From the mid-1960s into the disillusioned 1970s, little instruments and non-instruments (transistor radios, contact microphones amplifying tiny sounds or surface noises extracted from tables, beards, cheese graters, etc) became symbols of the drive to democratize music, to allow access to unskilled players (including children), draw sound from instruments rather than subjugate them to systems, open the music up to chance events and create a sense of collectively organized community as an attempted break from hard professionalism, particularly, the star system that afflicted both jazz groups and classical performers.

— Ocean of Sound by David Toop (Page 135)