music is prophesy

Mimi and I are very into music--not just listening and playing but having many, many long discussions about it. So it was only a matter of time until she found this quote--thanks for passing it along Mimi.

"Music is prophesy. Its styles and economic organisation are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible . . . It is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future. For that reason musicians, even when officially recognised, are dangerous, disturbing and subversive; for this reason it is impossible to separate their history from that of repression and surveillance." -Jaques Attali, The Political Economy of Music

And if you want to know more about where this came from:

I ran upon this quote in a different book called Notes from the Heart: A Celebration of Tradional Irish Music by P.J. Curtis on page 7.