THE FUNCTION OF MUSIC: With Radiolab's Jad Abumrad by Mac Premo

The Function of Music (2016), dir. Mac Premo. With Jad Abumrad. Co-produced by Adrianna Dufay and Divya Gadangi. Sound mix/design by HEARby and Owen McLean. Via Vimeo.

Mac Premo is many things — artist, filmmaker, commercial director, occasional one-man show. But ask him about music and something shifts. He grew up on the outskirts of DC, in a house where politics was constant conversation and the Dischord scene was the soundtrack — music that was, as he puts it, "both emotionally inclusive and intellectually empathic." Power chords you could feel in your chest, but also work that was genuinely about something. For Premo, that combination never left him.

His films and art have shown at PS1 MoMA, The Brooklyn Museum, The New Museum, and beyond. He's earned 13 New York Emmy® Awards and fellowships from NYFA and The New Institute in Hamburg. But underneath the resume is someone who believes music is singular among art forms — not just sound, not just feeling, but what he calls "the embodiment of meaning." Something that, when it really hits you, ceases to be a form and becomes a medium.

The Function of Music is his attempt to get at that. He sat down with Radiolab's Jad Abumrad to talk about sound, music, and what music actually does — then turned that conversation into a film. Consider this his thank-you note to the fact that music exists at all.

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The Cue the Record Journal is a space to explore the stories, histories, and cultural threads woven into the music we gather around. If you’re interested in contributing a written piece, reflection, or critical response, email us at journal@cuetherecord.com. We’re always open to thoughtful voices and original perspectives.