Trax on the Trail 2020 | Paul Christiansen on the Evolution of Music in Television Political Ads by WRGC

In 2020, presidential candidates will wage an all-out assault on Americans’ eyes, ears and sensibilities.
At Trax on the Trail, we focus on the way campaigns use music and sound to differentiate their candidate and persuade you to vote for them.
In each episode of the Trax on the Trail podcast, hosts Dana Gorzelany-Mostak and Naomi Graber breakdown the music candidates play at rallies and in campaign ads and how voters manipulate and remix sound to signal support or disdain for the politics and politicians of our times.
The Trax on the Trail podcast is the aural alternative to the Trax on the Trail research project that will catalogue and critique the soundscape of the 2020 presidential election. You can follow along at traxonthetrail.com.
In this episode, Musicologist Paul Christiansen talks about the use of music in television campaign ads.
Christiansen is a professor of musicology at Seton Hall and the author of Orchestrating Public Opinion: How Music Persuades in Television Political Ads for U.S. Presidential Campaigns, 1952-2016.