Group Singing and Social Identity

Abstract

Group singing practices interact with socio-cultural context, and this relationship depends on predominant social trends. Furthermore, ability to act in the world is expressed through Self-Identity, whereby we constitute ourselves as agents, authors of our actions, and generate our identities. There are three principal components of Self: the Material Self (the body; the physical world); the Social Self (expressed in relationships); and the Spiritual Self (found in religious/ spiritual experience). These elements interact in a web of individual and cultural circumstance, the overall becoming labeled The Created Self. In this chapter Selfhood is acknowledged as developing within a social and cultural milieu and is shaped by the specific roles we enact. Identity is primarily developed in relation to others, comprising many elements that are not fixed, but changing. Case studies are used to explore how social musical identities are developed in the social activity of group singing.