Noise

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Just starting to read this book by JacquesAttali

My essay on what grabs me about it can be read on OnComposing

Essentially, Noise is a "political economy" of music. It describes the economic system which creates music : the musicians, the patrons, the audience. Thus it's an analysis of politics, economics and music allowing each to illuminate the others.

An important idea of "Noise" is that music heralds. What does this mean? Why should music "herald"?

For Attali, music is "ritualized sacrifice". Which I suppose can be taken to mean something which is costly but non-productive. Music heralds because it is the most virtual of the arts. So when new ideas of political economy or of organization arise, they tend to find a home in the political economy of music earlier than in other fields.

Examples

Now moved to MusicHeralds

Quick thoughts :

bands are StartUps (punk's DIY "everyone can start a band" heralding a world of more and cheaper startups described by PaulGraham

does the fragmentation of consensus around good music (let's say "classical" or perhaps "national" musics (after all Romanticism and EarlyTwentiethCenturyFolkloricClassical are national musics)) into fans of cult / genre "pop" music herald the break up of TheNationState in a FourthGenerationWar kind of way ?

In MonetiseTheWeb JaronLanier suggests that music was the pioneer of the idealism of the amateur which actually destroyed the livelihoods of many workers in the sector and which is a trend that's sweeping the rest of the world.

Capitalism and American Experimental Electronic music : http://www.gersic.com/static.php?page=static041209-235945