This text was read at an event at Laughton Village Hall as part of the Villages Festival on 2nd July 2025.
Not being possessed of a crystal ball, I’ve no idea what the future of music will hold. So in a few hopefully provocative minutes, I’m going to sketch the outlines of two possible futures.
I’m going to start with a dystopia. There’s a wonderful little essay by Umberto Eco called ‘14 ways to spot a fascist’. I’m going to offer you half a dozen ways to spot musically dystopian thinking.
Music is seen as a commodity, traded in an open market. Audiences are ‘consumers’. Watch out for musicians who describe themselves as ‘in the music business’ and justify what they do by telling us how much it contributes to the economy. The purpose of culture is to increase GDP.
Ideally, there will be lots of ‘consumers’ and very few ‘producers’ – the definition of a star system. These stars will be relentlessly marketed to us, and the marketing won’t have anything to do with music – watch out for being invited to take a prurient interest in their personal lives. Stars are specially blessed by the gods with miraculous ‘talent’. A programme of musical education would be a waste of money, as ‘star quality’ can’t be learnt. In line with inequality in wider society, stars will be grotesquely overpaid and the working musicians who support them will be lucky to get union rate.
Competition is a key feature of market-driven societies whereas music is an essentially co-operative activity. So the competitive element has to be supplied artificially – look out for anything which pitches musicians against each other in gladiatorial contests.
As music is a commercial activity, any obstacles to consumption must be cleared away. Relax with Classic FM. Look out for a tendency towards blandness and musical monoculture, and an indignant intolerance of any music which requires effort or repeated listenings to appreciate, which will often be condemned as elitist.
Key questions – how can I write a hit song? How do I make it?
Some of you will have noticed that many aspects of this dystopia are already well and truly with us.
Now for the utopian vision.
Music is a near universal core human activity. It’s intrinsically worthwhile and doesn’t need to justify itself in terms of money. GDP is there to support culture – culture isn’t there to support GDP. Music is something you do, not something you buy.
That doing starts at the bottom. The musical pyramid isn’t held up by its stars – it’s supported by its base. Like compost in a well-managed garden, a community teeming with musical life may well produce exceptional individuals – but they are a welcome by-product, not the point of the activity.
Children are the future of music and in this utopian society they will be immersed in music, – at school, at home and in their communities – in making it, learning about it and becoming literate in it. It will be clearly understood that music is a craft which can be learnt by all, not just a talented few.
Healthy ecosystems are networked and diverse. So sorry Donald – a resilient musical ecosystem will be diverse – diverse in genre, with old music and new music, the young and the old and people from all parts of society.
Key questions – not how do I make it, but how do I make music?
Not how do I write a hit song but how do I write a good song?
What can we do to promote Vision B? Churchill said – so it must be true –
The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them.
I tend to agree with him – so one thing we could do would be to wait for the State to shower the arts with largesse. I have long ago given up holding my breath.
I think we’ve got to start with the compost heap and make music happen in our own communities. And at the same time we’ve got to exert relentless pressure on our politicians, at local and national level, on curriculum makers and educators and on business and demand a musically healthy society and above all a proper, rigorous musical education for our children.