Music as identity

Music can be a powerful marker for our memories. We hear a sound and it brings us back to a moment of time, not unlike smells or things that trigger our other senses. Music is embedded into our personal memories and, in part because of this, it plays a huge role in how we imagine ourselves. Music is part of our identity. We use it to share who we are and what “groups” we are in. We use it to build relationships with others while listening together, singing together, chanting at football games, dancing at clubs, listening to hymns in church, and so on. It’s pervasive and layered, just like our identities.

In this module, we explore how music helps to make us who we are. It’s a big topic, so we will break it down and leave other parts of the conversation for other parts of the class. Our focus here will be on our sense of identity, who we think we are. But it’s not just about what we think about ourselves: music also plays into what we show others about who we are.

Throughout these next pages, we will see examples of people sharing their music to show certain aspects of their identities and others holding onto music as a way to remember their own past. We also briefly think about what our music can say about us and our personalities. We will follow this by focusing more intently on this idea of music and memory. How do we look at music to tell our own stories about ourselves? We will look at musical styles and musical instruments that have been embedded with meaning and consider how this meaning continues to operate in the face of modern crises of identity.

Music and who we are

People are lots of things and we are good at being lots of things at the same time. I’m a college teacher, a researcher, a musician, a dad, an amateur woodworker (I like to build banjos…), and other things all at once. Each of these pieces of who I am put me into different communities, some of which overlap. Many of my colleagues are also musicians. But many others are not, especially those who are not in the College of Musical Arts. Of course, some are, like a sculptor in the art area who builds and plays guitars. The lines between our identities and our communities are not “boundaries” that divide us into pieces, they are layers that overlap. Instead of being mutually exclusive, these layers give us a chance to build nuance into how we think of ourselves and how we show what we are to others.

In this section, we’ll look at three examples of how this works. It may be a good time to revisit your musical autobiography response, especially before you prepare for the next assignment: an interview with an “elder.”

Layered identities

Consider the list of my identities from the last paragraph. I could also add “white man who grew up in middle-class suburban neighborhoods” and “child of the 1980s and 1990s.” Those two things dramatically impact the music that I listened to when I was a teenager. Certain choices did, too. When I started playing bass in the high school jazz band, I was introduced to a very different musical world. When I joined a funk band of people who were older than me, the same thing happened again. But the “dad” part means that the soundtracks for Frozen and Moana, two Disney movies, were often on in my home (and in my head). And the music’s really good, so I’m okay with that! In fact, the jazz experience changes the way I hear “Into the Unknown” from Frozen 2. And being a bass player who enjoys 70s-era funk means that I may pick up on different parts of “Shiny” from Moana than others may.

This is all to say that who we are is complicated and layered. What are some of the layers in your identity? How do they overlap and where are they really different?

The next part of this is about how we present ourselves to others. How do you foreground some of these elements of yourself at different times? Are there parts of your identity that are not really appropriate in other parts of your life? Maybe you conveniently wear headphones when listening to certain things around your parents or family, things that you think they wouldn’t approve of. Or, perhaps you know a 40 or 50-year old who loves singing along to embarrassing pop songs when no one is listening, a “guilty pleasure.” I don’t bother talking about growing up listening to Polish-American polka music in general conversation, but it is part of who I am.

But it’s a music class, so here is an example of some of the polka that I heard at dances while growing up in Western New York. And the group is from nearby Toledo!

Toledo Polkamotion: “Celebrate”

For this section of the course, you have a reading and a film to watch. The reading explores this idea of presenting certain elements of yourself as members of the Aztec community in Mexico gather to remember their history, not unlike how members of Toledo’s Polish-American community come together for polka festivals. In the reading, Kristina Nielsen uses an idea from a scholar named Stuart Hall called “articulation theory” to understand how we swap out different parts of our identity at different times. From the reading:

Hall likened this process to a truck with multiple interchangeable trailers [… He] points out that these elements are not permanently fused but rather flexible. New elements can be coupled together (and in turn decoupled), and in the process they can change how individuals and communities identify.

As you read and watch the embedded videos, think about where you might be changing out different “trailers” or aspects of your identity in different contexts. How are you different in the classroom than at home? How do your tastes change during a holiday season? On summer vacation or during a winter storm? When you are feeling joyful or down?

Remembering ourselves

Music and memory can be especially important during times of extraordinary change. We will look at moments of technological change later, where people are grappling with how the world and their communities are shifting and how traditions are becoming more obviously fluid. Have you ever had a parent or grandparent complain about a lack of respect for how things are done? (This comes up in my family around Christmas time.) What about how people act or dress? Their priorities?

It’s not always the world that changes around us, though. An especially powerful case of people holding on to music to remember their past while also using it within a very different present comes up in the case of forced migration. I’m talking about refugees, people who are fleeing violence, fear, or poverty and struggling to find better lives for themselves and their families, often at great sacrifice.

The last part of this segment is a film called Wajd, Songs of Separation. It follows different musicians who have left wartime Syria for Europe and Turkey. In some cases, they are leaving their families to find stability with the hopes of bringing them to a new home. This section is not about Middle Eastern or North African music generally, but here I ask you to consider the many ways in which music is serving these individuals as a link to a past—a memory—and as a way to represent themselves and navigate their efforts toward a better future.

Required reading and viewing

• Kristina Nielsen, “Music and Identity in Danza Azteca”
• Wajd, Songs of Separation, or similar: see your course shell or course announcements for details

Assignment: Interview an “elder”

Not only are we focusing on memory here, we are dealing with a whole lot of change in this course. How do people remember music? How do memories of music come back? How do those memories influence the way people think about change, whether in technology, taste, appropriateness, and on and on?

In this discussion, I ask you to do an interview with someone you consider to be an “elder.” This may not be someone who is older than you, but it should be someone who can reflect on the sounds of generations and contexts that are unfamiliar to you. If you are 20, think about asking a relative or friend who is in their 80s about their youth. If you are 80, consider finding someone who grew up in a very different set of circumstances than you (perhaps someone who is from another country, or from a rural or urban area).

You should plan on your interview being at least an hour or so. It can be casual, but sit with someone and listen to his or her story. Ask about this person’s opinions regarding how the music that he or she loved from the past held up, did this person’s tastes change? Are there memories that make this music special or powerful? Pull up some examples on a streaming service and listen together. How are your reactions different? How are they similar? You can record the conversation (a smartphone’s voice memo function is likely good enough, but get permission, of course) or take good notes so that you can reflect back when writing.

This is intentionally open ended. I want it to be a chance to connect with someone, perhaps someone special with whom you’ve never had this type of conversation. When you sit down to write your short (300 word) essay, report how the conversation went to us. Use specific quotes to describe what your interviewee remembered. Tell us about his or her opinions and tastes, the experiences that shape preferences. Again, this is open ended: if something powerful happened, explore that. If not, think about why that may be the case.

When writing, link this to how music and memory work, how music relates to identity, or something similar. Connect it to the required class materials. There’s a lot from the class that can inform the way people talk about their own musical histories. You may want to read ahead a bit if you need some ideas.

For your comments to your peers’ essays, reflect on each conversation. Respond to what happened, or didn’t happen. How do these experiences match your own, or those of the people you talked to? What larger themes seem to appear? Do any patterns hint at how tradition and modernity work within our communities?

An important note

Remember to connect your thoughts to the readings in specific ways: what relates, what caught your attention? Without clear references to the readings, you won’t be able to get full credit! Review the discussion grading rubrics for details.