Abstract
Meaningful musical experiences during youth can leave a lasting impression on an individual by shaping their identity and place in the world. This study examines such experiences in relation to autobiography and self-identity. An online questionnaire (N = 50) was distributed to establish how individuals understood musical experiences from their youth as important to their past and present self-identities. Following the online study, 10 questionnaire participants were selected to be interviewed to further examine the meanings created within their nominated experiences, and how these meanings had been autobiographically contextualised against the backdrop of the memory of these experiences. Questionnaire data was analysed using Thematic Analysis to establish shared autobiographical- and identity-related concepts. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis served as the methodological framework for analysing the participant interviews to support a more individualised interpretation of each participant’s experience. Data from the online questionnaire were analysed to reveal a network of identity- and autobiography-relevant themes, which were organised under three wider thematic categories: the self, the social, and the musical. Analysis of the interviews, guided by Identity Theory, revealed individual differences in participants’ processes of identity formation, relationships with music, and attitudes towards their past selves. In both sets of data, prominent themes emerged around ideas of personal transformation and pivoting to a new path in life. These findings frame autobiographically significant musical experiences as powerful in their potential to contribute to identity formation, although their impact varies for each individual. We assessed this autobiographical significance through the enduring salience over time of the identity the experience affected, enabled by our respondents’ reflections on both their past and their present self-identities. Our results illustrate that music can support a wide range of self-identity-relevant meanings, and fundamentally transform our sense of who we are.
Introduction
The ability of music to anchor events in our autobiographical memory is remarkable. A song on a crackling radio has the power to send us back in time, allowing us to relive the past and reflect upon who we were and how we saw ourselves. These music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) have been shown to be a powerful trigger for memory recall, often more vivid than memories elicited by other stimuli – such as images (Belfi et al., 2016) – and can be recalled decades after the original event and even persist in the presence of neurodegenerative diseases (Cuddy et al., 2017; El Haj et al., 2012). Previous research has explored music recall ability (Bartlett & Snelus, 1980; Schulkind et al., 2013); however, few studies have examined the content of these recollected events or investigated how these memories are situated within broader autobiographical contexts. This study builds on the work of Janata et al. (2007) – in which the content of MEAMs were identified into broad categories – and Alf Gabrielsson’s Strong Experiences with Music (SEM, 2011) – which explored myriad powerful and transformative experiences – and focuses on exploring the autobiographical significance of meaningful musical experiences. The link between music, memory, and autobiography is investigated through the lens of identity, in keeping with the assertion that ‘both memory and self are constructed through specific forms of social interactions and/or cultural frameworks that lead to the formation of an autobiographical narrative’ (Fivush & Haden, 2003, p. xii). Our focus on youth is motivated by the analytical fertility of the ‘reminiscence bump’ (Rubin et al., 1986), a concept recently re-assessed by Loveday et al. (2020) in terms of the ‘self-defining period’ (SP) to better account for ‘the main theoretical aspect of memories from the SP, which is their enduring relation to self across the lifespan’ (p. 1; our italics). Autobiography, memory, and identity are co-constitutive: by exploring the way we interpret the effects of meaningful musical experiences on our past-and-present identities, we can better understand their autobiographical significance and the types of memories they engender.
Our understanding of identity is guided by the Identity Theory (IT) of Burke and Stets (2009). In this framework, individuals are said to have various identities: clusters of meanings that they have internalised as roles, based on constant dialogue between the self and the ‘patterned’ social structures in which it exists (Stryker, 2008, p. 19). These identities are then activated in appropriate situations, leading the individual to behave in keeping with the identity’s meanings and thus perceive their identity performance as successful. Since terms such as ‘self’ and ‘identity’ are often used in confusingly mixed ways (Oyserman et al., 2012), we observe an analytical distinction between the overarching ‘self’, which denotes ‘an individual’s consciousness of his or her own being’ (Burke & Stets, 2009, p. 9), and ‘identity’, which denotes the ‘self as’ something; for example ‘father, […] storekeeper’ (p. 10). In order to link these binaries to the autobiographical concerns of this study, we borrow Giddens’ term ‘self-identity’ to discuss ‘the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 53; italics original). In this (auto)biographical vein, we endorse McAdams’ claim that each of us is the ‘life story’ we develop, although we retain ‘self-identity’ over his preferred ‘identity’ to avoid confusion (2003, p. 187).
IT pins down the key variables that interest us in our respondents’ autobiographical reports of past identity meanings and behaviours, in the form of the following concepts:
Identity standard: This is ‘the self-meanings of an identity’ (Burke & Stets, 2009, p. 50), the internalised values that define what a particular identity means for the individual it acts through.
Salience: This is ‘the likelihood that [an identity] will be activated’ (p. 133), and reflects its position in an individual’s identity hierarchy.
Identity hierarchy: This is the hierarchy of all the identities internalised by an individual, in which more situationally specific identities at the bottom tend to be moderated by increasingly general identities higher up in the hierarchy (p. 136).
We used these concepts because they enable the organised analysis of our respondents’ discussions of their past and present self-identities. We analysed the meanings introduced to the identity standards affected by our respondents’ meaningful musical experiences and measured the relative salience of the corresponding identities, in order to contextualise the overall autobiographical significance of their chosen experiences.
Other social-psychological perspectives on identity have emphasised group identification, such as social identity theory (SIT; see Hogg, 2003; Thoits & Virshup, 1997). IT was chosen because its individual emphasis matches our own focus on unique, individual life narratives, and our wish to elicit responses in such terms.
What is music’s place in all this? Identity-oriented musicology and music psychology have offered some useful frameworks and concepts. Hargreaves et al. offered a useful distinction between ‘identities in music’, that is, identities we take from music, and ‘music in identities’, that is, the use of music to pursue prior identity goals (2002, p. 2). More broadly, DeNora (2000) has influentially understood music as a Foucauldian ‘technology of the self’, while Hesmondhalgh, following Nussbaum, has regarded it as a means for ‘human flourishing’ (2013, p. 5), that is, the ‘idea of living a good life’ (p. 17). The common sentiment here is that music can facilitate activities and modes of understanding that help individuals to manage their identities (for good or ill; see Hesmondhalgh, 2008, 2013, pp. 40–41). Relating this sentiment to IT, we here understand music as a ‘resource’: as a means with which we do our identity work (Stets, 2006, pp. 97–98; Burke & Stets, 2009, pp. 99–109).
Uniting these ideas, we define an autobiographically significant experience as one that has inaugurated or affected an identity that remains salient over time. Since self-identity is an inherently autobiographical phenomenon, the enduring salience of an identity over time can be said to indicate the autobiographical significance of any experience that has impacted it, as reported by the individual in question.
Research Question
How do meaningful musical experiences in youth contribute to identity formation, and how are these contributions contextualised in autobiographical memory?
Methods
In order to investigate the research question, a two-part methodology was devised, consisting of an online questionnaire followed by interviews, to provide both general and specific data about meaningful musical experiences. The research project was guided by Yardley’s (2000) research principles: sensitivity to context, rigour of data collection, transparency of methods, and impact.
Recruitment for the online survey was carried out through university email lists and word of mouth. Participants were required to be 18 years of age or older, with no additional restrictions placed on participation. A threshold of 50 participants was set in order to collect sufficient qualitative data within the time restrictions of the research project. Fifty-three participants responded to the questionnaire with three participants being omitted from the study due to their failure to submit responses. The average age of participants (N = 50) was 35.8 years (SD = 12.73) with a range between 18 and 64 years. The participant ages were non-normally distributed, with skewness of 0.84 (SE = 0.34) and kurtosis of -0.51 (SE = 0.66). Participants comprised 22 men and 28 women (men’s age: M = 37.3, SD = 12.7; women’s age: M = 34.7, SD = 12.8). The nationality of participants was reported as British (27), American (7), German (4), Swedish (2), and 10 other individual nationalities (Paraguayan, Italian, Turkish, Belgian, Irish, Canadian, Greek, Polish, Swiss, and Vietnamese). Though the survey was made accessible to the general public, many of the respondents were directly associated with universities. The level of education reported was high, with 21 (42.9%) of the participants holding a graduate degree and 14 (28.6%) a doctorate. Musical background was also high with an average of 15.32 years (SD = 11.90) of musical training and 16.48 hours (SD = 11.29) of music listening per week, while 23 (46%) participants reported attending live music events at least monthly. Ten participants were selected from those who had volunteered to be interviewed and had comprehensively articulated their experiences in detail in the questionnaire. These participants were generally representative of the survey respondents in education and musical background.
The online questionnaire was securely hosted by JISC (www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk) and collected data regarding demographic information, musical background, and the relation between meaningful musical experiences from youth and the creation of autobiography and identity. Three free-response questions were posed to participants. These questions (given in the following) were designed to allow participants to recall past experiences and express them in their own words. We deliberately chose the terms ‘personal identity’, ‘sense of self’, and ‘understanding of “who you were” at that time’ for their everyday resonance, in order to provide ample conceptual breadth for various participant interpretations and allow for unique understandings of similar concepts.
Please describe in your own words a musical experience from your youth that you found particularly meaningful to your personal identity, sense of self, or understanding of ‘who you were’ at that time. This can be an experience of playing music or listening to music (live or recorded). Please be as descriptive as possible in your recollection of the event and specify your age at that time.
How did this experience influence your sense of personal identity, sense of self, or ‘who you were’ at the time?
How, if at all, does the same music influence your personal identity, sense of self or ‘who you are’ now?
Participant data from the online questionnaire was analysed using Thematic Analysis, following the guidelines of qualitative inquiry set by Boyatzis (1998), and the procedure phases suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006). This methodological approach was chosen due to its ability to identify patterns from a large number of participants with responses of varying length. These patterns were analysed, categorised, and condensed into themes to give insight into responses and guide the analysis of interview data.
Following the online questionnaire, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews – which lasted an average of 40 minutes – with each of the ten participants, wherein four main questions were posed:
Please retell in your own words the musical experience from your youth that you found particularly meaningful to your personal identity or understanding of who you were at that time.
What was the relationship you had with this music at the time?
Did this musical experience mark/coincide with a more generally important moment, such as a romantic episode, moment of tragedy/loss?
How important is music generally to your sense of self or identity?
All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed by the researchers, and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), according to guidelines suggested by Smith et al. (2009). To complement the questionnaire data, these interviews sought to build richer accounts of the participants’ lived experiences (p. 32) and draw out the meanings of those experiences (Larkin et al., 2006; Smith, 2004). IPA was chosen due to the relatively small number of participants (Reid et al., 2005) and the self-reflective nature of the questions posed. Analyses made by each researcher were audited and cross-validated by the other researcher.
Results and Interpretation
Questionnaire
Describe in Your Own Words a Musical Experience from Your Youth that You Found Particularly Meaningful to Your Personal Identity, Sense of Self, or Understanding of ‘Who You Were’ at That Time
The free response data collected from the online questionnaire varied in length between participants, with reports spanning from a few sentences to several paragraphs. These responses were coded for pertinent and insightful information. These codes were then compared with each other to reveal common and higher-level themes that were shared between many participants. The emerging themes were analysed as belonging to one of three general topics: The Self, The Social, or The Musical (see also Lamont and Loveday (2020) for a similar approach to topical differentiation). The delineation of these topics is best viewed as a permeable membrane, one that allows a theme to leech outside its own topic and connect with themes categorised under other topics. Each of these topics and their respective themes were examined through direct participant quotations and interpreted to reveal thematic connections.
The first topic, The Self, contained the themes of Identity Creation, Personalisation of Music, and Emotional Responses. The theme of Identity Creation captured explicit descriptions of processes involved in establishing self-identities. Several participants described instrumentalist identities, and how events early in their lives acted as critical origin points for these identities. At the time I didn’t have any particular hobby or passion. From that period on I have always been a boy who plays violin. That has always identified myself. That particular passion and ability was something special nobody else shared with me. (P8)
Personalisation of Music described the way individuals felt the music was directed at them and/or how they saw themselves in the music. The idea of music ‘speaking’ to the individual was raised by multiple participants, implying a direct and purposeful connection between the music (and often lyrics) and the listener. This sense of the music’s personalisation often coincided with identity- and meaning-creating processes due to the explicit focus on the self. By seeming to address the participants (in each case) as individuals, the music established the self as the frame of reference for its meanings. In addition, strong identification with particular musical artists reportedly lent a sense of personalisation to the music: ‘It seemed as though he was speaking directly to me’ (P13). The musician on the recording was understood to be an active participant in the listener’s experience; this can be seen as an act of social surrogacy (Schäfer & Eerola, 2020) whereby the listener feels an attachment to a particular person in the music and even a sense of belonging (Greenwood & Long, 2009). It just spoke to me in a very deep way, like it just connected with my soul somehow, and I knew that this was my kind of music. It was energetic, rebellious, melodic, fast-paced, and at the same time the lyrics were very articulate and thoughtful and personal and meaningful, and it all just clicked. (P20)
The theme Emotional Responses was created to capture the physiological and cognitive emotional sentiments many respondents reported. Often these expressions indicated strong, intense experiences that were overwhelming and uncontrollable. The majority of the emotional content was positively valenced, expressing joy, ecstasy, and happiness. These intense positive experiences predominated the responses, echoing the results found in Gabrielsson’s SEM (2011). However, the negatively valenced responses were also present and can be understood via the ‘music as a mirror’ concept mentioned previously. I felt a sense of despair around me, and the album seemed to mirror that for me. (P50)
The second topic, The Social, relates individuals’ understandings of themselves with the world around them. This topic consists of two themes – Family, Friends, and Peers and Political Relationships – and captures the dialogue between these social ties and meaningful musical experiences. The first theme, Family, Friends, and Peers, describes the relationships closest to the individual. By asking participants to recall experiences from their youth, it was not surprising that many responses detailed school- and family-related experiences and the associated interpersonal relationships. These relationships shaped how participants understood themselves as social beings, and simultaneously affected the development of their self-identities. General social themes common among many responses were feelings of isolation, the need for rebellion, and friendship. Individuation from one’s family was achieved by embracing new and different music. This acted as a lesser form of rebellion that set the individual apart from those close to them and afforded them a new arena for identity creation independent from their other social spheres.
The Political Relationships theme was derived from numerous responses in which participants discussed themselves in relation to the wider world and socio-political structures in which they lived. Notions of class, social in/justice, and nationality were often invoked. Participants often contrasted their chosen musical experiences with their day-to-day lives, wherein ideas about the world around them came into conversation with the narrower social spheres of friends and family. The band [Cake] also interjected a bit of politics into what they were into…and their politics (American Left) was very different than my family and extended families at the time (American Right) and felt a strange disconnect between my families identity and the identity of loving this band and the music. I think everything they were singing about and talking about really resonated with me and their music really gave me a way to adopt this new identity as my own without outright going against the culture and politics I was currently a part of. (P34)
The third general topic, The Musical, was formed of two themes: Musical Features and Uses of Music. These themes described the characteristics of the music, how the music was presented, and the uses it was put to in processes of identity creation and formation. In Musical Features some of the participant descriptions focused on the sonic qualities of the music (e.g. timbre) whilst other participants commented on more traditional musical features (e.g. instrumental arrangement). These features perceived in the music itself can be interpreted as related to and/or reflective of the self. Other musical descriptions from participants’ referenced evocative lyrics and novelty of the music. These musical descriptions also commented on the personal understanding of lyrical content and incorporated the meaning of these lyrics into the overall larger understanding of their sense of self. A full discussion of lyrical influence on identity is outside of the purview of this study, but research has been carried out in this area showing its importance (e.g. Michael, 2019; Skinner, 2018).
The final theme, Uses of Music, referred to the ways in which the music was consciously employed by participants for identity-forming processes. One particularly interesting function was that of using music to enter into adulthood. This sense of growth from childhood or adolescence was shared between several participant responses. I felt this was a [music] group who appealed to the older teens and I wanted desperately to be an adult before my time. (P25)
How Did This Experience Influence Your Sense of Personal Identity, Sense of Self, or ‘Who You Were’ at the Time?
Several themes emerged from the second question, which focused on the influence of the musical experience on self-identity. Identity as a Musician was a common theme mentioned in the previous section. For some their experience was a continuation of a previously established identity, while for others it acted as a starting point for their identity as a musician. These experiences were often not just the impetus for taking up music as a hobby, but elsewhere it prompted the musician identity to be reflexively recognised and promoted. P7, who reported, ‘I made the fact that I played an instrument one of the first things I would tell someone about myself.’
A second theme, Opening up of the self, encompassed expressions of expanding one’s mind and embracing new ideas. In these cases, a deep engagement with music birthed a curiosity about the wider world. I suppose it made me think of myself as a person who was thirsty to find out about how different people thought about the world. (P24)
Another theme dealing with the evolution of the self was Change in Life Path, denoting a reorientation of the self-identity trajectory. The ‘this could be my life’ (P15) sentiment projects the self into the future and offers new possibilities for the way individuals see themselves. This theme has similarities with Becoming a New Person, a rare but interesting expression that described a fundamental change in self-identity such that their previous sense of self-identity was replaced entirely. These recollections often differed from the slower longitudinal evolutionary processes of self-identity seen in other themes.
The last identity-related theme was Finding a Place in the World. This described the feelings of validation of one’s self-identity due to a sense of affinity with the music and/or by the musicians. This was internalised by individuals to develop a sense of belonging, and of their identity being conferred and confirmed by social surrogates. So it did make me feel like, ok there is a place in this world for me as well, because these people made this music and we must be similar somehow. (P20)
How, if at all, Does the Same Music Influence Your Personal Identity, Sense of Self or ‘Who You Are’ Now?
This study was interested in not only how individuals saw themselves at the time of their meaningful musical experiences, but also how that music now resonates with their self-identity. Relatively common in these data was the expression of nostalgia from looking back on youth and comparing it with the present. Often this manifested in expressions of fondness for the music regardless of its current relation to identity. Participants who rejected the influence of their formerly influential music on their current self-identity attributed this to changes in musical preferences over time. I definitely moved on with my musical taste over the years. At 17 or so, I happened to be at an AC/DC concert, and already then I did not feel it anymore. (P40) It is foundational to how I experience and use music to this day. How I use music to help me think through what I am feeling and going through, taking advice or comfort from lyrics. The music itself always reminds me of good and bad times, and how I have grown in the last 5–7 years. (P53)
Interviews
The participant interviews explored the themes of the questionnaire in greater depth. With this richer data, in which more embellished life stories emerged. It was then possible to see more clearly the patterns of autobiographical significance that the reported musical experiences tended to form, and the corresponding identities through which this significance manifested. We categorised each of our ten interview responses under one of six main themes. These themes aim to summarise the autobiographically contextualised self-identity effect of the musical experience reported.
Vocational Path in Life
This theme characterised the responses of P1 and P11, who are both musicologists. In these autobiographical reports, the meaningful musical experience served to orient them vocationally. [S]uddenly I had this clarified ‘this is what I wanted to do’, and, you know, it was a moment where my ambitions had been sort of clarified for me a bit and I sort of recognised the role that music had played in my life and the formation of me as a person and my social circle and all of those things. (P1)
P11’s experience was similar, if less epiphanic. Although they had already been ‘obsessed’ with it beforehand, their surprise trip to see Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco on their tenth birthday was understood as ‘the moment where the real obsession’ began. They trace a narrative line from this event to their developing musical and linguistic abilities, which were often-invoked sources of pleasure and pride in their youth, and the mechanisms of salient identities, such as their singer identity. Like P1, these interests eventually led them, if indirectly, to the musicologist identity that now underpins their professional life. Less like P1, any firm causal links between their experience and that identity have been obscured for them by the 24 years that have passed since (9 years in P1’s case), and are undermined by their having been already interested in Nabucco prior to the concert. Nevertheless, P11’s presentation of this experience as one which influenced their self-identity at the time, along with the consistent salience of musical and music-related (e.g., linguist) identities across their life, demonstrate the memory’s autobiographical significance.
Maturation
This theme characterised the responses of P24 and P34, who associated their experiences with their wider personal development, fuelled by the promise of a richer socio-cultural consciousness perceived in the ‘mystery’ (P24) and ‘weirdness’ (P34) of the music involved. I think music just opened up all these possibilities of what music can be, what your life can be. (P34) [T]he idea that the range of what was out there could be found in the little song was exciting to me, and…it also suggested to me what kind of person I might like to be, and that was to be a person that was curious and wanted to learn and wanted to search and try and find out about life and how you might approach it in as many ways as possible, and I would say I’ve been the same ever since. (P24)
A similar process emerged in P34’s report. They cast their experience of seeing the band Cake in concert, age 14, as catalysing the growth of ‘my personality in terms of what I liked to do and how I like to do it’, in that it intensified the salience of their trumpeter identity at the time, the identity through which they developed the tendency for ‘obsessive fixation on things’ now involved in their data scientist identity. The commonality of this tendency between trumpet-playing to data science suggests that it has similarly assimilated into the foundations of their person identity. This development traces back to their experience of seeing Cake, indicating its autobiographical significance.
Personal Aesthetic Awakening
This theme characterised the responses of P17, P22, and P53, although the impact of this awakening in their autobiography differed for each respondent. For P7, their experience of seeing, age 11, a performance of Adolphe Adam’s ballet Giselle – their first such concert experience – suddenly unveiled to them a powerful aesthetic world into which they could migrate and create themselves. I think that was also around the time where I was increasingly looking for things to enrich my life or have a connection with, because that was around the time I really I think firmly decided to not want to be engaged with the world I was living in…it was almost pointed towards, yeah, a different world or realm that I wanted to be part of…much more inviting and beautiful and comforting. (P17)
P53 had a similar if less momentous experience, in which encountering Edward Elgar’s cello concerto as a 15-year-old violinist revealed to them a new dimension of musical expressivity, and provoked a more independent appreciation of music in general. I’d really not had much experience of any sort of 20th century music at all, and…the structure of it is…quite different from like the concertos I’d heard before…and…[it] just did things with harmonies that I’d never heard before. (P53)
Despite being a trained cellist and scholar of early 20th-century French music, P22 actively denied a direct causal link between their experience of hearing Ravel’s ‘Introduction and Allegro’, age 13, and these identities. However, this was significant as the first time they can remember experiencing: that sense of being kind of borne away by the music…or responding to this very living thing…I don’t want to say inhabiting a new identity by listening to that music…just…not being kind of involved in your own selfhood. (P22)
Affirmation of Self-worth
This theme characterised the response of P44. This respondent reported a ‘cloud memory’ (Istvandity, 2019, p. 23), an amalgamated impression of rehearsing and performing a dance routine to Gwen Stefani’s ‘What You Waiting For?’, age 11–12. I admire my 11-year-old self that didn’t put make-up on and didn’t really care, just had a laugh with my friends and danced cus I enjoyed it and knew I was good at it, and…I can see part of my 11-year-old self coming back now I’m a bit older and wiser, but I do admire that about myself. (P44)
Subversion of Self-worth
This theme characterised the response of P19. Their experience of seeing, age 10, their older sister perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto filled them with pride, but subsequently symbolised their sense of personal inadequacy within their family, as they felt unable to live up to her example as a violinist. This played into a wider pattern of significant psychological distress, resulting in multiple hospitalisations. This is a difficult case to analyse, given the clinical issues involved, the particulars of which the researchers are not qualified to discuss. Nevertheless, a tentative interpretation here is presented: P19’s most salient identities during their youth were ‘violinist’ and ‘family member’, identities whose meanings were largely derived from the examples set by their sister. This set a precarious and damaging course for their wellbeing, as these examples were ever-present and clear-cut, and any apparent failure to follow them equated to a failure to successfully perform their most salient identities. This course has been defined by the subversion of their self-worth, not only in that their violinist and family member identities often did not satisfy their identity standards, but also insofar as their entire individuality was completely subordinated to the examples set by someone else. For P19, now 24, this experience thus holds autobiographical significance as the originary example that their sister set, an identifiable beginning of that subversion. Their ongoing recovery is partly reflected in their reconciliation with music. I stopped playing for a long time, kind of when I left school for about five years, and I think a lot of that was, ‘well, I might as well not even bother because I’m not any good’-type thing, and…I’m definitely a lot better at that now, but…it’s kind of sad because it’s so joyful, music is so joyful, but I think like anything: the pressure gets to you, and it becomes about being best, rather than the joy. (P19)
Music as a Mirror
This theme characterised the response of P50. They discussed listening to Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer with their brother on the night of its release, aged 18. Here, the tenor of P50’s circumstances was carthatically mirrored in the music they encountered, music that was already strongly emblematic of their sense of self. I suppose that it was an album that…it echoed that sense of chaos and that sense of…yeah, dislocation and not really understanding the world around me. Feeling very confused, and I was, you know, emotionally very raw. (P50)
Discussion
Previous research has tended to focus on either music and autobiographical memory (e.g. Janata et al., 2007; Krumhansl & Zupnick, 2013) or music and identity (e.g. Dibben, 2002; Folkestad, 2002; Tarrant et al., 2002). By emphasising the necessary interdependence of both autobiography and identity, we have offered a way of studying each through the other while cataloguing the effects of meaningful musical experiences on their formation.
The results detailed previously suggest a number of answers to our research question. Each experience affords and, upon reflection, represents the eruption of new meanings into an already complex landscape of self-identity in youth. These new meanings are incorporated into the standards of new or pre-existing identities, and their influence on identities are subject to change as the respondent’s life progresses. Both our questionnaire and interview themes represent the types of meanings that were incorporated into our respondents’ identities at the autobiographical moment to which they refer in their response. Naturally these themes do not capture all self-identity effects that such experiences can possibly have. However, we feel they are a helpfully diverse collection that also subtly differentiate autobiographical priorities between respondents, differences which can help illuminate respondents’ identity standards, both past and present. Compare, for instance, the interviews of P17 and P1: both are musicologists, but only P1 fits into the Vocational Path in Life category, while P17 fits into Personal Aesthetic Awakening. This is due to the different autobiographical perspectives of each: P1’s experience is valued by them because it set them on their present path; meanwhile, P17 values their experience because it represents a more desirable mode of aesthetic experience that their professional life actively undermines, and to which they wish to return. This can be largely explained by the higher salience of the researcher identity in P1’s hierarchy.
Our results afford reflection on observations made in previous research on music and identity, autobiographical memory, and the impact of powerful musical experiences. Our responses endorsed Loveday et al.’s general claim that ‘[m]usic from the SP connects an individual to the people, places, and times that are significant to their identity’ (2020, p. 7). The depth and dynamism of many of our responses supports Rubin’s explanation that first-time and novel experiences in the reminiscence bump window (Rubin et al., 1986) – or SP – may be rehearsed more frequently and in a deeper way than other memories (Rubin et al., 1998). The memories reported were often associated with happiness, excitement, and nostalgia, an observation previously made regarding MEAMs (Belfi et al., 2016). However, other respondents also exhibited sadness or regret when reflecting on their experiences due to the pain associated with the resulting identity negotiations, even if the experience was positively valenced at the time (although the sadness associated with some of these memories reflected their role in positive ‘redemption sequences’ (McAdams et al., 1997)). This suggests a link between the relative valence of the memory of the experience (if not the experience itself) and the success of the identity impacted by that experience. This link between valence and identity resonates with Barrett et al.’s (2010) observation regarding nostalgia – a response also exhibited in our results – experienced through MEAMs that ‘nostalgia was stronger to the extent that a song was autobiographically salient’ (p. 390). Our data generally supported many of Gabrielsson’s (2011) observations regarding SEMs, such as their therapeutic (pp. 66–67) and self-identity-transforming (p. 149) potential. This latter motif pervaded our results, perhaps unsurprisingly, but what is notable is just how radical these transformations could be. This is evinced by questionnaire themes such as Opening up of Self, Change in Life Path, and Becoming a New Person, whose preponderance of responses supports the view that meaningful musical experiences in youth – a time when self-identities are ripe for transformation – can not only modify but also wholly transform a person’s self-identity.
This has been an exploratory study, and there are many unexplored paths leading away from the data we have collected. We first acknowledge that a high proportion of our questionnaire respondents and all of our interview respondents explicitly associated their experience with a specifically musical identity. This is a consequence not only of our study’s musical focus, but also its distribution methods, which led to a high proportion of music-oriented participants. A larger study, casting a wider net, would hope to include more interviewees whose musical experiences interacted with non-musical identities. Moreover, we have generalised the very idea of a meaningful musical experience, but a better understanding of such an experience’s autobiographical significance would delineate the relative importance in that experience of the music itself. This relates to another key variable largely unexplored here, that of ‘liking’. We would suggest a link between persistent ‘liking’ of the music and the persistent salience of the identity affected by the experience (see also Lamont & Loveday (2020)).
When considering autobiographical significance, we have not differentiated between the varyingly prominent roles each experience played in the formation of the identity in question: some were literally epiphanic, for instance, while others served to cohere present but hitherto unconnected meanings within the standard of a specific identity. We would posit no categorical rule here (e.g. inauguration = higher significance), as there is too much autobiographical complexity at play in any given life. What matters is the emphasis placed during the experience on the meanings in the relevant identity standard (new or otherwise), and whether this emphasis has persisted in the form of that identity’s continued salience.
Lastly, we have passed over the importance of the participants’ varying ages at the time of their experiences. Following Harter (2012), their developmental stage will have determined what kinds of identity-forming processes were operational, and the degree of reflexivity available. The present study is interested in each respondent’s autobiographical narrativisation of the past regardless of its ‘truthfulness’, but ‘validating’ the developmental possibility of a reported identity formation might illuminate a respondent’s narrative priorities. A related issue is how to compare autobiographical significance between respondents of considerably different ages; for example, a retiree (P53) and an undergraduate (P19). Since we equate autobiographical significance with enduring identity salience, this would require some measurement of identity durability, that is, its resistance to dissolution. We might then compare an older respondent whose relevant identity has endured a few mild crises with a younger respondent whose relevant identity has survived multiple and intense crises, and say that the autobiographical significance of the originary experience of each is similar.
Conclusion
This paper has explored the ways in which people autobiographically contextualise meaningful musical experiences from their youth. We gauged the autobiographical significance of these experiences via the impact they had on our respondents’ self-identities, as measured through the trajectory of the specific identities implicated in the experience in question. The themes we have identified represent the types of meanings that were incorporated into the relevant identity standard in any given case. These identities develop differently depending on the passage of each individual’s life: some wax, others wane; some transform, others obdure. Autobiographical significance of a meaningful musical experience is reflected by the continued salience over time of the identities that either partially or wholly emerged from, or were sedimented by, each respondent’s experience. In trying to extract generalisable lessons from our results, it is important to re-acknowledge the complexity of any given respondent’s case: each has their own life narrative, which spans a particular stretch of time, and each of which places a different emphasis on the importance of its own meaningful musical experience. It is beyond the scope of this study to fully account for all this potential variance, and to outline firm rules for how such experiences will impact one’s sense of self. Nevertheless, we have established some key themes that capture the ways in which musical experiences in youth can be meaningful for identity formation, which can be further elaborated and added to in future studies. These themes illustrate the ability of meaningful musical experiences to mobilise musical, social, and self-oriented meanings to not only interact with our self-identity, but also actively transform it. Here we see that music can not only mark meaningful experiences, but also fundamentally motivate their autobiographical significance.
Footnotes
Action Editors
Amy Belfi, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Department of Psychological Science.
Kelly Jakubowski, Durham University, Department of Music.
Peer Review
Raymond MacDonald, University of Edinburgh, Reid School of Music.
Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster, School of Social Sciences.
Contributorship
LP and PG researched literature, conceived the study, involved in study design, gaining ethical approval, participant recruitment, and data analysis. LP and PG wrote the all drafts of the manuscript. Both authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical Approval
This research was approved by the Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC) (Approval Reference: R65108/RE001).
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
