The Sound of Muzak
by Stojgniev O’Donnell

Not so long ago in America I saw a Muzak van cruising the streets. I had no idea Muzak still today existed as a business enterprise. Muzak was often ridiculed by children of the 1960s: supermarket music, the sounds one heard in K-Mart, noise imposed upon an unwilling audience. At one point in my youth, I despised Muzak, although my musical tastes have changed constantly with time. Later, I came to admire the professionalism and virtuosity of some Muzak musicians.

Muzak as a company, perhaps then, still exists. But also it exists as a broader concept. I observe that visitors to American airports, for example, are subjected to some vicious, terrorist Muzak. I dread the American airport, not just for the security stupidities. If I had a dollar for every time I was forced in American airports or shopping centers to listen to Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill,” I could take a luxury vacation to one of the world’s exotic locations. I resent being subjected to “Blueberry Hill” and every other American “Oldy-Goldy.” I do not want to hear the American commercial trash that now passes as “music.” Unfortunately, there are stores and malls in Europe where a loud audio pathology celebrating “niggahs,” “pimps,” and “ho’s” is forced upon the clientele. I prefer not to be forced to hear the pounding, disturbing autobiographical expressions of America’s “niggahs.”

I for one do not believe in progress. The human condition today is the same as it was millennia ago. We are born and die, seemingly without reason. Each human has a limited capacity for experience. We work, eat, love, hate, grow old and ill, and then expire. Qualitatively and quantitatively, the human experience will never get any better than it was three thousand years ago. For each new technology introduced, some ancient wisdom or philosophical insight is violated. The human dilemma is this: we are prisoners of time. We are slaves to the period in which we live and die. Technology has not just changed our lives “for the better,” but it robs us of some essentials celebrated by the ancients.

The constant, omnipresent bombardment of noise means that we are deadened to a joy our ancestors appreciated. Music once was one of the greatest satisfactions of life. It was something then always performed by living human beings. Music was heard chiefly at formal and collective gatherings, many of those characterized by heightened emotions. Humans in their free evenings reveled in music, often accompanied by dancing. Music one thousand years ago did not fatigue its listeners. It had no commercial purpose. It had a direct connection to culture, as the individual did not so often hear the music of other cultures. Music was an expression of collective identity. People sang about what happened in their collective lives, in forms arisen within their own culture.

Today much discarded trash of synthetic materials and culture is washed upon our shores. But we have no beauty. Most humans today are unable to experience the joy of music. Some flee the noise of modernity to seek consolation in silence. Yet silence will never give that joy our ancestors once experienced in music.