C. Spencer-Espinosa: Music and Social Change.

IRASM 53 (2022) 1: 57-75

Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

Christian Spencer-
Espinosa
Centro de Investigación en
Artes y Humanidades (CIAH)
Universidad Mayor
Avda Portugal 351,
SANTIAGO, RM
Music and Social Change. CP 8330231, Chile
Reflections on the UDC: 78:316.4
Original Scholarly Paper
Relationship between Izvorni znanstveni rad
Received: 11 August 2020
Sound and Society* Primljeno: 11. kolovoza 2020.
Accepted: 3 December 2021
Prihvaćeno: 3. prosinca 2021.

Abstract – Résumé
The following article analyzes the
relationship between music and
society from a general perspective.
I propose four scenarios or theoreti-
cal/practical areas where this
relationship could be observed and
analyzed: people participation and
Introduction uses of bodies; discourses and
narratives about music; revitaliza-
tion of sound and the communities
of recovering, and aesthetics of
According to the latest report on global music or the idea of music beyond
consumption by the International Federation of the lyrics. The presentation will be
divided into three parts. In the first
Phonographic Industry (2017), 45% of people listen to part, “Music and People” I will talk
about the relationship between
music every day, whether via streaming, video, music and society and those who
have contributed to this debate in
purchasing audio material, downloading, or the music studies (ethnomusicology,
radio. During this »last month«, says the 2017 report, musicology and popular music
studies). In the second, I describe
1.3 billion users frequently listened to music on You- four scenarios in which it is evident:
first, in the participation offered by
Tube. In Chile, according to the 2017 Cultural Partici- dance music and its associated use
pation Survey (p. 104),1 over a third of the population of the body; second, in the texts,
discourses and narratives of the
attended musical events during the previous year, songs (intertextuality); third, in the
ideas of “communities of recovery”;
not including listening to music in other activities and fourth, in the aesthetic of the
music. For the first case, I use the
such as the circus, opera, theater, movies or dance. example of the South American
so-called bailes de tierra (literally,
“ground dances”), for the second,
the protest song, for the third the
revival of popular culture of the
*
This paper is part of a long-term research project about the 1990s, and for the fourth, folklore in
history of Chilean traditional music supported by the Chilean general. I end my presentation with
Council for Science and Technology (CONICYT, FONDECYT some conclusions on the relation-
ship between music and social
11180946). change, attempting to give some
1
Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes. 2017, Encuesta predictions as to the future.
de Participación Cultural 2017, Santiago: CNCA. Available at Keywords: aesthetics of
music • participation • bodi-
https://issuu.com/consejodelacultura/docs/enpc_2017/1?ff=true es • revitalization • inter-
&e=1246619/58972693 textuality • Latin America

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IRASM 53 (2022) 1: 57-75 C. Spencer-Espinosa: Music and Social Change.
Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

Why do people listen to music? What do people do with music? What relation-
ship does sound have with peoples’ lives, individually or collectively? Is there a link
between a person’s social existence and the music to which they listen? English
sociologist Tia De Nora (2000) tells us that music is not just an act of consumption,
but rather a form of social measuring that is integrated in people’s daily lives and
possibly more so than other art forms. It would seem that with its fantastic pres-
ence, execrable banality, externality and tremendous ubiquity, music fills our lives
with meanings, values, beliefs, stereotypes and symbols that we integrate in our
routine ways of thinking and doing with amazing ease (Bennett 2005). We could
say, pre-reflexively, that quantitative and qualitative data shows us that music and
society tie together in a way that is inextricable or, to say it colloquially, it doesn’t
matter if we can’t see the forest for the trees as long as we have »music playing« to
accompany us on our journey to the two points of observation.
In this article, I want to speak from a general perspective, and not precisely a
musicological one, about the relationship between music and society. My interest
in the topic not only comes from my very own education as a sociologist that ma-
kes music, but also from my persistent interest in showing that Chilean and Latin
American social life can be interpreted from music, not only from the economic-
political paradigm that comprises 70 or 80% of communication media every day.
The main conclusion that I want to offer you is that music necessarily implies
social aspects, especially manners of participations, types of discourse or message,
creation and maintaining of communities and audiences, as well as a particular
sound aesthetics. All these elements show not only the direct relationship between
music and society but rather define the way in which musicians, composers and
listeners participate in the changes it experiences and projects.
My presentation will be divided into three parts. In the first part, »Music and
People« I will talk about the relationship between music and society and those
who have contributed to this debate in music studies (ethnomusicology, musico-
logy and popular music studies). In the second, I describe four scenarios in which
it is evident: first, in the participation offered by dance music and its associated
use of the body; second, in the texts, discourses and narratives of the songs (inter-
textuality); third, in the idea of »communities of recovery,« and fourth, in the
aesthetics of music and sound. For the first case, I use the example of the bailes de
tierra or earth dances, for the second, the protest song, for the third the revival of
popular culture of the 1990s and for the fourth, folklore in general. Finally, I end
my presentation with some conclusions on the relationship between music and
social change, attempting to give some predictions as to the future.
Methodologically, I believe it is important to note that the examples that I
give are not case studies, but ways of clarifying my thoughts in a more effective
way. Therefore, my exposition takes on the form of an essay rather than an article.
It also has a main question – that of clarifying the relationship between music and
society – and a focus based on the sociology of music and music studies.

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Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

Music and People

We often hear music being referred to as a social phenomenon. Producers,

musicians, arrangers/sound engineers, musicologists, anthropologists and, to a
lesser degree, composers, frequently state that music is created, played and con-
sumed in a collective environment of which it is indescribably part. During the
last century, those who have also begun to follow this idea include historians,
geographers, city-planners/urbanists, actors and a long list of disciplines that –
from their different fields of expertise – seek to connect the king of all arts, music,
with social life.
It is not easy to trace/define the relationship between these two ideas that are
so important for culture. However, we can mention a few milestones from musi-
cal studies that can guide us. We should say first that the word »music« has had
diverse meanings depending on the epochs of the world’s cultures. Each discipli-
ne has treated the word in very different ways despite the fact that it is part of
culture in a general sense. As Colin explains, »the histories of art, literature, music,
religion, philosophy, and science—in a word, all parts of cultural history that are
today separate disciplines (cultural history does not exist presently as a unified
discipline)—operate in a profoundly different manner and fairly independently
of one another« (Colin 2012: 167). Considering this and focusing on the western
world, the first appearance of the word »music« in English occurred in the 13th
century, derived from the French term musique that comes from the Latin work
musica translated from the Greek word mousikē (Nettl, in Grove 2001, »Music«).
However, several definitions of »musica« were used by writers in Greek or Latin
before. Pythagoras used the concept of »music of the spheres« in 4th century BC,
and Boethius proposed the division of music into three areas: mundana (universe),
humana (body and soul) and instrumentalis (sound) in the 6th century AD. In the
next century Isidore of Seville introduced the ideas of musica harmonica (vocal),
musica ex flatu (wind instruments) and musica rhythmica ex pulses digitorum (percu-
ssion and plucked strings). Later, theorists wrote treatises on sound, language,
religion, astronomy and music, such as Guido d’Arezzo’s Micrologus (11th century
AD), Ars cantus mensurabilis by Franco of Cologne (13th century AD) and the five
treatises written by Johannes de Muris between 1319 and 1340, among others. All
of them used the word »musica« in the Latin-Greek sense of ‘muse’ and ‘sound’.
The first definitions of music arrived with the French dictionaries – born in
the 18th century – that defined it as the art of combining sounds. These definitions,
however, were aimed at general knowledge and would become more specific
with the music dictionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, the major
German music dictionary, Riemann Musik Lexikon (12th ed., Sachteil, Mainz 1967),
says that music is an artistic formation of sounds of western culture that repre-
sents the world and the spirit in the form of natural voice and kingdom of senti-
ments (…)«. The Swedish dictionary Sohlmans Musiklexikon by Bengtsson

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IRASM 53 (2022) 1: 57-75 C. Spencer-Espinosa: Music and Social Change.
Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

(Stockholm, 1948–52) adds that music is made by the relationship between dance,
movement and language in different cultures. On the other hand, the Russian
dictionary Muzïkal’naya entsiklopediya (Moscow, 1973–82) describes music as an
art form that reflects reality and possesses an effect on the listener, always by way
of the combination of sounds. Overall, these and other definitions differ from
those made by musicology studies in the early 20th century, strongly influenced
by acoustics, psychology and biology, but also by anthropology and sociology.
The first writings of ‘comparative musicology’, which began in the late 19th
century with methods taken from philosophy or philology, sought a scientific and
deterministic explanation in which music produced knowledge. For example,
texts by Chrysander, Helmholtz (1821–94) and Stumpf (1848–1936) use arguments
and examples from medicine, physiology and acoustics to explain how music
operates in that biological and organic framework called ‘society’. Nevertheless,
in them there is an attempt to recognize the impact that music causes in people or
the ‘social effect’ of it being heard. Yet, texts of a historic nature from the years
following this period, published in the format of »books on the history of music«
(European) – like those by François-Joseph Fétis or Jules Combarieu – directly
recognize the social aspect of music, assigning it a place in European cultural
history without a doubt (Balchin, in Grove 2001 ‘Musicology’). Said debate would
last the entire 20th century and would be clarified with the contributions of five
senior researchers of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology: Alan Merriam,
John Blacking, Christopher Waterman, Ruth Finnegan and Sara Cohen.2
Considered by his peers as the most influential music anthropologist of the
late 20th century in the northern hemisphere, Alan Merriam offered one of the
most accurate and in-depth definitions of the relationship between music and
society in his book The Anthropology of Music of 1964. In his book he explains that
music is not one, but three things at the same time: a type of sound or a ‘sound
itself’; a social, physical and verbal conduct associated with that sound; and,
finally, a musical practice that produces that sound with audiences that hear it.
This definition later converted into a method of music study in American univer-
sities, having a large impact on the academics who studied in them, at least until
the decade of the 1990s.3
Just as important as that of Merriam was the work of British ethnomusicolo-
gist John Blacking (1973), for whom music was, I quote, »a product of human

2
In Chile, María Ester Grebe, one of our country’s most brilliant minds on the topic and a disci-
ple of Blacking, said in 1976 that music is a sound language, a means of communication and an artistic
expression made by man and not by nature (Grebe 1976: 5).
3
Music, says Merriam, is one of the foundations of cultural change and allows us to rebuild the
history of culture and therefore any study of music must answer the same question, What can music say
about society? Later, Merriam himself would name his focus as the study of music »as culture« or the
comparative study of the musical cultures or hermeneutic science of musical behavior of the human
being (Myers 1992/2001, »Ethnomusicology«).

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Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

group behavior, whether formal or informal: a humanly organized sound«

(Blacking 2006: 38). This definition, possibly the most used to date -- before the
Sound Studies turn -- suggests that ‘social man’ is also a ‘musical man’ (or woman)
in the sense that his or her body and language possess a predisposition towards
sound, as generative linguistics would show. Interestingly, Blacking concurs with
Merriam that music establishes connections that facilitate the surging of emotions
and specific actions, the reason for which it gets people’s appreciation. Overall,
music is the direct result of the relationship between cognoscitive processes and
social interactions, for which it cannot be separated from the whole or what’s
called »extra-musical aspects«.
But one has to leave Europe to find new ideas. After an in-depth fieldwork on
Jùjú music from the Southeastern Yoruba of Nigeria, American ethnomusicologist
Christopher Waterman, in 1991, said that the connection between music and
society is so strong that many of the social codes are built and resolved from
music. Because of this, said Waterman, you can learn about a society through
music but for such it is necessary to ask who produces the art, what music means
to these people, in what circumstances and restrictions it is produced, and accord-
ing to what conventions (Barber in Waterman 1991: 49).
During this same period, the English researchers Ruth Finnegan (1989 [2007])
and Sara Cohen (1993, 1995) proposed the idea that music’s connection with peo-
ple is produced via the performance in space presented in a specific spatial context
(music-making). The meaning of sound is produced on the theatrical level and
interpretive plasticity of music, but in negotiation with the audiences that partici-
pates actively in the defining of the repertoire and decides as to the belonging of
the sound in space. In fact, the majority of Latin American repertoires and musical
styles would become known via the study of this sonic-social variable leading to
notable studies and edited volumes both in Europe in Latin America. Later we
will review the work of other researchers that complement these ideas, including
my own work on the urban cueca.
From this brief review we can conclude four initial aspects: first, music
understood as »organized sound« is made by the human being, not by nature
(Grebe 1976); second, having said that, music is also a mode of communication
that possesses its own language and is made under conventions that intertwine
cognoscitive processes and human interactions; third, the depositaries of that
sound (i.e. audiences) are relevant in the sense that music allows them to connect
individual or collective experiences, adding value or meaning to their daily lives
(Frith 2002, De Nora 2000); and fourth, the meaning of music is usually negotiated
via performance, defining styles and genres socially, not individually. Although
it is true that musicological research about sounding of animals is gaining interest
in the last decade, we cannot say that it has become as yet a subfield of the disci-
pline.

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Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

The Relationship between Music and Society

The connection between music and society is old in the western hemisphere.
According to Blacking, music is one of the most important forms of social changes
in cultural history and its study has always been related to music. Therefore, it
could never be studied outside the context in which it occurs. Moreover, this
ethnomusicologist claims in 1977, society acts as a medium of contrast that allows
us to see what music is like ‘without people’ versus music ‘with people’ (in other
words, with people making it). Thus, music cannot be reduced to music itself or
variables of pitch, frequency, timbre or dynamics mentioned earlier, but rather
must be related with other elements that aid in decoding music’s communicative
system, called ‘scoring’, which is no more than a musical language destined to
serve as communication between people or, eventually, machines. In other words,
music always operates within that which is non-musical and this is precisely
music’s place in society.
If we agree that music has an effective relationship with society, then it is
necessary to have a clearer understanding of this relationship. There is a long list
of examples that we could give. For example, we could say that street protests
have songs, that historically, songs have served to represent the demands of social
movements or, as Simon Frith states in his text Music and Identity (1996), people
use music to show their cultural capital or their lifestyle (their ‘mobile self’), defin-
ing their identity based on images, slogans, lyrics and shifts that different types of
music present. Nevertheless, for now I do not wish to focus on case studies, but
rather on four general aspects that I have observed in the last four years which I
believe serve to partially explain the ways in which society and sound are linked.
Specifically, I refer to participative audiences, discourses (text), communities of
recovery, and aesthetics of music.

a) Audiences, Participation, Body

The first element that shows the close relationship between music and society
is participation. Music implies manners of audience participation such as singing
and dancing. The American ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino has written exten-
sively about this in his book Music as Social Life (2008) in which he states that
music is a know-how that takes place by a staging of sound that can be presenta-
tional or participative: in the first case, music is organized based on an audience-
musician separation (like us now) where the main objective is to sound »like it
does on the record«. This music is often made in closed formats, like in classical
or concert music (Turino 2008: 61-63). The second case, however, refers to »a
special type of artistic practice where the artist-audience distinctions do not exist,
but rather are only participants and potential participants that execute distinct
roles, and whose main objective is to involve the largest number of people possible
in a performative role« (p. 26).

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On the contrary, in ‘presentational performances’ a group of people – the

artists – prepare and offer music for another group – the audience – that does not
participate in making the music or dancing (p. 26). In this case, music allows for
sharing values and creating a participative ethos in which each individual contri-
bution is considered part of the performance’s success (p. 33). In the participative
traditions, like the music of Zampoñas (panpipes) of Conima, in Peru, the specific
mode of playing from Zimbabwe or the South American peñas folclóricas (folk
venues), participation causes higher concentration, a direct interaction between
sound and movement via dancing and socializing (which is to say, the use of the
body in a social function), a certain pressure to participate and the ability to
participate like that which occurs with the tambourine, symbols, box drum and
the tañador in current-day Chilean cuecazos (cueca encounters for dancing and
playing). Briefly stated, participation erases the artist-audience differences,
decreases the individual self-conscience and increases the collective commitment
in terms of sound (pp. 29-31) for which it is necessary »for people to understand
themselves and their identity, for the forming and sustaining of social groups, for
spiritual and emotional communication, for political movements and for other
fundamental aspects of social life« (pp. 1-2).
Regarding the second point, in the last two decades, the number of studies on
dance, music and body have doubled, speaking even of a body turn. Overall, the
body is the depositary of the senses and therefore has been considered the
»semantic vector through which the evidence of the relationship with the world is
built« (Le Breton 2011: 7). It is a source of experience from singing, speaking,
dancing, playing of instruments and listening. But the body is also an artefact
represented by images and oral, visual, and written discourses that reflect the
way in which society interprets it, placing judgements and prejudices regarding
race, gender and age on it (Beard & Gloag 2005: 22-24). For this reason, the body
is also, in the words of James Scott (2003), a space of resistance to the rules and
norms of society where aspects of class or identity can be negotiated.
I would like to make an example of this with a 19th-century practice known
in the Latin American studies of musical history research: the so called bailes de
tierra. The term bailes de tierra (literally ‘earth dances’) sometimes referred to as
bailes de chicoteo are traditional, ‘criollas’ or ‘criollizadas’ dances of ‘picaresco’ or
‘apicarado’ nature that were practiced in South America during the 19th century
(Spencer 2007). These dances, which arrived in the form of European court dances,
were then appropriated and transformed in their basic forms by the social practice
of dance, later converting into choreographies that led to regional and national
styles. Their name was created in contrast to the ballroom dances whose organiz-
ed choreography and structured movements were not practiced by the popula-
tion. The bailes de tierra, however, connected with popular culture and the incipient
idea of national identity (like zamba, abuelito, fandango, bolero and cachucha,
followed by chocolate and much later, zamacueca), dances requiring the partici-

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Reflections on the Relationship between Sound and Society

pation of various people. Carlos Vega states that they were a late manifestation of
the group of dances that spread from Lima in the early 19th century. However, he
reminds us, before 1800, the style and choreography that brought them about was
already known in the region: the so-called danzas del país or country dances (See
Loyola 1980: 17 & Vega 1956: 153-154 and 158).
The bailes de tierra help put the participation and the body into perspective. On
one hand, they are an initial manifestation of the coordinated use with a desire for
collective participation, as observed in the images of the chinganas and other spaces
of the 1900s. On the other, they are a way of breaking the Republican ethos of 19th-
century Chilean society with a tendency towards urban order and the critique of the
use of space. The majority of the regulatory decrees of public entertainment, in fact,
were destined to regulate the lewd, »unorganized« and festive use of the body
given, as Torres explains, thus causing a synthesis between pleasure and participa-
tion that ‘built community’ (Torres 2008: 23), for a while the symbolic construction
of that ‘unique’ and homogeneous community called nation.

b) Texts, Discourses, Narratives

A second aspect that shows the music and society relationship is the poetic or
text discourse of music. With the word ‘discourse’ I am referring to the oral or
written statements that express a reasoning, sentiment or desire that comes with a
soundtrack, which is to say, a formal structure, a harmony and a type of specific
order for these words. According to Horner (1999), the words that accompany the
music are not a static way of sending a message -- as understood by the renovated
Marxist perspectives and the American methodological individualism -- but rather
»a space of and for the negotiation of conflicts and the changing of representations
and constructions regarding experience, the individual identity and music« (p. 26).
What is central here is that the discursive practices »create and re-create« music as
well as our experience of it (p. 27). It is important to consider, however, that there
are types of music that do not have text and that, just as with the discourse, it is
important to note who makes them, with what purpose, under what conditions
and how they are linked to sound (p. 27). Thus, more than helping reveal the
music, the discourse aids in creating the meaning of the music (p. 21).
An even more important phenomenon is the intertextuality of the message.
Intertextuality, a concept born in linguistics and the literary critique of the 1960s,
refers to the relationships of lending, redefining and borrowing of styles, conven-
tions or languages and can occur among songs (such as in different versions) or
among written texts without music (Burkholder 2001). In both cases, what we
observe are semantic reuses that go spreading terms or words that —repeated
over and over— create a framework of meanings that become concrete over time
(Castelo Branco 2008: 13-14). Over time, these words create ‘categories’ that even-
tually determine the way in which »musical universes are built and disseminated,

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how musicians and listeners perceive and participate in making music and how
the disciplines and fields of study are structured.« Musical journalism, in this
sense, has an immense influence on the definition of music and the way in which
we name it.
I want to give an example of this third element with that known as the ‘Can-
ción Protesta’ or Protest Song of the 1960s and 1970s. The protest song was a
Hispano-American phenomenon in which the song writers, composers, artists
and audience used music and words to show their dissatisfaction with the
dictatorial and/or imperialist political regimes of the 60s and 70s. It was an ideo-
logically-committed political movement that occurred in the context of the Nueva
Canción Chilena and Nueva Canción Latinoamericana, whose international
popularity became more widespread than any other cultural phenomenon in this
region in terms of diffusion (Vergara 2012) and circulation. The New Song posed
an epistemological break from the dominating cultural paradigm, which was
based on social archetypes created by the erudite and intellectual elite that were
later adopted and promotionally used by the music industry. The New Song,
however, turned to folklore and popular culture to seek out the atavistic and
utopic Latin American identity, especially that derived from the Bolivarian
discourse of unity and the Martinist desire of liberation from the colonial yoke.4
According to Juan Pablo González (2017: 7), the lyrics of these songs were almost
always linked to folklore, with which it built a discourse with a political and social
message. Its main effect was the spreading and internationalization of the »folk-
loric projection« in the international scene of the Latin American song and the
Nueva Trova, as seen in the work of Violeta Parra, Margot Loyola and Quilapa-
yún, among others. Afterwards, this song’s message was played during the dicta-
torship at college festivals and by the Catholic Church, but changing its content
dedicated to a suffering America towards the social ailments caused by the
deep-seated local problems (ibid., pp. 18-21).
According to Darío Tejeda in the special issue of the Boletín Música from Casa
de las Américas, published in April 2017, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the
Canción Protesta, this phenomenon was based on the re-writing of society and
contemporary culture via the narrative or poetic of the songs (Tejeda 2017: 75). Its
intertextuality lay in the recovery of the orality of traditional knowledge and the
politically engaged poetry (ibid., p. 77) that were later put into musical genre
format (like a melody, song of the sirilla, in the Chilean case) to produce a type of
satirical music (like that of Piero and Facundo Cabral, in Argentina) or epic and
dramatic (like that of Mercedes Sosa, Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani).

4
This movement comprises, in general, the Nuevo Cancionero argentino, Nuevo Canto in Uru-
guay, Nueva Canción Chilena (represented by La peña de los Parra), Carlos Puebla and La Nueva Trova
Cubana, Bossa Nova and Tropicalismo, among others.

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c) Communities of Recovery
An aspect rarely addressed by historiography and musicology is the creation
of connections or ways of belonging based on music, an element strongly related
to participation. What I aim to point out here is that music ties together values and
feelings that are evoked and remembered every once in a while. The latter is what
creates the forming of what I call »communities of recovery« that are movements
composed of individuals, associations, civil or cultural organizations that seek to
restore and/or preserve musical traditions believed to be in the process of disap-
pearing or confinement to the past, a phenomenon known as revival (Livingston
1999: 68).5 Their objective is to serve as an alternative source of official culture and
instill values based on authenticity so as to conserve past cultural content by way
of the »genuine« testimonies of old followers (Martí 1996: 50, 69-70). These move-
ments have existed in diverse eras of Chilean history, especially after periods of
substantial cultural change, such as the reformist education movement during the
era of the Frente Popular of the 1940s or the rise of the proyección folclórica groups
in Chile during the 1960s. However, it isn’t until after the Pinochet’s dictatorship
that this type of manifestation becomes especially evident.
Regarding the latter, let’s say briefly that the identity crisis of the 1990s
caused a »nostalgic search for popular culture denied by the dictatorship« (Spen-
cer 2017: 109 and ss). This desire for the past was reflected in the increased cultural
consumption of music and the creation of new audiences. As shown in the data
collected in the Culture Briefs (Anuarios de Cultura) of the National Statistics Insti-
tute (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, INE), during the late 1990s, there was a
rise in consumption of music goods in the Metropolitan Region in the areas of
folklore and in the number of attendees at recitals, concerts and miscellaneous
shows. At these events, the »past was consumed« and therefore the dictatorship’s
inheritance was denied translating »into a search for the values and experiences
of lower to lower middle class social sectors (previous to the dictatorship), espe-
cially from the musicians of bars, brothels, neighborhoods and markets« (Spencer
2017: 109-110). As Benavente explains in his thesis Dissidence and Transgression in
Andean Manifestations in Santiago, Chile (2017), after this process, a post-revival
movement took place in Santiago aimed at re-building or re-contextualizing the
already-recovered past (Bithell and Hill 2014). Similar to other city scenes, musi-
cians, producers and audiences began a phase of establishing »new meanings«
that would reincorporate and re-define (re-escenificar, in Spanish) old musical and
corporal expressions previously recovered.
The main axis of all these changes is the idea of community. The community
can be defined as a link or connection based on common interests. These interests
create one or more ways of collective belonging, as well as rules of behavior and

5
In this section I take some ideas from Chapter 1 by Spencer (2017).

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ways of speaking, in addition to a positive evaluation of human relationships (Cf.

Rapport in Stobart 2011: 210; Harris 2004: 77). As shown in music anthropology
and ethnomusicology, music generates stable community connections, helps
build representations of one’s self and of others leading to the creation of indi-
vidual or collective identities (De Nora 2000, Frith 2002). Belonging with or from
music, in this sense, possesses an emotional orientation towards the past, nostal-
gia and memory, and is also a means of communication that gives one sociability.6
As the old Bruno Nettl would say, one of ethnomusicology’s main historians,
although the human being has many ways to make and listen to music, he tends
to choose only a few of them.7 For them precisely, it legitimizes ceremonial, social,
religious or linguistic activities of their culture (Nettl 1979), in his own words:
»the general character of a society’s music comes from something specific within
that society. It may be the economic system, the social structure, the group of
values or the quality of its human relations among its people…but overall it is the
culture which determines its music« (Nettl 1979: 77).8

6
As seen in the ideas of Turino or as stated in the studies on the effect of the radio on musical
tastes made by Simon Frith in England (Frith 2002).
7
English anthropologist Ruth Finnegan went in-depth on this subject in her book The Hidden
Musicians. Music-making in an English Town, where she observed the notion of community built from
music in the town of Milton Keynes. After 10 years of fieldwork, she concluded that music was not
only a medium to create community, but rather an integral aspect of the development of that society
thanks to the work of amateurs or »insignificant« groups, such as choruses, academies, brass bands,
ensembles, neighborhood groups or session musicians, among many others. Overall, music allows us
to learn about changes and continuities of a community in a determined space-time (p. 297) not just in
small, rural, cohesive areas (p. 301), but also in medium to large cities.
Contemporary Latin American authors have also effectively addressed this topic, going in-depth
into the way in which traditional, folklorico and popular genres build identity and allow us to thema-
tize racial and national tension, like Raúl Romero and Julio Mendívil in Perú, Mario Godoy in Ecua-
dor, Pablo Alabarces in Argentina, Felipe Trotta in Brazil, Liliana González in Cuba, Juan Sebastián
Ochoa in Colombia, Juan Francisco Sans in Venezuela and Juan José Olvera in México, in addition to
many others coming from the popular music studies that have addressed local music types in their
connection with the social medium.
8
Due to lack of space, at this time I will not go into the meaning of the word »nostalgia« used
here. Yet, let’s say for now that it is an evocation of the past that constitutes a cultural practice whose
form, meaning and effect change with the context and the place from where it is enunciated (Stewart
1988). Said evocation creates a framework of dramatized meaning as to an apparently unknown life
from which a functional narrative is created that organizes the events of a temporary mode. These
events later unite and bring back times and places in which subject has lost or could have inhabited
(Stewart 1988), in other words, it is an emotional process that is often accompanied by an auto-
biographical memory (Barrett et al 2010: 390). Thus, in years in which the culture is more and more
widespread, nostalgia rises like a »ghost-like and parodical rehabilitation of all the lost frames of
reference« (Foster in Stewart 1988: 227-28), like a way to fight against »inauthenticity« (Fiske in Storey
2015: 8). Therefore, the past is no longer a simple »policy of memory« to be »a synchronic storage of
cultural scenarios, a type of temporary and fundamental crucible to which appropriate outlet is given,
according to the film that wants to be made, the scene that wants to be represented, the hostages that
want to be freed« (Appadurai 1996: 30-31).

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d) Aesthetics of Music and Sound

In his book Why Music Matters, David Hesmondhalgh (2013) writes that
while we already know that music enriches our social life, we commonly forget
that that experience takes place in daily life in a way that is aesthetics or, if you
prefer, emerges from an ideal of beauty. I consider this aspect relevant given that,
if music is – as dictionaries say -- the art of combining sounds, it is essential to
know what those sounds are like. This phrase implies recognizing the traditional
variables that govern music like duration (which, when structured, we call
rhythm), the frequency of sound (or pitch), timbre (or color), dynamic (or varia-
tions of volume) and the electronic or digital character of sound, variables that
interact with active or passive audiences, communication media and interactivity
technologies in concrete sociopolitical contexts.
Now, what I would like to note here is that we often emphasize the character
of the »sound itself« of music, forgetting that such sound changes or transforms
over time. As Philip Bohlman (1988) explains, change in music depends on the
people, not on the »sound itself« and its communicative character is based on its
ability to adapt to the times. In oral or traditional music, this is evident when the
creation and the circulation of the music, as well as its version and arrangement,
are governed by transformation mechanisms (voluntary or involuntary) that
make that music sound a century ago or in the next century. Among the mecha-
nisms are music repetition (to spread repertoires), forgetting of certain parts
(which causes the creation of others), consolidation of the sound (to establish
phrases or melodies) or borrowing (to quote or relate itself to other versions).
Therefore, how »music variables« change is much more important than the varia-
bles »themselves« given that via these changes the musicians define repertoires,
remake classics, establish or renew styles, acquire new skills and negotiate with

The intellectuality of the 1990s shares the feeling of nostalgia for past culture. In 1992, La Biblio-
teca Nacional de Chile created the Archivo de Literatura Oral y Tradiciones Populares (ALOTP) or
Oral Literature and Popular Traditions Archive, that maintains a collection with a large number of
volumes on popular culture in Chile before the dictatorship. In 1998, two years before winning the
National Prize in Literature, writer Alfonso Calderón published Memorial del viejo Santiago (1996),
where he defended Santiago’s »culto del pasado« (Calderón 1996: 43). The next year, one of the coun-
try’s most renowned folklore researchers, Oreste Plath (1907-1996), posthumously published the book
El Santiago Que Se Fue, where he writes about the »corners of Santiago« in order to save a place for
them in social memory and highlight the »nostalgia for Santiago«, according to author himself (Plath
1997). Two years later, he published in book-format the first Santiago neighborhood stories compila-
tion, titled Voces de la Ciudad (1999) or Voices of the City, with stories that combine memories of older
residents of the capital city and literary fiction, thus creating a neighborhood map of Santiago nostal-
gia. In the field of music two classic books are published on popular Chilean music (1900-1960 and
1960-1973), bringing back the memory of musicians from the record industry with transcriptions and
short biographies (Advis and González 1994; Advis et al 1998), volumes that would be complemented
with a book of testimonies on the music of the 70s and 80s (Godoy and González 1995). The decade of
1990s, therefore, would be a constant attempt to relate the values of democracy to the deep-rooted
local culture.

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the industry (or the community of origin and reception) the mode in which the
music acquires its final form. This point is especially present in live music (whether
in person or recorded) where the changes occur minute to minute.

Conclusions: Music and Social Change

We can establish that music implies forms of participation, types of discourse,

the creating and maintaining of communities and audiences. In addition, it also
brings certain types of message and aesthetics that define the genres that we often
hear. All these aspects show not only the eminent relationship of music and
society, but also define the mode in which the music-makers, creators and
audiences participate in the changes that it experiences. The relationship between
music and society, therefore, is based on change, and thus when these elements
change, music changes. As Handler and Linnekin (1984) explain, change implies
recognizing that music has a past that left an ‘objectively definable’ past and an
important or substantial content that has generated addition, amalgamation,
dissemination, absorption and fusion of sound.
The change is one of music’s main subjects of study. Ethnomusicology is, basi-
cally, the study of changes in sound and the ways in which that change helps inter-
pret the past and the future of the world in which we live (Cf. Reyes 2009). In my
book on the Chilean urban cueca (cueca urbana), which includes a historic review of
the meaning of this genre, there is a table which shows the changes that the genre
underwent in its relationship with society. When making this table that addresses
the change in the music of the cueca – which took me ten years to make but only has
one page – I realized that there were three ways to interpret social change from
music that inevitably intertwined with the changes of the country itself.
• When we interpret the past via the changes in music synchronically, such
as the changes in lyrics, types of arrangement, album titles, iconographies, record
labels and others. It is what occurs, for example, with the relationship between
cueca huasa and cueca urbana. Upon the rise of the latter, in the late 1990s, the cueca
huasa became a sign of previous times, transforming its aesthetics to one of ‘another
era’. More recently, there is also the case of trap, which has put hip hop in English
and Spanish in a historical perspective, or the tango queer in regard to traditional
tango, and so on. In this way, genres that we believed »modern« now have a new
past that situates them within cultural change in a way that is much clearer.
Change in music is therefore an interpretation of the present and the past, but also
a way of negotiating meaning of music, that is: what is authentic and for whom. I
leave you with this question to ponder: which types of music have helped you
interpret your family history? Which types of music interpret the country where
you come from? What do those types of music say about the changes it has expe-
rienced? It is a wonderful question, resounding and deep.

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• When we interpret the past via changes in music diachronically, which is to

say, when we interpret changes in music as a type of historical memory. In this case,
we do the opposite: conserve memories or stories (our own or those of others) as
historic events that show modifications in the meanings of culture or collective
identity. Not to erase them, but rather to maintain them because with them we
interpret society. This happens with the repertoires called epic or dramatic like
cantatas, nationalist operas, or the protest song itself, but also with micro-memo-
ries like family events or memories on a smaller scale. In the world of popular
culture, the creation of memory is a mode of social resistance in the sense of sym-
bolizing or memorializing the social conflict so as not to repeat it or redefine it.
The memory of music, therefore, is a niche of confrontation and also of reconcili-
ation and resilience in regard to the past.
• When we interpret the changes in music as a form of modernity: with this I
refer to how the implementation of new technologies or mediations cause a
»future effect« (listening to a vinyl record or an mp4 produce a different experi-
ence than that of listening to a cassette tape). According to Blank and Howard,
technology, one of the music’s great allies, is an immediate sign of change in the
sense that you reinforce traditions upon printing or establishing them, making
the past a shared future and reconciling tradition and modernity (Blank and
Howard 2013: 10). This point is related with the new ways in which music is con-
sumed in Chile and Latin America since the 90s. In the book Made in Latin America:
Studies in Popular Music, that Julio Mendívil and I edited together in 2016, we
noted that a large part of popular music consumption of certain genres (such as la
chicha, la cumbia, and el pasillo) not only served to represent identities or classes,
but also to acquire cultural capital or social distinction, projecting the values of
music much further beyond the »art of combining sounds«.
We can conclude from all this that music not only partially reflects social
changes, but rather contributes to causing them via participation, intertextuality,
the recovery of repertoires and sound transformation by way of performance. In
all these elements, there is a close relationship between people and sound,
especially in people that appropriate music and use it for different purposes.

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Sažetak

Glazba i društvene mijene.

Razmišljanja o odnosu zvuka i društva

U članku se analizira odnos između glazbe i društva s opće perspektive. Predlažu se

četiri scenarija ili teorijsko-praktička područja u kojima se taj odnos može promatrati i ana-
lizirati. To su: 1) čovjekovo sudjelovanje i uporaba tijela koja se odnosi na sve glazbene
aktivnosti u kojima obični ljudi imaju mogućnost donošenja odluka vezanih uz događaj
zvan »glazba« ili »zvuk«; 2) diskursi i narativi o glazbi: o važnosti intertekstualnosti ili prije-
nosu poruka među pisanim tekstovima kroz izvjesno vrijeme; ova ideja je povezana s
pojmom diskurzivnog kanona što ga je autor objasnio 2009. godine; 3) revitalizacija zvuka
i zajednica oporavka: ili proces reinterpretacije različitih formi tradicije uglavnom u obliku
»preporodnih« ili »post-preporodnih« procesa kulturnih promjena. U Latinskoj Americi ovi
tipovi post-tradicionalnih oblika obično se pojavljuju pod vodstvom zajednica ili kulturnih
grupa (glazbene scene, kulturni centri, pozornice i drugo); 4) estetike glazbe i zvuka ili
ideja glazbe s onu stranu lirike.
Članak je podijeljen u tri dijela. U prvome dijelu, »Glazba i ljudi«, govori se o odnosu
glazbe i društva i onima koji su pridonijeli toj raspravi u proučavanju glazbe (studije iz etno-
muzikologije, muzikologije i popularne glazbe). U drugome dijelu opisuju se četiri scenarija:
prvi, o sudjelovanju plesne glazbe i njezine povezanosti s tijelom; drugi, o tekstovima, dis-
kursima i narativima pjesama (intertekstualnost); treći, o idejama »zajednica za oporavak«;
četvrti, o estetici glazbe. Za prvi slučaj daje se primjer južnoameričkih tzv. bailes de tierra

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(doslovno: plesovi zemlje), za drugi protestne pjesme, za treći preporod popularne kulture
1990-ih i za četvrto općenito folklor.
Na kraju se donose neki zaključci o odnosu glazbe i društvenih mijena s pokušajem
nekih predviđanja za budućnost. Prvo se ustanovljuje da glazba implicira oblike sudjelova-
nja, tipove diskursa te stvaranje i održavanje zajednica i slušateljstva. Uz to, glazba donosi
određene tipove poruka i estetike koji određuju žanrove koje čujemo. Svi ti aspekti ne po-
kazuju samo eminentnu vezu glazbe i društva, nego i određuju načine na koje tvorci glazbe
i slušateljstva sudjeluju u promjenama koje doživljavaju.
Stoga se odnos glazbe i društva temelji na promjenama, pa zato kad se ti elementi
mijenjaju mijenja se i glazba. Kako su Handler i Linnekin objasnili 1994. godine, promjena
implicira priznanje da glazba ima prošlost koja je ostavila »objektivno određujuću« prošlost
te važan ili supstancijalan sadržaj koji je proizveo dodavanje, amalgamiranje, rasprostira-
nje, apsorpciju i fuziju zvukovlja.

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