that music as prophecy is elusive

 '25 years. 25 years. 25 years of social researches' - hawklords, 25 years. 

horsemouth cast his eyes over eric drott's  rereading jacques attali's bruits (2015, critical inquiry).  drott is the author of  music and the elusive revolution: cultural politics and political culture in france, 1968–1981. 

arguably it is in the new musicology that attali has had his largest effect and drott, associate professor of music theory at the university of texas at austin, has done a great job in situating the writing of the book  at that particular post-68 moment in french politics and in tracking where the work has gone.

bruits was first published in 1977 in french by the french universities press (PUF). it was translated into english by brian massumi (with a foreward and afterwards by frederic jameson and susan mcclary respectively) as noise: the political economy of music (university of minnesota press, 1985). in 2001 a rewritten and re-edited edition was published in french.

it was this last edition (and the differences with earlier editions) that formed the basis of horsemouth's review on metamute - lost in translation (9 September 2004). 

it is attali's claim of music as prophecy and in particular economic prophecy that drives it forward. and all this through an era where digital recording, production, distribution and consumption has  changed what music is. drott is much more attentive to the political and theoretical situation of bruits than horsemouth was, he has found material horsemouth did not find. that said horsemouth was working with a limited wordcount and timing constraints - the tread he was mainly pulling on was that of adorno. attali had read adorno's philosophy of modern music (it says so in the bibliography in the 1977 edition of bruits) and horsemouth read attali's  repetition as the destructive repetition of adorno. he is much more attentive to attali's text and its theoretical bases (giraud, baudrillard, information theory, autogestion) than horsemouth. 

this leads drott to a better and more detailed reading of bruits 2.0 (as the drott of the time describes it) and how it reflects/ heralds and serves changes in both french poltics and music/ the political economy of music/ the wider political economy as a whole.

horsemouth went on to investigate improvisation (the important fourth stage of attali's schema and a key musical practice) via the work of derek bailey in his article first cut is the deepest  and he did it through the work of adorno (as reflected by ben watson).  

horsemouth is up early once again (curse it). his brother has gone back to london. tomorrow his aunt and uncle visit. thursday his brother, wife and kids visit (thereafter they are off to porto on holiday). they will be covering september mostly (to permit horsemouth to get off on holiday). 

horsemouth has been hearing cream's sunshine of your love over the tune of eric clapton's wonderful tonight (does that even work?). he wonders if anyone can explain this for him. kate bushes running up that hill has also featured heavily. his brother has suggested elgar's nimrod for their father's memorial service - horsemouth will have to listen to it lots to toughen himself up for it.