MusicEd
 







        
 


3. Sue Hallam's study is valuable because it pulls together the wealth of evidence about the value or power of music for almost all of us. Never has such a variety of music been so readily available to so many, thanks entirely to the development of electronic media, starting with the "wireless" and today's gramophone record - the tape and the CD. This though has been an explosion in listening numbers. We use music to manipulate personal moods, emotional feelings; and others (on our behalf), to create environments which encourage us to buy, drink or eat more! So, it is not surprising that music has become a major world industry. National Music Council research established that the total domestic spend on music in the UK 1997 was £3.7bn. Net overseas earnings were estimated at £519m. And the UK music 'industry' employs 130,000 people (full-time equivalent). And it as well to note that all those figures relate to all music making, not simply the record industry and professional music.

   
  4. Fortunately, school music services and community music help to ensure that, despite the many counter attractions and easy to access recorded music, music making is still important to millions.
   
  5. Discussion of the power of music invariably includes references to its political applications - mass rallies, party conferences - and political prohibitions, eg of jazz by the Nazis in Germany, African music by the apartheid regime in South Africa, western music generally by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Even in genuinely democratic countries, some musics, usually those favoured by the young, generate fear and calls for banning by the "establishment". The big band swing which 'sent' the jitterbuggers in the late thirties, the rock and rollers of the late fifties and sixties and more recently heavy metal bands and rap artists have all been accused of causing anti-social behaviour and even long-term harm.
   
6. Yet something that powerful can also have positive applications such as accompaniments to rites of passage and dance, expressions of love and respect, lullabies, liturgical revelation and enhancement, totemic expressions of apolitical national feeling (eg the music played at the Princess of Wales' Funeral Service) and of course as a unique expression of ineffable feelings. Perhaps that is the most beguiling of the mysteries attending music: it can express that which has no other means of expression.