Music, Power, and Practice

I am aware that, on the eve of the 2012 United States presidential election, it may seem like sidestepping "real politics" and the "real issues" to talk about cultural politics. Still, I want to do so because thinking in terms of cultural politics enables us to examine the ways in which people debate, reproduce, and sometimes change power relations through their engagements with expressive culture. I’ll even go so far as to say that through engagement with expressive culture people respond to and deal with "real politics" and "real issues."