Thoughtful Thursday: Sociology of Music

When I was an undergraduate, one of my favorite courses of all times was Sociology of Music. It was taught by my favorite professor in the department, Dr. George Heller, and the topic really tickled my fancy. During the course. we had the chance to select a term paper topic that included discussion about culture and music, and I loved looking for information that showed correlations between societal events and musical themes and elements.

I started thinking about this course yesterday when I was working in my office. 

To keep myself company during non-group hours, I watch downloaded television shows. Currently, I am enjoying vintage television. I am watching the first ever season of Columbo. It came out in 1972 and is just chock full of 70's kitsch. I am loving it.

Now, the thing that made me think about Sociology of Music was listening to the soundtrack of this old television show and linking it to other soundtracks of the same era. This will take too long to explain in one post, so I'm thinking I might bring back an old series - Cultural Considerations - to help me figure out what I am thinking about with this entire topic.

The thing about sociology (the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society - according to dictionary.com) is that it considers how society functions - within and in-between cultures and cultural differences. This fascinates me - always has and probably always will.

So, as I am watching and listening to television shows from 1972, I am reminded of the music from movies from the late 70's that I loved that share musical characteristics. My brain linked the two musical forms together. That recognition made me start to wonder about the music and the composers.

Is the music written by the same person? If so, how did they move from television to movies (I am guessing it would go this way due to the release dates of the media that I am thinking about). If the music is not composed by the same person, was there a school of musical structure and composition theory that was shared by each composer? How did the music that I am listening to now reflect society in the 70's? Was the music a response to what was happening in the world or was the world responding to the music?

Of course, many of the ideas here are not things that I can ever prove. All I would ever be able to do is propose hypotheses and seek correlation. It is difficult to prove causation in situations like this, but I like to speculate. The best thing about writing a blog is that I do not have to prove my suppositions as long as they are offered as opinions. If I do use different references and resources, though, I will cite them appropriately - do not fear!!

I am working on how to make this series into something that interests me as well as something that might be interesting to others. I thank Dr. Heller for his attention to this topic and for just being him. He inspired me to think about music as a cultural phenomenon as well as something to use, create, and share with others. That's the purpose of higher education, isn't it? Inspiring critical thinking in students. So, look for some more posts on this particular topic.

By the way, if you like Columbo like I do, then you can find it on Amazon Prime Video right now. I will write more about the music that has inspired this train of thought very soon. It is running around in my brain, so I will need to keep writing about it all until I am finished with the thoughts...

See you soon.