ABSTRACT
Music is, and always has been, an integral part of public communication. It can create emotive allegiance to powerful nation states, religions, and today also brands, express the values these institutions stand for and rally people behind them. This chapter argues that music can, and should, be analysed as discourse. It draws on the work of musicologists who have analysed music as discourse in proposing tools for the critical analysis of musical discourse that are accessible to non-musicologists. The act of making music, and listening to music, is by nature a form of social interaction, and the relations of power and solidarity that are created by musical interaction are a primary source of musical meaning. Musical time enacts and celebrates the timings of social interaction. Some forms of music adhere strictly to a regular, metronomic beat, just as some social institutions require strict adherence to the mechanical time of the clock.
