Hooked on the Blues: Technical and expressive continuities between life and music

Abstract

This article proposes a very specific approach to music, defined as a cultural, material or symbolic tool that intermeshes with certain people's life experience. From that standpoint, music may be seen as one of the essential keys for interpreting a biography. The theoretical argument, described from a cultural and mediational perspective, is exemplified in the relationship established between musician and instrument. The singular value of each interpreter's personal and non-transferable encounter with musical mediators is addressed, and the possible interweave between musicians' technical and actual life horizons explored. The significance proposed refers to the specific ways in which music may translate world experience and model affect. The objective is to establish the relevance or possibility of expanding or nuancing the view of music as the outer representation of inner emotions through the conceit vitality affects, a term that stresses the dynamic and temporal dimensions of the emotive meaning of music.

Culture & Psychology: 25 Constructive years

“…Last (but not least), there is the methodological challenge—the need to go beyond the verbal reporting of the state of affairs within the Self’s multiple dialogues:…our discussion…demonstrates that the dialogue prism presents some limitations to interpret the utterances solely from the verbal form since the understanding of each other in a conversation can imply very different meanings and senses depending on the worldview of the partners in the dialogue. (Jensen & Guimarães, 2018, p. 416)Silence within the Self is a powerful tool for the Dialogical Self (Lehmann, 2012), interspersed with musical “voices” (Marcos, Castro-Tejerina, & Trejo, 2018) and those expressed in poetry (Abbey & Bastos, 2014; Lehmann & Brinkmann, 2019). Klempe (2017) points to the implicit polyphony within the Dialogical Self the origin of which might historically be not verbal argumentation but immersion in music:The enjoyment of this experience is not restricted to one of the systems in isolation, but is also present when different systems are mixed up.…”

Patterns of variation in sociomusical identity of school-goers in a condition of social vulnerability and musical gaps in their education

“…Therefore, there are "things people know but never need to explain" (Weidman 2012, 230). Social differences may be observed in the distribution of sociomusical capital because personal experiences intertwine with the social world's immanent structure (Bernal, Castro-Tejerina, and Blanco 2017), promoting sociomusical mobilization (Hennion 2016). Hence, society plays a determinant role in sociomusical identity construction because, on the one hand, each social group provides specific musical goods and, on the other hand, every individual internalizes sociomusical capital in a particular way.…”