Tomorrow (November 21, 2009) is No Music Day

Long story short: No Music Day, first celebrated on November 21, 2005, is "... the brainchild of Bill Drummond [above], former frontman of dance band The KLF and seasoned cultural provocateur," wrote Laura Battle in a November 16, 2009 Financial Times story.

Excerpts follow.

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As the recording industry has developed throughout the 20th century – “the Age of Noise”, according to Aldous Huxley – and into the 21st, there has been an increasing interest in the cultural and commercial value of music and, correspondingly, the function and significance of silence.

The date [November 21] is no accident: in true fast-before-the-feast tradition it falls on the eve of celebrations for the patron saint of music, Saint Cecilia, on November 22. And a theme of mild rebellion is promoted through a website displaying little more than a cheery, quasi-political manifesto ordering, among other things, that: “No hymns will be sung... no records will be played on the radio... iPods will be left at home... jingles will not jangle... milkmen will not whistle... ” What started as an almost private observance has gathered pace and publicity over five years.

“I had this fantasy of being a medieval hermit and travelling from my hermitage in the middle of nowhere to a city. I get to the city, I find the cathedral, I walk through its doors into a shaft of sunlight, and there’s a choir practising,” Drummond explains. “I know that the impact of that music would be far greater than anything I could experience in my life from now on in.”

... many people have become frightened of silence. Inevitably, a fear of silence is inextricably linked with a fear of death, because even if we insulate ourselves against all extraneous noise we are still aware of the thudding metronome inside our chest. But many people now choose to live their lives with a continual soundtrack accompaniment. Aware of this effect, Drummond has gradually weaned himself off a dependence on music – he has got rid of his entire CD collection – and attempts actively to listen as opposed to passively hearing. He describes it as “a radical shift in my life” and says he has noticed a marked sharpening of the senses.

... he believes that recording was in essence “a 20th-century medium” and that it will not exist in the same way in the future.

This year No Music Day is being hosted by the Austrian city of Linz, this year’s European Capital of Culture, and the planned events add up to an impressive swansong (if that is the right word) for the initiative: schools and churches are having no sung music during the day, the main cinema is playing only films with no soundtrack, Spar shops have agreed not to play music and McDonald’s outlets are displaying No Music Day statements on their canteen trays. As for the future, the website will remain but Drummond will no longer function as the public face of the campaign.