SImon Firth's "Music and Identity"

In Simon Firth’s “Music and Identity,” there are two main claims in his argument. The first part is that “music is mobile.” I believe that by this statement Firth means that it a process and experience. This experience of listening to a song can be compared to writing and English paper. Music is the writing of the paper, not reading a book. The second part of Firth’s argument is the music process is based both on the ethnic and the aesthetic. I think that Firth’s argument here is to point out that you can’t just a song only by its lyrics, beat, artist, or genre, but instead by the combination of it all.

The second part of Firth’s argument was particularly confusing to me when I first read it. I had to stop and reread it several times before continuing on in the article. When I got to the section entitled “from aesthetics to ethics,” I again began to get confused again. I understood the part of Firth’s argument when he was stating that someone cannot listen to a song and claim that it derived from one person, one experience, or one genre because many people comment and edit the song in different ways before It is heard by a listening audience. The part of this argument that started to really confuse me began at the end of this section when Firth began to state the questions that listeners should be asking themselves when they listen to music. Firth talks about how popular music isn’t popular because of its own sound, but instead because it fits in to the genre that people believe defines popularity. However, early in the article Firth disagrees with sociologists that believe popular music that is derived from an African background is only intended listeners to be people with African background. What I find contradictory is that he disagrees with this statement, but later states that popular music is only popular because certain groups of people say it is. So wouldn’t different popular groups determine what is popular, so then the music that is created would be of this genre as well; therefore agreeing with other sociologists statements.