ABSTRACT

The Brass Liberation orchestra, as it is affectionately known, is a horizontally organized collective of musicians who play together at protests, picket lines, and other political events in the Bay Area. A tempting and popular narrative of human socio-political history is that humans used to live in more communitarian, egalitarian social systems, and that the values have been gradually eroded by historical developments, including, the advent of capitalism and liberalism, which are often seen as imposing an excessively individualistic ethos. Emile Durkheim saw collective effervescence as important to explaining a puzzling observation about the trajectory of human well-being in recent history. In the spirit of Durkheim’s origin story, some contemporary theorists of human cultural evolution have speculated that synchronized activities like dancing, music making and singing/chanting may have evolved to promote social bonding. A brass band that was extremely musically tight, with drilled performance in the style of a military band, although impressive, would not convey the same values.