Music/Politics

Music and Politics is a combination that might surprise at first glance, but the connections between the two run deep. Music has always had a political dimension, whether as a vehicle for protest, a tool of statecraft and propaganda, an expression of national or community identity, or a site of cultural contest. Politics, meanwhile, is increasingly studied as a cultural phenomenon as much as an institutional one, and music offers a rich set of examples of how ideology, power and collective experience are expressed and contested in practice.

Together the two disciplines develop an unusually broad set of analytical tools.

At the University of Glasgow this four-year full-time degree gives you a range of options in both music and politics across all four years, allowing you to design a pathway that reflects your particular interests and strengths. Your music study will engage with the technical, cultural, historical and philosophical questions that music opens up, developing both practical experience and critical understanding. Your politics work will give you the analytical frameworks to understand power, governance, ideology and international relations, and to apply those frameworks to contemporary and historical political situations.

The degree includes a year abroad, broadening your intellectual and cultural perspective.

Graduates from Music and Politics degrees bring an unusual and valuable combination of creative sensitivity and analytical rigour. Many find careers in arts administration, cultural policy, journalism, broadcasting, political research and the civil service. Others work in music education, community arts, publishing and international organisations engaged with culture and creative industries.

The degree also provides a strong foundation for postgraduate study in music, politics, cultural policy, musicology or related disciplines.