melinda ard her friend are students, the material-culnrral
settings of their domestic ves are somewhat constrained. Confined to
one oomwith onlybasic rnishiags, eome candles, posters and the ke,
music is one ofthe few available materials for altering and specifting the
ccenes in qrhich their enaoutors occur. It is a way of establishing a sense

.-fl

Music aud intimate crlture

ll3

of setting the stage, as it were, of the encounter, stnucturing the parameters ofthe happening. 'Settingf, as Melinda puts it, 'is very important and
music is averybigpart of that.'
Vhat, then, are Melinda and her partner doing with music? How is
music an actfte ingredient here in the ongoing configuration of their
ncounter and, within it, themselves as social agents? The an$trers to
these questions involve reference to music's material and symboc properties, its parameters as they are invoked and selected during musical production, performance and distribution.

Melinda's preferred music here gives prominence to conventional

representations of love, relationships and romance, through l'rics and
throrgh melodic conventions (for exampl, soft and sensual - colour,
texnre and slow tempi). Moreover, the music she desctibes as ,good'
occasionally alludps to romantic and erotic locations and culturc, again,
through lyrics (for example, Enyans 'Caribbean blue', 'The Celts', .China
roses' 'Storrns in Africa) and throqh musical conventions such as
'Celtic' melodies. Melinda also prefers music that is characrerized by only
mild dynamic shifts andwhere rhythmicpulse is notaprominenrfearure.
Finallg Melinda prefers music that features female voices and performers
who cultivate a'feminine'image orwho occupy, within the context of the
lyrics or Broadway show story-lines,'feminine'roles. Indeed, Enya's big

hair, lace and velvet aptly exempfy these stereoqpically feminine,

romantic values.In shor6 Melinda and herpartner were engaging in the
aesthetic reflexive activity of configuring, via their musical choices, the
prospective strucnre of their encounter: a time for relaxing, being
sensual, slowing down, being romantic and celebrating things 'feminine,
- soffrress, slowness, quiet, decoration. In this respect we can see,
expanded on to the local, real-time interacti\e plane, music's role as a
device for configuring aesthetic agency. Music provides, in other words,
an exemplar for styles of being; it may be perceived as representing, or
making accessible to awareness rarious parameters of emotional and
embodied conduct an{ in this way, it enables ttre possibility of (at least
apparently) intersubiective, entrained physical conduct as an ongoing
accompshment.

Although this discussion has focused on individual cultural pracrice,

Melinda's musical preferences are by no means unique; on the conttar!,
they are tpical of what other writers have observed in relation to gender
and musical taste @etercon and

Shftus 1992; Brnon 1996; Frith and

McRobbie 1990 [978]). I-ess obvious, perhaps, is rhat the stylistic trappings of intimacy preferred by Melinda confom to what previous studies
ofgender and sexual conduct have revealed: that women rnlue the temporal structures and embodled practices commensurate with slowing down.

1t4

Music

as a

&yice of social ordedng

Perhape this is because leisurely pace, u/hether as a feafte of rrsic'

speeh or ac:tionr affords equivocation, intemlption, languor, redfuectiont
digfession and so is commensurate with narratives of intimate conduct

that feanue the ninal and the noll-purposive, that 'get dorpn off the
beanstallC as McClaryhas putitin reference to the upward mobity often
used to siFify sexuality in \[estern cultures (McClary 1991:ll2-tl).
Given that young women often find it difrcult to verbalize tastes and dispositions to theirp"rtners (from lack of experience and general diffidence
(flolland et al. 1994)), the salience of non-verbal, asthetic means for
pre-scripting scenes, for instigating scenarios and associated desires and
conduct forms, is heigbtened. 'sening is very important', as Melinda
says, perhaps because getting the music rigbt is a way of trying to make
ttre action right, not merely in the embodied and technical sense, but as a
way ofprospectively calting out forms of agency tftat are comfortable and
prderable, that feel right in emotional and ernbodied terms.
Intimate conduct is often bodily conduct. It is therefore worth bearing
i mind issues raised in chapter 4, particularly those that relate to the

configuration and reconfiguration of embodied energy' tempo and

consciousness style, as discus$ed in relation to the body and ttre trarsformations it undergoes over forty-five minutes of aerobic exercise.
There, the body could be seen to be organized musically, and aligned with
a preconfigured aerobic grammar or sequential order of how the body is

fr

'1

fil
1

li

meant to be during an aerobic session. In an aerobic session, slower artd

more sentimental ballad forms were used to cool-down participantsr to
bring them back from the mind-less and more physically encompassing
forms of movement that they had engaged in during fhe core of the exercise, to bring them back into a more conscious and reflective mode of
attention. In relation to the real-time intimate encolrnter, so, too, slower
lese rhythmically and harmonically forward-moving, more texnral and
tonally ambigrous musical materials may be preferred by women becalse
they afford a less mechanical and more sentimental mode of bodily
conducq they also work, in a manner akin to the warm-up music of aero-

of the 'feminine', to maintain the

intimate

Observations such as these may be (too) quickly taken

to imply

biss

in its

celebration

encormter as an aesthetic encormterr as involvfurg more than bodily pro'

cesses and techniques. Moteoverr -as with aerobics, slower and more
sentirrental rnusic may be commnsurate with low-impact forms of
movement.
essentialist conceptions of 'female desirer. But essentialist perspectives on

'women and music' preclude consideration of the aesthetic-pragmatic

dimension of women's musical practice, for example, women's attempts
to renegotiate stereoqtpical represntations of intimacy (representations

Music and intimate culture

115

that have been made and initiated perhaps mostly by men), and to interject nuance or alternative practice into the proceedings. Essentialist readings also preclude the wars in which desire is culturally constituted in and
through reference to sctipts, representations and a variety of cultural
materials' one of which is music @eNora lggT).The desire for a backdrop of slow or romantic music is thus not necessarily linked to 'femaleness'perse, but rather to a perceived need for relaxation and/or a desire to
sentimentalize interaction, to hold it as an object upon which ro reflect
(and change). Sloq relaxing music, then, may be deployed so as to slow
action and to open its course to the possibty of negotiation. The following excerpt, concerning a ituation whete the male rather than female
participant makes recourse to 'romance' music as a backdrop for intimate
interaction, shows how, for men too, music may be used as a means for
slowing intimate interaction, for conferring a degree of sentimentaty on
to it and thus for reconfguring inrimate possibilities by raising its level of
consciousness, its degree of sentimentality:
Q. Anotler question I ask ererybodR some people sayyes, some people say no, in
mmantic context do you e\er rse mr{ic for, kind of, intimate situations or how
do you ever, or does anyone errer, put on music as a complement to seduction or
a

intimacy?

Beckp Yeah, I do, 'cause I rend to, although the last boyfriend I had I didn't
actually put te music on, he di4 he was in my house so he sort of took the initiative to put the music on and I think he activelytook my cD player upstairs so he
quite sort of . . . [pause]
Q. . . . Do you remember what he chose? . . .
Becky: I ttrink it was, I think it was - I've got the love albumq l,ve got e complete [set]. r think it was [rrclume] two or three and he chose that. r7hich took me
by surprise, I must admit at the time I thought .Oh, cheeky so-and-so' [augbs].
Thkingmy CD player. . . [from the livingroom to rhe bedroom]. There is a nnny
storybehind it butplease don't laugh. Afterwards I found out, well it sort ofdeveloped into just a friendship because there wasn't, there was no spark there and it
turned out that he was actually homosexual and he didn't know hos to come our
and he was trying to convince himserhe srill liked women and in the end I sort of
helped him through it andhe now liver in Manchesterwirh his boyfriend
lauehs].
Hewasveryeffeminate and Iwas always attlebit suspicious butdidn't srr oflet
on so that migbt have something to do with why he chose the music . . . At the
time it wasnt I can tell you, it was shell-shock with rat one, and I'm gening the
standing iokes ke 'That's what you do to men is it? put them right offwomen'

[aushsl.

Q.And if you're in a position to chose music for an intimate situation what

mightyouchose?
Becky: I tend to go for more relaxing CDs. I go more tonards that because I em
- I mean sinee I've been separated, or divorced now, for five years - and I tend to
go more towards that because it's ben a long time, I've only had three relationships since theu, I must say this'last one, which was last year, was so brief I'm

116
always

Music

as a dvice

of social ordering

wry nervorn when I meet somebody new

so

I te,lrd to try and son of relax a

bitwitht$en. I mighthave even knocothem for several months buttbey still fel
linaudiblel tlauebsl.

Q. Now, how have they responded to thie relrFng music, do they ke it? It
dbeslt bother them, they don't my 'Tlrn,that off or anything?
Becky No, nobody, theyhaven't sald anything, thet're probably amueed' sort
of hmour her, leave it on [ugbsl, keep the woman happy Uaughs].
:i
I
I

ll

Of the fifty-trro women interviewed for the music and daily life study,
not one indicated fast-paced or higb-volume music as something they
associated with intimacy (for example, heavy metal, dance music or atobics music), but many rqrorted enjoying and employing in intimate situations 'romantic', 'relaxing' or 'smoochy' music - the terms are theirs -

and some bemoaned the fact that the music they'would'like to hear as a
prelude or accompaniment to intimacy was disdained by their partners.
As suggested abone, these preferences are perhaps best viewed as nondiscursi\e strategies, ones that open up intimate encounters, slow them
and configure them as sentimenal (that is' conscious) occasions. Such
practical work then facitates a negotiation of the situation and its happenings. Music is thus a device of sexual-potical negotiation or, prt less

combatively, a device for configuring the intimate environment. But

women's musical preferences - at least those espoused by the women
interviewed here - also tap into gender-stereotyrical scripts of intimate
conduct, ones within which feminine desire is in bodily terms' not
urgent, an{ in behavioural tertns, laced with rorrrancer a quasi-sacred
occasion.

For example, Jennifer's partner kes 'Gangster Rap', which she disdains ('The things that I listen to are more feminine, more ke Girl music.
That's what I call his music - Boy music'). She goes on to speculate that
he does not acnrally oke'this music but feels obhced, within his 'bof
peer group, to esfrorse a taste for it. None the less, at times of physical
intimacy theylistento the music ofher choice:
Jennifer: I ke things that are, kind of, maybe a little mystical.
Q.Is thene anyspecial resonfothat?I can imggine some.
Jennifor: Iguessbcause when I'm alone with myfiance it's kind of
mystical type thtn& we're both very into non-traditional religion.

magical'

She goes on to dbscribe the music in mgre detail as 'classical music wih

nature sounds

. . . a Tchaikovsky CD'with nature sounds

[thunder

stormsn rain, birdsl put into the music . . . a CD with like ocean sounds,
it?s really nice . . .'.
Convonely, asNancydescribesr a musical backdrop forintimacyis not
ahrays welcomed by both partners:

Music and intimate culture

tt7

Q.Ifyouwere going:to havepeople aroundr l'm iustgoingto iwnp ahead abitrfor

meal or drink or somethiug, wouldyou putmusic on fsr that?

Nancy: Yeah' I thinkfor a meal, at Christmas wehad a Chismas meal andwe
had the Christmas tape on ip the background that sort of tling.
Q. Do ou ever use any other kind of music to set te mood in any circuma

stances?

Nancy: Um

- I try quite often witl

[breaks off]
Q. Can you tell me about that?

my boyfriend aughsl but he never . .

Nancy: Yeal we'll watch tellybefore we go to bed, which is what we like to do

to relax, and then we flun it offand as I said, I don't really like silence that much
aoyway so I say, 'Oh, can we have a CD on?' and every single '1e it'll be 'No, why
do you want a CD on?' tlaugsl. So he's not very big on having the mood set with
music, \phich if it's at my house I might put a tape on to relax to.
Q. He's the one with the CD [player] though?
Nancy:Yes.
Q. IThat kind of a CD would you be wanting to listen to at that stage of the day?
Nancy: Ah, it would have to be something quite relaxing and quiet, I think.
Q. Could you give me some examples of what from his collection you would
choose?

Nancy: hobably, he hasn't got much, he's got the Beatles, which I ke, so probably something like that rryould suit me. And the sorr of thing I think would be a

compilation of fernale singers.

Q. Can you, I'm going to press, can you be as specic as possible, what kind of
music and whatkind of female singers?
Nancy: I guess anysort, really. You know it could be sort of background music,
notthe sortllou have to reallylistento.
Q. How would you describe what is the mood that it evokes if you are putting
them on?
Nancy: Relarationr l think, is the main one. Also because I don't like silence too
much I feel relacd because there is a noise in the background. I think it's quite
rela:ring to have all sorts of love songs, something like that.
Q. Acually, one of the questions I ask werybody is, do you ever like to have
music on in the background as a prelude to, you know, 'romance'?
Nancn Yes, well I try to [augbs].
Q. If it's not for going to sleep but is background for intimacy, why do you think
he doesn'twantit andyou wantit?

Nanc!': I don't know - I cannt really think. I have thought about it, I sort of lie
there thinking'\Vhy cant we have the Q! s|'l think maybe males see music or
hearmuelc differentlyto us, maybe a romantic sounduack to them would be too
soppy and a bit too stereotypical, I think.

Nancy, a twenty-year-old English university snrdent, would ke to decorate fhe auditory spaces in which reled.g and being intimate with her
parts ocours. But she peroeives her partner as non-co-operative in this
regard. She goes on to descrihe how, if she puts her tapes on in other less
intimate circtmstanceo, such as while drivingr'He'll have a little snigger

--q
I

18

when

Music

I'm in

as a device of social

thE car

ordering

[awhsl. So I think he probably finds theul quite

amusing, So we probably are quite ffierent, actually.' When I go on to ask

her lf she thinks 'is is because her musical choices connote the .romantic'and that perhaps he doesn't care for overtly romantic configurations
ofintimacy and couples, she says (echoing McRobbie's (lggl) discussion
of the dovmplaying of 'romance' in young women's culture):'It maybe -

think men tend to avoid sort of typical romantic siflations. They don't
really ke [them] . I guess they get a lot of stick for being too romantic now
and it's a bit naffto be over the top and romantic.'
It would be misleading to jump to conclusions about female senrality
on the basis of this (non-representative, erploratory) data. Indeed within
the sample of women discussed here, not all dessibed using music as a
device for intimate occasioning. None the less, the responses of the
women in my sample give rise to some fruitfrl spectrlation concerning
why nusic may be woven into the fabric of an intimate encounter. For
instance, responden8 who did not use music in intimate circumstances
were tlpically involved in a longer-term relationship and/or in a relationship where they seemed to have less need to prestructure or to negotiate
the parameters of intimacy, where less uncertainty existed and where the
need for relaxation was not felt as pressing. Ulrika, for erample, a firentyyear-old university shrdent- originally from Sweden - said that there was
'no time'before iutimate encounters for setting the scene with music, .it
all happens too fast' with her boyfriend. She was clearly not complaining
about pace but was rather trying to underline how her relationship was
characteristically passionate; she meant they felt no need for musical
enhancenentin their phrsical relationship. Indeed,love songs and sentimental pop nes were not part of her repertoire of musical tsstes and
practices (she tended ro lisren to high-energy dance music and frequently, to go out to clubs with the express purpose of dancing). And for
fifiy-something Elaine, playing music as a backdrop for intimacy would
be like'a signal to the household'and so is avoided, thougb she recalls
using music for zuch encounters in her youth.

In shorb when music was used as a backdrop for intimacy, it was

because it contributed to intimate interadon-for eramplq it served as an
aid to relaration, a signal about style, a motivator, an occasioning device.
Musicwas a resource oe could unto as one engagedinthe collaborative
production of an intimate scene, rather as it was in other tpes of circumstances, such as when one wanted to get psyched up for a particular task,
as decribed in chapter 3. Perhaps, for this rssss, 1is not zurprising that
the use of slo\p music, nenr age music; natufe sounds, (spiritual' music,
sentimental and romantic ballads and the like, as used for intimacy, is
mofe sornmon among the young, among those who are still getting to

Music and intimate crrlpure

119

know each other, fhe nervors and the uncf,tainr and those who wish to
reconfigure otherwise pregiven, stereotypical or routine intimate practices. These musical materials seem, for the respondentsr to afford sentimentalizing, slowing down and deconstructing teleological grammars of
intimate conduct. They also reflect a conventional and gendered division
of musical taste, a difference between what men versus women may feel is
appropriate for them to espouse and play in social situationsr or between
what men and women come to associate with familiarity and musical
security. In our etlrnography of karaoke, for example, when women performed theyusually chose love songs, lyrical sohgs that dealt with the topic
of relationships.Ihen men sangr they opted for a wider range of musical
oMy
material - hard rock, rap, Elvis hits, famous Sinatra classics such as
way'. They rarely performed romantic numbers. Inrrestigating the actual
musical practices of intimate encounters thus echoes \Falset's observations about music's role as a resource for gender display (1993:114-17,
'No girls allowed'), and provides etlnographic data in line with Frith and
McRobbie's semiotic rea.lirg of music's erotic affordances in their pioneering essay on rock and senrality:
Cock rock performers are aggressive, dominating' and boastfrrl, and tley constantly seek to remind to audience of their prowess, their control. Their stance is
obvious in live shows; male bodies on display, plunging shirts and tight trousers' a
visual emphasis on chest hair and gpnitals . . . mikes and guitars are phallic
symbolq the music is loud rhythmically insistent' built around techniques of
arousal and climaxi the lyrics are assrtive and arrogant, thougb the eract words
are less sipificant than the vocal styles involved, the shouting and scteaming.
(Frith and McRobbie 1 990 fl97 87:37 4)

Frith and McRobbie were clear at the time ttrat they were not suggesting that the rhythmic 'insistence' of rock was eguated with 'natural'
ssruality; rather they were attempting to observe - rather as one might
observe the properties of conversation - how rock's 'thrusting' musical
character 'can be heard as a sexual insistence' (1990 [978]:383) and, as
such, can be contrasted with rrusical materials that configure hesitation'
feeling as opposed to action. For example, Kate Bush's '\Puthering
heights' has the following characteristic:
Both her vocal and her piano lines are disrupte4 snrooping, unsteadg the song
does nothave a regularmelodic orrhythmic structure, even in the chorus'with its
unsettling stress tbe words that are emphasized are 'nervous', 'despe,rate',
'nobody olse'. . . . The music contradicts the enioyment that the lyrics assert. Kate

Bush' aestec intentions ae denied by the musical convendons she uses. @rith
and McRobbie 1990 [978] :386)

' Frith and McRobbie were concerned with how music could be used
to represent senralityr with horr its stnrctures could come to inform and

--ni
t20

Music

as a device of social

ordering

engender desire. This proiect is akin to Susan McClaq/s, as discussed in

chapter 2 - we ca see, for example, musical strnctures mapped on to
gendered action suoh that musical conventions and matedals may come
to oomote gendered 6sanings. Fith and McRobbie's conoerns are

adjacent to but different from the proiect outlined here, whictr is concerned with how actors mobilize musical materials and conrentions as
resources for coastituting agency and its locations. A focus on how
music is mobilized in the course of action ft linked to the ethnographic
realm and to ttre question of what actors actually d, with music, how
music is implicated in what they do and how it may strucfttre what can
be done.
Richard Dyer (1990) was also concerned with this question, which he
addresged, in autobiographical mode, in his 1979 essay 'In Defense of
Disco', where he compares the'disembodied' eroticism of pop songs with
the'tbrueting'eroticism of rock and the'whole bodt' eroticism of disco.
Dyet's essay is raluable today because it offers an accornt of how, for a
particular individual, music may afford congurations of desire and
erotic agency. As in the case study ofaerobics discussed in chapter 4,
music can be understood as an accompce for bodily entrainment; it can
heighten or zulpress cognitirrc forms of awareness and the tendency to be
emotional or sentimental; it can interest the body zuch that it is dravm
into a temporal trajectory (a rhythm, a pulse, a corporeal grammar and
style ofmovement); it can enlistthebodyto forget aboutitself;it can sene
as a non-rerbal accomplice for certain forms of action. This is why the
question ofwho puts what on the record player as a backdrop for intimacy
is of necessity a question of intimate politics.
Increasingfy, music distribution companies have tapped this market for
what they refer to as'romantic compilation albums'. A 1994 issue of CttB
magazine devoted a feature to these albums and describes the growing
market as follows:

[t is] the idea that for a few quid 'ou can kit 'ourself out with a completely legal
mood-manipulator whicb together with soft lights and optional beankin rug will
work hard on your behalf beforer during and after maldng the beast with two
backs. Ambience to gtp. (Cu 1994:68)

The albums are produoed in consulttion ith focus groups and are
advertied,on national television. They are aimed erpressly at the socalled'ghtpurchaser', the individuak with little knowledge about music
who buy no more than three music CDs a year. According to Nick
Moran, of Dino Records (who lead the maket with a five-volume 'That
lovin'feelingl series): "We do try to steer cleaf, of clichs, but this very stylised image of love and happiness is what is expected to go with the songB

Music and collective ccasions

t2l

. . . It's very aspirational, especially among women - so research has told

us. . .' (Qn1994:69).
This point was born out by the interview data. Many of the intervie
wees themselves described how, although their (male) partners were
mostly interested in music and had particular tastes, that they could take
charge ofmusic when theywished:
He wouldn't knowwhat to put on.
He's really not that bothered about what I put on.
He's not as keen on music anyway as me so he gengrally will go along with what I
say . . . he's probably the most dominant in our relationship, but when it comes to
music, I think I probably would win.

I think my tastes
has very

ae foore dominant in the house.hold, period. But my husband

little iterest in music.

Accounts such as these are difficult to evaluate; they may be occasioned

orpressly for the in-depth interview and its conventional style of rapport
between two women. Theymay, in otherwordsrbe part ofthe doing-the
performance - of confidentiality, part of how speaker and hearer collude
in producing cuhural scripts and images, in this case' for example, of
'female powet' (on this point, see Frith and Kiainger I 998). Interviewees
may, in other words, sp into what C.I7. Mills once referred to as Aocabularies of motive' (Mi[s 1940).'The interview procedure was designed to
address this problemby repeatedly leading respondents backto the practical level of real-life examples of whodid-what-when-hoq the 'nitty-

gntt/

level of mundane action that has the capacity to undermine

accounts and the various identity claims, posturings and role play that
often occur withi" an interview. Sticking close to the level of respondents'
musical practices helped to reveal how respondents used music rather
than their depictions of relations between themselves and others. If, in
fact, women are more likely to resort to aesthetic means for configuring
intimate occasions, there is an important lesson there for theories of
gender and power in close relationships, one that could be further illuminated through more ethnographic research on couple culture and its production over the course of a relationship.

Muslc and collecdve oscaslons

Jennifer: Ve had a party a couple of weeks ago. It was supposed to be like a wine
and cheese party but it was desserts and mixed drinksl \Pe had candles in here and
it was wefud because we played BillyJoel and we played a lot of [dance music] at
the end ofthe evening because everybody was going from my party, out to go
daocing. Ve played a lot of pretty things in other langu.ages.

_____!

Music

as a device

of social ordering

Farticulady at the start of the evening - for music was here used to outline
a tenporal strucnrre of conduct style over the duration of an evening tennifer and herhousemates weretrying, she explainsr to crete a relaxed
yetrefned environment, one in which participants dressed up' consuned

drins (as opposed to the more usual beer and snack

food), and comersed quietly or danced (s"lowly) to the strains of 'pretq/
music with lyrics 'in other languages', slgns[ing travel and tl'ings
European (often slmon)tmous ntith high culture in the United States).
Here, musicwas part andparcel oflennifer and her friends'orientationto
(what they perceived as) prestigious forms of symbolic capital' forms
residing on the perimeter of their usual leisue practices. This form of
what Mauss has called oprestigious imitation' (Ish and Urry 1994245;
Mauss 19?9:101) delimited the parameters of conduct in wars that were
commensurate with their ralues of glamour, relaxed pace, sophistication
and romance. Thus, through the ways it is perceived to be related to a
network of other obiects, meanings aod modes of agency, mtsic can be
seen as providing an ongoing tracking device for participants, a cue or
template for the formulation of energy levels and conduct styles that can
be examined when and/or ifuncertainty about appropriate agency arises'
when/if one needs to get a handle on how to 'be'within a setting.In this
sense, music is a template or model for the fonrulation of emotional,
social and embodied agensy overthe course of real-time interaction.Just
as it maybe difficul6 for exa:nple, to reconcile'pretty things in other languagss'with beer, or candles with snreatshirts, ieans and @iners, so too it
is difficult to engage in some ofthe earthier modes of intimacy against the
background entailments of, sayr Celine Dion's'Our love will go on', the
Tinnic themesong. The point is not that music delineates modes of sub'
jectivity and embodied acti on pq serhtthat actors perceive it as implying
(or as associated with) modes of agenc$ they also feel it to be analogous
orhomologous to modes ofbeing:
desserts and mixed

I would have the music onbeforethey [houseguests] come because r ke to create

an atmoephere. And because - it would depend to some extert on what [the occasion ist. If it were a very elegant little cockail party then I would probably be going
to put onsome kind of classical or somethinglikethat, although I might make it a
ttle more - what I would think of as informal classical ke classical guitar, for
example. Whenit's aroundthe hodays tr ahvayeput on musicthat'srelatedto the
holidays but no singing music,I like instrumental music forthat' harps, or whatever. If we're doing a Friday nigbt dinner, kind of informal with ftiends' I migbt
put on folk mwlc or ligbt iaz, something like that . . . If I want things to be very
lively and a little boisterousryou knowrtbeo I am goingto playloud orf,ast-paced
mtrsic obviously lf I want people to dance but iust' you knoq if you have tuenty
people tbere andyoudon't want quiet forthe conversationwhich the lowermusic
lends itself to, then I migbt put on something that would be more, you knotp'

Music and collective occasions

something a ttle hipper augbsl . . . I tink people' they need to knon what's
happoningto themrwe allrespondtothe emotionaltone ofmusic so I thinkmusic
can be very, very soothing and quiet or it can son ofiaz things up or it can put a
cast ofuner pall over, you know. Have you ever been to a party where they want
people to dance but they put the wrong music on and you just can't move with it?
(Elaine, age fiffy-five, United States)

Music is thus part of the cultural material through which 'scenes' are
constructd, scenes that afford different kinds of agency, different sorts of
pleasure and ways of being. It is important go underline, as described in
chapter 4, that this process and the use of music as a device of scene
construction may ede rational consciousness. \Pithout being aware of
how they are responding to and interpreting music, actors may latch on to
and fall in with musical structures. This faing in with may entail realignment of bodily comportment as discussed in chapter 4 (for example, the
tapping ofafoot or a shiftinphysical energy or motivation), a realignment
of euotional state (chapter 3) or a realignment of social conduct, as
addressed in this chapter. As is discussed in chapter 6, human action is
assembled at least in pan by a practical appropriation of models and
resources for action's conguration. Ve see this pgrfops most cleady in
examinations of situated discourse, for erample in how actors may draw
upon conventional narratives, registers and manners of speaking to
generate a voice and point of view locally, to 'get througb'the activity of
face-to-face communication (Frazer and Cameron 1989). This need not
imply the absence of a subject but, rather, that subiects' if they are to
reale themselves as speakert, must find the words and so cast about for
arailable and appropriate linguistic techniques. So, too, subiects mayfind
available auditory structures with which to configure themselves, not only
as speaking and acting subjects, but as subiects whose speech and acrion
possess an emotional and corporeal dimension - as aesthetic agents.
Ifithin social spaces, then, prominent music may allude to modes of aesthetic agency-feeling' being, moving, acting- and so may place near-tohand certain aesthetic styles that can be used as referene for configuring
agency in real time, for the bodily technique of producing oneself as an
agent in the full sense of that word (that is' beyond the discursive and cognitive dimensions normally understood within the social sciences).
Musicworksin this waythrough nro interrelated avenues. Firstritmay
be perceived as carrying connotations or, as discussed in chapter 4,'secondary signlcations'. Secondly, it may profile and place on offer ways of
moving, being and feeling througb the ways its materials are configured
,into a range of sonic parameters zuch as pace, rhythm, the vertical and
horizontal 'distances'between [ones, the musical envelope of particular
tones and tone gfoups - 'attack and release' as it is termed in music

124

Music

as a device

of social ordering

analysis, timbre or volume. For example, when the music 'hops' and
's&p$', so too bodies may feel motivated to mover as it werer ke the
mrsic. trn these cases, music is doing something more than re-presenting
orsimulating bodily panerns aud brineing them to mind; it is providing a
ground or medium within which to be a bodyr a medium against whioh
thebody comestobe organized interms ofits ownphysical and temporal
organization (for example, as it springs from the ground in a way that is
entrained to the musical pulse). So, aligned with and entrained by the
phaical patterns music profiles, bodies not onlyl empowere{ they
may e empowered in the sense of gaining a capacity. These capacities are
sometirnes visible, as, for example, when we can observe the body gestures of people listening to music via headphones or orchestral conducton'norrcments; this visibility is heigbtened when musical materials
shift, forexamplq from slo\pto fas6 fromgenreto genrerwhere contiguous but contradictory forms of musical agency rub up against each other.

This tendenry to fall in with the music was something that arose
repeatedly in all aspects of the music in the daily life sdy. As a phenomenon, it highlights the capacity, perhaps even the tendenry, on the part of

human beings, to adopt and adapt, not neceesarily consciouslg to

resolrces within an environment. At the same time, agtors' nondiscrrsirrc, corporeal, emotional, falling in with music does not imply that
music works ke a stimulus. Actore may have awaeness of what music
entails and yet also be aware that those entailments feel wrong; they may
wish to override music'sperceived implications, to resist orreappropriate
music's force (for example, when the ballad 'Stand by your man' is
reappropriated as an ironic commentary on patriarchal relations).
Melinda, quoted earlier in this chapter, made this clear when she sai4
about a follow-on track on a CD herboyfriend had chosen, 'we were like,
'1{o no no, we don't want thatt"'In short, music's capacity to senve as a
device ofsocial ordering can be seen in the fact that it can serve as the
solrce of social discomfort:
BckV: . . . A lot of the people [at a party] were working together [so] tley didn't
ke elow music, I got the impression tley felt quite uneay becauee they feltthey
had to touch their worltmates [aughs] and it didn't go docm very well . . . One
chap that I worked quite closely with came over and asked me to actually dance
and I felt zery conscious, I penonally felt conecious that I was dancing to a slow
dance andhis wife was only oventhere and it was all very uncomfonable, rcally.

In this example, tension arose between, on the one hand the general
social ralue of boing polite at a special function for people who were colleagues rather than friends (for erample, to refuse an invitation to dance
migbt be read as a snub or as not contributing to the social 'work' of
geniality and festivity) an{ on the other, wishing to avoid what were per-

I
Music and collective occasions

ceived as the music's entailments (intimacy and romance and more

specificallg a range of minute bodily actions associated with these
things). Thus when actor3 'disllke' particular music, it may be because
they sense that the resources from which their agency is generated are
subiect to threat (in this case, preserving certain bodily habits that constitute collegialityversus intimacy). Vhen they speak of music as 'inappropriate', then, this 'troubles talk' brings into relief respondents'
understanding of what music entails for the constitution of agency and
social scene. This is by no means the same thing as suggesting flrat music
cozses respondents to behave in certain ways.
On the contrary, as discussed in chapter 2, music's force is made manifest throWh appropriation and reception. \fithin these constraints'
however, it is perfectly reasonable to speak of music as a material of social
organization, because styles of movementr emotional and social roles
come to be associated with it and may issue from it. In the presence of
music, actors may take pleasure in fafling ia with music or displeasure in
trying to avoid what they perceive the music to imply in a behavioural
sense. Mrsic may indeed be concepnralized as a prospectirrc device of
agency: a way of cueing or tuning in to the ongoing formation of order, or,
npools'of order, locally achieved. It is in this senser thent
more accurately,
that mgsic maybe pre.scriptive (Akrich 1991) of social order(s).Iflhether
or not it is actually usd. as a referent for producing order in real time'
thougb, is always open to question. There is thus tittle point in producing
an abstract taxonomy ofwhat music will'do; certain patterns may emerge
over time within particular settings or relationships and these may be
specified with degrees of precision, though they are always in process. A
stimulus-response model ofhow music woflts is simFly inaccurate because
it elides 1s 6sqnin,gful and interpretive acts of music recipients as they
drawupon music's affordances as part ofmundane musical practice'

The point is that althowb music's meanings and effests are constructed and dependent upon how they are appropriated patterns of

associated with panicular styles within particular settings

emefge and ac6ue over time. For example, acto6 often have a sense of
-.what
goes with what how' - the candles, the mixed dfinks and the'pretty

appropriation

things in other languages" the 'informal' dinner on Friday nigbt with

friends and the folk music, the 'beautiful . . . calning'music of the Finr
Nzg,lzr soundtrack and a 'relaxed' intimate encounter. The analysis of
representations as propounded by massdistributed cultue fonns (for
example, what music is used tq "ignal intimacy and romance in films) is
thus an important component to the snrdy of how specific actors
appropriate aesthetic materials as ordaing devices because it illuminates
,-*y of the arailable fesoufces for action and erperience. Analysis of

Music

as a device of social

ordering

popularforms andmedia epresentations is notrhowever, a subsdnrte for

the analyois of cultural practice and everyday life. To conflate the two is to
return to theproblems facedby scholiars such as Adorno w[en the bases
for their olaius about the level of erperience and what music causes are
erposed to ctitical examination. The individual erperienoe of culture is a
topic that cannotbe encompassed by the homology concqlt as it is traditionally conceived. Nor can it be addressed by the idea that music inculcates, instigates or nurtures particuhr mind-sets. The level of musical
practice, of appropriation- ofwhat music may offer as a resource for the
practical matter of world building - is a matter in its own right and it may
be best to work upwards from it to so-called 'larger' questions about
music and social structure.

Muslc as a touchstone ofsoclalreladons

This last point can be seen perhaps most clearly when we consider how
music is used not only to reinforce but also to undermine particular relations between friends and intimates. Flere, for exampler Lesley describes
how a shift in music listening habits and tastes at home was associated
with the deterioration of her relationship with her partner.
Lesley: In the'80s I son of got distanced from music. My [children] were trle
and my husband didn't really like a lot of music going on - he rrasnt particularly
keen on the radio being on all the timer probably - I suppose the bands I didn't
identify wittr at the time were Dire Straits - those sort ofbands. I liked some of the
things theydid but Itfikitwas more orcitable and so my ex-husbandliked them
and didn't mind them being put on, whereas some ofthe other music I'd put on he
thoueht would upset the [children] and of course then they got to identi$ with
some of the things I ked with being morose, ke the Leonard Cohen. So it
tended to be more popular iiggfy music . . . Normally if I listened to l-eonard
Cohen I wanted to be in my own space listening and of course so normally I
rrould hare been in a bit of a strange mood in comparison to how I would be, and
I suppose he picked upon that and maybe the lchildren] did as well . . . T7hen we
first got marriedwe used to listento the radio alot, andwithin nine months Iwas
listening to Radio 4 rather than Radio I because he iust didn't like Radio I at all.
When the bbrs were young babies, occsionally I'd put something on raucous or
heavy metal or sometliing and his attitude was that he deffnitely didn't want it o
because it was too noisy. But I think the [children] picked up on that as well
because if I put anything on that was a bit loud [here she gestures that they
woultl aot-upl . . . during the '80s I didn't really botha 'with music because I
thougfut it would cause fricdon.- be upsetdng or whatever - so I stopped . . . The
late ?80s I stated listening to Beehive and the Thompson Tbrins,,,which of course
myhr,rsband didnttdenti& witli at all . . .

I-esley describes how she began to make a deliberate musical move away
from her relationship, replacing the'popular iiCCb/ music that she per-

-.
Music

as a

touchstone of social relations

t27

ceived as within the bounds of the relationship for example,

Dire saaits
- and also rhe more, as she perceived it, .inie[ectu'moae of Radio 4,
with music that her husband disked and viewed with disapprovar.
r-esley
goes on to describe how, near the end of her
relationship with her exhusband shewould sometimes, whenshewas angryrplaya soft
ceil song
ertitled 'say hello, wave goodbye' (from an album calr ed. Erotc cabaret).
she would play the track at high volume so that it would be
audible from
any room in the house. As she puts it, 'It was a hint really,,
but admits that
she is not sure her husband understood (.He didn,t
*yri"gf .

*,

Lesley used music ro convey a message (perhaps uo"t

hel evotving
aesthetic and stylistic stance) that she hd not yet formulated
in words _

she was formulating a sense of how she was .diherent'tot

thinking through musical practice about leaving that partner. ""p*",
via music,
r-esley may also have been undermining the aesthetic
basis of their rerationship, preparing the aesthetic ground for her deparnrre,
creating an
aesthetic trajectory for the agency of her departure. The
first step in this
process wfs to move away from the music that
had hitherto been located
in the cente of their relationship (atbeit a weak centre music
was never
particularly important to them as a coupre). The secondrr"p *u, ,o *"o,
instea4 to the sort of music her husband had always frowned
..poo,
'raucous or heavy metal or something', as she puts it, or else something
gonducive to introspection (and alienation), such as I*onard cohen or

susanne vega, to the sort of music that did not signify, from
her partner,s

point ofview,'happyfamies'.In a senser l*sreyfreslged

h"ii"ip to- u
social relationship - hermarriage by trying ii out ftoally,
in'the aes_
thetic sphere. Changes in musical pracd"e provided, in other
words, a
practice genre for the 'real' or sociar and economic
move that was to

follow-leavinghome.
\rfthin an intimate relationship, even minute aesthetic turnings may
cause dis'ess, albeit without any accompanyrng recognirion
Jr ,rny
things seem rneasy (one may say, 'I can't put my finger on it
but I sense
something is vnongi). Non-negotiated aesthed"
may cut off
access to the aesthetic resources from which relationships
"*goand modes
of
being are generated and sustained. In this regard, denying
access to aesthetic resources within micro- or idioculrural senings ca;illuminate
the
social dynamics of artistic censorship in wider co[efuvities,
the suppres1io19f seditiols songs, of instrumental music in cromwellt timer'of the
\Felsh harp or of local variants of medievar plainsong. The
mateih that
had hitherto provided the_t1cit reference
loints fr collecrive identity
work, for entrainment and for the shaping up of embodied aesthetic
agencyr are removed. vith this removal, actors are deprived
of a resource
he renewal of a social form and the modes of arousal,

for

motirntion and

t,
I

128

Music

as a device

of social ordering

trs it any wonder, then, fhat

pfserve
their ccess to aesacto,may go to extraordinary leqgfhs to
thetic mater,ials - the crlptic portfaits of Bonny Frince ChAre, the 'cried

feadiness for aetion that go with these forms.

down sangs' (that is, prosctibed songs) of the Jaoobite rebellion that leappearedin encoded form, for example Bonnie Prince charlie reappeafs as
'our guideman'or as a blackbird or a 'bonnie moorhen':
My bonnie moorhen has feathers'enew
She's a'fine coloursrbut nane ot themblue;
She's red and she's white and she's green and she's grey.

My bonnie moorhen, come hither away.

Come up by Glenduich and down by Glendee
And round by Kinclaven and hither to mei
For Ronald and Donald ae out on the fen,
Tb break the wing o' my bonnie moorhen. (STR I 98 1 [1 960])

Echoing Victor Tirney's discussion

of

paradigms (1981), Ron

partic-

Eyerman and Andrew Jamieson harre recently begUn to specify this

ulartlpe of actioninrelation to music and social movements:

Tb the categories ofagtion discussed by sociologists we wish to add the concept

of

ercmplary ction. As represented or articulated in the cognitive praxis of social

movemdts, exemplary action can be thought of as a specification oftherymbolic
action discussed by Melucci and othert The exemplary action of cognitive praxis
is symbolic i several senses; but it is also 'more'than merely symboc. As real
cd;ural repr$entatios - art, tef,ature, songs - it is anefaCual and material, as
well. What we are attempting to capture with the term is the exemplary use of
music and art in social mo\ements' the various wayr in which songs and singers
can senrc a function akin to the exemplary works tlat Thomas Kuhn characterized as being central to ssientific rvolutions: tle paradigm-constituting entitieg
that serveto realign scientifrcthinking andthatrepresent ideal exmples offundamentally innovative scientific work Kubn 19701 . The difference beneen culture
ad science, however, is that the exemplary action of music and art is lived as we
as thougbt it is cognitive, but it also drans on more emotive aspects of human
consciousness . (1998:23)

so far in this chapter, actors can be seen to

have used music so as to call out or call ahead manners of conduct, valuet
style and murual oriontation. Music, in this sense, whether or not it actu-

In the exrunples discussed

allyworks aQ sush, is apfesctiptive device a cue for social agecy. Withi

msig's struc6es, its perceived connotatiqtrs, its sensual pafametefs
(dmamics, sound envelopes, harmonies, textures, colous and so on),
rfiud' or gather themselves,as agents with particular cspacities
actors maJ
for social action. These specific eramples thus help us to see how, to
vaf '$ng degrees, actofs are engagd in tacit aegthetic activities at
produce their action, in laying down potential aesthetic gounding fof
funre conduct. Aesthetic materials here may be seen as akin to what

7-

Music forstrangers

t29

Roben lfftkin once refered to as 'holding forms' (Witkin 1974). They

provide rroti fhat procede, and serve as a reference point forr lines of
conduct over time. In this way their function is similar to that of memory
artefacts, as discussed by Urry Q996) and Radley (1990)' described in
chapter 3. Sudr moti$ are seen by actors to somehow encapsulate and
provide a container for what might othern'ise pass as a momentary
impulse to act, or a momentary identification of some kind. Holding
forms thus provide a touchstone to whicl actors may return as they
engage in expressive activity. They are resources against which future
agencytakes shape.
Seen in this ght' the snrdy of how music is used in daily life helps to
illuminate the practical activity of casting ahead and furnishing the social
space with material-culnral resources for feeling, being and doing. This
is part of how the habitat for social life - its support system - is produced
and sustained. And aesthetic reflexive action, that is the reference to aesthetic materials as a means for generating agencyr is a crucial aspect of
strucnration. It is a keystone for the project of knowing what to say, how
to move, how to feel.In short, music is a resource for producingsocial life.
Critical then is the issue' as was discussed at the end of chapter 1, of
how the production of an agency-sustaining habitat is itself controlled
for example, constructdr maintainedr deconstructed. Within social set-

tings, particular musical materials may place on offer some aestletic

resources for the production of agency while they make others inaccessible (for example, the loud rock and the beer versus the 'pretty things in
other languages'and the 'mixed drinls and desserts'). And if music is a
device of social ordering, if- in and through its manner of appropriation it is a resource against which holding forms, templates and parameters of
action and experience are forged ifit can be seen to have effects upon
bodies, hearts and minds, thsnthematter ofmusic in the social space is, as
discussed above, an aesthetic-political matter. This is why matters of taste
haver ttrroughout history and across cultures, often been contentious.
What, then, of situatiolls - so common in late-modern societies - where
the circumstances of music's deplotment arebeyond astors'control?

Mustc forstrangers
For the mostpart, the unit of analysis in this book has been the individual
and the small social group. \trith the ercqrtion of aerobics, moreover' this
focus so far has been directed at individuals' own - albeit at times contested - music practices, with the ways they mobilize music - primarily
mechanically reproduced, mass-distributed music - as a backdrop or
sounduack for heir prirrate ves. It was neaessary to begin at the level of

[r"

r30

Music

as a device

of social ordering

indivilal practioe because it is ,the,re that nrusic's,nls to identity and

subiectivity san be,seen rosr clearly. But the project of erptoring how
music wsrls as an organizing device ofhtman social life would be inoonrplete without moving beyond this level ro consider music's organizing
role in more impersonal and socially diffuse circrmstances in pubc settings. Indeed, music's link to the rqgulation of self and the configuratiou
of subiectivity and agenry is of concern to a rangb of economically and
politically interested actors - manufacturers concerned with .worker satisfaction', motirration and 'fatigue', marketeers interested in .purchase
behaviour', potical parties and their desire to win over voters, nations
and regimes concerned with fostering belief in their legitimacy, churches,
cults and sects seeking to inspire and reinforce 'derrotion', and municipalities who wish to suppress hooligan forms of betraviour and crime. Atl of
these actor grcups are collectivities who at times have exploited music,s
po\rers in their sttempts to structure motivation, energl and desire. The

burgeoning of the background music industry (fnza 1994) finther

attests to the way in which music is increasingly considered as a .solution'
to the'problem' of social control and management.
Empirical studies, primarily within psyctrology Q.[orth and Hargreaves
1997a; 1997b) and market research (Alpert and Alpert 1989; 1990;
Eroglu and Machleit 1993; Kellaris and Kent 1992), have suggesrd rhat
music can be used to strucnre conduct in public - feeling, comportment,
behaviour, energy, conduct style and identity formation. These studies
suggest that music is a device for focusing conduct, drawing conduct into
channels associated with a range of organizationally sponsored aims.
There is an impressive body of data so far. On-site orperimene suggest

that background music can influence the time it takes to eat a meal
(Miiman 1986; Roballey et al. 1985), drink a soft drink (McElrea and
Standing 1992), the average tength of stay in a shop (Milliman 1982;
Smith and Curnow 1966), the choice of one brand or style over another
(North and Hargireaves 1997b) and the alount of money spent (Areni
and Kim 1993).In shor6 in the commercial sestor, where results are
assessed by profit margins, considerable investmenthas been deroted to
finding outiustwhatmusic can makepeople do.
Most sociologists harre been slow to appreciate the significance of these
findinss; trn part, this reluctance is linked to the ehaviourist discourses in
which most studies of 'what music causes' are couched. Those sooiologists who hare sorcidered the world of nrarketing, howwer, have
observed that there is much Eore at stake than the question of how to
'manipulate'consumers. Indee{ what appears to be behaviourism when
viewed from a distance is far more conrplex upon cloeer scrutiny,
involving questions of nreaning, appropriation and interpretive work, as

Music in pubc-the retail sector

in

chapter 2. Moreover, appcations in marketing provide

to'the questionthatphilosophers haveposed as the cornerstone of

described
access

l3l

their most complex theoretical edifices: the relationship between subject

and obiect' (Flennion and Meadel f989:l9l). To interrogate this rela-

tionship is to delve into the sociologically profound matter of how a

species of organizationally sponsored agency - mood, energy, desire,
action - is informed by and shaped up with reference to organizationalaesthetic materials. How and to what extent, then, is music, as one of the
more subtle of these materials, a building material for the production of
consumption?

Muslc lnpubc places -the case ofthe retall sector

One of the most appropriate settings for investigating music's opubc'
po\pen is the retail sector, where, in recent years, the nature of consump.

tion has undergone derrclopment and change. As it is characterized, the

shift consists of a move from a utilitarian acquisition of needed obiects
(such as, when shoes wear out or when a forthcoming social engagement
demands 'appropriate' dress) into a key component - particularly for the
young, but increasingly the middle-aged as well - of identity constnction. Indeed, identity construction and maintenance has become a leisure
pursuit in its own rigbt, through the rarious activities of self-care and
culti\ation such as body shaping grooming procedures, therapy and the
appropriation.of 'style', where a good part of the pleasure associated with
these pursuits is linked to the playrng out of fantasy life @ocock 1993;
Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; 7*pp 1986; Friedberg 1993; Bowlby
1985; \Filliams 1982). In short, the role of e-Fressive action has
expanded in late modern culture. At the level of practice, identity is now
corstrued as put together in and through a range of identifications with
aesthetic materials and representations, perhaps most clearly visible in
the consunerrealmwhere shopping is now aboutmuch more ran status
distinction (Campbell 1987; Baudrillard 1988; Fearhersrone et al. l99l;
Bocock 1993).It is perhaps best encapsulated by Baudrillardl 'I shop,
therefore I am', but also exemplified in the wan individuals interact
with self.help literature (Lichternan 1992), mlneuu. (Macdonald
1998; Zolberg 1996) and new social movements (tletherington 1998;
Roiek 1995)
At the level of social theoryr.the Enlightenment uadition upheld by
Max V'eber's (1970) belief that the realm offeeling and rhe romantic were
perilous fo proper citizenship (which also deeply concerned the critical
theorists such as'Adorno) has been counterposed5 in recent years, to a
Durkheimian enrphasis on the culnral and aesthetic bases of the subject

132

Music

as a device of social

ordering

who is concpnralizd as standing weU inside the frame of culnral structrures and is interpolated by them ([Ieterington 1998:41-59). To delve
into this matttr in relation to the retail sector is to speak about the matter
of how identities are constructed &om within the technologically
configured'landscapes of powed (Zukin 1992), which in nrn merges

with the more genenl concern withrhe interface between material

culture, social action and subiectivity as discussed in chapter 2.
Interest in the interaction between environment and emotional action
is by no means new with regard to consumptiory as Anne Friedberg has

observed nineteenth-cennrry commentators viewed the large department stores as'machines'for producing conzumption, a metaphor that
lives on in the discourse of 1990s shopping mall plauners and their preoccupation with'genentors, flow and pull' (Friedberg 1993:ll2). !7ith
regard to music, it was not uncormon in the department stores of the
early twentieth cenrry for live music to be performed (for example, the
pipe organ at the Philadelphia store, John \trannamakers). Howwcr it
was not rntil the advent of mechanically reproduced 'muzak' that in-store
sound was converted from overt 'entertainment' to more sbliminal

'ambience'. Snrdying music's in-store presence thus raises the question of

howretail spaces maymake designsupon the shopping subiect, and horp
consumer agency is produced locallg in-store. Moreover, consideration
of retail emrironments'dereodence upon and attempts to adrnnce emotionally flexible pable constrmer-subiects (as described below) draws
together the otherwise incongruous disciplines of citical social theory
and marketing research. It is in this context, then, that rre need to
concqrnralize i*tore music; it is deployed as a device of social ordering'
an aesthetic means through which consumer agency may be arti@late{
changed and sustained. In this senser the sociology of consumption
cannot afrord to ignore the soundtrack of consumer purchasing.
Music is a ubiquitous feanue of shopping. Waffng discreetly from concealed speakers orblaring from a prominentVDU' it is as integral to fhe
artificial envhonment of the retail sector-aB climate control, ebting and
interior design. Yet music's pre$enoe has passed virnrally unnoticed
within the social ecienoes, whore attention has been deroted to the field of
vision in-storer to the mobilization of desire via ldisplayed' obiects. This
'visualist'eonoeption of in:store srubiectivity and its construction (BuckMorss 197? Friedberyl9g3) impoitly concEives of shopping as involving thegaze and the nobilization ofthe gazc.
Perhaps this is because the ears of sociologistsr ke those ofthe general
public, are, as Adotno once observed (l 976:51)' passive. The e'e, by contrast, attends selectively - it can close, rivetr avert itself - and sor Adorno
suggesor,it is linked more closely to consciousness. By anatomical design'

Sound of consumption

t33

the ear is'always open', less, as Richard Middleton puts it' 'subiectively
organized than the eye' (1990:94). Moreover, sound objects are fleeting,

mercurial; without musical training, it is difrcult to 'point'to them or

'see'them, it is more diftcult to be aware of and remember sound objects,
as they are configured and reconfigured within an instant. Our concepal vocabulary for music's effects and the mechanisms througb whictl
these effests are produced is undweloped. For these reasons music's
powers remain invisible and often fall into a residual category of analysis.
@or example, one of the inernational chain stores we sndied handled
in-store music under the rubric of Yisuals' (that is, store design).)

Ihesoundofconsumpdon
The ethnomusicologistJonathan Sterne (1997) has developed this line of
thinking in his study of a U.S. mega-mall, the Mall of America. Sterne
conceives of music as a sonic 'framingl device, one that helps mall management to define and differentiate and link together mall spaces througb
manipulations of the auditory environment. Following the notion that
daily life poses a heterogeny of oppornrnities for existence, Sterne speaks
ofmusic as, oone of the energy floun (such as electricity or air) which continuallyproduce . . . social space' (1997:29). This idea is promisingrbut it
does not go far enough to ilhminate the actual mechanisms and
moments througb and within which such'flows' are appropriated and get
into action. If, moreover, we adhere to the concept of agencyr in the sense
that has been used so far in this book - as a capacity for emotional'
embodied and cognitive being' the shaping up of action in relation to aes- we can apply that concept to the study of the retail
sector by investigating the matter of how that sector engages in the activity of helping to sponsor or stncture the materials with which agency is
constructd in-store.
To be sure, the music of the retail space is organizationally sponsored;
it is one of a range of devices by which forsrs of affective agency can be
understood to be placed on offer to shoppers who not only try on or try
out goods, but who use the retail space to try on or try out new subiect
positions, identities and staces. Key, then, is that the shop can be seen
to provide a 'natutal laboratory', one within which actors may be folloned as they are acted upon by aesthetic materials, that is' as those
materials are deployed with particular organizational designs on the
$rucnre of its obiect - the strucnrre of the consuming subiect. We can
also uackactors as tlreyenterrmove around inand exitthe aestheticfield

thetic parameters

of the retail scene, and we can obeerve, throughout that time, actors'
interactions with the material environments ofthose scenes.In shon, the

--!!lil
t34

Mueic as a device of social ordering

retail envionment is a place where subiectivity and action may be examined as they are constittrted in real time and in'a sonic setting the parameters of,whictr lie fortte mostrart outside of actors'control. The retail
outlet is a rseful errclave, tl,ren, for consideriog the matter of how music
mayfunction as an organizing device and the related issues of so-called
'people management' and 'social control'. Here, music senes as part of a
coection of culnral resources that can be used to create soenic
specificity, and to place on offer modes of leing. Deliberately and il
facmrretail, outlets seek to foster particular in-store cultures and images
of imped clientele.
Clothes have alwars been carrierc of meaning @avis 1985; Lurie I 992;

Mukerji 1994) and key resources for identity work, but their role as
resources for identity work varies across age lines (Vincent 199t.
Whereas the older women gpically make fewer excursions to the shops
and have in mind aims and obiectirrcs when they do and do not enioy
leing distracted, younger women are more likely to view shopping as a
leisure-time pursuit, more likely to visit a shop with no specific purchase
in mind. The clothing purchases of older women are moe kely to be
linkd to specific needs (professional and social) or to their household
budgets. For these women, identity will be futher removed, than for
youngerwomen, fromhow theylook and its significance.Itwill be nked
to matters zuch as professional standing, children, social roles and obliga-

tions. By contrastr younger women purchase things that help them

e.:rpand and alter their self-perceirrcd identities and images. Entities far
more complex than clothes are being tried on in the changing rooms,
where a dress becomes something that ofits'or rnay be 'grown into'in a
symboc as we as a physical sense. Young women purchase things 1"t
'cool' (this word was used repeatedly by shoppers observed
in our study) or somehow erpressive of how they feel or of images to
which they aspire.In ou own fieldwork, we vierped, time and time again,
young people trvine thingp on as an end in itself, as part of the fonnation
ofgtoup culture, and as part ofthe proiect ofidentity work.
Theee are the kinds of shoppers most likely to make 'impulse purchases', unplanned on-the-spot spending. Market researchero desctibe
many oftheseimpulse buys as 'erperiential purchases', that is, purehases
aooorapaniedby emotional reactions suoh as 'sudden desire to purchaset
feeling of helplessness, feeliog good, purohasing iu response to moods
and feeling guilq/ (Firon 1993:341). Key to the concept ofthe 'etperiential purchase'is that the arena where desire is formulated as desire 'for'
something is the in-store environment 'tr\e enwtianal dimension of shopping and the unplanned purchase is thus of, maior interest to market
researchers, who suggest that up to 60 per cent of all purchase decisions
beere to be

fJ

t;
li;
IL,
Ii-.-

1gs 6 an Bngllsh high street

L35

are not prerneditated but arise as a result of in-store browsing (Yelaniian

l99l). If this is so, it helps to hiehlight the extent to which at least some

forrrs of action are locally organized and so illunrinates the notion that
subiectivity may be constructed in and throWh reference to culftral
materials as these are encountered during a corrse of action.
Bearing in mind the significance of the browser, then, the proiect of
configuring consumers and enrolling ttrem into certain emotional states
commensurate with displayed goods - seducing consumers - is therefore
of paramount importance to retailers. As the 'food of love', music is
perhaps the medium par excellerce for igniting such passions and for
structuring in-store subiectivity. In coniunction with window displays,
dcor, assistants dressed in errployee-dbcounted merchandise and,
indeed, the merchandise itself, music is a means of delineating retail
teritory, a way of proiecting imaginary shopperr on to the aesthetically
configured space ofthe shop floor.
Case srdy: muslc on ar Fndrsh hlgh street

From January to Sqrterrber 1998, Sophie Belcher and I conducted participant observation and interviews in and eund thshigh street shops in
a small city in England. The snrdy considered a total of eleven shops eigbt national or international 'chain'shops and three'indqrendents'. In
the dissrssion that follows (and in accordance with the wishes of outlet
managers) these shops are referred to by pseudonrms.

Canyon: Global chain with U.S. headquarters, specializing in

casual wear and cotton goods for men, women and children
Ctrshirts, shorts, ieans, iackets, small selection of casual skirts
and dresses).

Mistral: U.IC company, branches througbout United Kingdom

and Europe; clothes for women and children. Dresses, skirts,
iackets and trousers in natual materials (silk, linen, cotton,
wool), rich colours and floral prints - exotic or ethnic in style.
Elesium: U.K. chain, trendy clothes aimed at affiuent young
lryomen. Hip-hugger trousers, coats with feather coars, luminous and neon-coloured desses, shrink-fit Gshirts and s\reaters, club wear.

Axiom: U.K. chain, suits, dresses, career clothes in synthetic

fabrics, evening wear, shoes. Serarate 'Petites' section and
men's section.

Linea: U.K. chain, suits, dresses, career clothes, ieans, underwear, bathing zuitq menb children's and frrninre sections.
Largemail-orderdepartment.

136

Music

as a dvice of

seial ordering

MeadowRiver: Global chain. Floralpattem dresses, skirts, straw

hats, sorctailored items, furnishings andhome dcor.

IC

chain. Tlrendy mini-dresses, basque tops, hip-hugger

tops, lower price range
crochet
rou$etsr
Directions: U.K. chain. Lower-priced sports rpear for young
women.Tirendy.
Persuasion: Independently oumed shop for women. Club wear'
quasidesigner labels.'Funk5/ type clothing.
Euphoria: Independently owned endy menslvear' mainly fot
men in their fipenties. Disco clothes; seet wear.

Babe:

Naked: Regional chain selng clubby trainers' pladorms'

sandalsrboots, Doc Matens formen andwomen.

li
t'

At the most basic, musical materials sErve as 'welcome mats' and 'keep
out' notices, depending upon how they are received. Some shopg such as
Mistral, maybe more lenient about disciplining retail space with musical
devices CThe music is a bit of weryrhing for the clientele because they are
not one specific age group' (interriew with manager))' yet at the same
time atterrpt to construct themsehes as a 'style-conscious' store with
music in the foreground. Others use music merely to present a bland but
recognizable retail identity, such as Canyon, q/here the music is barely
audible and where a policy of playing music in chaneing rootns was cancelled because, according to the branch manger, 'Cents found it invasive.' Still other sbops use a nattower range of overtly prominent music to
fine tune their image, broadcast their market niche and heigbten their
erclsivity. At Babe, for examplg music is used to 'encapsulate the corporate identity of young modern, fe6ale and let the customers lnow that
they are in nrne with what's going on in the music industrf (interview
withmanager).
At the locallybased independent shops, music's role as a way of specifflng store identity- and hence tafget consumers - is more overt. In these
stores catering to particular market niches and to local clientele in a
highty personal mannerr the managers erpounded upon the importance
of sound to the retail environrrent. For erample, Janice, owner and
manager of Perzuasion, told us,'Music is essential to the shop image.It
creates an environment. Vhenyoubave come from the hustle . . . it marks
a dlstinct space.'She described the comrercial music that plays in most
shope as boring, counterposing her orrn mgsic as,'mote alternativer llke
my shop . . .'. But she was not in fa\torr sf high volume levels for her small
shop space. She told us ho\r she aims for zubtlety: You want it to be
mellowr have rhytht . . . not e obtrusive . . .'. The manager of Euphoria
whose target clientele are 'predominantly lads', told us, 'You have to
knorp what will work, and at Euphoria you don't want anything too

,,I

r
1
,

Store music policies

t37

certainly no classical, but not anerr ian' (the shop sticks to

described
drun-and-bas8 and club uumberr). At Nakedr the manager
,gives the store an irnaget. Fot the young, club'oriented cenhow music
(Ihe shop
tele, 'cheesy pop flmes, iaa, andclassical would be a no'no"
,.soulfulo

plays a steady diet of drum-and-bass.)

How andurhere are store muslc policles nade?

According ro the type of store, we found that strop workers had different
large national and
degrees oluotooo-y in developing music policy. At the
minimized' in
was
variation
branch
or
local
iniernational chain stores,
the
thatlleyhad
toldus
Canyon
of
manager
favour of homogeneity. The
to
able
shouldbe
one
zone,
time
same
fhe
idea that in anybranch within
in
the
ofice
head
canyon's
instant.
same
hear the same music at the
United States chooses the music for the United Kingdom, United States
roughly
and canada. supped by the Muzak corporation, it is changed
autoplay
tapeson
to
designed
are
decks
every two mottth* Tbe cassette
choosingt
own
their
play
of
tapes
cannot
leverse, so that store employees
The staff, we
and company music pocy is thrs technologically enforced.
extended
over
tape
same
hearingthe
the nanager'getbored
r""r" toldby-time
.can'i
one staff
As
arrive'.
to
,upe
new
for
a
wait
and
p"o, of
sometimes
off'
I
switch
Somehow
it.
to
sten
Lemberputitr'Ihardly ever
you can notice
are parts that obviously are much more pleasing so
there

Outrotuoy

often Ir I supposewhenyouworkin thereyou have to s\titch

from
off somehow [i.e., ignore the music].' At Babe, tapes come down
per
deck
tapes
four
have
They
time'
a
at
head office every two weeks, two
a
tape
thry
Linea
At
sel
changed.
are
and every trro weels balf of these
office'
head
from
come
tapes
Mistral,
At
each month from head oce.

*p"rmonthrbuttheyalsokeepabacHogofoldtapesthattheyfeel
A"y^"- *" since they are not oriented to curent chartnumbers'
other*to"o"o"ooogeaformofpartialautonomy'incollaboration
For
with record shops from whom cDs are borrowed or purchased.

regional head
example, Directions receives a memo every month from its
chooses from
then
manager
The
options.
ofrce tisting a range of music
two a week'
borrow
usually
They
MVC.
this list urrd bor,fo*, tapes from
mellod'
is
that
one
'more
one that is 'quite funky/ctubby' and
parameWhile Ditectious has to work within management-specified
at
purchasing'
gfeater
autonomy,
ters, at Naked and Elysium staffenjoy
for
monthlybudget
a
have
Both
HMV.
their orm diss:retion, mgsic from

musicandthemanagerdecideswhatshouldbeplayed,thoue'oallstaff
This'
n"ke suggestionJabout what should be purchas" -1.Pluv."d'
shop's
the
like
very
cult'ratty
afe
staff
the manager-ttd us, is because the

r rirlll
'l:ii

.ul
I

rl

ii'
I

[38

Mtsic as a device of social ordering

target oonsumrst they function ke 'lead-usens' for the product lines.

Finally, at the local independent shops, staffhave the greatest degee of
autonooy; they do not need to work within budgetary or policy oonstraints. At Buphoria, for example, staff decide what will be played,
though when the boss is in, he does tte choosing. Stafralso bring in music
from home. At Euphoria, the manager toldl us that he chooses music on
the basis of what he knows of his customers, that you get to know them
and know what they ke. At Persuasion, fanice chooses music on the basis
of what is going on in the club scene (her partner is a local Dl). She
chooses it and changes it every trro weeks.
These local and quasi-local music marketing practices are characteristic of newer and more flexible pattetns of errploment. They also
reduce costs by drawing upon skills that are allowed to go unrecognized.
Instead of supporting an entire marketing department for music production and pocV, retailers can delegate the responsibities to local staff.
Thee staff, because they are chosen in part for their similarity to target
consumers, perform the tasks otherwise allocated to a brand rtanager,
simplyby drawingupon theirovn tastes and preferences in choosinginstore music. They are, in effect, prototpical target customers. They also,
occasionally, spend their orrn mony on music for the shop. Similarly at
HMV and MVC, the local record shops where slqthi'rg stailgrs go to buy
or borrow their music, the 'advisory service' that record shop staffprovide
is unacknowledged (and not remuneratd). For exalnple, Dave, from
HMV, told us how he uies to be 'reactive not proactive'when swing
advice about what music miglt work in a retail space, and Peter, at MVC,
saidhewisheshe could offermore advicebecause, inhis opinion' manyof
the shops get their music rmong.

Creadng scene, creadng aSency-muslc ag anblence

In all the stores we studiedr Bu$ic was employed as a fesource for creating
and heightening sceic specificity, for imparting a sense of occasion andr
therefore, for placing modes of agency on offer. For retailem, these
affEoive dimensions of sgency are critical because'point-of-purchase' or
'impulse' sales are typically tansactions that involve'sonsumers' enotions, for exanple, opurchasing in response to moods' (Piron 1990; 1993;
Rook 1987; Rook and Hoct 1985),. For this easoRr retailers are concerned, as notod above, to strucft the aesthetic environment an{
throug! this, the emotional conduct of consumers' This stnrcturing of
agency- in partianlar, emotional agency* applies to shop staffas well as
shopperu. Indee{ in the marketing terature, concern with manipulating
the moods of employees is common. !?ith regard to 8t4ff, the idea is that

Music

as

ambience

t39

music helps them to do 'emotional work' (flochschild 1983), enter into a

mode of agency conducive to the emotional features of their iob - that is,
acting ke a lead-user (of strop goods) and generally fitting in, in terms of
appearance and temperament, with the shop's qmbience. Ilittr regard to
shoppers, the idea is that music helps to enrol them into an appropriate'

or institutionally sponsored mode of agency, that is' a mode of agency

that is oriented to purchase behaviour. Certainly during the ethnographic
phase of our research we notd nrmerous examples of staffbehaving as if
they were co-shoppers, 'confessing' to conbumers their own shopping
difrculties and dilemmas in a cosy, gossipy manner ('I'm tempted to
spend all my salary on clothes herer'for example (overheard in the chang-

ingroomof Mistral)).
Each shop is engaged in strucnrring agency tbrough its attempts to
create a sense of occasion and a type of scenic specificity. The use of
musical means forthese purposes is perhaps mostvisible throughmusic's
use in helping to instil temporal specificity to the in-store environment.
All the stores we studied' even those with globally organized music policies, such as Canyon, tailored their music to fit temporal trends, and to
construct and reinforce temporal realities, whether daily, weekly or ssasonal. These constructions were aimed at both staff and shoppers. For
example, morning in all the stores is when as one manager put it, 'laidback' music is played, qpically at lower volume levels. In Euphoria, relaxing music is standard for morning. In Naked' Rick described how a
6pical day begins with 'quite a slow tempo in the morning which rises
throughout the day and begins to slow again near the end of the day.
That's for staffas well . . .'At Directions the manager described how more
'clubby, ufr-tempo'music is used at lunchtime and'always on Saturday'
(their busiest day). In fact' all the stores provide louder, more up-beat
music for Saturda]s - the time when shoppers are oriented to 'The
\ffeekend'and going out. Even at Canyon, where the music is changed
roughly every two monttrs, different tapes are used on Saturday: 'more
uptempo music when . . . people [young worned are shopping for outfits
for that evening' (quote from interview with manager). At Misral they
begin the day with 'more ambient'tunes, 'more gentle, as loud music
would be off-puning'. As the day wears on, from around 11.30 to 12,30'
music'gets more soulfirl', with cuts from the Brand New Heavies and
Ella Fitzgerald for example. And at Elysium, the music for Sanudays is,
as the manager puts it, 'brighter, funkier'thoWb not strictly more uptempo. This is because, as it was explained to usr there are more young
'people on a Sanuday and the music helps to get everyone in high spirits.
Some of the stores also use music to mark seasonal changes and events.
For erample, Babe used the soundtrack to the 1997 Romen ond'fulintfor

140

ir

Music

as a device

of social ordering

their Valentine's Day pronotions, and in December Linea and Canyon

used Chrismag,music. Diec'tions, on the other han4 whose choice of
music from the local MVC is made fromwithinregional oce stipulated
paameters, were given a Christmas option but reiected it because, 'shoppers were sick of Christmas music . . . to entice theur ltol stty we played
club and party music, so lit wasl seasnal without being Christmasqf
(interviewwith manager). Elysiumrby contl?st' did use Christmas music
and made a point of using special, more'light-he-arted, up-tempo'music
during the summer. At the time of Princess Diana's death, Elysium
played music that the rnanager fett, 'matched the mood of the nation',
including Diana Roes tapes. (At the time of Diana's funeral, Mistral frequentlyplayed the reworkedversion of 'Candle inthe wind'.)
That music is a resource for the temporal construction of occasion is
reflected in company music pocies, most clearly visible perhaps when
those policies are articulated and broadcast docinwards in terms of
options to local branches where a degee of autonomy is available. For
example, at Directions, the instructions sent down from regional headquarte describe how different options are linked to di:fferent musical
'efrects'.The 3 Decembermemo reads:
Clnscn

taPes

fo Decs?r,be'

(l)'TheNo I XmasAlbum'

I'm afraid

rhere's no escaring Bing Crcsby's White Xmas, but this lpe is a new

release and

includesmore resentxmashin. Thistapewillbe particuladyeffective

on Sundays & late nigbts.

(2)'Best Party in the Vorld Evet'

This tape is orcellent and inctudes new mixes of old and new hits. Customers have
reactedverywell to tlis. Suitable for every day. . .

It goes on to suggest the following as 'other suitable tapes if you borrow

orbuy as an individualrwhich canbe played'and describesbothwhen the
musiwilbemost effective and aleo thetipe ofmood itwill foster:
(1) 'Best Club Anthems (2) Eved - Clubby' released last week
(2) 'Ftrnky Divas' - Very girl powe'r' released today. Vaded and upbeat.
(3) Whaml The Best Of'- making a huge impact and is predicted to be top 3 for
Xnas. Suitable fol during the week.

Muslc ls a fl edble but power{ul lnterpretedve resource

Compared to the other aesthetic materials in-store, music is easily con'
trolled. Slith the flick of a suitch, it can be added' removed, adiusted
ahered. Not surprisinglg therefore, music is one of the most frequently
altered aspects of in-store environments and because of its flexibity, it is

Music

as

internetative resource

L4l

an ideal medium for temporal definition. Througb its ongoing variation,

music provides an acthetic contrast strucrufer against which more sta-

tionary materials can be contextralized and recontextualized. For

example, music may lead consumen to attend selectivelyto some kinds of
goods more than others. In Mistral, for example, at the time of Christrnas
and seasonal parties or summer balls, party and dancing music is played
to reinforce the goods displayed at the front of the shop, the party dresses.
The slower and more dreamlike numbers are not featured and the'day
weat' is moved to the back of the shop.
What music does wben it acc as a clarifuing material is to serve as an
indor for a whole sryle or gestalt of in-store conduct. According to how it
is perceived, music may sene as a referent for the formulation of such
diverse matters as how to move, how to imagine one's self-identity, how to
browse (and thus, perhaps, what to purchase), how to mould one's
appearance, and how to tlink, feel and act. Music is 'there'if and when it
is needed for these non-cognitive purposes; if it is not needed it can and is
often ignored as, for example, when a shopper becomes engrossed in a

particular item. (Music may not, however, be ignored by all - style and
volume lwels may intervenE as discussed above) Moreover, particular
gerrer their actual materials such as
kinds of music - their
tempo or orchestration, their perceived secondary significations - may
carry social and behaviorral entainents. These entailments may be
active in the pubc sphere iust as they are in the realm of private life
within intimate encounters and social gtherings as discussed at the start

ofthis chapter.
In this regar{ the wine outlet has received particular attention from
environmental psychologists. Recent studies have suggested that music
may be particularty effective under conditions of uncertainty' when
customers have less knowledge about a productr and are rnsure how to
discriminate between difrerent options or where the actual choice
between different produce is not greatly important. For example, when
'classical' (Mozart, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn) music was alternated with
'pop' in a wine outlet, customers exposed to tle classical selections
bougbt more erpensive items (Areni and Kim 1993). Most of the customers who visited a wine outlet studied by Areni and Kim confessed to
harring ttle eqrerience of wine. Given that inexperience, and sustomers'
associated 'vigue expestations and intentions' (1993:338)' Areni and

Kirr

suggest that 'background music may have operated independently

the erpected purchase experieoce'. By this they mean that:

of

con$rmeror consciously or unconeciously, souglt external cues as to appropriate be.haviour. The classical music may have communicated a sophieticated
urper class, atmoephere, suggssting that only exlensftre merchandise should

nil

iii

-.FIj,l
L

[J.'

tlt
l

142

Music

as a device

of social ordering

e.vn have felt pressufe to confor..m to the

setting implied by the nnusic by purchasing erpensive wine. A iecond poesibility is that the backgound music comnunicated to shoppers the price and
quality of the merchandise in the store . . . high prestige high price imags . . .

be considerod. Customers may

t.

(1993:338)

Following from this work, Adrian North and David Hargreaves han'e
suggestd that music can be used to structue product choice (1997b).
Using an Asda wine department, they arranged a display feanrring trno
wines, one Gerrran, one French, both at the same - relatively inexpensive
- price. $hen background music featured French accordion music,
French wines sales rose significantly over German, and when German
'Bierkeller'music was pla]e4 the opposite occurred leading the authors
to conclude that music is a referent to which consumes may turn to
clarifr choice (albeit unconsciously - few admitte4 when guestioned
upon exiting the area, to having'noticed'the music). Product choice, in
other words, is 'fitted' to the aesthetic atmosphere in-store, that is to what
Maclnnis and Park (199lz162) hare descibed as,'consumets' subjective
perceptions of the music's relevance or appropriateness'.
These snrdies are exciting from the sociological perspective becuse
they emphasize the importance of 'the syrrbolic meaning undedying each
purchase exgrerience' (Areni and Kim 1993t338). They emphasize shoppingas a form of social action, meaningfuUy oriented in ic course and
chaacterized by a range of interpretive activity. (ncidentally, they shoq
too, how carefully constructed reflexively administered experimental
methods - long snubbed by cultural sociologists - can be used with

benefit by sociologists.) This environmental psychological work also

underlines consumption as apsth,etc activity and illuminates the importance, particularly in relation to browsing astivity, of the local aesthetic
environrrent as a ground againstwhich purohase behaviour is confisuredi
as scussed above, the point-of-purchase sale is increasingly significant
within the otail rade. And the rise of point-of'purohase.activity in turn
points to the inceasing endency of consumers to visit shops as if they
were galleries whose displays are also repositories of identity, modes of
aesthetic being. Cobsumers rnay entor shops, in other words' simply to
'try on'ideas, goods, as opportunities arise. Given this characteristic form
of consumer rncertainty- one goes to a shop to see vrhat the experience
willbring, rather as one migbt go to a pafk'film orgallery-the salience of
in-store aesthetics is heigfotenod. The shop thus provides an ideal case in
point for the study of organizational aesthetics. Consumers may also
orient to in-store aesthetics as a routine part of their efforts to place or
recognize a shop's style and the possibities for agency that it oflers or
implies.

-I

Music within organizational settings

T9hat does muslc do

L43

wlthln organtzadonal settings?

It

has been suggested above that music can be usefully conceived of as a

device of scenic placement. It provides contextual cues (Gumpen 1977;
DeNora f 986b) that can be used to shape up the meaning of character

and situation. It works, within the scenes of 'real fe' as it works in the
cinema, bestowing meaning upon the actions and settings ttrat transpire
within its sonic frame @rown 1994; Mundy f 999; Flinn 1992). As the
manager of Persuasion put it during an interview, 'lVhen you're trying
something on-you picture yourself in a place where they are playing this
kind of music.'In similar vein, the manager of Directions opined'The
music is to get people into the mood of the style of the clotles and the
store image.'In retail settings, then, music can serye as a cultural material,
a resource to which crstomers and staff can turn when, with varying
levels of discursive a\irareness, they articulate and execute forms of

agency, perhaps particularly under conditions of uncertainty. For

example, customers may attend to the shop envirotrment - music and
dcor - so as to form an overall impression of the setting and the goods
purveyed and also of themselves. Thus music's secondary significations
have an impact on the cognitive and interpretive dimension of consumer
agency.

Butthe factthatmusic isrbydefinition, a temporal medium, and thatit

offluctuatingfrom moment to momentr song to song, and tape

is capable

to tape, means that music is also an ideal medium for corporeal and social
forms of enuainment. Music adds rhythm and pace to settingsr temporal
qualities with whidr consumers may, perhaps mostly without conscious
awareness, interact, to which they may adapt in (non-cognitive) embodied and emotional ways. Here, through its links to bodily conduct, music's
relationship to the 'motional' and enotional aspects of agency are often

visible.
One of the most obvious topics in ris regard is the connection between
musical tempo and movement style. At Babe, fast-paced music is used to
create activity and also to reinforce activity, to matchfastflow. There, and
in other store$, the staffwe spoke with believed that fast music encoruaged fast shopping. At sale time, when'it is host to greater numbers of
customers and more goods cranmed into the shopping space, Mistral
uses faster-paced, snarpier music, the kind that may serve as inspiration
and template for snappybodily movements and-implicitly- snap decisions. In this regar consumption behaviour can be understood - at least

sometimes-

as a

kind of,dance.

At other times, when

business is slow, shope may attealpt

to hold

customers in tbe store, to encourage them to look attbings slowlg and to

144

Music

as a device of social

ordering

seduce themt ultimately, into handling the goodsr trying them on and
making a purchase. As the managen of Elysigm put it, 'Slow music Teates
a slo\rer mood a6ong etaffand shoppers.'There are a number of experimenal studies of oommercial or catering envionrnents that have also

tq)orted cofrelations bepeen 'slow' music and 'slowet' patterns of

behaviour (Mi[iman 1986; Roballey et al. 1985).

Beyond the link between music and bodily pace, honever, are yet more
intriguifg issues concerning what one could think of as mundane cholg.
ography. These issues concern the interrelationship betreen musical
rhythm, motional and emotional form. In a discussion of parallels
between musical structures and ctroreographic structures perceived in
dance performances, the music psychologists Carol lQrmharsl and
Diana Lmn Schenck have suggested that dance may express the'basic
"kinetic feel'or "energy slrape'of the musid (1997:65), At the more
workaday level of mundane movement, we obsened in our ethnogfaphy
of the retail scene a similar phenomenon that we came to term 'brief body
efrcounte( with music'. These wee moments - sometimes of only a
second's duration - where shoppers could be seen to 'fa in' with the
music's style and rhythm and where music was visibly profiling consumers' comportment, where it had an impact on the mundane choreography of in-store movement. Some of the'brief encounters'we witnessed
of snapping the fingert or nodding the head (to ian), waving
"o*rt
the hands, palms outwards (to show nrnes), slowing movement, making it
more fluid ad putting the body in balletic postures and subtly raising the
chin and head (to slow-paced languorous music). All the managers we
interviewed told us that they commonly observed sustomers engaging
bodily with the music. In Euphoria, the manager told us it was common
to see the young male customers 'singing and dancing in front of the
mirrors'. In Babe, young women frequently danced, especially in the
changing foogls when they were trying on outfits. In Directions, 'People
dance around the store, especially when they are trying on stgff', the
manager told us. The manager of one of the local record shops was also
quickio speak ofhow he saw people 'singing and dancing all the time'. He
descTibed how he saw a variety of imitative behaviour, for orample, when
he plays a Tom lonee cD he sees male customers putting 'a swagger in
their walts. (Conversely, he tsld us about'a certain country and wegtern
artist who, urhen played, empties the store, because it's so depressing. So
we donltplaytil"q.')

Dancing, toe-tapping, moving about in &out of the mirron' even

singing wre all comnon occlffences in ogr study.Indeed; the matter of
.mundane choreography', or nicto-stylistic changes in comportment and
its relationship with social and cultural settingsr is an area ripe for

Music within organizadonal settings

t45

development within the field of sociology of everyday life. For how the
body is entraind - the motional character of the body in music - nray
provide a basis for the forurulation of emotional matters, energy levels
and action style$ in other words, how one moves uray provide' througb
gesture, as dissu$sed in chapter 4, media for the autodidactic process of
self-constitution in real time. Dance and/or mundane choreography are,
in Scruton's (1995) sense (and also discussed by Frith 1996:265-7)' Providing a means of grasping the (perceived) aesthetic character of music.
'\We should not sdy listeningr'Scruton argues' 'which has so much in
corlmon with reading and looking, but dancing, which places music in
the very centre of our bodily lives' (quoted in Frith t996:266). Iow one
moves one's

same in-store soundtrack (see DeNora and Belcher 2000)). \tre found
that, irrespective ofwhat t}e volunteers said (and irrespective of what we
said about the volunteers we were observing!), how they spoke turned out
to be as important as what they said in so far as it seemed to correlate,

noticeably, with the in-store aesthetic environment. For example, on a

shopping expedition with a volunteer that included a spacious shop, decorated with fresh flowers, furniture and laid-back music from George
Michael, both volunteer and shadower, who were some distance from
each other, commented on how'nice'the shop wasr the volunteer commented that the shop was 'quite relaxing' and, on both tapes, voices
audibly slowe{became less clipped and lowered in pitch.

Here, then, we can begin to get at possible connections betneen

musica! style and bodily conduct on the one hand, and bodily conduct,
browsing and purchase activity on the other. According to the manager of
Euphoria, 'Music helps [customers] buy.'Vhat he means by this is that
customen purchase products that have stystic effnitis with the background music and with the kind of corporeality that comes to be associated with that nusic - for exarnple, 'If dnm-and-bass music is playing,
they will buy street wear, if "clubby clubby" music is playing they are
more likely to purchase tigbt tops.' Similarly, at Naked' the manager told
us tbat the music may not increase the market nihe thabis store ocorpies

.-

iii

jill

body- and the connotations that one ascribes to those move-

('funkf or'gacefirl') -

is a resource that, once generated, can be

used in nrrn to clarifr or consdnrte the connotations of the merchandise
displayed and its 'desirabiqy' - cool versus uncool, sexy versus cheap' for
example.
This bodily'falling in with'music was evident in our'consumer shadowing expeditions' (we shadowed a volunteer shopper such that both
shopper and shadower wore clip-on mictophones: the shopper was asked
simply to 'think out loud'and the shadower commented on the volunteeds activities. Thpes could be smchronized because they shared the
ments

1tltllll

t46

Music

as a device

of social ordering

locally (it is a specialist shoe store featuring 'club weat' style shoes and
there are only so many merrbers of the local population intenested in ttris
kibd, of shoes) but that it may 'enhance'his market s&r because the type
of cu$totef,s who come to him ke the music and renrn to his storgfor
the music (theyare more intenselyloyal to his store's culturg and making
a purchase in his store is a culnral act in its own rigbt - that is' the store
has a higb semiotic profile). Conversely, the musi0 provides a mechanisn

for sharpening his client image by repelling customers whose personal

style would be less 'cool'.
In.all of these circumstances, the retail outlet produces potential
sources of identilcation for the consumer, who may visit such a location
as a kiad of identity repository, as a storehouse of possible ways of being
and possible stances. By makiag a purchase, the consumer is eporring a
way of being from the shop and importing it into her or his personal
rqrertory of modes of being, where it becomes a resource for the production of self-identity. In this sense' the shop, like the art gallery and the
tenple, is not only a disuibutor offashion and trend, not only a promoter
of commodities, but an iastrument of social stability, of a particular
rersion of order and its associated modes of consciousness and aesthetic
agency. The retail outlet provides cultural resources that in turn strucre agency;itis a settinginwhich the pubc-goodsrimagss and ambiences - is transposed on to and serves to construct the prirtate realn of
subjectivity, nalue and expresgive action. In this sense' music is employed
to tune the spirit, to remind the faithful of its value comminents and to

align agency with organizational images of model actors. It has the

potential to operate at ttre connotative lerel and can put its recipients 'in
mind' of other social situations' scenes and relations. This is precisely
why there hare been so many controversies about lirurgical music over
time. For example, when f,S. Bach was- reprimanded in 1730 for includig'new and hitherto unknown'hyrrns in the liturgical service,'such an
arbitrary procedure is not to be tolerated', wrote the members of the
Consistory of the Elector and Prince of Saxony to Bach's boss, Dr
Salomon Deylirry, the Superintendent of the Thomas-Schule in Itipzig
(David and Mendel 1966:118-19). Ttus' iust as Janice, owner of
Betsuasion, put it in reference to music's role as a medium that fosters
the mental and emotional tuning in a context where one might be
wearing the garb one is trying on ("!Vhen you're trying something on you
imagine youself in a place uere they're playing his kind of music'), so,
toq iD sit'uations ostonsibly devoted to worship it is possible that music
helpo actors to picture their relation to God and to religious values. In
both cases, sacred and profaner music helps to order consciousnesst
imaginationandmemory.

Soundsofsllence

147

The sounds ofsllence

During the music and dailylife study we visited a number of U.S. and
U.IC cities andtowns toecordthe'sound ofshopping'. Atthe end ofone
of these field trips, we visited a traditional 'ladies' outtters', whose centele, with the decline of transgenerational merchandising, has dwindled
to (primarily) elderly women. Wending our way through racks of A-line
skirts, flower-patterned frocls and good woollen cardigans, we commented on the incongruous silence, strange to us after the relentless
soundtracle of loung people's shops'; Our very footsteps were annulled
by thick pile carpeting. In the course of the study we came to realize that,
to shoppers two ortbree generations olderthan ourselves, theveryidea of
background music is abhorrent as the following excerpts from exit interviews make clear:

I don't like it when it's iumping

because I've got a hearing ai4 you see, so it's

pretty acrful . . . fBesidesl I've got other tlings on my mind, you know. I'm not
thinking about music. I'm tlinking where am I going to get this skirt I'm looking

for.

I call that pollution

...

I don't like

any music in shops or in

lifts or anywhere.

Reflecting on this mauer in the context of the cnoss-generational interviews with women about music in their lirrcs, and also on 128 exit interviews conducted outside the shops we strdid during our ethnography,
we concluded that, for olderwomen, local passages in and through music
(as, for example, when one encounters music in a social setting) are less
significant as a resource for the constintion of self and social setting. This
is not to say that music itself was less significant as a cultural medium of
agency's constitution, but that the older women with whom we spoke
were more likely to conceive of music as something that one stops and
listens to wittr intent. To be sure, the mobilization of electronic music
equipment is a cultural practice assosiated with youth and middle age,
but, as the discussion in chapter 3 began to illustrate, the older women
who were interviewed for the music in daily fe study were less likely to
engage in the music-reflexive practices of managing mood througlr music
programning. Music was not something they oused'to get them into, or
get them adjusted to, appropriate or desired emotions, nor was it something 1fr6y sed to structure social scenes and settings within which they
acted in conoert with others. Indeed, most of them were less reflexive
about the production of their agencVr and less self-conscious about their
self-identity. Ihile it would be misleading to speak of them as more
'securd, they seemed to be less preoccupied with self-monitoring, with
observing themselve as feeling, being subiects. They were, perrhaps,

148

Mrsic as a device of social ordering

therefore more impervious to urusic?s deployment as a paft of the funiture of public spaoe. They were not so over,tly obiece of knowledge to
themselves,lese llkely to speak of what they migbt'need'to hear and leee
likoly to be finfluenced'by music (affart from music ivith special bio'
graphical significance). They were also most kely to do nothing but lzsar
when theyputmusic on the stereorwhethef, or not theyhad musical training. These age-linked uses ofmusie in private life and in the retail clothing
sectortherefore shouldbe explored in relation to thehistory of consciousness. Are they in line with what some have suggested is an historical transformation of the relations of production and self-production of social
agency? To b sure, the social world is more variegated, more complex
and qontradictory than at any time in the past. Given the discussion above
of music's heightened salience under conditions of uncertainty, might
this suggest, pace tecent thinking \pithin social and cultural theory, tha
agenq/s configuration hs taken on, under late modernity, a increasingly'other directed'dimension? In what way may the study of music in
daily life address these issues?
'Sounds'rJohn Cage once saidr'when allowed to be themselves do not
requirethatthosewho hearthemdo so unfeelingly. The opposite iswhat
is meant by response abiliqyr (Cage 196l:10). The point here is that,
increasingly, within organizational sectots sounds ae not allowed to be
themselves or to arise spontaneously (asr for exampler when sorreone
bursts into song). Instead they are planned and programmd with the qi'n
of affording organizationally specific ends. In -any of the spaces inhabited by younger people - opt' clubs - music is oriented to an agency
constituted in real-time and in relation to locally provided audio-aesthetic
materials. This form of agency is formulated in relation to mood ambience and image. In keeping with more recent modes of 'flexible'production, this agency is one that is constituted in relation to the aesthetic
materials at han4 hre and now; it is adaptive, receptive to being
morlded by a range of sensory stimuli. It is not only an aesthetically
reflexive mode of agency; itis also aestheticallyresponsive.
Some commentators have zuggested that this new emotional fleribility
and the aesthetic reflexivity to whioh it is linked is liberating (Lash and
Urry 199423, 3l). Others, such as Donald M. I-orre (1995), view te consuming subject in its post-commodity phase as having rescinded autonomy, TMay, Lowe argues, retailers no longer cater to pre-existing
'lifestyle'gtroups ut actuall' instigate the imqge of,suoh groups by fabricating and placing on offer images of agency that are achievable in and
througb pa,rticipation in retail scenes' ir and througb the purchase of
signifrcant items (paca the present Archbishop of Canterbu4t's thesis that

malls are beooming sites where the sacred is constructed and wor-

.t49

Sounds ofsilenie

shipped). trn a similar critical vein, Stiepan Mesuovic (1999) has suggstd that emotionel flexibtlity is a sign of an advanced 'other directedness' (d. Riesman 1950), an increasingly characterisc tendency, in late
modernity, to experience emotion vicariously and according to the parameters of feeling that are placed on offer within specific situations (the
classic example here is surely the new brand of 'talk shows').
In a recently translated essay on the 'sociology of music', Adorno
observes that, '[w]hat should be close at hand, the "conssiousness of
suffering", becomes unbelievably alien. The most alien thing of all,
however, the process that hammers the rnachinery into men's consciousness and has ceased to contain ttrat which is human, invades them body
and soul and appears to be the nearest d dsares thing of all' (1999:14).
Uke Adorno, Mestovic is concerned with the proliferation of a particular
kind of emotionality proffered by and in the interests of administration:

\hat

appears to be postmodern disorder or the circulation of random ctions, as

depicted byJean Baudrillard, trrrs out to have a hidden order of its own, and to
be highly automatized, rehearsed, and planned. (L999:2)

There is ttle doubt that tle retail organizatiorir we studied were

overtly, delibe,rately oriented to the deplorment of qmbols sithin !s
social spaces of their shop$ there and in many other public social spaces transport terminals, dentists' chairs, clubs, pubs, lestaluanB, fitness
snrdies. Indeed, film, television, video and virnal reality as representative
'visual' media all make ample use of music to enhance and sometimes
subsdnte for more overt depiction.
Whether or not one agrees with Mestrovic's neo-Ors'ellian diagnosis of
late modernity, it is easy to see music's role in relation to the processes of
adrninistration he describes; indeed, music's role in relation to the'dialec-

tic of

enlightenment' was the subfect

of Adorno's life work. As

an

ephemeral and subtle medium, one that can be changed in an instant,

music's role is key here in helping to instantiate scenarios of desire, styles
of (momentary) agency, and in fostering a new and 'postmodern' form of
communitas - a co-subiectivity where two or more individuals may come
to e:ibit similar modes of feeling and acting, constituted in relation to
extra-personal paraneters, such as those provided by musical materials.
Such co-subiectivity differs in important ways from the more traditional

(and modern) notion

of inter-subiectivi$, which presrmes

interper-

sonal dialogue and the collaborative production of meaning and cognition. Inter-subiectivity - even if underrtood in the ethnomethodological
sense where it is on$ apparent and'for all practical purposes'(Garfinkel
1967) - involves a collaborative version of reflexivity. By contrast, cosubiectivityis tbe result of isolated irdivinllyrcflve nlignments to an

50

Music

as a device

ofsocial ordering

environnent and its matef,ials. There ,ls no doubt tha in s' snrdies of
music in relation to the constitutiou of $biectivity and agency are s:rucial
to undenstandigp of 'poet-emotionalt society, and it is all the more
strage, therefore, that music has scarcely featued so far in ese lite6atures. For surely it is easy to discera the nucleus of Disneyldnd in lfl.agner
and the legacy of both in the Gesamthunswerh of the modern shopping
mall?

Music's social powers

Music has organizational properties.It may serve a$ a resc,urce in daily life,

and it may be understood to have social 'powers' in relation to human
social being. The previous chapters hare moved from music's connection
to what are generally thougbt of as the innermost reces$es of the self emotion, memory, self-identity - througb music's interelationship with
the body, to music's role as an actirrc ingredient within the senings of interactio. Music is but one type of cultural materiat volumes could also be
wdtten about the role of many other types of aesthetic materials - visual,
wen olfactory - in relation to human agency. And music's 'powers'nacillatEwithinsome contexts andforsome people, music is a neutral mediun.
At other times, music's powers may be profound. In a footnote to his
famous stttdy of ercephalitis lctr&gca srrvivors, Oliver Sacks speaks of
music's berating'powet' in relation to Parkinsonism sufferers:
This was shorm beautifull and discussed with great insight, by Edith T!,

former music teacher. She said that she had become'graceless'with ttrc onset of
Parkinsonism, that her movements had become owooden, mechanical - like a
robot or doll', that she had lost her former 'naturalness' and 'musicalness' of
movement, that - in a word - she had been'unmusicked'. Fortunately, she added,
the disease was'accompanied'by its o\rn cuae. I raised an eyebrow: 'Musicr'she
saidr'as I am unmusicked, I must be remusicked.'Often she said she would find
herself 'frozen', utterly motionless, deprived of the power, the impulse, the
though6of auy motioq she felt at such times 'like a still photo, a frozen frame'- a
mere optical flat, without substance or life. l thin state, this statelessness, this
timeleee irreality, she would remain, motionless-helplasrunfrTmusic came:'SongE,
I know from years ago, catchy tunes, rhythmic tunes, the sort I loved to
dance to.' (1990:60n, enphasis in original)

tunes

Upon hearing or imagining music, Edith T. erplained to Sacks, her 'iner

music'- the capacity to move and to act - was returnd. 'It was like', she
said, 'suddenly remembering myself, my own living nrne' (l 990:60n).
Sasks refe[B to Kant's conception of music as 'the quickening art', a
meaas fol arcusing a person's liveliness. For Bdith Tl, as Sacks puts it,
music aroused, 'herving-and-moving identity and will, which is othelwise
15r