project for use Marxism analyzing a film or music

Muzak as the Sonic Potential of Capital Alec Hall March 2009 Supervised by Jerry Balzano

Introduction

The occurrence of programmed music1 in quotidian spaces has become so typical today

that when one enters music-free environment, its absence is noticeably evident.2 The

explanation behind its widespread presence is indeed complex, but making sense out of

Muzak as a phenomenon requires a high degree of interpretational specificity.

It is often bemoaned that the contemporary listening public is no longer interested

in the possibilities of the sublime in the work, and that the “general public’s apathy to any

aspect of music other than its power to soothe the nerves after a hard day in the office, is

a symptom of the decline of the sense of music as intellectual adventure,” bringing us

ever further along “the dangerous path into the abyss of muzak.”3 This institutional trope

of the contemporary music world is too often regarded as fact, rather than opinion,

however, and as the sentence referring to Muzak demonstrates, a secondary narrative is

covertly advanced inside the polemic where Muzak’s existence is to be read as a fall from

grace from the Great Musical Tradition; Muzak is a dangerous perversion of the

wondrous and mystical qualities of art where they have become instead a “powerful

source of cultural corruption.”4 What this reading of Muzak qua perversion of sacred

traditions implies, however, is in effect, a grand un-reified edifice of a pure (western)

culture that has remained untouched and isolated from any of the mediating effects of

capital. Of course, given the role of capitalization in assisting the production and

dissemination of these works throughout history (and indeed the publication mechanisms

























































 1 Usage of the term ‘programmed music’ is freely interchangeable in this essay with other nomenclatures, such as ‘Muzak’ and ‘elevator music’. 2 For a more exhaustive article on the statistics of the use of programmed music see: Sterne, 1997. 3 “Music or Muzak?” The Musical Times. Vol. 141, No. 1870 (Spring, 2000) 4 Ibid

that allow such tropes to gain traction in the first place), this reading of Muzak is

problematic at best. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the materials of programmed

music are entirely derived from this mystified cultural order, programmed music is

exogenous to it and threatens to destabilize its integrity. Furthermore, because Muzak as

a genre has no restrictions on the source of its musical materials, the traditional notion of

‘high’ art that Muzak is accused of corrupting has to be transposed, as it were, onto a

common hierarchical ground with exactly the type of art that a gradational model of

hierarchical culture would consider to be ‘low’. In other words, if Muzak can draw upon

any style of music for its content, then perhaps its greatest accomplishment is not the

successful real-world application its creators had imagined, but instead it demonstrates

that in spite of the perceived chasm between ‘high’ and ‘low’ musical art forms, it

manages to flatten these categories into a single unified space by highlighting the

essential musical quality in every putative level of aesthetic hierarchy. This critique

makes it thus quite apparent that the model of Muzak as force of cultural corruption

contains serious structural flaws, compelling one to seek a more consistent reading

elsewhere. What this paper proposes instead is that programmed music does not represent

a debasement of any established cultural norms, whether elite or vulgar, but instead that it

represents an evolutionary progression. Muzak as an entity is neither a reactionary force

nor a cultural force; rather it represents the natural evolution of the artificial management

of sounds in late capitalist economies.

Initial distinctions between programmed and non-programmed music

Jonathan Sterne states, “If all music is ethnic music then the ethnicity of programmed

music is capitalism”.5 Pursuing this ontological trajectory further, if all systems have

ideologies, than the ideology of capitalism is the subjugation of all other concerns to the

reproduction of capital. If this is our model then, one can infer that the pursuit of artistic

endeavors in modes of capitalist exchange is contained within a purely functional

structure; if cultivating the aesthetic value of a product results in increased profitability,

there is no reason not to engage such a development (indeed such an action might

potentially even be an imperative). However, the development of art for art’s sake is

typically dependant on philanthropy and/or public arts council support and to view the

epistimelogico-metaphysical advances that new artworks provide as ‘profitable’ would

require a radical re-orientation in the justice matrix of late capitalism. Thus if the

ethnicity of programmed music is capitalism then its existence as an aesthetic object is

ultimately predicated upon it functioning in such a way that it augments the flow of

capital to whatever it is associated with.

With Sterne’s point in mind, Muzak has (at least) three qualities that, despite the

indivisible aspect of its relationship to other musics qua aesthetic moment/object,

determine its essence to be a functional one and setting it apart other forms of art as such.

The first essential distinction is that Muzak is fashioned through a stringently

reproducible formula of production. While many artists systematize their technique in

many respects, Muzak is not so much created as it is assembled. Indeed the Muzak

headquarters (or any other similar production facility) should be thought of as a music 























































 5 Sterne, Jonathan. Sounds Like the Mall of America. Ethnomusicology. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 1997)

factory. The second difference between programmed and non-programmed music is that

programmed music is heard exclusively in spaces mediated, either directly or indirectly,

by the exchange of capital. Music not inspired by capital strives for a physical context of

reproduction that will provide a meaningful and spiritually fulfilling experience for the

audience.6 The diffusion of programmed music, on the other hand, is not destined for the

concert hall, but for the awkward and uncomfortable spaces like doctor’s waiting rooms,

elevators and airport terminals. Lastly, the third distinctive aspect of programmed music

is that it serves an agenda that is specifically officiated by its creators—the intentionality

of such an aesthetic object is essentially simple in its dimensionality. The multiplicities

implicit to both the construction of the ‘genuine’ artwork and in the qualities of

subjective interpretation of the work create a sharp divide between the respective ethos of

programmed music and art music.

What does this mean in the broader context; however, taking Sterne’s point into

account that programmed music represents the natural evolution of the organization of

sounds in capitalist modes of social organization? To begin with, it is important to take

stock of the places where programmed music is employed and what the possible goals of

its use might be. While it is true that anyone could buy a recording of Muzak and simply

play it at home, the crucial aspect of Muzak’s existence is that by and large, its

occurrence as a sonic phenomenon happens independently of one’s volition. Entering into

a hotel lobby or a shopping mall, the precisely selected and subsequently arranged

melodies are always already there. For example, the concept of a shopping mall without

























































 6 One might argue against this point by referring to bands like Throbbing Gristle, whose performances are motivated by a desire to always ‘disappoint’ the audience. On the contrary, however, when actively expecting disappointment, the outcome is so complex that a degree of satisfaction will always be present. Tom Johnson’s piece Failing is an excellent example of regarding disappointment in a positive light.

an accompanying soundtrack would be inconceivable—the architectonics of the post-war

consumption exercise called ‘shopping’ is incomplete without a musical backdrop.

Nevertheless, because the individual is powerless to stop, or even change the

programmed music in the slightest way, the “music becomes a form of architecture.

Rather than simply filling up an empty space, the music becomes part of the consistency

of that space. The sound becomes a presence, and as that presence it becomes an essential

part of the building's infrastructure.”7 Indeed programmed music strives not to call

attention to itself but rather to become merely one architectural element among others.

This feat of perceptual anonymity is attained because at the very core of its

aesthetic essence, Muzak is monophonic. Through a methodical process of fabrication,

familiar tunes are taken from their original context and undergo profound rearrangement

in timbre, texture and structure. Despite any subtle timbral variations in the arrangement

or interesting and unexpected twists in the form a Muzak-ified song might take, there is

never anything greater than the semblance of polyphony in the writing. The elemental

aspect of western music since the beginnings of organum until certain composers of the

20th century is discarded and instead there is an aesthetic entity that borrows material

implying polyphony, yet these themes are presented in an isolated and monophonic

fashion. By doing this, the melody itself, and its lack of traditional developmental paths

and structures, becomes through its refreshed staticicity, as it were, a kind of architectural

element. The objective when arranging programmed music then is finding the right

balance between a type of music which “sounds like music” to the inattentive passer-by,

but stays firmly enough in the background so as not to attract attention to its bizarre

aesthetic form. In Ronald Radano’s excellent essay on programmed music, he explains 























































 7 Sterne, Jonathan. Sounds Like the Mall of America. Ethnomusicology. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 1997)

how if an original song contains a vocal element, it will always be omitted

Muzak's arrangers omit the vocal parts and lyrics that might call attention to themselves. ‘The minute you use words,’ explains Muzak's Jane Jarvis, ‘you call up contemplative thinking and people begin to have opinions.’ Vocal parts, she also suggests, would introduce a humanizing element that might attract public notice.8

Radano also explains how the original instrumentation is scrapped for more non-intrusive

timbres, such as strings and quiet woodwinds, or sometimes as a polite jazz quartet in

more contemporary Muzak releases. Most important to note, however, is his discussion

of the new arrangements given to existing songs. In a description of the Muzak re-

production of the Barry Manilow version of Bruce Johnston’s I Write the Songs, Radano

concludes his analysis by stating that

The transparency and obviousness of the arrangement reveals, paradoxically, complexity in intent. Through conventional means, the arranger reproduces literally both the melody and form of a highly familiar popular song, thereby minimizing the introduction of new-and potentially interesting-musical stimuli. Yet the arranger also varies the texture by changing instrumentation and by employing typical arranging conventions that, while innocuous and banal, help to reduce monotony and keep forward motion steady. Accordingly, the programmed arrangement maintains a delicate balance between interest and convention, preserving the work's anonymity even as it exists so centrally within the everyday sonic landscape.9

What Radano has described here in other words, and ostensibly what all successful

programmed music must be, is essentially the Deleuze-Guattarian concept of the Refrain.

























































 8 Radano, Ronald M. Interpreting Muzak. American Music. Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), p. 450 9 Ibid

Muzak as Refrain

Developed in A Thousand Plateaus, the refrain is outlined primarily as a territorializing

device, which according to Ian Buchanan serves three functions.

“It comforts us by providing a rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, centre in the heart of chaos. It is the song the lost child, scared of the dark, sings to find his or her way home. The tune also creates the very home we return to when our foray into the world grows wearisome.”10

Central to the idea of the refrain is the notion of a home—the refuge of the individual

within the schizophrenic reality of late capitalism. The home is territorial by nature, it is a

space created to keep out the forces of chaos that is delimited and encircled by

“landmarks and marks of all kinds,” of which “Sonorous or vocal components are very

important: a wall of sound, or at least a wall with some sonic bricks in it.”11 For Deleuze

and Guattari music represents a de-territorializing force, it moves toward the eradication

of codes, to the interfacing of the individual with the world in such a way as to “join with

the forces of the future, cosmic forces… to join with the World, or meld with it.”12 While

on the other hand, the refrain “recodes, or overcodes, which does not mean it restores

order, as though music were chaos, but rather means it attempts to constrain variation by

regulating it.”13 This idea of variation represents precisely that which Muzak is employed

to regulate. The ambient noises that a building’s infrastructure creates, or the rowdy

exhortations of unsupervised teenagers in a mall all pose survival level threats to the

established order of consumer capitalism. The subtle micro-tonalities of the naturally

























































 10 Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Pop Music. Australian Humanities Review. Issue 7 (August 1997) 11 Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus, Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, p. 311 12 Ibid 13 Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Pop Music. Australian Humanities Review. Issue 7 (August 1997)

occurring sound world in capitalized spaces represent an unwanted byproduct of the

required edifices used to sustain the flow of capital. The result is that programmed music

comes into existence as an attempt to smooth over the unavoidable flaws in the

environment of consumption. Muzak is in one manner of thought an acoustical

wallpaper; it is a tool with which one can conceal and disguise the aleatoric noise content

of the built environment of capitalism. Uncontrollable elements, whether the minutiae of

everyday physical mechanics, or the unpredictable macro-level disturbances of events

like car crashes, accidents resulting in the (often noisy) destruction of property, or

emotional outbursts between individuals represent at the very least the silhouette of

chaos, where in the streamlined purchasing environments of late capitalism, this cannot

be tolerated. Confronted with any such possibilities, the consumer would be forced to

interface with these elements in a way that might provoke thoughts and emotions

orienting the subject towards the unrealized space the larger, future world without such

hegemonic suppression of variation. Obviously such an engagement is a hindrance to the

exchange of capital, but at the crucial psychological moment of recognizing such a state,

there is a latent post-capitalist ideological framework waiting to be explored.

If, as Frederic Jameson posits, the cultural logic of late capitalism is post-

modernism, then his perspicuous analysis of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los

Angeles, one of the preeminent examples of post-modern architecture, provides an

excellent example in which to apply the refrain to programmed music. The physical

layout of the building itself is so labyrinthine and anti-modern in functionality leading

Jameson to claim that it represents

“a mutation in built space itself… we ourselves, the human subjects who happen into this new space, have not kept pace with that evolution; there has been a

mutation in the object unaccompanied as yet by any equivalent mutation in the subject. We do not yet posses the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace…”14

Given the tendencies that chaotic elements happen to produce in systems of capitalist

exchange as just described previously, it would seem that the inability of a person to

navigate the post-modern architectural space of the Westin Bonaventure could pose

potentially devastating effects on its ability to generate profits. The building,

however, could never be complete without the constant presence of programmed

music. Going back to the refrain, in spite of the aggressively non-functional built

environment of the hotel atrium, the usage of Muzak provides for (at least most) who

enter the “means of erecting, hastily if needs be, a portable territory that can secure us

in troubled situations.”15 As Ian Buchanan paraphrases Deleuze and Guattari,

A housewife might sing to herself as she washes the dishes, or else have the radio playing in the background, and by so doing build a wall of sound around her to shelter a precious interiority, her self-created reserve of inner strength. A song also enables us to launch forth from the home it helped us to build. One ventures from home on the thread of a tune. With a song in our hearts we are able to extend indefinitely the secure interiority of the home; it is as though we take home with us wherever we go. The song is our future, a future of our own dreaming. To put it differently, we need not venture into the dark, chaotic world of the unhomely again so long as we have a song. The refrain is these three things at once, not in succession: it is a block of sound that is at once a way home, the very source of home, and the home in our hearts.16

The programmed music of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles follows patterns

of use typical to that of most programmed music. In the large open expanse of the

lobby/atrium, music is always playing in the background. During the mornings and early

afternoon typical small jazz group arrangements are played, never with vocals, and as the

























































 14 Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, p. 38 15 Buchanan, Ian and Swiboda, Marcel (Eds.). Deleuze and Music. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2004, p. 16 16 Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Pop Music. Australian Humanities Review. Issue 7 (August 1997)

day progresses and the bar opens for the evening the music slowly shifts towards a more

upbeat genre, signaling to the guests that the objectified content of the contemporary

nightlife experience is beginning. Speaking to the maître d’ at the reception desk,

however, he informed me that the neither the amplitude of the music nor its aesthetic

intensity ever crosses above a consciousness level threshold where any guest would be

forced to acknowledge its presence.17

Returning to the monophonic character of programmed music with the notion of the

refrain well established, one could now observe some of the reasons why the

orchestrations and arrangements of Muzak function as they do. In order to navigate the

alienating and disorientating physical spaces of late capitalism, one must carry with one’s

self the ability, as Buchanan puts it, to erect portable territories in the face of debilitating

conditions. If music represents a force to engage the world, then any such genuine

musical moment would only serve to aggravate the sense of disconnect. Only the refrain

presents the possibility to move through these spaces unfazed and unharmed. Muzak’s

purely melodious aesthetic represents the refrain in a perfect real-world instantiation: “A

tune that sticks in your head and can be easily whistled or hummed is a refrain; a tune

that requires more than one set of lips to whistle or hum is, by virtue of this inherent

poly-vocality, becoming-musical”18

























































 17 This information was obtained via an informal telephone interview with the Maître d’ of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel on April 14th, 2009. 18 Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Pop Music. Australian Humanities Review. Issue 7 (August 1997)

How to stifle dissent and subversion

To rearticulate once more the base level ideological component of capitalist systems is to

say that these economies place the reproduction of capital above all other concerns.

Implicit to this critique is the notion that any such system must also contain elements that

promote the reproduction of itself, whether in periods of relative stability or in the face of

socio-political change. Programmed music is one such element of many in the vast

arsenal of late capitalism’s defenses. While this music of the refrain is ostensibly a

functional tool that can provide for stronger corporate brand identification or to better

facilitate the navigation of a building,19 it also acts as a kind of authority figure, policing

the sonic space and mediating emotional responses to physical environments.

Entertaining the notion that Muzak represents the evolutionary arrival point of

sound organization in capitalist economies, it then becomes possible to interpret its

location in the global system of production as a commodity itself. The sheer existence of

such uncritical music according to Adorno, represents “an affirmation of the situation as

it is,” fostering a sense of total identification with “the established order” and “the total

exclusion of all that does not fit conveniently into that order.”20 As my conversation with

the Maître d’ of the Westin Bonaventure established, the music diffused into the atrium

just prior to the opening of the evening bar represents a proto-fascistic attempt to not only

encourage patrons of the hotel to engage in the evening activities either within or without

the hotel, but more importantly, reproduces a particular idea of what ‘nightlife’ means.

The upbeat, club-like music establishes specific aesthetic and semantic coordinates,

























































 19 Sterne, Jonathan. Sounds Like the Mall of America. Ethnomusicology. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 1997) 20 Paddison, Max. Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture. London: Kahn and Averill, 1996, p. 87

ostensibly dictating to all in the range of audibility not only what the style of subjective

experience will be inside the hotel, but also outlining an objectified form of nightlife

possibilities at the total exclusion of any potential experience that is incompatible with

such a soundtrack.

Programmed music doesn’t only have the power to denote objective forms with

standardized content it also has an incredible ability to suppress potential instances of

subversive behavior. As I have outlined before, Muzak exists, rather generally, to smooth

out flaws in the built form of the physical capitalist environment. It directs consumers to

the appropriate locations of consumption (stores, etc.) and keeps out the unwanted noises

of infrastructure, but it also works to keep consumers monadic. Elevator music, stricto

sensu, really only exists for one reason: elevators themselves are bizarre spaces that

would rarely exist if not for their employment in the service of capital. They only serve

buildings with too many stories to traverse easily by foot (or conversely, in underground

mines—one of the first great spaces of exchange—where they are used to descend).

Moreover, these tall buildings themselves are the early outgrowths of capitalist modes of

physical organization.21 As such, elevators represent a space that is entirely a product of,

and indeed still mediated by capitalism. It cannot hurt that the devices themselves are

routinely small, cramped and generally awkward for their occupants and that the time

required to traverse a number of floors with one’s colleagues in ascent is large enough to

engage in meaningless chit-chat. It could be imagined then that there might arise

occasions where a more subversive member of the traveling group could make a

comment potentially hostile to the broader enterprise and thus, Muzak, or in this instance

























































 21 See Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York for an exhaustive study on the relationship between market capitalism and the development of the skycraper.

elevator music, forms an effective safeguard against any such talk. The always-already

presence of sounds in the air allows the bunker mentality to persist and the monadic state

of the individual continues, clinging to the last remains of the bourgeois ego and safe

from any possible inter-subjective revelations that a new or disgruntled colleague might

inspire. As Ronald Radano says,

Muzak takes a place alongside other familiar objects of our private worlds. It functions as a special blanket of security that has through transference of complex personal perceptions come to represent symbolically a public trans-position of domestic bourgeois life.22

One of the more intriguing possibilities that has been raised though the ongoing

advancements in contemporary neuroscience, is the idea that Muzak, as an aesthetic

object in and of itself, is a cognitive tool that works to ensure rigidity in our neural

functionality, effectively closing off the possibility for one to recognize, as Deleuze and

Guattari put it, music-becoming, and instead misinterpreting it for noise. Jonah Leher, in

his well-researched book Proust Was a Neuroscientist, arrives at the conclusion that

music, as we know it essentially consists in the apprehension of sonic patterns, pieced

together by our short-term memory functions. He argues that although the premiere of

The Rite of Spring may have sounded like nothing more than cacophony and noise to the

ears of those first attendees, over time our brains learn to make sense of such patterns, as

the structures become physically engrained into our neural pathways. The premiere of

The Rite may have caused a riot in 1913, but by 1940, with its inclusion in the soundtrack

of Fantasia, the music had become staid enough for a children’s cartoon. Leher describes

the physical mechanism of pattern apprehension, attributing to a part of the brain known

as the cortigofugal network 























































 22 Radano, Ronald M. Interpreting Muzak. American Music. Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1989)

One of the central functions of the cortigofugal network is what neuroscience calls egocentric selection. When a pattern of noises is heard repeatedly, the brain memorizes that pattern. Feedback from higher-up brain regions reorganizes the auditory cortex, which makes it easier to hear the pattern in the future.23

While this may seem promising for the possibilities of acquiring and assimilating new

paradigms of thought, it also carries with it a hidden danger—the possibility of limiting

our aesthetic experiences. The cortigofugal system,

“is a positive-feedback loop, a system whose output causes its input to recur… Over time… we become better able to hear those sounds that we have heard before. This only encourages us to listen to the golden oldies we already know (since they sounds better) and to ignore the difficult songs that we don’t know. We are built to abhor to uncertainty of newness.”24

As an effectively pure representation of the refrain, Muzak serves the dark side of the

cortigofugal system, as it were. It reinforces all of the components that we perceive to

represent music, and worse yet it shuts out the possibilities of ever overcoming these

acquired prejudices by literally closing our mind off to their potential. In this respect,

programmed music serves the forces of ignorance and complacency, two pillars in

late-capitalism’s efforts to sustain the frameworks of its reproduction.

Conclusion

While programmed music still waits for truly detailed and thoroughgoing

philosophical and metaphysical studies, it can still be recognized that its existence is a

complex and challenging topic. While the common narrative of how Muzak

represents a corruption of higher forms of music is far-reaching and prevalent, this

























































 23 Lehrer, Jonah. Proust Was a Neuroscientist. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007, p. 140 24 Ibid, p. 142

explanation ultimately provides no positive solutions; it only describes a fin-de-

millennium despondency, caused perhaps by the failure of every attempted form of

emancipatory politics and the seemingly inevitable triumph of global capitalism. The

proposition that Muzak represents the evolutionary potential of sound in capitalist

systems is a compelling one, however, that can be supported by both contemporary

aesthetic theories that deal very specifically with the notion of late-capitalism and

also by new developments in the cognitive and neurological sciences. As I have

attempted to demonstrate, programmed music does not signify a fall from grace or a

perversion of artistic and intellectual culture, but rather that its existence in general

represents just one of the ways in which capitalism succeeds in commodifying

previously non-capitalized public domains. It does this to ensure the ongoing

augmentation of the reproduction of capital flows, and also to ensure its survivability

as a system of exchange. Capitalism is not a system of ethics—it has no overarching

principle other than the ongoing accumulation of wealth. Similarly, programmed

music has no ethical core, only the mandate to function in the employ of capital. This

manifests in its dual authoritarian aspects, both in its characteristic of the refrain and

in the way it suppresses dissent and new forms of experience.

It is not a bleak situation, however, because merely listening to it attentively, by

giving the kind of attention it intentionally avoids garnering, represents in itself a

subversive gesture. “Music doesn’t awaken a death instinct… it confronts death,

stares it in the face.”25 The structures of global capitalism are all-pervasive in

contemporary life, but as the sonic realization of those structures is nearly as

























































 25 Buchanan, Ian and Swiboda, Marcel (Eds.). Deleuze and Music. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2004, p.15

omnipresent as the invisible structures of capital exchange itself, perhaps Muzak

represents one of the most immediately accessible ways to draw attention to these

shadowy and elusive ideologies, and a possible first step towards genuinely engaging

the possibilities of a post-capitalist world.

Works Consulted

Buchanan, Ian. Deleuze and Pop Music. Australian Humanities Review. Issue 7 (August 1997). Buchanan, Ian and Swiboda, Marcel (Eds.). Deleuze and Music. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2004. Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Lehrer, Jonah. Proust Was a Neuroscientist. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. Paddison, Max. Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture. London: Kahn and Averill, 1996. Radano, Ronald M. Interpreting Muzak. American Music. Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 448-460. Sterne, Jonathan. Sounds Like the Mall of America. Ethnomusicology. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 1997). Pp. 22-50. “Music or Muzak?” The Musical Times. Vol. 141, No. 1870 (Spring, 2000), pp.2-3.