Music in the Course of Life

This book illustrates how social meanings provided by music are experienced throughout the course of life. To this end, the author examines in depth the concepts of self, identity, socialization, and the life course itself. Social scientists have traditionally focused on music experiences among different generations, one at a time, with an emphasis on young audiences. This book explores appreciation for and use of music as a dynamic process that does not begin when we enter adolescence, nor end when we become adults. It demonstrates the relationship between the experience of music and the experience of self as a fundamental feature of the more general relationship of the individual to society. Music completes the circle of life. The author bases his analysis on observations made through a variety of qualitative studies and methodologies, as well as his own music autobiography. Clear and jargon free, this book is a timely application of key concepts from the everyday life sociologies for scholars and students in the sociology of music and culture and other related disciplines such as anthropology and ethnomusicology. It will be of interest for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in culture, music, symbolic interaction, social psychology, and qualitative research methods.

Joseph A. Kotarba is Professor of Sociology at Texas State University, U.S.A. where he directs the Music Across the Life Course Project. He also serves as Medical Sociologist and Ethnographer for the Institute for Translational Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He received the George Herbert Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction; and the Society's Charles Horton Cooley Award for Best Book in the Symbolic Interactionist Tradition for Baby Boomer Rock 'n' Roll Fans (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013); and the Society's Helena Lopata Award for Excellence in Mentoring. He is currently studying the relationship between science, medicine, and music; the experience of music during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the culture of the translational science movement. He received his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.

Introduction 1 Early Childhood: The Music-Self as Being 2 Later Childhood/Early Adolescence: Experimenting with the Music-Self 3 Later Adolescence and the Becoming of the Music-Self 4 Becoming of the Music-Self in Early Adulthood 5 Adulthood: "Still Becoming" 6 International Experiences of the Adult Music-Self 7 The Early Elders' Music-Self as "Been There" 8 Community as the Vortex for Music and the Self 9 Compassion for Later Elders and Music at the End of Life: The Music-Self Comes Full Circle Conclusion