Musical meaning and social reproduction: A case for retrieving autonomy by Lucy Green

After reading, Musical meaning and social reproduction: A case for retrieving autonomy by Lucy Green, I wanted to share some thoughts. What stood out to me about this article focuses on social aspects. Sociology was used to show music and culture. This made me focus on the relationship between cultures and there music. I thought about music under the light of being: sound owned by a groups ideas. Not that I would define music this way but it is an interesting idea to toy and play around with. This lead me to think about how we define music and the big question of “what is music?”

Green also brought up analogies of sounds that we perceive and don't perceive as music. She used the idea of a one-second clip on the radio and because of the context of radio and the organization of sound, we perceive music to have just happened. In my bachelors degree at Sam Houston, once every year Dr. Lane would devote a studio class to the question of “What is music?” My last year he took us out to a fountain on a sunny day and read some lectures of John Cage. He then posed the question “What is music?” I tried to describe music as our choice to under stand sounds around us. I gave the birds singing as being back ground noise until you focus entirely on their singing, then it becomes music. I am not sure this is a good definition of music but in an abstract way it still works for me. 

Green gave cultural analogies as well as questioned human nature. I found the analogies of cultures using slow or fast music in funerals to be very interesting. Green state that this is a cultural reflection of death. Green also discussed the physical reaction of children dancing to slow or fast to question enculturation verses human natural reaction to musical emotions.

I found Lucy Greens statement “We have a positive response when we feel the music in some way expresses our feelings, when we identify with the music because it delineates our social class or supports our political values, when it affirms our preferred clothing, hair-style, our age, ethnicity, gender and many other factors” to be absolutely fascinating! This seems to be a human trait. We like when things re-enforce us. We gravitate to things that are comfortable. Human culture and personalities like to live in comfort zones of familiarity. Is it in our nature to change?Also in this article, Green gives an analogy of a student who listens to Schoenberg and does not like or understand his compositional approach. She states “when musical style is this unfamiliar, we may well find the music random or incoherent.” I think this goes back to the idea of familiarity and enculturation. 

I found this article to be extremely interesting. I believe Lucy Green presents many great points of consideration. It is interesting that in music history we study what was going on at the time but when it comes to present day I think the big picture of what is happening around us is sometimes missed.