Music has throughout history helped define our identity. Professor Even Ruud believes that music has become even more important as an identity builder in the age of streaming.
/ 18/05/2018 / Willy MartinsenNorwegians have become music streamers. 81 percent of us stream music, 48 percent pay for music via streaming services and Norwegians are at the top of the world in Spotify usage. This was shown by the Polaris Music Survey from 2017, where TONO surveyed the Norwegian music listener.
Today, we no longer need to save up money for the latest album by our favorite artist, or borrow it from a friend. Almost all the music in the world is available at the touch of a button.
– Music creates memories. We use music as time markers in our lives. It is an access to our private history.
– With today's electronic media, we can fill our lives with music from morning to night. It is present from childhood to funeral. And music connects us to time and place, to other people and our most important experiences, says Professor Even Ruud.
But does the new way of listening to music affect how we identify with the music and our musical idols? Or have we become uncritical consumers of ready-made playlists? Is the time when a music genre was also a lifestyle over?
Even Ruud is professor emeritus in musicology at the University of Oslo and in music therapy at the Norwegian Music Institute.
university. He has both a doctorate in musicology and a cand. psychol. – and has written 20 professional books. Ruud's research is leading in the borderland between music and social research.
– Music is part of our identity. The music – or the memories and associations connected to the music – says a lot about who we perceive ourselves to be and who we want the outside world to perceive us as, how we remember our own history and how we want that history to continue, he explains.
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Ruud explains that our identity – who we experience ourselves to be – is the sum of everything we have experienced and all the stories we create about ourselves – our story. In this story, music is an important piece.
– Music creates memories. We use music as time markers in our lives. It is an access to our private history. For example, I can date something to 1963. It was because John Coltrane held his legendary concert in Njårdhallen. Our emotional memories related to music are part of the history of ourselves, he says.
Ruud says that throughout history, music has had an identity-building function in several ways.
– Throughout history, music has helped to mark an individual's belonging to a group. When the idea of the nation-state emerged in the 1700th and 1800th centuries, music was important as a national identity builder. Take, for example, the national anthems, and how Grieg went back and drew from folk music. Music became a tool in a nation-building project.
– Music has been, and is, a unifier for entire religions, it has been a marker for class affiliation and politics in the labor movement, and for affiliation to different cultures and subcultures.
Ruud explains that personal identity as we know it is a relatively new concept.
– In the past, your identity was something you were born into. You were born into a social status or class. Then we say that in the 1700th and 1800th centuries, the individual was “liberated”. Gradually, your own identity becomes something you create yourself, increasingly free from innate belonging. Today, personal identity is stronger than ever. We live in an age of individualism, he says.
In recent times, music has been an important way of building identity towards the outside world, especially for young people.
– When I was young, for example, I listened to Duane Eddy. Why? To show that I was a bit tough. Admittedly not naughty enough that I listened to Elvis. But tougher than listening to Cliff Richard. Music becomes a way to profile yourself, it becomes a social card to play out to position yourself, he says.
The professor continues:
– Being a punk in the 80s meant much more than just liking punk. It was a lifestyle, a style of clothing and a set of political values. Different genres of music have also been associated with what has been considered good taste throughout history.
Despite living in the age of streaming, Ruud doesn't believe that we identify less with the music we listen to or that music represents less of who we are. But it has perhaps become more difficult to find the music that you feel at home with.
– I would say that music today is only becoming more important as a marker of identity. We live in an era of self-representation and individualism. Your Spotify playlists are as much a part of your self-representation as your Facebook or Instagram profile.
He concludes:
– But it was probably “easier before”. The booths were clearer. You couldn’t be both a jazz fan and a rocker in the 50s. The lines between genres and subcultures are not so steep today. We are more musically omnivorous in the sense that we “shop” more freely in the enormous music selection we have. It is accepted to enjoy music across genres – from classical to hip-hop.