Music Teaching and Young People's Own Musical Experience

Abstract

This article derives from a project called Experience and Music Teaching (EMT) and concerns English and Swedish young people's experience of music. The perspective is that of the young people themselves, and the aim is to elucidate their musical experience, together with their view of music, from the point of view of social background, environment, identity and cultural norms. The three essential questions are these: How do they assign a value to music? What does music mean to them? Where does their experience of music occur? The investigation is based on interviews and conversations with six English and six Swedish 15-year-olds. It emerges that music in their lives is part of a broader context, occurring in different environments and playing an important role in various types of activity. Firstly, the young people draw attention to the importance of music to the individual, having to do with how the individual assigns a value it. Secondly, they draw attention to the function of music, to the part it plays in their lives. Thirdly, they draw attention to their musical environment, to (as it were) the spaces in which music appears. Thus the value of music, the role of music and the spaces for music emerge as essential categories when it comes to elucidating young people's musical experience.