Music and Human Identity

I just listened to this radio broadcast via a link on the KUT website.

The recording is a fascinating article on the success of a guitar class in a juvenile correctional facility. Music, it seems, has the power to heighten an individual's sense of self-control and self-worth. One of the interviewees even says, playing the guitar allows these kids to discover something about who they are.

This fits in with the findings the students in my class, Music and the Natural World, keep stumbling onto: music acts as bonding agent and, in helping define us within a group, also reinforces and strengthens our identity as individuals. This appears to be a trait of humanity, not just classical music, not just our culture, not just the Western world.

I just touched on this same subject in a column I wrote yesterday for the Asbury Park Press, appearing this Sunday. By way of acknowledging Christmas, Hannukah and the New Years holidays, I point out this role of music in expressing the spiritual and physical bonds we share as humans.

--C.
www.theandofone.blogspot.com
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