This course explores music and its interactions with human society. We shall consider the ways in which music not only reflects social structures, identities, and ideologies, but actively helps to construct them. A basic premise of the course is the intimate dialectical relationship between musical sound and social meaning, and we face the challenge not only of formulating this relationship in theoretical terms but also of demonstrating it through empirical evidence. Our discussions of the various aspects of the music-society link therefore will pay close attention to specific musical styles.