Frith response

In this article, Simon Frith looks to explain music’s role in the development of identities and how music creates a certain aesthetic experience for people. His argument is based on two points. The first is that “identity is mobile”, and the second is that the musical experience is “an experience of this self-in-progress.” Throughout the article he describes identity as a “process” rather than a “thing.” Frith claims that music can be linked to identity because, like identity, music offers a judgment of the individual in the collective. Social groups are created through the participation in their cultural activities. It is not necessarily that these groups can be defined by their social class, but that by taking part in the musical experience they became a grouped together. Hip hop music, for example, does not shape identities by the meaning pulled from the lyrics, but rather by the way the music is presented, because oftentimes the music is a scratched or cut-up version of a text that already existed.

An interesting, but confusing aspect of Frith’s argument is the “distinction between high and low culture.” It seems as if he is classifying rappers and those who listen to that type of music as low culture and classical music as high culture. This is confusing to me because I’m not sure if he means the music of “high-class” individuals when he says “high-culture” or is he is referring to one style of music being more cultural than others. Do all types of music fall under the category of high-culture or low-culture? Either way, I feel like I missed his point. Basically he is saying that the critics know better than the artist what his or her identity is and that it is in the way people respond to music that shapes their own identities.