![]() ![]() By “identity,” I refer to both the ways that an individual thinks of himself or herself in relationship to other people and the way that others classify an individual because they perceive or otherwise categorize the person to be associated with specific collectives. Identity is an interesting issue in the armed forces because so much emphasis is placed by both those in the upper echelons and those in lower ranks on shared identity. New technological developments enable American troops to listen to music throughout days and nights during both leisure and work time activities, allowing for the ongoing blending of life and art, or as Eric, a white Army medic in his late 20s whom I interviewed on February 26, 2007, put it, “music was huge over there!” Examining troops’ musical practice of listening sheds light on the complicated and diverse “ways for people to reaffirm old identities and forge new ones” within the especially demanding context of war. Some members of the American military compose and perform music while deployed to Iraq almost all listen to music and listen to music a lot, suggesting that this daily engagement with music is an important part of troops’ experiences of war. This article is about musicking, specifically, the practice of listening to music. Ĭhristopher Small offers the term “musicking” to emphasize that “music is not primarily a thing or a collection of things, but an activity in which we engage.” He defines the word to include performance, composition, listening, and dancing. Our musical practices do not blend life and art as thoroughly as they do in some parts of Africa, but they nonetheless function as nodes in a larger network, as complicated and diverse as ways for people to reaffirm old identities and to forge new ones. No less than in Africa, we encounter music everywhere-at the schools and the symphony halls, in the churches and the taverns, on the radio and television. We enter a world of music already in progress around us. ![]() Musical practices do not ‘start’ when we pick up an instrument or when we pay attention to what is happening in a given song.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |