Depersonalized and participative music: A terminological proposal from sociomusicology

Abstract

Music, despite the huge progress made in Philosophy, Sociology and Musicology, still has a very large lax terminological framework. At present, terms from the informal register of language are used in scientific research even if they are ideologically charged and based on an elitist, ethnocentric and biased view of the social reality. Furthermore, the division between Musicology –focused on the study of history and science of Western Art music– and Ethnomusicology –which makes its research on other societies and other social groups, especially, rural ones– represents a hindrance for scientific activity. These paternalistic and discriminatory values must be overcome with holistic approaches. We need to surpass the ideological apriorism and combine the multidisciplinary and critical point of views in order to identify the characteristics of each society. In order to analyze the capitalist societies’ musical environment, we focus our proposal onto the concept of power. So, we rescue the theoretical paradigm from Jesús Ibáñez who identifies the elites as the only group capable of extracting information from other social classes while, simultaneously, injecting negentropy in order to preserve the status quo. Furthermore, we include his theoretical work on thermodynamic processes of capitalism production, circulation and consumption. We suggest, thus, a double division based on whether the production and/or the reproduction is reserved for upper classes or shared with subordinate classes. Our work proposes a new terminology based on the logics from the artistic events and away from acritical approaches. In conclusion, this is a theoretical proposal which matches the scientific rigor with which we intend to reveal the great musical myth: how the upper classes used to hide their domain of the productive resources with a magical and esoteric discourse.