Frith Response - Zachary Gottlieb

In his article, Music and Identity, Simon Frith presents a logical argument showing how music plays a key role in identity formation and representation. He says that music does not just reveal certain characteristics of a group of people, but plays a more direct role in actually forming and reinforcing these characteristics. Frith believes that as complex identity formation is, music enables people to better grasp with a certain identity. Music is not popular to a group of people because it expresses something, but because it creates an understanding of what popularity is. Frith believes people enjoy listening to music because it provides an identity, which in turn gives people a place with society and themselves. Music acts as a medium for people to manage the relationship between their public and private emotional lives. Although people believe that music popularity is determined heavily by society, I still think formations such as gender, class, and ethnicity also influence musical taste.

Identity is always changing and I think Frith does a good job of explaining how it relates to music. Although it seems to be a rather abstract argument, he is able to clearly illustrate what role he believes music plays. He says “an identity is always already an ideal, what we would like to be, not what we are.” He argues that music is not an identity itself, but “gives us a real experience of what the ideal could be.” After reading Frith’s article I thought about the content of the majority of popular music in America today. Throughout various genres there is a strong emphasis on materialism, sex, drugs, and indulgence. What does this reveal about our culture? I think it is very depressing and sad that even the music we listen to reinforces the great amount of greed present in America. It seems we have already become comfortable with these faults and perhaps encouraged by the music to engage in the false pleasures that it celebrates.