Music plays an important role in all our lives, and is a channel through which we can express emotions, thoughts, political statements, and social relationships. However, just as music can be a channel through which we express ourselves, it can also have a profound influence on our own developing sense of identity. This is the first book to explore the powerful effect that music can have as we develop our sense of identity, from adolescence through to adulthood. Bringing together leading experts from psychology and music, it will be a valuable addition to the music psychology literature, and essential for music psychologists, social and developmental psychologists, and educational psychologists.
Music is a tremendously powerful channel through which people develop their personal and social identities. Music is used to communicate emotions, thoughts, political statements, social relationships, and physical expressions. But, just as language can mediate the construction and negotiation of developing identities, so music can also be a means of communication through which aspects of people's identities are constructed. Music can have a profound influence on our developing sense of identity, our values, and our beliefs, whether from rock music, classical music, or jazz. Different research studies in social and developmental psychology are beginning to chart the various ways in which these processes occur, and this is the first book to examine the relationship between music and identity. The first section focuses on Developing Musical Identities, and deals with the ways in which individuals involved in musical participation develop personal identities that are intrinsically musical. Chapters include: 'The self identity of young musicians', 'Musical identities and the school environment' and 'Personal identity and music: a family perspective'. The second section deals with Developing Identities Through Music and contains chapters on 'Gender identity and music', 'National identity and music' and 'Music as a catalyst for changing personal identity'. This is the first book to deal with musical identity from a psychological perspective, and will be fascinating and important reading for postgraduate and research psychologists in social, developmental, and music psychology. The book will also appeal to those within the applied fields of health and educational psychology, music education, and music therapy.
The Handbook of Musical Identities explores three features of psychological approaches to musical identities and four real-life contexts in which musical identities have been investigated. The multidisciplinary breadth of the Handbook reflects the changes that are taking place in music, in digital technology, and in their role in society.
Music is a tremendously powerful channel through which people develop their personal and social identities. Music is used to communicate emotions, thoughts, political statements, social relationships, and physical expressions. But, just as language can mediate the construction and negotiation of developing identities, so music can also be a means of communication through which aspects of people's identities are constructed. Music can have a profound influence on our developing sense of identity, our values, and our beliefs, be it from rock music, classical music, or jazz. Musical identities (MacDonald, Hargreaves and Miell, 2002) was unique in being in being one of the first books to explore this fascinating topic. This new book documents the remarkable expansion and growth in the study of musical identities since the publication of the earlier work. The editors identify three main features of current psychological approaches to musical identities, which concern their definition, development, and the identification of individual differences, as well as four main real-life contexts in which musical identities have been investigated, namely in music and musical institutions; specific geographical communities; education; and in health and well-being. This conceptual framework provides the rationale for the structure of the Handbook. The book is divided into seven main sections. The first, 'Sociological, discursive and narrative approaches', includes several general theoretical accounts of musical identities from this perspective, as well as some more specific investigations. The second and third main sections deal in depth with two of the three psychological topics described above, namely the development of and individual differences in musical identities. The fourth, fifth and sixth main sections pursue three of the real-life contexts identified above, namely 'Musical institutions and practitioners', 'Education', and 'Health and well-being'. The seventh and final main section of the Handbook - 'Case studies' - includes chapters which look at particular musical identities in specific times, places, or contexts. The multidisciplinary range and breadth of the Handbook's contents reflect the rapid changes that are taking place in music, in digital technology, and in their role in society as a whole, such that the study of musical identity is likely to proliferate even further in the future.
Music of the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas has long been recognized as defining one of a dozen or more musical "scenes" across the country. In Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank, himself a musician who played and lived in the Texas capital, studies the history of its popular music, its cultural and economic context, and also the broader ramifications of that music as a signifying practice capable of transforming identities. While his focus is primarily on progressive country and rock, Shank also writes about traditional country, blues, rock, disco, ethnic, and folk musics. Using empirical detail and an expansive theoretical framework, he shows how Austin became the site for "a productive contestation between two forces: the fierce desire to remake oneself through musical practice, and the equally powerful struggle to affirm the value of that practice in the complexly structured late-capitalist marketplace."
The musics of Africa play a particularly important role in expressing and forming identities. This book brings together African and Nordic scholars from both musicology and other disciplines in an attempt to analyse various aspects of the complex playing with volatile identities in music in Africa today. Taken together the papers put new light on the assumed or real dichotomies between countryside and city, collective and individual, tradition and modernity, authentic and alien. The papers are based on contributions for a conference organized by the research project “Cultural Images in and of Africa†of the Nordic Africa Institute together with the Sibelius Museum/Department of Musicology and the Centre for Continuing Education at Ã...bo Akademi University in Ã...bo (Turku), Finland in October 2000. The book includes a keynote speech by Christopher Waterman (UCLA), and an introduction by Annemette Kirkegaard, Copenhagen University. Southern, West and East Africa are represented in the studies, which cover a great variety of musics.
Postnational Musical Identities gathers interdisciplinary essays that explore how music audiences and markets are imagined in a globalized scenario, how music reflects and reflects upon new understandings of citizenship beyond the nation-state, and how music works as a site of resistance against globalization. "Hybridity," "postnationalism," "transnationalism," "globalization," "diaspora," and similar buzzwords have not only informed scholarly discourse and analysis of music but also shaped the way musical productions have been marketed worldwide in recent times. While the construction of identities occupies a central position in this context, there are discrepancies between the conceptualization of music as an extremely fluid phenomenon and the traditionally monovalent notion of identity to which it has historically been incorporated. As such, music has always been linked to the construction of regional and national identities. The essays in this collection seek to explore the role of music, networks of music distribution, music markets, music consumption, music production, and music scholarship in the articulation of postnational sites of identification.
Music, Popular Culture, Identities is a collection of sixteen essays that will appeal to a wide range of readers with interests in popular culture and music, cultural studies, and ethnomusicology. Organized around the central theme of music as an expression of local, ethnic, social and other identities, the essays touch upon popular traditions and contemporary forms from several different regions of the world: political engagement in Italian popular music; flamenco in Spain; the challenge of traditional music in Bulgaria; boerenrock and rap in Holland; Israeli extreme heavy metal; jazz and pop in South Africa, and musical hybridity and politics in Côte d’Ivoire. The collection includes essays about Latin America: on the Mexican corrido, the Caribbean, popular dance music in Cuba, and bossanova from Brazil. Communities of a cultural diaspora in North America are discussed in essays on Somali immigrant and refugee youth and Iranians in exile in the US. Grounded in cultural theory and a specialized knowledge of a particular popular musical practice, each author has written a critical study on the mix of music and identity in a particular social practice and context.
Cutting across countries, genres, and time periods, this volume explores topics ranging from hip hop’s influence on Maasai identity in current day Tanzania to jazz in Bulawayo during the interwar years, using music to tell a larger story about the cultures and societies of Africa.
Looking at musical globalization and vocal music, this collection of essays studies the complex relationship between the human voice and cultural identity in 20th- and 21st-century music in both East Asian and Western music. The authors approach musical meaning in specific case studies against the background of general trends of cultural globalization and the construction/deconstruction of identity produced by human (and artificial) voices. The essays proceed from different angles, notably sociocultural and historical contexts, philosophical and literary aesthetics, vocal technique, analysis of vocal microstructures, text/phonetics-music-relationships, historical vocal sources or models for contemporary art and pop music, and areas of conflict between vocalization, "ethnicity," and cultural identity. They pinpoint crucial topical features that have shaped identity-discourses in art and popular musical situations since the1950s, with a special focus on the past two decades. The volume thus offers a unique compilation of texts on the human voice in a period of heightened cultural globalization by utilizing systematic methodological research and firsthand accounts on compositional practice by current Asian and Western authors.
