Muzak Fills the Deadly Silences

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Muzak developed during the era of “jazzy” design and Art Deco architecture. Like Art Deco, Muzak was meant to inspire office workers to move along to the increasingly fast pace of the modern corporation. Just as design and architecture evolved from Art Deco to the International Style, Muzak moved to the Stimulus Progression.

The streamlined geometry of Art Deco design attempted to mask the repetitive nature of office work with a representation of the speed and tempo of modern music. But Art Deco failed to keep its promise: being fixed into architectural form, it could only represent change, and was not itself capable of changing over time. As workers grew accustomed to Art Deco, they grew bored of it and began to associate it with bygone eras, not with the present.

As International Style modern architecture spread in the postwar era, Muzak spread with it. Muzak punctuated activity on the floors of the Johnson Wax Company building, Lever House, the Seagram building, the Chase Manhattan bank building, the Pan Am building, the Sears Tower, the Apollo XI command module and countless other modernist buildings. Muzak is the hidden element in every Ezra Stoller photograph of a modernist office interior. By 1950, some 50 million people heard Muzak every year. In this, Muzak surpassed modernism itself as well. The new, hermetically sealed office buildings that the glass curtain wall and postwar air conditioning system permitted were capable of blocking out distracting sounds from outside, but silence itself could be noticeable. Muzak ensured a background condition even greater than that of silence itself.

Muzak’s slogan during this period was “Muzak fills the deadly silences.” But Muzak isn’t just invisible to the eyes, in the company’s own words, Muzak “is meant to be heard, but not listened to,” and is aimed at a subliminal level. The immaterial gestures of the Stimulus Progression were neither ornamental nor representational, but rather physiological. Workers do not think about Muzak, they are programmed by it. Whenever Muzak received any requests for songs, they immediately removed them from the library. Like the Fordist worker, Muzak that drew attention to itself was deemed unsuccessful and dismissed.

By filling the deadly silences, Muzak supported modernism and made the impersonality of the Fordist management system more palatable. In bridging melody (individuality) and monotony (the abstract field), Muzak provides an element of accommodation against a background of abstraction, acting as a palliative for both the modern office and for modern architecture. Interactions between individuals that would otherwise have been uncomfortable, such as disciplinary reprimands, terminations, and general office tension could all be alleviated by its soothing background tones.

Thus, when James Keenen, Ph.D., the Chairman of Muzak’s Board of Scientific Advisors, stated that “Muzak promotes the sharing of meaning because it massifies symbolism in which not few but all can participate,” we need to understand that Muzak provided the same symbolic experience as the pre-Industrial song did, however this sharing of meaning happened not consciously but just below the threshold of consciousness. Composed almost exclusively of love songs stripped of their lyrics, the Stimulus Progression provided a gentle state of erotic arousal throughout the day. Desire, union, and disappointment could all be felt collectively, even though subconsciously, thereby adding color to the day and blunting the impact of these emotions when real life intruded into the workplace.

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