Popular Music across the Life Course

Abstract

Although popular music subcultures among youth have been studied extensively, and recently researchers have examined the continued involvement of these same fans in these subcultures as they age, a life‐course perspective has not been brought to bear on this topic. In this entry, the authors outline the questions that might be addressed by using a life‐course perspective to study music consumption and production. In so doing, the authors distinguish between the developmental and life‐course perspectives and between cohort and aging effects. Most research on the role of music in people's lives focuses on a specific age group: adolescents, young adults, midlife adults, young‐old adults, and old‐old adults. Here these findings are combined and used to describe what we know about the connection between music consumption and production with social relationship development and involvement, identity formation and maintenance, and the establishment of well‐being across the life course. In conclusion, the authors discuss future directions for research on popular music consumption and production across the life course including methodological issues, theoretical issues, and gaps in the literature.

Building a life note-by-note: music and the life course

“…The main issue with research on music consumption, identity, and socialization is that it has been largely attended to by age group/cohort with little examination in regards to life course development aside from a few sources (for examples see Adams & Harmon, 2017;Bennett, 2013) -this is the case in the leisure literature and beyond (sociology, communications, cultural studies). What this study does is provide an empirical examination of participants' reflection on their lives with music and its connection to their current involvement and affiliations, suggesting the potential to "see" how lives develop through music over the decades.…”

“…As meanings are socially constructed (Blumer, 1969), the very social and public aspects of music make it an obvious venue for understanding how people negotiate aspects of identity, friendship, and perspective (DeNora, 2000). That these pivotal components are the bedrock of a life welllived stresses the importance of concepts like the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001(Fredrickson, , 2003 to provide insights into how people transcend the hardships of life by connecting them to their personal histories and valued experiences which they cultivated through their pursuit of leisure (Adams & Harmon, 2017;Bennett, 2013). In the event when fans were faced with traumatic circumstances, having the potential to pull from their accrued resources of positive experiences and emotions served as a buffer to the felt-impact of their personal setbacks and tragedies (Kleiber, Hutchinson, & Williams, 2002).…”

“…Scholars have considered the ability and importance of music to act as a therapeutic tool in cognition and physical coordination or strength ( However, there is a dearth of focus on the role of music as it is used, embraced, and identified with over the course of a lifetime. There are few studies of significance that look at how music use develops over the course of one's life (for exceptions see Adams & Harmon, 2017;Bennett, 2013). Much as Hendricks (2012) said that early life experiences are "embodied in the individual upon their occurrence and have a direct impact" (p. 228) on later circumstances, so too can music be defining and significant from the earliest interactions in adolescence to the last notes played at our funeral.…”