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This book has offered a reasoned summary of over 150 musical lives, showing how each has unique and complex paths to varying types of participation from listening to performing. This chapter concludes by examining the ways in which these stories might assist us to bring a more coherent and informed agenda to understanding musical ability, development, and identity.

This chapter explores the intersections of musical and homosexual identity in twentieth-century American culture. It examines the operative categories and constructs in the cultural and historical specificity of New York-based gay composers from the 1920s to the 1950s, taking a social-constructionist view of what were often highly essentialized understandings of self and other. It also addresses questions that readily arise from queer identifications of so many celebrated twentieth-century American composers, including Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, and Marc Blitzstein.

This chapter analyzes the connection between musical desire and queer desire, and musical identity and queer identity. It suggests that recognizing the so-called musicosexual “closet codes” and their workings may clarify and complicate any number of issues in musical modernism concerning the activities and work of artists both gay and straight. It also contends that engaging these codes is essential to any genuine understanding or appreciation of the lives and work of this gay modernist composers' circle and their contemporaries and to any understanding of the mutual cross-coding of homosexuality and musicality that continues to shape our own cultural universe.

This chapter discusses the processes and factors involved in the development of an individual's musical skills throughout his life. It also takes into consideration the maturational processes that the individual goes through and the possible decline in his physical skills as he matures. The chapter talks about how these may affect his musical skills. This chapter contains an interesting discussion on the maturational process in acquiring music and musical identity, and learning from exceptional musical development. It also takes a closer look into a musician's mind. The chapter ends with how an individual ‘loses music’ as he grows old. Inasmuch as it provides details on how music can be acquired during the period of infancy, the chapter also gives details on how musical faculties can be lost due to age-related factors.

This chapter argues that a modern revival of traditional music is accompanied by a shift in the sociocultural network of which the original music had been a part. Traditional and revival cultures thus often represent two completely different sociocultural environments. Likewise, many English revivalists did not grow up in a traditional, but rather an American musical environment, which was also imitated and adapted. Yet, becoming increasingly part of a global mainstream, many — strongly influenced by A. L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl — subsequently started to rediscover English music as a counter-identity. The modern re-adaptation process was also shaped by the use of modern mass media, which led to a broad selection process. Yet many musicians developed an intensive and conscious relationship to the tradition. While political issues also played a central role, traditional music was especially taken as a strong means of cultural identity within a globalized context by these musicians.

This chapter considers the diverse forms of musical identity manifested in electronic dance music. It begins with a theoretical account of musical ontology in terms of the interaction of three related spheres: work, text, and performance. The second and third sections are based largely on ethnographic accounts of DJ and laptop performances. The fourth and final section combines these theoretical and practical orientations by developing a conceptual model for the multiple, fluid ontologies of EDM performance and applying this framework through an extended analysis. Major areas of concern include the effects of recording practices and techniques on musical ontologies, relationships between elements of musical identity and their material instantiations, and the ways in which musical identity may change over time and through the involvement of multiple creative agents.

Chapter 2 proposes a theory of adolescent musical identity based on the experiences of 30 American adolescents, ages 12-18. Musical identity is organized in four developmental periods: (1) active construction, (2) emerging, (3) developing, and (4) focusing. Each developmental period is described in detail with subcategories. Important others who contribute to musical identity include parents and family members, peers, music educators, private lesson instructors, and community music facilitators. The chapter highlights the central experience of musical identity development as feeling musical, a pivotal moment where adolescents described making music for themselves. At the end of the chapter, a visual figure situates musical identity as a dynamic process traveling from externalized to internalized identity construction.

Musical identities are central to the formation of identity in emerging adulthood. We examined how standard psychological approaches to identity apply to musical identities, and how individual differences in personality and music preferences are involved. Results from a large-scale study of undergraduates from two university campuses revealed that: (1) preferences for different musical genres vary according to culture, environment, and ethnic background; (2) music preferences are associated with personality characteristics, particularly openness-to-experience; (3) performing musicians and non-performers prefer different genres of music; (4) participants’ musical identity statuses have only small associations with identity formation in other domains; and (5) music preferences are associated with musical identities, as well as with individual differences in personality, self-concept clarity, and music training.

By conceiving musical experience to be the raw material of musical identity, this chapter brings the role of the musical self-concept into play. In comparison to identity, self-concept has only rather recently appeared on the platform of human science. It is based on self-awareness, related to self-perception, leading to self-description, and influencing thinking, feeling, motivation, expression, and action. Dimensions of the musical self-concept, which have been empirically demonstrated in large samples of participants, are presented. Musical self-concept is hypothesized to be the psychological structure that turns personal musical experiences into musical identity. Connecting musical identity to musical self-concept sheds light on basic activities of the mind, awareness, and consciousness, and on the interactive concept of recognition. The construct of self-concept itself, best understood from the point of view of cognitive and social-constructivist theory, may well have evolved from an increased societal basis for self-reflection, and individualism.

In this chapter arguments are set out proposing that musical identities related to learning and teaching constantly change and develop throughout the lifespan in response to cultural norms and the feedback received from interactions with others and that it is possible for music to be a central element of an individual’s learning identity even though they do not play an instrument. The chapter considers the complex nature of musical identities in a wide range of educational contexts, formal and informal and examines the relationships between musical identities and a range of factors including perceived ability, understanding of music, the development of expertise, motivation and cultural expectations. The relationships between musical and other identities are explored and how musical identities change through the lifespan as individuals move between different learning and employment environments.

This chapter argues that explanations of why and how music making and listening contribute to many kinds of identity formation—including musical, personal, social, cultural, gendered, and ethical identity development—should begin with a concept of personhood. In other words, selfhood and personal identity are not identical with personhood, but primary dimensions of it. Part one presents an embodied-enactive concept of personhood. Part two provides philosophical arguments that support our concept of personhood and explain the roles of empathy, ethical idealization, and moral communities in the co-construction of personhood, musical identities, and musical experiences. Part three knits parts one and two together by offering reasons why music making, listening, and musical praxes can serve as “affordances” for lifelong experiences of identity formation and “full human flourishing,” or eudaimonia.

This chapter takes as its point of departure my chapter in Musical Identities (2002), and the distinctions between national, ethnic, and cultural identities. At a time when the idea of the national state is being eroded in favor of identifications, which are simultaneously local and global, national identity in music mainly manifests itself as a top-down project in school curricula. On the other hand, in the informal musical interaction and learning, which is actually taking place, not the least on the internet, the individual’s musical cultural identity is formed in dialogue with many different cultural contexts: it is therefore important to recognize the many and varied ways in which people relate to their backgrounds, and how they choose to put these into play in their cultural practices. Today, globally shared intertextual references have become very common, not least in popular culture. Musical imagination and creation thus involves acting in a global intertextual musical arena in which national or ethnic backgrounds are negotiated and reconfigured in new cultural surroundings. In this chapter these issues will be further developed and discussed in the light of theories of intertextuality, and the concepts of discourse in music and the personal inner musical library. I will focus on young people’s collaborative musical creativity from both local and global perspectives, and the consequences of this for music education.

Chapter 1 introduces several concepts used throughout the book. A discussion of Christopher Small’s musicking begins the chapter. The reader then gets to know the 30 adolescent contributors along with their backgrounds. The chapter explores the concept of being musical as the core of one’s musical identity including one’s musical self-esteem, self-concept, and self-representation. In the interest of further unpacking musical identities, three key ideas are offered including the self as adaptive, identities as complete self-systems, and the influence of individuals and social systems on identity. The end of the chapter calls on the reader to focus on here and now and acquaints the reader with the book’s structure.

This chapter will consider the nature of the learning processes involved when children engage with popular music, privately and in school music settings. The opening section addresses sociocultural roles of popular music in children’s lives and how it provides avenues of shared experiences with family members, and a platform for shared understandings and cultural capital between peers. Popular music styles play a predominant role in the listening environment for many children, and the chapter highlights some of the ways children participate in popular music informally and how this engagement works to affect their conceptual and emotional views of music, which emerge in formal learning situations. Listening is not a passive activity for children, but rather forms the basis for musical engagement and identity construction. Highlighted throughout is children’s use of informal and holistic processes, which inform the development of their musical identities.

The music classroom in any country is increasingly affected by globalization, immigration and ever-widening access to new media. This article examines identity formation in schools on the collective and daily interactive level, as related to agency and as identities might appear and have been studied within the contextual frames of localized, but increasingly globalized music classrooms. This examination is done by utilizing three categories of collective identities. In this context, Castell’s legitimizing identities refer to the taken-for-granted nationalism and patriotism, and the hegemony of classical music, resistance identities to the acknowledgment of actors in positions devalued by the logic of domination, such as youth or immigrants, and project identities of becoming to democratic identities that further progressive social transformation in and through music. The concept of a hybrid “music classroom community identity” is constructed to serve as an educational guideline for identity work that relates to understandings of, as well as a need of vis-à-vis solidarity and ethical values in music education.

There are interesting and important similarities and differences between the various musical identities displayed by the population of Australia and South Korea. Each reveals contrasting musical identities of a social nature, which might be described in terms of self-categorization theory. In Australia, there is a vibrant group identifying with American style Country and Western music, another identifying with Elvis Presley and his music, and strong identification with western classical and religious music. In South Korea, many young people identify with Psy’s Gangnam Style and K-pop, but there is strong support for religious music and western classical music. The launch of K-pop in the mid-1990s on social media produced new identities and Australia’s newest international pop star, Sia Furler, has similarly generated a huge following through the internet and YouTube. South Korea values its ancient traditional court music and Australia recognizes the music of the Aborigines. This chapter explains these musical identities, comments on the various educational opportunities available, and argues that the emergence of the high-speed internet and social media have revolutionized the formation of musical identities.

The idea that a ‘musicianship of listening’ might exist alongside the more conventional notion of musicianship based on composition, improvisation, and performance forms the starting point of our analysis of the importance and function of musical preferences in adolescence. We consider adolescents’ musical preferences, a key part of their social identities, in the context of broader lifespan changes in musical preference, looking in particular at the explanatory power of the notion of ‘open-earedness’. We consider the main psychological theories of adolescent musical preference, distinguishing between those based on social identity theory and those which adopt different sociocultural approaches. There can be no doubt that musical preferences form a central part of the identities of many adolescents, and that the notion of a musicianship of listening can help explain why these preferences are integral to their social relationships and wellbeing.

This chapter embraces a wide spectrum of settings and circumstances in which children are engaged in the acquisition of musical repertoire, knowledge, and values. Within families and across communities, informal processes of enculturation and socialization are in operation in lieu of (or in tandem with) formal teaching and learning in schools, studios, and other institutional contexts. The growth of disciplinary attention to children’s learning and their perceived beliefs, interests, and needs is acknowledged, particularly with attention to the emergence of an “ethnomusicology of children” that considers children’s musical identities as the product of family, peer, and mediated forces. In brief excursions to a variety of geo-cultural contexts, music transmission and learning are described for the rich set of global practices that they are, with attention to their cross-cultural and culture-specific features.

Social empathy is the capacity of an individual to be compassionate toward others. Does this capacity influence one’s musical identity and engagement with music? Recent research has examined the relationships between empathy and music. The evidence presented in the literature suggests that empathy consists of several dissociable components, making its relationship with music complex. One component is emotional contagion. It has now been established that people can “catch” emotions from both other people (e.g., automatically feeling sad when someone else is sad) and when listening to music (e.g., happy music making the listener feel happy). This chapter explores the idea that musical identity can be influenced by aspects of empathy through shared use of “contagion circuits.” Activation of contagion circuits is a prerequisite for empathy, but not sufficient. However, it is sufficient for “capturing” emotions from music, where social perspective taking (another component of empathy) is not required. A Common Coding Model of Prosocial Behaviour Processing is proposed that shows how components of empathy are apprehended by music, thus explaining why, for example, people with an autistic spectrum disorder suffer deficits in empathy, but can still engage in music and its emotional content. The model predicts that people with low cognitive empathy, but normal affective empathy will have a stronger and more eccentric musical identity than those who are normal social empathizers, and therefore more influenced by social norms. Susceptibility to emotional contagion and one’s perspective taking abilities are therefore proposed as individual differences that contribute to musical identity.