What roles do you see music taking in the workplace? What are its main functions?
MK: We trace three key dimensions through the period from pre-industrialization through industrialization and then onto the introduction of broadcast music in the workplace. The first of these dimensions we call ‘fancy and function’, whereby music has a functionality. So even if a song isn’t a work song (a song designed to co-ordinate labour), it’s still functional for you in that it gives you energy or a cadence for your work. But music has an element of what we call ‘fancy’ too, which we take from a lovely quotation by a singer of traditional songs called Harry Cox who said that “singing at work used to bring me all manner of fancies”. So the functionality embeds you in time, place and your body – but you’ve also got the space for fancy – for going places, for re-imainging what you’re doing, for going somewhere else. You’re still embedded in what you’re doing, though – I’m quite strongly against the idea of music at work being ‘escapism’ – we find very little evidence of it simply being about ‘escape’.
Read: Whistle While You Work: On Music & Toil From Communism To Coldplay (via TNI)
