Said musicologist Lily E. Hirsch, author of "Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment," quoted in "L.A. blasting classical music to drive unhoused people from subway station. It’s louder than officials claim" (L.A. Times).
April 5, 2023
"You’re trying to attract and make certain people feel comfortable based on the associations with classical music."
"And you see that in fancy cheese shops that play classical music because they hope people will feel like they’re a part of some elite upscale world and then they’ll spend more money.... It’s like a bird marking its territory where you hear the signal and you go, 'OK, this is not for me. This is for the older money crowd.... And that technique seems to work. There are examples of teenagers leaving an area that’s playing classical music, not because they don’t like the music but because of the associations.... [Y]ou’re creating hierarchies of sound... And you’re not solving the problem... You’re just pushing the problem to another spot."
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59 comments:
It’s louder than officials claim
Soooo.......it's working???
An image of gritty hobos flashmob ballet dancing to Delibes Flower Duet from Lakme just flashed across my mind.
I think they could be great. Worthy of Carnegie Hall. The hobos should try it. They'd be bigger than Blue Man Group.
A strip mall near where I once lived did this in the 80s to keep scruffy white teenagers from hanging out in their parking lot. It worked. Now there aren't any scruffy white teenagers in town (Alexandria VA), thanks to the high cost of living in non-public/-subsidized housing.
If business owners did this, too, the Los Angeles' government would fine and/or arrest them for doing so.
I have been singing for years in a classical men’s choral group, a very good one.
Our members are blue and white collar guys and quite a few local preachers and school music teachers. No big money guys.
In my work playing for Catholic and Methodist churches, I play short classical pieces as preludes and postludes on organ and piano, at the request of my very middle class congregants.
Traditionally religious, middle class people are great patrons of classical music. Classical music originated as sacred music.
"L.A. blasting classical music to drive unhoused people from subway station"
Sounds like it's effective.
"It’s louder than officials claim"
So you can't hear the screams and money-begging? For shame.
Perhaps Ms. Hirsch should check out the performances on youtube in which homeless people turn out remarkable performances of standard-repertory works -- classical as well as jazz or pop. And classical music works just fine in many movies and ads seeking to attract a younger potential audience.
But she's right that most approaches to the homeless amount to exercises in "pushing the problem to another spot." For many, that's all the solution to this problem that they are seeking to achieve.
What a great idea, playing Bach and Beethoven like a fire-hose to wash the delinquents off the street!
Or do they favor Stravinsky? Cage? Schoenberg?
Doesn't have to be classical. Play any five songs over and over and over and over and over.
Drive 'em crazy.
They should play Act III of Götterdämmerung, on a loop.
Some places play classical, while other rock, while others yet R&B.
Audible sense and sensibility or diversity politics?
Most of what classical music stations play is crap. Whoever is listening to it can't be listening to it.
My own recent youtube bookmarks
Chopin Barcarolle
Bach Musical Offering ricerar a 6 (trace of Gould, but emphasizing a voice with legato against staccato in other voices)
Bach organ trio sonata adagio scored for piano
None of that beamed at teenagers.
Read of a convenience store that played Classical to run off the black youths who hung around outside and menaced customers. Apparently it worked. You can play rap music between periods at hockey games but it won’t bring in black fans. Because there are none. They don’t like hockey. Ditto classical music. Orchestras can feature black composers but apart from kids on school trips you will not have a majority black audience. Not even close. It has been tried by every major orchestra in the USA. I suppose the LA effort was based on the premise that it would run off vagrants but the issue noted was the volume. Gitmo style torture. I would guess that a fair number of homeless would find it restful or uplifting if the volume was toned down.
"There are examples of teenagers leaving an area that’s playing classical music, not because they don’t like the music but because of the associations...."
I think its the latter. Teenagers don't like the music.
I listened to a bit of "Immaterial" which is now playing in LA subways. I wouldn't call it "classical:" I would call it ominous. If I went into a North Shore wine bar and heard that music I would think the owners were on drugs and liked horror movies. In a subway I'd be thinking I'd seen this movie and that when the doors opened the guys with the guns would start spraying. But if I were homeless I'd pay no attention because my feet would hurt and I'd be looking for a place to rest.
They said unhoused.
Debussy and Ravel sound the way they do because of air pollution.
And you see that in fancy cheese shops that play classical music because they hope people will feel like they’re a part of some elite upscale world and then they’ll spend more money...
"Will you shut that bloody dancing up?!"
On the same day that Nike announced the hiring of Dylan Mulvaney to market sports bras.
Mark Steyn has been talking about this for this, the idea that the West no longer has the will or confidence to survive.
But geez, death by self-inflicted stupidity is a horrible, wasting way to go.
That ain't classical music.
It's post-apocalyptic electronic "classical"-inspired noise.
I have no problem with its use, as it is intended to drive homeless people out of using transit stations as quasi-residences.
Just please do not call it classical music. I seriously clicked on the link, wondering what the musical selections might be. Mozart? Haydn? Boccherini? Perhaps some more Romantic music, mistaken as Classical? Liszt? Wagner? Or did they think that Baroque would be the thing to drive out the homeless? Handel? Gluck? J.S. Bach?
I have no idea what that (appropriately) unlistenable drivel was on the sound system. And I really do not wish to know.
Btw: Los Angeles has two very lovely, well-programmed classical music radio stations last time I was in town. I'd do everything I could to listen to them if I could as opposed to the terrible subway soundtrack.
Actually, they don't like the music.
Takes an academic with a theory to overlook the glaringly obvious.
VR headsets, a universe unto oneself. There's the answer. Perhaps remote shopping, without the diversity-sensitive audiovisuals, which could cause discomfort. And definitely no elements of cultural appropriation, biology, chemistry, physics, babies, and other unsafe topics.
The Fresh Market we frequent plays classical music at fairly low volume. Beats Muzak.
And an old, very popular, home-cooking kind of restaurant near the Medical Center plays
50s doowop and bubblegum music in the parking lot to keep the riffraff away.
Art is a wonderful sorting mechanism for us clever monkeys.
"And you’re not solving the problem... You’re just pushing the problem to another spot."
Works for me.
They'll be Bach.
LA trains are a horror show. No normal person feels safe, and the smell is almost unbearable in many stations and train cars. The lefties have done everything possible to make life for working decent folks a misery. When you combine state income tax, property tax, and 9.5% sales tax, LA is a nightmare. Some CA cities have sales tax as high as 10.75%.
If the homeless had to pay any of that, we wouldn’t need Mahler to get rid of them. They’d self-relocate and take their filth with them.
- Krumhorn
There's a local McDonald's that plays loud bagpipe music on it's outdoors speakers. The area is overrun with bums and it seems like it may have made a difference. Now they're all inside.
This article says that orchestral music is used to attract an "older money crowd," and "makes it clear that an area belongs to certain privileged groups." But the attempt to turn this into a class issue makes no sense.
Apart from the urban subway station, the one example it gives is that classical music is sometimes played outside 7-Elevens in an attempt to keep teenagers from loitering. Do they really think that will only keep "certain people" away, while attracting, say, Frasier Crane to come in for a daily Lotto scratcher and microwave burrito?
The fact is, any music is annoying when you don't want to hear it -- from blaring classical strings to supermarket Muzak to the thumping dance records they play at my gym. If it's not your choice to listen at any given time, you're not going to like it.
How ridiculous. teenagers find classical music boring and nerdish. They don't regard it as "Old money", they regard it as "Old fart" music. Old boring jewish, white or asian people, half-dead old mummies, sitting in their seats, listening to old musicians in powdered wigs.
Did I write "old" enough?
Ms. Hirsh is probably projecting some of her own attitudes onto teenagers, black, brown, and white.
And not a loop of Mrs Miller singing "These Boots Are Made for Walking"?
Went to the symphony here in town last weekend. Full house. Not a teenager in sight. A few young professionals, but no teens. It was nice. I guess that proves it works.
PS- rcocean- yes, the crowd was most definitely older. But then, that's always been the curse of classical. The older are willing to make it a priority to pay for and go to the symphony. And each generation wonders what will happen to the music if only old people listen to it. And every generation, another group of old people take the time to listen...and go.
I grew up listening to it. I loved it as a kid, then...put it away for my entire college life and all of my working years until...recently. Now I'm one of those older people going regularly. I sometimes get the thought that there will be no more music once our time here is done. But I know that's just not the case. The classics outlive all the teenagers in the end. Teens come and go, they grow and get old and leave. Classics stick around. That's why they're called 'classic'.
I see a fair number of young(ish) people at the classical concerts I attend, most of whom strike me as music students. The non-musician youngster who spends his or her own money to go just for enjoyment of the music is a rarity in my experience.
And as everyone knows, American Blacks tend to loathe European high culture, when they become aware of its existence. (Increasingly true of young Whites also. alas.)
"Doesn't have to be classical. Play any five songs over and over and over and over and over.
Drive 'em crazy."
Sweet Caroline should be sufficient all by itself.
My first thought: "Well, duh!"
Second, after reading further and finding what she is upset about: "Hahahahaha."
There was a popular bar in downtown Minneapolis that used to switch its music to country-western whenever black people walked in. They never stayed.
So, the reverse Pied Piper. Now have speakers on trucks. Space them out and drive the unhoused to the neighboring city.
Easy peasy.
But free form jazz may be more effective.
Apart from the high volume (which I don't endorse at all), this is silly. Silly, above all, in the blithe assumption that kids don't object to classical music as such, but only to the social-class vibes it gives off. This is nonsense. Apart from the small number of youth who were actually trained in classical music from an early age, like myself, "classical" represents, not "old money," but Squaresville. Pretending to like it (or actually liking it!) makes you hopelessly non-hip. I listened to nothing but classical music in high school. Was I a popular kid? Erm, no.
Frankly, I'd love to be the DJ for a 7-11. I'd give them such variety that maybe a few might actually want to stay and listen.
I should add that classical music isn't the only music used this way. I'm not thinking of the heavy metal referred to in the article, where volume also figures. I'm thinking more along the lines of the school teacher in (?) New Jersey whose detentions involved 45 minutes of Frank Sinatra. "You've got a Frank"! Is it any surprise that some of these kids . . . developed something of an interest in Frank?
Look, no generation is as puritanical about music as our last couple have been. They loathe everything not of their own tiny slice -- in time and genre -- with a tearing rage that's difficult to understand. Me, I rather like being able to range at will through the thousand years or so that they reject.
A few years ago, West Palm Beach deployed Baby Shark to chase the homeless from outdoor pavilions. I imagine it was much more effective than classical music would have been.
Doesn't have to be classical. Play any five songs over and over and over and over and over.
We just returned from taking my in-laws to Hawaii. In the course of driving around everywhere, my father-in-law plugged in his phone and put on Apple Music so we could listen to his playlist (of a whole 200 or more songs! We didn't tell him how much music we keep in rotation).
For some reason it kept playing the same couple of dozen songs over and over. Finally I undertook to diagnose the problem (I'm not the ideal choice because I have no Apple products, but I'm the one who was, first, sufficiently driven nuts, and second, sufficiently techie to bother with it).
Turns out we'd been listening to his auto-generated 25 Most Played list - thereby ensuring that those 25 songs will forever be on that list, and possibly that they may be the only songs he hears for the rest of his life, since he has no idea how to go to a different playlist.
My kids range in age from 19 to 26. Their musical tastes range from early soul to psychedelic to singer-songwriter 70s to hair band 80s to EDM to what the girl calls "good" country to instrumental classical (that's a study favorite), with forays into lots of other genres, including musicals. I love when the whole family (minus my husband, who looks on in amusement) is together in our kitchen singing Midnight Train To Georgia or "the mommy song" (I Hope You Dance, which is on no one's list but mine because it makes me cry even though I know it's cheesy, but my oldest does the harmony with me and if his voice is the last thing I hear before I die, I'll die happy) into our air mikes.
I don't like classical music not played loud. FYI most teens don't know what "old money" means.
We took a huge societal downturn when we decided that the mentally ill and the drug-addicted have a right - a right! - to live and poop in public places such as subway stations.
Yes, they deserve help. "Allowing" them to live rough without professional care does them no favors, but it makes some of us feel virtuous - "we're giving them freedom!"
What we're given them is hell on earth, and we're losing our public places in the process.
What bobby said. The buried lede in this story is that another nice, white liberal lady is finding something to fuss about regarding the "unhoused" that will allow her to demonstrate her incredible empathy and virtue, while successfully ignoring the primary drivers of the problem, mental illness and addiction, which must not be mentioned, much less addressed.
Recall a news item several years back that 7-Eleven advised its franchises dealing with kids hanging in the parking lot to pipe classical music thru outdoor speakers.
A memory burst forth. For a (mercifully) brief period our youngest had us play Barney the Dinosaur on a seemingly endless loop.
Want me out of your parking lot?
I love you,
You love me,
We're a great big family....
/shudder
Jamie--I suppose that there may be someone, somewhere who doesn't like "Midnight Train to Georgia," but it's hard to imagine.
I've always liked classical. Especially Bach.
This is truly awesome, from University of Michigan
http://www.blockmrecords.org/bach/
I range from there to Five Finger Death Punch. Bagpipes not so much.
"unhoused" sounds very derogatory. I don't know what's wrong with "homeless."
Most people like "boom, boom, boom" music when they are young. Later, a certain percentage move on the classical music and jazz. That's the way of the world. I'd guess its because your testostorne (sic) level goes down, and your appreciation of the finer things in life goes up.
At some point - a certain percent - also stop caring about football or pro wrestling and move on to Golf and/or Tennis.
Of course a large percentage of people never change. Their musical tastes and sports preferences are set at 18. That's why you have Grandma's listening to Rock and Roll.
BTW, I'm been hearing for 40 years that "Golf is dying" because young people aren't playing. But its still going strong, because young people turn into middle-aged people.
People of Houseless (PoH) pronounced in the urbane vernacular
JAORE said...
A memory burst forth. For a (mercifully) brief period our youngest had us play Barney the Dinosaur on a seemingly endless loop.
Want me out of your parking lot?
I love you,
You love me,
We're a great big family....
Years ago, we rented a beach house for a week with my sister-in-law and her family. I had to work, and the youngest kid of the group broke her ankle shortly before the trip. So, the two of us were cooped up in the house all day. Maria loved the cartoon show "Franklin", and played it endlessly. My strongest memory of the trip is trying to work and having to listen to the !#$^& theme song "Hey, it's Franklin" over and over and over.
Interested Bystander said...
There's a local McDonald's that plays loud bagpipe music on its outdoors speakers...
TheSnakeCharmer has several songs on YouTube that I found interesting, often done in a bagpipe fusion style.
rcocean said...
How ridiculous. teenagers find classical music boring and nerdish. They don't regard it as "Old money", they regard it as "Old fart" music. Old boring jewish, white or asian people, half-dead old mummies, sitting in their seats, listening to old musicians in powdered wigs.
Did I write "old" enough?
While it's not exactly a "young people" song any ore, here's a link to AC/DC's Thunderstruck played on cellos. In a concert hall by guys in powdered wigs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk
rcocean said...
BTW, I've been hearing for 40 years that "Golf is dying" because young people aren't playing. But its still going strong, because young people turn into middle-aged people.
For three decades, I've been playing golf once a year with guys from high school. At first we could pretty much hit the course and play without waiting. But the last few years we've had to schedule tee times well in advance.
I miss listening to Jamie sing.
There are only two ads before showings of The Met: Live in HD at the movie theater: one for Bloomberg and one for Rolex.
I thank the Fates that I was exposed to the classical canon early, and had the mind to appreciate it, and what it represents.
LOL Seattle tried that at one of its busy drug/homeless intersections by playing country western music. They interviewed one of the homeless folks who said: "I don't mind, it's nice music that tells a good story."
Michael (5:27pm and 6:52am):
You're probably thinking of comments I've left on this very site, about a 7-11 in the Baltimore suburbs where two of my nephews worked. It played opera music to deter teenagers (mostly or entirely white, by the way) from hanging around the front door smoking dope all day and driving away paying customers. They said the guy owned four 7-11s and did the same at all of them. The one I know they worked at is on Frederick Road in Catonsville a block or so outside the Baltimore Beltway. Whether it still has opera music playing, or the same owner, I do not know. It's been 20+ years since my nephews worked there, and the last of my relatives left the area 2-3 years ago, so I'll never go there again.
They also worked on the tarp crew at Orioles stadium and could tell you which famously pleasant Orioles were actually total assholes to the little people and which were in fact great guys. The one name I recall is Ozzie Smith, who was one of the latter, if you're wondering.
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