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Creativity Quote by Siobhan Fahey

"Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation"

About this Quote

Fahey’s line is a quiet rebuke to the way we’ve trained ourselves to talk about pop music as “content” and shows as “product.” She drags the conversation back to the body: music as “gut,” not brain; “primal,” not “modern.” It’s not anti-intellectual so much as anti-sanitized. The point is that the deepest power of a song isn’t its cleverness or even its message, but its ability to bypass your defenses and land in the nervous system. You don’t argue with a bassline. You submit to it, or you don’t.

Calling a gig a “ritual” is doing a lot of work. Ritual implies repetition, codes, a shared script: the opening track like a call to order, the chorus as communal recitation, the lighting and volume as choreography for mass feeling. “Congregation” sharpens the provocation. In an era where organized religion has thinned out for plenty of people, concerts become one of the few remaining places where strangers agree to gather for synchronized emotion, to be moved on purpose, together, without irony as a prerequisite.

There’s subtext here about modern isolation and disembodiment: streaming alone, earbuds as personal chapels, algorithmic choice as pseudo-freedom. Fahey’s framing insists the live room still matters because it restores the social function music used to have in older cultures: binding people through rhythm, repetition, and release. It also slyly reframes the performer’s job. Not influencer, not brand ambassador: officiant, conduit, catalyst.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Fahey, Siobhan. (2026, January 17). Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/music-is-a-gut-thing-youre-working-in-a-medium-75780/

Chicago Style
Fahey, Siobhan. "Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/music-is-a-gut-thing-youre-working-in-a-medium-75780/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/music-is-a-gut-thing-youre-working-in-a-medium-75780/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Siobhan Fahey (born September 10, 1957) is a Musician from United Kingdom.

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