Join Matt Dineen for a reading and discussion around his new zine "Not for You: Stories of Music & Work from the Precarious Service Industry." The zine is part of the Music & Work Project and explores the antagonistic dynamics between management, workers, and customers in relationship to the beats, rhythms, lyrics, and melodies played at his past jobs. Come share your own experiences!

The Music & Work Project seeks to explore the role that music plays in our working lives. How do the soundtracks to our jobs shape our daily experiences on the clock? Are these songs functioning only to increase productivity and profits for the boss? Or is the workplace playlist freely controlled by their workers to reduce alienation and open a portal toward liberation? Can music be a tool of resistance? What if there is no music at all? Looking at the realities of wage labor through the lens of music has the potential to heighten our understanding of capitalist society – and hopefully illuminate possibilities beyond the current economic system. And unlike existing academic and corporate research on music in the workplace, this exploration is from the bottom up; from the eyes and ears of actual workers.

Matt Dineen is an independent scholar and activist based in Philadelphia. He has traveled across the East Coast and Midwest facilitating readings and discussions while creating space for people to share their own experiences of music and work. In addition to various community centers and bookstores, he has presented at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, DC; the Goddard Graduate Institute in Plainfield, VT; and Interference Archive in Brooklyn, NY. A published writer and political organizer for the past 15 years, Dineen has also served on the board of directors of a community radio station in Western Massachusetts and coordinated events programming at a radical bookstore in Philadelphia. He holds a BA in Sociology from Bard College and an MA in Individualized Studies from Goddard College where he studied the potentials of worker-owned collectives and the dilemma of artists and activists in capitalist society.