Communicative Power and Ideology in Popular Music.

Music constitutes communities in an aesthetically distinct way because it relies so centrally on bodily innervations. Such bodily innervation resonates with cognition and affective life and creates communities of listeners and producers. Following Theodor Adorno’s critical theory of music, however, we must distinguish these musical communities within the political economy of late capitalism. I examine this communicative power of music by considering Adorno’s critique of popular music in the political-economic context of the “informatization” of popular music under post-Fordism. Informatization has changed popular music production and consumption in important ways, but I seek to demonstrate that Adorno’s critique of music can still help us understand these changes. I emphasize the community constitutive power of music and I consider the non-Culture Industry form of heavy metal music as resistant music in the Adornoian critical theory tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]