Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:17:34.511Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Growing and Grooving to a Steady Beat: Pop Music in Fifth-Graders’ Social Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Extract

As everyday musical experience becomes increasingly mediated by radio, recordings, television, film, and computers, scholarly and popular discourses about music are periodically punctuated by concerns over consumer passivity and alienation. When we shift the focus to the musical practices of children and youth, these concerns are accompanied by age-old arguments over the intellectual, moral, and physical effects of music on developing young people. Charles Keil (1998:304) has recently suggested that humanity is in dire need of “restoration of grooving-capacity,” or else “boredom, anxiety, consumerism, and business as usual will kill us.” This is apparently a continuation of his earlier concern (1993:2) that mass mediation may be “enriching our private lives at the expense of a broader sociability.” Undoubtedly, thoughtful critiques of mass media constitute important work for musicologists; grass-roots projects for enlarging the musical materials to which children have access are equally valuable. Nevertheless, I think it's too early to condemn mass mediation as the pathway to human devolution.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Appadurai, Arjun 1996 Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Patricia Shehan 1998 Songs in Their Heads: Music and its Meaning in Children's Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Christenson, and DeBenedittis, 1986 “Eavesdropping on the FM Band: Children's Use of Radio. “Journal of Communication 36(2):2738.Google Scholar
Christenson, DeBenedittis, and Lindlof, 1985Children's Use of Audio Media.” Communication Research 12(3):327343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Bennett, Stith 1971An Exploratory Model of Play.” American Anthropologist 73:4558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyson, Anne Haas 1996Cultural Constellations and Childhood Identities: On Greek Gods, Cartoon Heroes, and the Social Lives of Schoolchildren.” Harvard Educational Review 66(3):471495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erikson, Erik 1950 Childhood and Society. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Feld, Steven 1994Communication, Music, and Speech About Music.” In Music Grooves, ed. Keil, and Feld, , 7795. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Finnegan, Ruth 1989 The Hidden Musicians: Music-making in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frith, Simon 1996 Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Frith, Simon 1981 Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Coll, García and Magnuson, 1997The Psychological Experience of Immigration: A Developmental Perspective.” In Immigration and the Family, ed. Booth, Alan, et al., 91132. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul 1993 The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Giroux, Henry 1994 Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goode, Schneider, and Blanc, 1992Transcending Boundaries and Closing Ranks: How Schools Shape Interrelations.” In Structuring Diversity: Ethnographic Perspectives on the New Immigration, ed. Lamphere, Louise, 173214. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart 1997aThe Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” In Culture, Globalization, and the World-System, ed. King, Anthony, 1940. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart 1997bOld and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities.” In Culture, Globalization, and the World-System, ed. King, Anthony, 4168. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart 1989Ethnicity: Identity and Difference.” Radical America 23(4):920.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart 1981Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular'.” In People's History and Socialist Theory, ed. Samuel, R., 227240. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart and Jefferson, Tony, eds. 1993 [1976] Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
James, Allison 1995Talking of Children and Youth: Language, Socialization and Culture.” In Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Amit-Talai, and Wulff, , 4362. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
James, Allison 1993 Childhood Identities: Self and Social Relationships in the Experience of the Child. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
James, Allison and Prout, Alan, eds. 1990 Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood. Basinstoke: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
James, Allison, Jenks, Chris, and Prout, Alan 1998 Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Keil, Charles 1998Applied Sociomusicology and Performance Studies.” Ethnomusicology 42(2):303312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keil, Charles 1993Introduction.” In My Music, ed. Crafts, Cavicchi, and Keil, , 13. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Kubey, and Colletti, 1989Changing Channels: Early Adolescent Media Choices and Shifting Investments in Family and Friends.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 18(6):583599.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Middleton, Richard 1990 Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
McRobbie, Angela 1994 Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortner, Sherry 1998Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World.” Cultural Anthropology 13(3):414440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortner, Sherry 1991Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture.” In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, ed. Fox, Richard, 137161. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Renato 1994p.c. quoted in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, James Clifford, 1997:56. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartzman, Helen 1978 Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play. New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, Mark 1993 Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Small, Christopher 1996 [1977] Music, Society, Education. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Staton, Ann 1990 Communication and Student Socialization. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Stephens, Sharon 1995Children and the Politics of Culture in ‘Late Capitalism'.” In Children and the Politics of Culture, ed. Stephens, Sharon, 348. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sutton-Smith, Brian 1982A Performance Theory of Peer Relations.” In The Social Life of Children in a Changing Society, ed. Borman, Kathryn, 6577. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, Associates.Google Scholar
Sutton-Smith, Brian 1977Play as Adaptive Potentiation.” In Studies in the Anthropology of Play, ed. Stevens, P. New York: Leisure Press.Google Scholar
Thorne, Barrie 1993 Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Brett 1991Good Guys and Bad Toys: The Paradoxical World of Children's Cartoons.” In The Politics of Culture, ed. Williams, Brett, 109132. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Willis, Paul 1990 Common Culture. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Willis, Paul 1981 [1977] Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar