Response to Frith- Ben Atkinson

Simon Frith asserts that music is not a reflection of people nor is it an expression from them, but rather it is itself a defining force which shapes the people. This assertion is contrary to what is, or seems to be, general perception of what music really is. We can understand how music does this by experiencing its production of identity and allowing it to manifest itself in us. He says that the difficulty is understanding how and why an idea or experience takes on the particular aesthetic form that it does and how it facilitates itself through this aesthetic medium. He says that identity is a process and not an inherent intrinsic thing. Our identity is shaped through how we experience our connections to the world (similar to something Jean Paul Sartre would say, who he cites) and that connection to the world and its cultures is music. In somewhat of an existentialistic twist, I will say that we know THAT we are because of our certainty in realization of existence, but we know WHO we are because of our experience of identity that must come from outside of us. The fact that identity itself cannot be autonomous in nature is what gives music the opportunity to be as powerful as it is and because it embodies cultural ideals is why it takes advantage of this opportunity. What’s more is that, as Frith says, music defines a space that has no boundaries. It can travel to the corners of the world and between all persons within them as well as define the places where these people find themselves. I agree with Frith that this fact makes it the cultural form most capable of mass influence.