Aural Regimes through Music Listening: Ideologies and Institutions in the 21st Century

Abstract

Is there something such as an aural regime that defines our music listening strategies? If so, how is such regime configured? What listening practices are imparted/supported by which institutions and ideologies and viceversa? This article offers possible interpretations to these questions by tackling contemporary practices of music listening. It presents a working definition of “aural regime” illustrating it through three contemporary problems around music listening, as are the effects of the ideology of multiculturalism in the installment of such a regime, the role of different industries (music, entertainment and tourism) and institutions (universities, cultural centers, archives), in the establishment of pedagogies for music listening as well as in the construction of musically mediated subjectivities. I revise ongoing academic debates concerning the generation of aesthetic judgment of non-western musics and its possible relationship with a “postmodern condition” (García 2012), the ubiquity of diverse, and not so diverse musics and the ensuing problem of attentive music listening (Kassabian 2013), the role of technologies for music listening (Erickson y Johanson 2017), or the debate of agency facing the conundrum of what or not to listen to (Filipovic 2012, Lipari 2014).