6 - Music's social powers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
Music has organizational properties. It may serve as a resource in daily life, and it may be understood to have social ‘powers’ in relation to human social being. The previous chapters have moved from music's connection to what are generally thought of as the innermost recesses of the self – emotion, memory, self-identity – through music's interrelationship with the body, to music's role as an active ingredient within the settings of inter-action. Music is but one type of cultural material; volumes could also be written about the role of many other types of aesthetic materials – visual, even olfactory – in relation to human agency. And music's ‘powers’ vacillate; within some contexts and for some people, music is a neutral medium.
At other times, music's powers may be profound. In a footnote to his famous study of encephalitis lethargica survivors, Oliver Sacks speaks of music's liberating ‘power’ in relation to Parkinsonism sufferers:
This was shown beautifully, and discussed with great insight, by Edith T., a former music teacher. She said that she had become ‘graceless’ with the onset of Parkinsonism, that her movements had become ‘wooden, 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 own cure. I raised an eyebrow: ‘Music,’ she said, ‘as I am unmusicked, I must be remusicked.’ […]
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- Music in Everyday Life , pp. 151 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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