ABSTRACT
This contribution, being work in progress, gathers together in an open fashion a body of reflections from a seminar given over to a comparison between rap and techno, and I begin with a brief reconsideration of common assumptions. The seminar was given with the object of studying listening, beginning with a series of juxtaposed experiments.3 The starting idea was simple: to regard music as being of an uncertain affect that depends on what its listener makes of it and not as being an experience that is merely received. The word ‘experiment’ can, indeed, create confusion. It does not mean that we subjected guinea-pigs to regulated tests, in order to measure the best possible listener reactions to a given object,4 although it
would, of course, be one way of showing what music is. Rather, moving in exactly the opposite direction, we have tried to make listeners the experts on their own listening, so that they can teach us what musical experience is for them.
