Can music change the world? That it can and does functions as a truism across many spheres of U.S. culture. Attali canonically argued that music, an element of what Marxists call the “superstructure,” can actually influence or foreshadow world-historical changes in the “base” of economic relations and production. The belief that music can change the world is also foregrounded in major American classical music institutions’ branding and fundraising campaigns and embedded in some of the ways academics justify our teaching and research. Art is good for society, art makes us better humans, art is what makes us humans in the first place—these are familiar clichés. What values are these clichés shaped around? What do they take as givens? And how do they help prop up social realities?
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