Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, released 40 years ago, marked the formal beginnings of ambient music. It is still provoking composers and audiences to contemplate new ways of listening.
For the enslaved Africans, music – rhythm in particular – became a tool of communication about their conditions. Later, it laid the foundation for spirituals and gospel songs.
Imagine a collaboratively-designed smartphone app that could provide cues to an autistic individual – about the emotional state of people they are communicating with.
CBC and NBC’s theme music that fills our ears before and after commercials and quietly accompanies intimate athlete profiles can actually have an impact on the way we view sports.
Developers will now be responsible for dealing with noise issues from nearby music venues – but it will take real community activism to prevent closures.
Number crunching the Hottest 100 votes produces fascinating insights into shifting musical tastes and poses the question: why was 1997 such a great year for music?
Tim Rogers has threatened to take legal action after one of his songs was included in Cory Bernardi’s conservative Australia Day playlist. Rogers’s case rests on obscure legal provisions known as moral rights.
Heavy metal music was traditionally associated with white, working class masculinity. But the genre has diversified - with many subgenres -
and now embraces causes ranging from whale protection to labour conditions.