ABSTRACT
Music has a wide range of social functions (Crozier, 1997; Gregory, 1997), including healing, the accompaniment of dancing, the creation of a group or ethnic identity, the relieving of work through the use of rhythmic singing, storytelling, religious worship (Rouget, 1985), salesmanship, the entertainment of oneself and others, and the communication and arousing of emotions. The performance of music is essentially a social experience (Crozier, 1997; Frith, 1996; Hargreaves and North, 1997). From a social-psychological viewpoint, Hargreaves and North (op. cit.) argue that for the individual consumer the social functions of music create a context in which three issues are key: the management of self-identity, of interpersonal relationships and of mood. They find that musical preference acts as a mark of identity during adolescence in particular. Again, DeNora (1999) conducted more than 50 in-depth interviews with female consumers and found that respondents used music as a resource for doing emotional work, a mood-changer, a way of doing identity work and to help build life stories or self-narratives.
