ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role that music plays in the evolution of habitus and in the way that memory consecrates those musical experiences to allow us to relive the past in the present. Music’s centrality as a maker of meanings for young people is reflected in the way it contributes to what De Nora refers to as ‘embodied awareness’ – the nexus between the experience and the environment where the experience occurs. Music is the experience but all of the associated environments –physical, human, mood – contribute to this awareness and create the ‘soundtrack of our life’ which we carry with us into adulthood. This creates a sense of entitlement to endorse elements of the soundtrack of our lives as authentic, thus conferring a sense of entitlement to misrecognise musical acts dismissed as not able to meet the authenticity test. The band Nickelback and performer James Blunt are prime examples of this misrecognition.
