ABSTRACT
Audio technology is both a medium and a form of mediation. Its significance as a principal constituent element of our contemporary musical life has not been achieved through some immanent force of its own, but rather by the ways in which it has interacted with, and participated in, relations of power. In this it is not exceptional; all cultural phenomena depend on their interactions with power in order to become meaningful. According to Foucault, power, running continuously through society and occurring in every aspect of a society’s activities, “is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Foucault 1984: 93). This chapter on music and power starts from this position that power is not something that belongs to some and not to others; rather than something applied to it, power is produced by society.1
