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The investigation of infants’ and young children’s early musical engagement as singers, song-makers, and music-makers has provided some insight into children’s early vocal and musical development. Recent research has highlighted the vital role of interactive vocalization or ‘communicative musicality’ in infants’ general development, including their health and well-being, and early identity work. Little research has investigated how these early vocalizations and musical interactions are taken up and used by young children as they construct an emergent identity as a musical and sociocultured being. This article draws on a three-year longitudinal project that has investigated the role of invented song-making and music engagement in 18 young children’s (aged approximately 18–48 months) identity work and self-making. Data sources employed within a narrative inquiry design included parent-maintained video and paper diaries of song-making and music engagement, interviews with parents and other care-givers, and researcher observations of children in musical activity. Processes of narrative analysis and analysis of narrative were employed to analyse these data and provide a narrative account of the ways in which one 2-year-old child fashions a self through her engagement with known and invented song and music-making over a 12-month period. Findings suggest that invented song and music-making build on young children’s experiences of ‘communicative musicality’ and provide narrative structures in which young children perform and enact multiple ways of being through musical storying and story-telling.

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This study extends an eight-country mapping exercise (McPherson & O'Neill, 2010; see Research Studies in Music Education issues 2010-2011) to include students' motivation to study music within the Australian context. It sought to determine whether music learners (students learning an instrument or voice), might be more motivated to study academic subjects at school, and whether gender and socioeconomic status (SES) affected student motivation to learn music at school. A total of 2,727 students from grades 5 to 12 completed a questionnaire based on Eccles and Wigfield's expectancy-value framework. Data collected included: ratings of competence beliefs, interest, importance, usefulness and difficulty for music, English, maths, and science; indications of whether the students were currently learning a musical instrument or voice (music learners); and whether they would like to if given the opportunity. There was an overall significant decline in competence beliefs, interest, importance, and usefulness across the school years, in contrast with increased task difficulty ratings across the school years. Music learners reported