What do Sociologists Learn from Music? Hidden Musical Lives and the Craft of Understanding Society

Abstract

Sociologists are often secret musicians.  This goes all the way back to W.E.B. Du Bois and Max Weber in the nineteenth century for whom musical life was always woven into their sociological thinking. In recent times, there have been numerous appeals to use music to reimagine sociology itself. For example, David Beer (2014) has called for a punk sociology – as urgent and vital like a Clash single - as an antidote to the showy and technical ‘prog rock’ tendencies in the mainstream discipline. This article develops the idea of doing sociology with music through focusing on the hidden musical lives of sociologists. It explores a range of examples from Howard Becker’s fieldwork apprenticeship as a pianist in the Chicago jazz clubs and his theories of deviance and labelling to the impact playing the guitar has had on Paul Gilroy's understanding the cultures of the African diaspora to the connection between Emma Jackson’s life as a bass player in indie rock band Kenickie and her feminist DIY sociology. It will argue that sociologists learn a great deal from music both in terms the insights it produces into the workings of culture and society but also in terms of how it sustains our sociological imagination and inspires us to make sociology differently.