Music and Democracy: beyond Metaphors and Idealization

This study day aims to interrogate the experimental and novel socialities, imagined communities and social and institutional conditions summoned into being by 'democratic' forms of music-making: What is the nature of a 'democratic ideal' in music (or art-making more widely)? What is achieved, politically, by rethinking the way in which music is made? When does such rethinking affect the wider domain of social relations, and when does it not? If democratic music-making can help with the wider democratisation of social life, how does it do so? When and how is ‘democratic' music more than just a metaphor?