SOC 3120 Sociology of Music

3 Hours

Prerequisites: SOC 1010 or Instructor’s consent.

Numerous sociological perspectives are used to understand the role of music in society. These include how music is produced, the social meaning people give it, the role of music as a marker of social status, how people of diverse backgrounds cooperate to make music, and the scenes that foster innovative music. Together these will help us to hazard predictions about the future of music. Music of diverse sorts, from disco to country, jazz, classical, hip-hop, and techno, will be used to show these and related processes, but the prime focus is on the trajectory of popular music over the last half of the century.