In Defense of Desired Music - David Loftus

In his autobiography, My Last Sigh, the late Spanish film director Luis Buñuel described his ideal bar. One detail that stuck with me was “no music.” Is there such a thing as a lounge or tavern, anywhere, that does not have music, live or canned, going almost constantly?

Why do restaurants, retail stores, cafés, and shopping malls invariably have piped-in music? Is it supposed to foster a “pleasant ambiance”? Or is it intended to force patrons to talk over it so the place sounds even busier, more lively, than it actually is?

Not so long ago -- perhaps about four or five generations -- the only sounds you heard were made by live people nearby: live musicians, live speakers, live machines. Today, Americans have grown up with our daily routines encased in music -- canned tunes vibrating in the air of public spaces, and the perpetual gabble and croon of the television at home. Most of us seem content to treat such organized sound as a kind of aural wallpaper. We tune it out.

At least other people seem to. I can’t. Organized sounds command my attention. My father was a musician who made music all the time, and insisted his family do the same. When I was a baby, my parents laid me on a blanket beneath my father’s grand piano when he practiced. I started piano lessons with him when I was about 5, took some basic percussion a few years later, and was forced to learn the violin at age 10. Later, I gave French horn, clarinet, and mandolin a try. My family also sang together -- at the dinner table, and in the car on long drives.

So my attitude on the subject may be a little retro. Music should not be wallpaper. It is important enough to be listened to attentively or it should not be present at all. It’s a personal thing: I have no objection to car stereos or iPods, but at least play them at a level and under such conditions that no one else is forced to hear what you’ve chosen for yourself. Above all, music should not be a soundtrack for shopping or public eating.

Music seeks attention; it welcomes it. Learning to tune it out, or to employ it as a sort of subconscious defense from the dread experience of letting one’s mind wander where it will -- of actually hearing oneself think -- is as bad as teaching oneself not to hear the chatter of one’s children. But of course that’s not what corporate America teaches us; as far as it is concerned, music does a fine job as commodity and sales assistant.

Don’t accept the regime. If you don’t make music of your own, at least pay it the respect it deserves.