ABSTRACT
Music is a rich form of symbolic discourse that enables humans to articulate a sense of self and community, as well as an array of emotions and embodied experiences perceived as meaningful in our lives. According to sociologist Peter Martin (2006, p. 65), music offers people ‘a sense of secure identity – whatever they wish that to be – and a sense of belonging at a time when the accelerating pace of economic and technological change is making it increasingly difficult to achieve continuity and stability in social life’. Identity is, therefore, an indispensable facet of music’s significance, one typically conceived in terms of social constructs such as nationality, gender and ethnicity. But is consideration of such categories essential in order to make sense of musical experience, and what might such a perspective serve only to obscure while at the same time enabling particular features of musical practice to be brought into sharper focus? What is the nature of the relationship between ethnicity, for example, and musical understanding, and to what extent may musical practices and meanings transcend ethnic boundaries?
