My Music

My Music is a first-hand exploration of the diverse roles music plays in people's lives. "What is music about for you?" asked members of the Music in Daily Life Project of some 150 people, and the responses they received -- from the profound to the mundane, from the deeply-felt to the flippant -- reflect highly individualistic relationships to and with music. Susan Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, and Project Director Charles Keil have collected and edited nearly forty of those interviews to document the diverse ways in which people enjoy, experience, and use music. Foreword by George Lipsitz.

"Whether they think [music is] occasional background, the meaning of life, or some unique amalgam of both, few of these informants pigeonhole neatly into one of those taste subcultures beloved of marketers, programmers, sociologists, and rock critics . . . With the most uncommitted users attesting to some degree of saturation, what comes through is how uncontrollably each bends music to his or her own semiconscious needs or well-conceived purposed." -- Robert Christgau, Voice Literary Supplement

"Not surprisingly, people listen to music for many different reasons and in many different ways, but the authors express pleasant surpise at most respondents' keen interest and intelligence about popular music in general and the astonishing range of individuals' interests despite the narrowcasting principles of radio specifically and the media in general." -- Washington Post

"The subjects here are the weirdest of the weird: ordinary people. The project interviewed people aged four to 83 on what music meant to them, using relatives, friends, ex-employees, and neighbors as questioners so that the answers wouldn't be the usual lies we tell about our tastes. It's staggering." -- SF Weekly

"My Music presents a lively cross-section of lay commentary on music . . . The interviews are very rich, and not only for their musical content. There are miniature psychodramas, and some clouded glimpses into private lives . . . My Music is unique in its use of open-ended, more-or-less nondirective interviews, and its focus on the voices of ordinary people . . . I suspect it will prove especially useful in the classroom." -- Postmodern Culture

"Captures the day-to-day and moment-to-moment experience of perfectly ordinary people. In revealing their keen interest in and their intelligence about popular music, it shows them to be the proper subject of musicology and cultural research." -- Paul Buhle

"My Music captures the day-to-day and moment-to-moment experience of perfectly ordinary people. In revealing their keen interest in and their intelligence about popular music, it shows them to be the proper subject of musicology and cultural research." -Paul Buhle, editor of Popular Culture in America