Table Of ContentMy Music
MUSIC/CULTURE
A series from Wesleyan University Press
Edited by George Lipsitz, Susan McClary, and Robert Walser
My Music Music, Society, Education by Christopher Small
by Susan D. Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, Charles
Keil, and the Music in Daily Life Project Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and
Listening by Christopher Small
Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and
Madness in Heavy Metal Music Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and
by Robert Walser Celebration in African American Music
by Christopher Small
Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West
by Mark Slobin Singing Archaeology.Philip Glass’ Akhnaten
by John Richardson
Upside Tour Head! Rhythm and Blues on
Central Avenue by Johnny Otis Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the
Phenomenology of Musical Experience
Dissonant Identities: The Rock ’n’Roll Scene in by Harris M. Berger
Austin, Texas by Barry Shank
Music and Cinema edited by James Buhler,
Black Noise: Rap Musk and Black Culture in Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer
Contemporary America by Tricia Rose
“You Better Work!” Underground Dance Music
Club Cultures: Music, Media and in New York City by Kai Fikentscher
Subcultural Capital by Sarah Thornton
Singing Our Way to Victory: French Cultural
Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction Politics and Music during the Great War
by Keith Negus by Regina M. Sweeney
Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, The Book of Music and Nature:
and Puerto Rican Cultures An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts
by Frances Aparicio edited by David Rothenberg and
Marta Ulvaeus
Any Sound You Can Imagine:
MakingMusic/Consuming Technology Recollecting from the Past: Musical Practice and
by Paul Théberge Spirit Possession on the East Coast of Madagascar
by Ron Emoff
Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal
Music and Dance Theater Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop
by Edward Herbst Outside the USA
edited by Tony Mitchell
A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in
Music from Basie to Motown—and Beyond Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders
by Preston Love by Helena Simonett
My Music
Explorations of Music
in Daily Life
Susan D. Crafts
Daniel Cavicchi
Charles Keil
and the MUSIC IN DAILY LIFE PROJECT
W E S L E Y A N UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown, Connecticut
Published by
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown, CT 06459
© 1993 by Wesleyan University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 32
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Originally produced in 1993 by
Wesleyan/University Press of New England
Hanover, NH 03755
Contents
Foreword by George Lipsitz ix
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction I
Children
Heather “I dance to ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady.’ ” 7
Johnnie “ You have to have a lullaby before you sleep.” 8
Carley “ I just play with my songs . . .” 12
Billy “ I was stuck in the snow cave, and I felt like listening
to music.” 17
Jennie “ They teach us that so we know what to do with our kids
when we grow up.” 23
Molly “I like to look for things that people don't really
recognize.” 28
Teenagers
Lisa “What would the human car do ... ?” 37
Matthew “ They play weird songs you have to be so old
to know.” 42
Connie “ Rap is things you say fast. . .” 49
Edwardo “Sometimes I think about life, and all
the problems I have.” 52
May “ I still have my violin from when I was five.” 54
Anita “ I listen to other music and then I go see the Dead.” 61
Contents / v
Young Adults
Beth “ It’s the first remedy for trying to get out of
my boredom . . .” 69
Mabel “. . . if I were to cuss someone out right after church, what
does my singing mean?” 74
Alan "I'm not gonna sit there and worship someone.” 80
Abby “ It’s about aggression.” 85
Rhonda "Roger Waters is really it for me." 90
Gail "It's hard to explain . . . it’s all feelings and emotions . . .” 94
Victor "They feel it more because they created the instrument." 99
Chad "It is not just the making of sound . . . it is how one nation
expresses its opinion.” 103
Adults
Neil "Music is just part of life, like air." 109
Ralph "It's a kind of critiquing ... an enjoyable critiquing.” 113
Betty ". . . I can’t wait to come home and get back
to my Neil Diamond.” 118
Carl "I can't give it up.” 125
Charles "To be the creator of it is to participate directly in that point
of coherence of the earth, of the universe, of humanity, of
meaning; all else is darkness.” 134
Karen "I like mood tapes, subliminals, and new age music. That
really sets me free.” 137
Keith "As I developed from childhood to adulthood, the music
developed with me.” 140
Wanda “. . . if I don't think of music in terms of dance, I'll think of it
in terms of colors.” 143
Stan “... if I don’t know it perfectly, I won't do it.” 148
Older Adults
Richard “ I actually become what I hear.” 155
Stella “. . . country and western is the only . . . adult music.” 159
Sally “ It can make you cry, and then other times it can really
perk you up.” 163
Frances “. . . the type of music that sells today is for that age group
that really doesn't care about the words.” 167
Contents / vi
Violet “. . . if I were home cleaning by myself during the day I might
put Pavarotti on and have it shaking to the rafters!” 170
James “ Regardless of what it is, somebody likes it.” 174
Steve “ I would say thirty percent of what I know about life today was
gleaned from songs.” 181
Elders
Ken “... when I was in the service, when we had the band playing, it
instilled a lot of things in you.” 189
Anthony “When you sing, you pray twice.” 194
Elaine “... if anybody wanted to dance at a party I was at
the piano.” 198
Helene “ Well, I was beautiful then and, boy, could I dance.” 204
Samuel “ It takes the fear away from you.” 207
Appendix: Music in Daily Life Guidelines by Charles Keil 211
Index 215
Contents / vii
This page intentionally left blank
G E O R GE L I P S I TZ
Foreword
A few years ago, a reporter for a national magazine asked the jazz pianist
Abdullah Ibrahim to explain how he first became interested in music.
Recognizing the question as a standard opening for interviews with
performers, Ibrahim nonetheless refused to answer directly. Instead, he
challenged the question’s premises in order to illumine an important
difference between music making in the United States and in his native
South Africa. "People always ask this question, you see, and I under-
stand why [laughs], because here it seems as if it's a concerted effort
which you have to go through when you're a child, that you have to
start singing or start playing. In Africa, you're born into it. It's all part
of the day-to-day living.”1
Ibrahim insisted upon representing music as a social rather than an
individual activity. Where he grew up, music played a vital role in medi-
cine, in religion, and in politics—not as an ornamentation or commen-
tary on them, but as a vital and organic part of the practices themselves.
Rephrasing the interviewer’s question, Ibrahim replied, "it's not when
7 started to play; music was there . . . you open up your eyes, it's in the
home, in the community.”2
Ibrahim's insight illumines an important aspect of music anywhere—
its inescapable identity as a social practice. When you open up your eyes,
it's there. Although Ibrahim delineates important differences between
musical practices in South Africa and in North America, we arc helped
by his formulation to notice an often ignored reality about music making
in the United States and in all advanced industrialized countries. Here,
too (in part because of the powerful African presence in all European
and American popular music), musical practices do not “start” when
we pick up an instrument or when we pay attention to what is happen-
ing in any given song. We enter a world of music already in progress
Foreword / ix
