Culture, Theory and Critique

ISSN: 1473-5784 (Print) 1473-5776 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rctc20

Introduction: Music, Music Making and

Neoliberalism

Javier F. León

To cite this article: Javier F. León (2014) Introduction: Music, Music Making and Neoliberalism,
Culture, Theory and Critique, 55:2, 129-137, DOI: 10.1080/14735784.2014.913847

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2014.913847

Published online: 29 Apr 2014.

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 Culture, Theory and Critique, 2014
Vol. 55, No. 2, 129 –137, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2014.913847

Introduction: Music, Music Making and Neoliberalism

Javier F. León

This special issue explores the relationship that music and musicians have
with the social and economic processes associated with neoliberalism. While
neoliberal economic reforms and their accompanying restructuring of social
and political life have been around since the 1970s, neoliberalism has
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seldom been featured as a central protagonist or theoretical concern of

various strands of music scholarship. Instead, it has constituted something
of a drone accompaniment to contemporary discussions about music and
music making; a ubiquitous presence that provides a requisite context for
other interrelated inquiries, but one that is also quickly forgotten or taken
for granted. Privatization, deregulation, and a weakening of the state have
provided a backdrop for accounts of the transformation of institutions that
support musical activities (schools, recording companies, instrument
makers, state-sponsored ensembles), particularly in places where these
reforms have been tied to democratic transitions, as has been the case in
South Africa, parts of Latin America, and the former Eastern Bloc countries.
Studies examining music and media industry practices also touch on how
these tendencies inform policy and legislation, both internationally and in
specific localities. Research on new music and related technologies has been
mapping out many of the new social, technological, and performative
spaces that are in part the result of the emphasis that neoliberal regimes
have placed on the development of information technologies to recruit new
consumer-citizens. Despite all of this work, the connection between these
musical spaces and neoliberalism remains noticeably under-theorized.
Filling this gap requires focusing attention beyond the above-mentioned
economic dimensions. Neoliberalism is built on the conviction that the free
market is the best and most efficient arbiter of not only economic but also
social and political challenges, prompting the expansion of capitalism into
all possible aspects of daily life (Harvey 2007: 3). This expansion identifies
and creates new markets and commodities that can support increased partici-
pation through consumption. It also reproduces its doctrine of liberalization at
multiple levels of society by means of logics that redefine how social, political,
economic and individual entities engage with each other within what is con-
ceived as a market-based society.
As a social, economic and aesthetic activity, music making mediates the
interaction of a wide variety of social actors and institutions, making it a

# 2014 Taylor & Francis

 130 Javier F. León

useful site in which to analyze the role that neoliberal logics have in this
process of negotiation. Doing so involves moving away from some fundamen-
tal models and assumptions that mainly regard neoliberalism as an intensifi-
cation of earlier cultural commodification models. Neoliberalism understood
this way simply becomes a new label or gloss for what in previous decades
has been a broad-stroked and problematic conceptualization of capitalism,
one fueled by Orwellian and Adornian anxieties about totalitarianism, mass
culture, and commodification combined with unquestioned utopian assertions
regarding the transcendence of art and its inherent ability to grant those who
engage with it with the capacity to resist the capitalist system.
The growing interest in popular culture by critics and academics during
the last two decades of the twentieth century brought about useful and impor-
tant correctives to these models. Nevertheless, many of the underlying
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assumptions regarding the relationship of art and artistic production to capit-

alism that underscore earlier models endure, in the process over-simplifying
or downplaying the type of social relations that underpin musical production
and the act of music making. Studies that foreground prominent artists and
their works tend to emphasize those aspects that make their music special
(harmonic, melodic, rhythmic or textual complexity, political commitment,
eclecticism, etc.) as a means of setting them up as exceptions that exist par-
tially, if not completely, outside of capitalism. Similarly, studies focused on
particular musical genres or musical communities more broadly also claim
their own forms of exceptionalism by invoking different types of ‘rootedness’
(in terms of social class, gender, ethnicity, and so on) as protection from capi-
talist alienation. A third category posits that the increased fragmentation of
late capitalism, the democratizing nature of new media technologies, and a
growing cosmopolitan sensibility create new loci that stimulate originality,
innovation and freedom of choice. This perspective tends to reproduce the
perceived experiences of the primarily urban, middle class and upwardly
mobile protagonists of these studies, all the while overlooking the different
forms of uneven development, internal competition, and socioeconomic
inequalities within and across different music economies that drive much of
what is more agnostically, if not enthusiastically, described in neoliberal
terms as a flexible, competitive and creatively entrepreneurial free market.
Gaining a better understanding of how individuals use music to negotiate
the social and economic environments that they occupy therefore requires
engaging with that Janus-faced quality of neoliberalism that repurposes and
redefines technologies, social practices, symbolic systems, and aesthetic
values previously deemed contrary or inconsequential to capitalist accumu-
lation as central to its further expansion. Yet, this is a scholarly project that
has gained comparatively little traction; this, despite the fact that neoliberal
economic reforms helped to impel much of the globalization processes that
captured the imagination of so many scholars in the humanities during the
1990s.
David Graeber (2001: ix–xiii) has pointed to that same disconnect more
broadly, noting the ironic parallels between postmodern and neoliberal world-
views during that time period. On the left, various strands of postmodernism
conceptualized late capitalist realities in terms of fragmentation and the failure
of grand narratives, which in turn brought about a new social condition
 Introduction 131

characterized by the pursuit of new, individual and hybrid strategies of self-

fashioning. On the right, there were those who heralded the rise of a new
form of flexible or disorganized capitalism that made the possibility of some
economic utopias untenable (effective management of capital by the state, effi-
cient regulatory systems, collective bargaining, socialist and communist
alternatives to capitalism, etc.). Instead, this new rising economic order was
celebrated for allowing individuals to exercise their individual freedom
through a rapidly growing array of economic opportunities and consumer
choices made available by the rapidly diversifying markets. Missing those par-
allels, Graeber suggests, may explain the relative scarcity of theoretically-
grounded critiques of neoliberalism to have emerged from that camp. The
absence, however, has not been complete. There have been a number of ana-
lyses and critiques of neoliberalism worth considering as music scholars
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seek to bridge this lingering gap.

A possible starting point would be to gain a better understanding of the
way in which neoliberal logics redefine foundational concepts and categories
associated with the act of music making. George Yúdice (2003) suggests that
forms of cultural or artistic expression like music are increasingly valued for
their ability to serve as vehicles for different forms of economic development,
rather than for their assumed intrinsic aesthetic qualities. They are contested
sites, where multiple constituencies (artists, audiences, granting agencies,
urban developers, politicians, activists) compete with one another for more
effective management control, simultaneously generating strategies that chal-
lenge and reinforce the current social and economic order. This process,
however, is not primarily about just generating commodities based on sym-
bolic cultural difference, although it is also clear that neoliberalism encourages
the diversification of commodities as part of its doctrine of consumer choice.
Jean and John Comaroff (2009) argue that the objects, tangible or intangible,
that are exchanged as a result of the transformation of ethnicity into an econ-
omic resource are secondary to the transformation of those who seek to claim
that ethnic difference into entrepreneurial entities in their own right, what
Ilana Gershon calls the definition of the neoliberal subject as ‘a flexible
bundle of skills that reflexively manages oneself as though the self was a
business’ (2011: 546). These strategies of self-management are embedded in
a variety of music-making contexts and are key in understanding how neoli-
beralism has ‘transformed the way that consumers understand their very
relationship to capital’ (Gopinath and Stanyek 2013: 146–147).
Another complementary avenue would involve engaging more actively
with the enduring disparities that are masked by this process of redefinition
and rebranding and its accompanying ideologies. In other words, we could
evaluate whether or not neoliberalism delivers on its messianic promise to
cure most social ills through a strategic, creative and entrepreneurial deploy-
ment of the transformative power of capitalism (Comaroff and Comaroff
2001). David Harvey’s work (2005) focuses on these enduring but also widen-
ing disparities, arguing that this veneer of promise covers up policies, strat-
egies, and philosophies that concentrate capital in the hands of a small
entrepreneurial class at the expense of a much larger laboring class, thus
reproducing an exploitative neocolonialist or imperialist form of capitalism.
Adam Krims (2003) identifies this type of disparity within the global
 132 Javier F. León

ecology of recording companies, pointing out that the growing proliferation of

small independent labels catering to a variety of diverse niche markets is
accompanied by a consolidation of the major labels, many of which ultimately
benefit financially from this diversity through a variety of partnership, sub-
sidiary and conglomerate agreements.1 Hesmondhalgh further extends this
critique to other music and media realms, including multiple calls for better
ways to theorize these disparities within the realms of creative labor (2008a),
copyright (2008b) and crowdsourcing (2010).
These critiques and accompanying calls for new theory have also led to a
reconsideration of the foundational texts and concepts, including multiple
rereadings of Marx’s works prompted by the most recent financial crisis
(Harvey 2010; Jameson 2011; Hobsbawm 2012; Eagleton 2012). Graber (2001:
xii) posits that such revaluations can help offer alternative conceptualizations
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to those offered by neoliberalism. Clearly, these are ambitious projects beyond

the scope of the essays in this special issue, let alone this brief introduction.
Nevertheless, it is useful to keep this spirit of critique in mind when engaging
the ongoing relationship between music, music-making and neoliberalism.
One thread running through most discussions regarding the relationship
between music and capitalism is the assumption that music’s ability to trans-
cend, overcome, or stand (at least partially) outside of capitalism stems from
its inherent aesthetic or use value exceeding its potential for exchange in the
marketplace. Although never directly addressed by Marx, this assumption
has become a tacit article of faith – what Shelly Errington calls the ‘universal-
ity of art as self-fulfilling prophecy’ (1998: 102) – that continues to inform
music scholarship. What ensues are idealized and problematic separations
between transformative art and banal imitation, genius and sellout, producer
and consumer, independent entrepreneur and industry stooge, ephemeral live
performance and reified musical commodity, egalitarian communal owner-
ship and copyright-driven individual ownership, music as everyday lived
experience and music as a form of compensated labor. These issues have pre-
occupied music scholars for some time, fueling much research and debate
regarding the merits and nuances associated with each, and, to be sure, in
many instances providing useful insights. At the same time, however, the
various lines of inquiry that have emerged from an engagement with this
underlying assumption (whether in the affirmative or the negative) are some-
what ill-equipped to deal with a neoliberal environment that collapses public
into private, work time into leisure time, consumption into labor, thus under-
mining the basis for many of those dichotomies.
While the point regarding neoliberalism may be a more recent challenge
or wrinkle to the efficacy of these enduring models, it is also fair to point out
that a number of music scholars have been concerned with similar questions
for at least a decade, if not longer. There remains, however, a hesitation or
perhaps a sort of epistemological inertia that prevents a more focused and sus-
tained dialogue from taking place. I suggest that the neoliberal tendency to col-
lapse these binaries into one another can offer an opportunity to sidestep that

1
In 2011 the newly consolidate Big Three recording companies were estimated to
own 75% of the recorded music market (Pelzie 2011).
 Introduction 133

impasse and move the debate forward in a more constructive manner. This is
precisely because neoliberal logics are not particularly concerned with the
differentiation between art and everything else as long as the activity or cul-
tural practice in question can prove to be politically and/or economically
useful. There are many issues that arise from such a claim, issues that to be
sure need to be challenged and unpacked. After all, this recommendation
should not be premised on the need to embrace that which neoliberalism
peddles. Rather, I believe that this can be a productive way of shifting the start-
ing point of critique and analysis away from those assumptions that many
music scholars have come to take for granted.
In doing so, there is still a need for at least two caveats. First, I find that
while going back to foundational texts to find new ways of thinking about
current problems can prove to be stimulating, it can also end up reproducing
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the same old models in less immediately recognizable guises. It may be tempt-
ing to follow the lead of Harvey or Jameson and go back to Capital, seeking a
new reading that may reposition art and the aesthetic in a place in regards to
Marx’s various types of value. For instance, the appendix at the end of Volume
1 (1990: 1038–1049) regarding productive and unproductive labor is short,
vague and often overlooked, therefore making it an ideal cornerstone for a
theoretical exercise on retroactive continuity. Such approaches can
certainly have an important place in what should be a multilateral and inter-
disciplinary engagement with neoliberalism. At the same time, such endea-
vors should be careful not to end up carving a different path to the same set
of assumptions.
Second, arguments such as Yúdice’s mentioned above claim that neoliber-
alism has completely redefined culture as something new, pragmatic and
expedient should also be broached with some care. Like other scholars inter-
ested in neoliberalism, part of his interest has been in outlining how different
neoliberalism is from earlier forms of capitalism. To this end, he argues, this
redefinition constitutes a new episteme (2003: 29–31), although one that con-
veniently recycles fragmented versions of the previous ones. Extending this
line of argument in a heavy-handed manner poses two interrelated problems.
It nostalgically sets up that which came before as a time when art was indeed
transcendent, thus resurrecting and legitimizing the relevance of Benjaminian
musings regarding the loss of aura (1988) and Adornian anxieties about
regressive listening (1998) at the present moment. Furthermore, it also
leaves room for these nostalgic conceptualizations of art to be reinvented
within the neoliberal context by disclaiming them as temporary and partially
compromised utopias (see for example Kun 2005). Moving the debate into
more productive ground involves breaking out of that type of epistemological
ouroboros, recognizing, as Jesse Shipley and Marina Peterson argue (2012:
400), that invoking the notion of music as separate from society ends up repli-
cating the same modernist logic of autonomy that dichotomizes music as alter-
nately transcendent or utilitarian.
The essays featured in this collection broach the above-mentioned issues
from complementary perspectives. Robin James’ essay on what she terms the
biopolitics of uncool leads off the collection, offering a Foucaultian rereading
of Jacques Attali’s Noise (1985). By redefining Attali’s notion of composition as
a manifestation of the neoliberal logic of deregulation, she ponders the
 134 Javier F. León

possibility of critiquing or resisting neoliberal situations from the inside. In

doing so, she does not evoke the ability of art to transcend the neoliberal
condition, but rather examines a case where specific artistic choices
generate a bland aesthetic of the mediocre that fails to live up to neoliberal-
ism’s expectations of cultural production being politically or economically
expedient.
Timothy Taylor, for his part, draws on Bourdieu’s theories regarding
fields as a means of reflecting on the dynamics through which neoliberalism
expands its market logics into other fields of cultural production, in particular
the world music arena. He argues that one of the ways of articulating this
expansion is through the dissemination and naturalization of brand ideologies
into other fields of cultural production, introducing competing forms of sym-
bolic capital that have the potential to redefine that field. Furthermore, Taylor
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suggests that the world music field may be particularly vulnerable to branding
incursion, given that many of its internal forms of capital have been the result
of impositions by music industry interest rather than having developed orga-
nically from internal tensions between producers and other social actors
within the field.
Amanda Weidman’s essay on female playback singers in South India
turns attention to how large-scale socioeconomic changes linked to the adop-
tion and implementation of neoliberal economic reforms transform specific
social, technological, performance and aesthetic spaces. She argues that the
economic liberalization of India decentralized a playback music industry pre-
viously concentrated in a few studios and a handful of performers. This trans-
formation created in its place a crowded, fragmented and competitive
environment characterized by new social, performative, and aesthetic prac-
tices of voice conceived in terms of neoliberal values like flexibility, creativity
and self-promotion. Weidman shows that, rather than constituting a break
from what came before, the new logics of voice still work to negotiate the
type of role that women should have within the public sphere, albeit from a
neoliberal perspective that exerts more demands on and expectations for
female playback singers than in the past.
Nicholas Tochka explores the effect of similar structural changes in post-
socialist Albania, but offers an alternative perspective where the transition into
neoliberal capitalism is experienced more as the state reneging on its obli-
gation to support musical practice than the creation of new creative and econ-
omic opportunities. He shows how composers have had to adapt to a free
market environment that inverts earlier socialist hierarchies of musical collab-
oration, placing them in a subordinate position as artists for hire who are
expected to cater to the desires of performers, financial backers of these ven-
tures, and a new media technology and music industry savvy producer
class. In this setting, the recording studio becomes an important site where
composers negotiate their position in relation to these other social actors. It
is also a space where they try to manage the pressure of having to become
increasingly entrepreneurial subjects against their self-image as ‘pro-
fessionals’, a construct that is articulated in terms of socialist-era logics that
defined the composer’s higher status in terms of formal musical training, edu-
cational pedigree, and career trajectory rather than the market share of their
compositions.
 Introduction 135

James Butterworth’s study of commercial singers of Andean huayno in

Peru draws on a Weberian counter to historical materialism, calling for a
decentered understanding of the neoliberal subject. He questions the notion
of neoliberalism as a totalizing system, arguing instead that it should be con-
ceived as interacting with other processes and formations that at different
points reinforce or attenuate neoliberalism’s own internal logics. To this end,
Butterworth posits that the huayno’s aesthetic and discursive evocation of suf-
fering and struggle constitutes the basis for an alternate and overlapping
subject formation, one that simultaneously speaks to neoliberalism’s interpret-
ation of these qualities as akin to hard work and industriousness and to
Marxist ideologies like liberation theology, where suffering and struggle
become the basis for revolution.
Larissa Whittaker’s essay on the Field Band Foundation, an NGO
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devoted to the use of music as a vehicle for economic growth and poverty alle-
viation in South Africa, shifts attention to some of the new meanings that the
concept of music-as-resource can take under neoliberalism. Most scholarship
in this area has been concerned with how the symbolic content of these
expressive practices can be transformed into marketable commodities, par-
ticularly those that can be indexed as consumable markers of social, ethnic,
and/or gendered difference. Whittaker instead focuses on how neoliberal
logics can also regard music-making sites as vehicles for the cultivation of
flexible skills that can then be deployed outside of the performance space to
improve quality of life and economic opportunity. In the case of FBF, this
involves not only recruiting, training and subsequently placing music educa-
tors from underprivileged communities, but also using the interpersonal
dynamics and family-like environment fostered by its American-style
marching band programs to introduce students to a variety of entrepreneurial
self-management strategies that can make them better neoliberal subjects.
Nevertheless, she argues, FBF’s neoliberal framework is not free from
internal contradictions and contravening agendas, some of which may point
toward parallel or alternative conceptualizations of the current neoliberal
moment.
Benjamin Tausig brings this collection of essays to a close by exploring the
intersection between music as political action and music as entrepreneurial
activity within the Thai Red Shirt Movement. His case study was inspired
by critics of the Red Shirt movement who singled out enterprising musicians
that performed at Red Shirt events as evidence of that movement’s political
bankruptcy. Tausig responds to this critique by examining the moral logics
of duty and exchange that underpin the performance of mor lam, one of the
genres commonly played at Red Shirt protests, arguing in the process that
such overlaps provide evidence that neoliberalism remains an incomplete
project.
These essays offer different ways of understanding how music and music
making mediate people’s engagement with neoliberal processes, and the
potential theoretical interventions that these situations can provide. They
also outline a number of the complex social, political and moral dynamics
that underlie contemporary musical economies. May they also contribute to
a more sustained and ongoing debate regarding the relationship between cul-
turally expressive practices and neoliberalism.
 136 Javier F. León

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 Introduction 137

Javier F. León is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Indiana Univer-

sity. His current research projects include a study regarding the impact of neo-
liberal economic reforms on Afro-Peruvian cultural production, and an
examination of the politics of Intangible Cultural Heritage policy and
implementation in Latin America. His publications include articles in Latin
American Music Review, the Black Music Research Journal, Ethnomusicology
Forum, and the volume Music and Cultural Rights. He is also the co-editor of
the upcoming volume Studies in Latin American Music published by the Univer-
sity of Illinois Press.
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