The tyranny of background music in our public places

In some restaurants, the music is so loud that you wonder why people are made to sit facing each other. In most cafes, the music fades but you know it’s there, like invisible smoke from vehicles. Wherever you go today, music seeps through the speakers. In restaurants, cafes, elevators, lobbies, airports, aircraft cabins, trains and taxis. This happens in movies, of course, when characters are talking, or when they die, or when a deaf person sees the world. There is nothing more absurd in art than background music. It is also in exercise lessons, cooking shows, wildlife documentaries and journalism on YouTube. Most cat videos don’t have music simply because pet owners don’t know how to add it, or it takes too much effort.

It seems as if the world is afraid of silence. Somehow we have reached a point where silence has become a form of sadness, or foreboding, as an omen that a marriage has been committed.

The defense of background music in real life is that it creates ‘a mood’ and ‘an atmosphere’. But this hypothesis has several flaws. Who can claim to know what music creates what mood in you?

A few days ago, in the lobby of a hotel in Mumbai, I heard Nesun Dorma, the aria of sadness. The hotel may want to give class, but then what is the neural connection between European operatic melancholy and Mumbai’s new emir in a class around an Indian buffet? Also, the context of that aria is this: an unexpected stranger manages to win a contest to marry the princess, but she finds him disgusting; So he says if you guess my name, kill me. But if you can’t guess my name, you have to marry me. And the psychic princess then decides that the people of her kingdom must find out her name, or they will all be executed. Nessun Dorma is the lover’s lament about how much he loves this strange woman. Who would want this kind of ‘mood’? So is mood a result of not knowing too much about music, which is the basic source of mood?

Even if you don’t know the context or history of a piece of music, it can still be torture. For a few years, a terminal at Delhi airport played 1980s Hindi film songs, most of which were offensive to anyone with earrings. Not only this, jingles were also played in between. Most people didn’t mind.

Even today, most people seem unaffected by background music. Looks like they want it too. Perpetuation of this music everywhere is part of the tyranny of the majority. As a result, some of the greatest classics of the European Enlightenment have become a breeze in a lobby, a mere sound to comfort those troubled by the silence.

When you turn off ambient music, it gets people out of the ‘mood’ and without it they get bored. Cab drivers display a dislike for customers who ask them to turn off the music. They usually just turn down the sound because the air is too loud for them otherwise.

I’ve heard many people wonder what “real life” would look like if it had background music “like in the movies”. By this they mean that an event in their life will be followed by their mood, and the mood will be followed by appropriate music. But it is the exact opposite of what happens in cinema. Background music not only creates the mood, it anticipates an event, and even defines the style of the film.

In cinema, and many other things that are called cinema today (for example ‘series’), the music is much more than the surroundings; This is a very specific and powerful nudge.

Not only this.

Without background music the time stretches and the story becomes very real. In fact, many art-house films tend to underestimate realism simply because they don’t have background music.

Just as Silence is heavily favored by the Art House and its disciples, so is the mainstream with a plethora of background scores.

For example, Marvel’s superhero movies are so filled with anthem-like music that the moment of silence is the actual music, which gives the necessary gravity.

The most idiosyncratic use of background score in mainstream cinema is when filmmakers use it for dialogues. I want to ask them- are you so unsure of your lines, or do you have so little respect for the faculties of the people who watch your films that you need to create the mood for the dialogues?

The tyranny of background music in mainstream big budget cinema has led to a situation where you can’t really follow the dialogues without reading the subtitles. Christopher Nolan’s theory was particularly focused on obscure dialogue because its background score is so overpowering. It is not that the film would have mattered much even if the dialogues were understood.

However, this is not the most corrupt or absurd use of background music in mass communication. ie if you’ve seen some new holy ‘documentaries’ coming out of the USA. The use of alarmist music in journalism is as much a violation of the profession’s promise to convey the truth as any bias or active agenda.

One good thing to read is that it is protected from background music. But I think, there will come a day when a publisher will come up with the idea of ​​introducing background music in e-books.

Manu Joseph is a journalist and novelist, most recently ‘Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous’.