Old words: music what is it good for?

In this episode Francois Matarasso reads some Old Words that he wrote a long time ago, and feels have become relevant to him and us once more. 

He analyses his initial reactions to hearing Eric Burdon singing House of the Rising Sun with the Animals as a child, and this leads him to look at wider and deeper questions about what constitutes music, and what how we might describe its effects and purposes.

As part of the Old Words series within a series, Francois will make the printed version of this essay available for download as a pdf at his Parliament of Dreams website at the same time as this podcast appears online.

Multimedia!