Music and the Politics of the Night

Lecture by Will Straw within the framework of the Master MUSIC IN SOCIETY

The last ten years have seen the emergence of an interdisciplinary field called “Night Studies.” The night has always been with us, of course, and for centuries it has inspired commentary from poets, philosophers and specialists in a variety of fields. Nevertheless, recent years have seen a new wave of interest in the night. Cities have appointed “night mayors” and others to develop their nights. Activists have struggled against those forces which make the night a time of exclusion or control, particularly for women and racial or ethnic minorities. Historians, urbanists, sociologists and geographers have produced a rapidly expanding body of studies of the night in all its dimensions.
Music has long been associated with the night. Since the nineteenth century, the “nocturne” has been a recognized musical genre, while later forms, such as jazz and electronic dance music have been understood as nocturnal in the feelings they inspire and the contexts in which they are heard. The politics of music are often inseparable from a politics of the night. Different kinds of night music are typically understood as the expression of marginal, nocturnal communities defined by their sexuality, age or racial identities. Struggles over the right to cultural expression in cities frequently centre on the perceived threats to social order brought by certain kinds of music and the activities (such as dancing) which they inspire. In battles over the gentrification of cities, the efforts of people to perform and consume music in dedicated spaces have inspired some of the most intense conflicts over what French geographer Henri Lefebvre called “the right to the city.”
This presentation will cover a variety of ways in which a politics of musical expression have become inseparable from a politics of the night.

Will Straw is James McGill Professor Emeritus in Urban Media Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 1950s America and of more than 200 articles on music, cinema, cities and the culture of the night. He is co-editor of the volume Night Studies: Regards croisés sur les nouveaux visages de la nuit (2020).