Whenever threatened, the first thing power restricts is the ability to linger or assemble in the street.
—Henri Lefebvre2
In September of 2014, I arrived in Montréal to study the students’ strike that had erupted throughout the province of Québec three years earlier. I was particularly interested in learning more about the evolution of the movement itself and the networks it had forged with related movements: the Chilean student protests, Occupy Wall Street, and 15M. Continue reading →
Capitalism originated first in the city-states of Renaissance Italy and grew to become a world system with trade, industrialization, and colonialism (Braudel 1982; Arrighi [1994] 2010). Thus, capitalism encompasses core centuries of the development of Western classical music and the transformation of classical and folk musics across the world under colonialism and modernity. However, research on music and its relationship to capitalism remains limited and focuses more on popular music and cultural industries. This is due to deeply rooted notions about “high” and “low” arts and “art” versus “commercial” music. The 1938 searing indictment of mass culture as an instrument of capitalist oppression by the musicologist, composer, and leading Frankfurt theorist Theodor Adorno also carries a strong responsibility (indeed, it was Adorno who coined the term “cultural industries,” giving it a strongly pejorative meaning [1978]). Continue reading →
