When doctoral candidate Ed Young characterizes French philosopher Marcel Merleau-Ponty people listen. Whether any of us actually understood what was going on is another question. Far be it from me to heap praise on a man who says to undergraduates  "As I am sure you all know Aristotle said this in the Nicomachean Ethics." Everyone in the room who hadn't read the Ethics was pushed away from the audience at that moment. Many people rolled with the punch and headed for the door. Those of us who stayed were treated to what was either an explanation of phenomenology by reference to musical performance or an explanation of musical performance by reference to phenomenology. 
 I have serious doubts that I will be blowing the plot of Merleau-Ponty by attempting to make sense of his ideas, so  I don't feel bad taking my own swipe at characterizing Young's position. In learning how to play guitar or singing to oneself the noises produced are judged individually. This individual judgement is a type of ultimate freedom, because whatever I play on the guitar is subject only to my values, I can decide whether it's good or bad. There are judgments to be made about my technical proficiency; can I move my hand between chords smoothly and in rhythm? These judgments however only pretend to be objective, after all everyone thinks they clap in time. The disciplinary process of playing a guitar, learning chord progressions and  scales for example instills a certain understanding of the guitar playing process that forecloses other understandings. 
 If I start learning to play heavy metal songs then the intertwined aspects of those songs will make sense to me. The idea of ridiculous noodling guitar solos will make more sense to me than say a two tone Ska or Reggae guitar line. The distinction between real and false metal sounds will begin to influence my play. This distinction, between true and false, will be intensified if I play in front of a crowd, or even with other people. The issue of what is in or out of the definition of a musical genre is recreated in the judgments that make up human relations. Young was fond of calling this politics. This term doesn't mean what people often take politics to mean, elections and parties and such. Curiously, Young also disconnects politics from ideology. 
 Margins of error are created for bands, where the noise that they have may sound great to them, but people won't accept their music because it doesn't fit into the traditions of their genre. At the same time there is room for people to reach between genres. The innovations that the band brings onstage with them are all accepted or rejected in the style of the genre. In vaudeville the rejection of a performer involved throwing rotting fruit at the performer, at punk shows rotting fruit is sometimes an honorific so this is obviously a subjective judgment. Regardless of the subtlties of the genre there is an implicit dialogue between the performers and the audience. The course of this dialogue is, according to Young's line, political. 
 This notion of the political is to a great degree identity based. In many ways it touches on the distinction between the flags that make for identification and the identifiers. People who can recognize "true metal" are part of an in-group that gets to say "What the f*** happened to Metallica?" According to Young they don't even have to be performers in order to wonder about Metallica, and indeed most of us who maintain that the bus should have fallen on Lars aren't music experts. 
 The relationship between the performer and the audience is easy to push even further when the idea of mechanical reproduction is added.    Unfortunately I sort of lost professor Young's thread when he got to reflexivity and mechanical reproduction. Getting back to my hypothetical example, when I learn how to play a metal guitar solo, I probably won't bang my head to a recording of my own music. 
 The political relationship between the performer and the audience is one that can be applied to any interaction if you assume that human nature is almost entirely socially constructed. At the same time the idea that it can be preideological is a little weird. Ideology is the system of beliefs that underpin political decisions. The rejection of new Metallica is not based on their music being objectively bad in some sense. People have loosely systematized, even if not rationalized issues with Metallica. Now's about the time when you ask if I am going somewhere with this? Maybe I will next week. There's certainly a lot to review when Ed  Young speaks.