Simon Frith

In his article, Frith states that "the issue is not how a particular piece of music or a performance reflects the people, but how it produces them, how it creates and constructs an experience...". What Frith is saying is that music is not a way of expressing our identity but rather a way of forming our identity. The beauty of music is that while a composition may have been written for a specific reason, we are free to interpret it in a completely different way and make it our own.We use music to find ourselves but through the same music we also discover the identity of others. Frith also states that musical identity is formed through different social activities rather than different tastes.
A point I found particularly intriguing was when Frith talks about the assumptions people make about how only African-Americans can like African-American music or only males can like music composed by males, etc. It seems to make sense that African-Americans will identify with African-American music but when you look at it, there is no one nation or race or age limit on music. People of all walks of life can enjoy the same music. I really enjoyed that point because sometimes people do not discover the wonderful music there is in the world simply because of who sings it or where the singer is from.