Questions of value have concerned anthropologists for generations. However, only recently there have been concerted attempts to try to formulate a more general theory of value that can encompass both Marx’s and Mauss’s seminal writings. Therefore, we were glad to welcome Timothy Taylor, professor of ethnomusicology and musicology at the University of Los Angeles (UCLA). In a series of three public lectures held on three subsequent days, Timothy Tayler explored questions of value with respect to music as a form of cultural production. To do so, he linked up to recent work by anthropologists like David Graeber, Michael Lambek, Fred Myers, Anna Tsing, and others. 

The “Master”

Timothy D. Taylor is a professor for ethnomusicology and musicology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). His numerous articles and books include Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (Routledge, 1997), Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture (Routledge, 2001), Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World (Duke, 2007), The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture (Chicago, 2012), Music and Capitalism: A History of the Present (Chicago, 2016), and editor, with Mark Katz and Tony Grajeda, of Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio (Duke, 2012). A collection of essays, Music in the World: Selected Essays, was published in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press.