Local Democracy Week – Making Music Democratically

Academics Professor Robert Adlington, Dr Elizabeth Dobson and Dr Toby Martin led Making Music Democratically: Equality, Difference, Participation at Huddersfield’s specialist record shop Vinyl Tap which featured Masters student Mohammad Reza Beladi.

THE basement of one of the country’s leading specialist record shops was the setting for a discussion session – punctuated by song – dealing with the links between music and democracy.

Led by lecturers at the University of Huddersfield, it was an element of Kirklees Council’s Local Democracy Week and took place amidst the racks of LPs and singles and the walls of pop-rock memorabilia at Vinyl Tap, in the heart of town.

The discussion was set in motion by Professor Robert Adlington, who is leading a research project on Democracy in Music.  He told how jazz – especially in its American homeland – was often regarded as a highly democratic form, offering a freedom of expression alongside a sense of responsibility to other people.

Professor Adlington also cited a string quartet by Elliott Carter that its composer believed was a mirror of democracy, with the instruments displaying strong individuality while musically debating with each other.

Societies have had differing interpretations of democracy over the centuries, said Professor Adlington, and the same went for musicians.

Senior Lecturer in Music Technology Dr Elizabeth Dobson spoke about the imbalances she had found in her field, which had been 90 per cent male.  The creative industries create 3.12 million jobs and contribute an annual £27 billion to the economy, she said, adding that the fact that most people in the industry were male and white meant there was an inequality to be addressed.

So, in 2015 she and 15 other women came together to create an all-woman space.  It led to workshops and the development of the organisation Yorkshire Sound Women Network, which now has centres in Huddersfield, Sheffield, York, Calderdale and Teesside.

Dr Toby Martin is Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Huddersfield, and in his native Australia he is a leading songwriter and performer.  He discussed democracy in the context of rock groups where, as a songwriter, he was continually in negotiation with bandmates over the performance of his material.

Dr Martin also has research specialities that include Aboriginal music in Australia and he told how he had formed collaboration with Aborigines and also with Vietnamese and Iraqi musicians in Sydney, integrating their ethnic instruments and styles with his music.

This was mirrored at the Vinyl Tap evening when Dr Martin performed a reinterpretation of one of his songs alongside Mohammad Reza Beladi, who is studying for a Master’s degree at the University of Huddersfield.  The researcher described the multi-cultural influences on the music of his home city, Bushehr in Iran, and how they had helped to instil democratic ideas.

Professor Adlington said that “democracy” was a word best used where there is a difference of opinion, and music was at its most democratic when there were differences to be negotiated.

This led to a discussion involved the panellists and the audience that touched on many aspects of music making, the contemporary music industry and self-expression through music.