ABSTRACT
Sound is all pervasive. Because of music's perennial presence, we often forego recognizing the social power of music. We forget how it provides listeners with directions, cues and in some cases a means for getting through their everyday life. However, because of this pervasiveness, listeners have developed strategies for controlling sound throughout everyday life via common modes of engaging with music – that is, through mainstream musical listening practices, or musical listening that is undertaken in everyday life, as distinct from musical listening in performance venues. I use the term ‘mainstream musical listening’ to denote experiences of music that are interwoven into daily life in such a way that are ‘personalized’. This type of listening is seldom discussed, yet it is highly representative. It is experienced in a very personal way whereby listeners create a space that puts them in the right frame of mind. We can point to public transport situations, or within the home, as possible spaces where this type of listening occurs. This chapter, however, explores mainstream musical listening within office environments. It considers musical listening as a way in which workers respond to, and cope with, the ‘noisy’ open-plan office environment. The chapter argues that musical listening, enabled by portable music devices such as the iPod, is one important way workers moderate the social situation of the office environment. Musical listening provides workers with a way to control what they experience within their ‘sound-space’ (Goffman 1971: 46). The notion of sound-space is deployed here as being connected to the idea of musical listening as a ‘framing device’ (Goffman 1974). By using material developed from in-depth qualitative interviews, this chapter shows how musical listening gives rise to certain ordering strategies within the office. It provides an account of how mainstream musical listening practices tentatively construct a space of private sanctuary that allows workers to undertake their daily tasks.
