Music as Social Text

he study of music in its social context has expanded rapidly over the last fifteen years, yet little of this work discusses the music itself: the processes, textures and structures of sound which so powerfully affect us as individuals. Music as Social Text begins by analysing the forces which have made this kind of discussion difficult within the intellectual tradition of the western world. The book argues that a society in which reality is grasped in an overwhelmingly visual way has difficulty with expression that is non-designative in its use of sound. Shepherd moves on to develop a framework for the social analysis of music as sound, and the way in which music can be highly individualizing at the same time as powerfully social.