Sociology of Music

This contribution represents a chapter in the volume "Sozialgeschichte der Musik des Barock", the sixth part of the "Handbuch der Musik des Barock", and deals with the status and function of bowed and plucked instruments in the Baroque period. During this era, musical instruments were generally closely linked to a specific social class. Although the same type of instrument may have sometimes been present among different social strata, its building technique varied substantially. I illustrate this by considering the following division: lower classes (beggars, marginalized groups, minstrels and village musicians), middle classes (civic and court musicians and amateurs) and upper classes (virtuosos and aristocrats). During the Baroque period, certain instruments also triggered social mobility: the violin, for instance, enabled the best players to generate considerable wealth as well as a title of nobility, whereas the viola da gamba gradually disappeared among professional musicians. In order to observe these musical-social strata and their potential crossings, we must attend to the specificities of region and gender dynamics.

From 1877, when the Liceo musicale (today Conservatory) “Santa Cecilia” was founded in Rome, with which the Academy known by the same name established music courses without charge taught by Giovanni Sgambati and Ettore Pinelli, the distinguished music critic Francesco D’Arcais often underlined two serious issues: the students who studied piano widely outnumbered all students from other disciplines and, moreover, were almost all female.
This research has first of all verified, on the basis of archive documentation, the reality of such statements, drafting many tables which illustrate the development of the classes in this music Institute and in others.
Secondly, to ask oneself about the practical and ethical issues created by such a situation and highlighted by D’Arcais and others. Apart from some suspicions of that time, promoted by the press, according to which it was believed that behind the increasing number of piano students there was the Sgambati’s desire to recruit some former pupils as teachers, it was irrefutable that such a large number of pianists would had never been absorbed by the work force, at that time also ravaged by the grave crisis of the opera theaters. Women, then, did not study certainly to begin a musical career, but only to perform in the family or to offer private lessons. The Conservatories, therefore, were used to educating mostly amateurs.
The issue then was the following: is it ethically correct financing with public funds the teaching to amateurs belonging to wealthy social classes? D’Arcais, who was one of the founders of the Liceo was of the opposite opinion. He instead suggested to reduce the piano classes (and the voice classes, equally crowded by non-professionals), to increase the orchestra’s instrumentalists, whose classes were almost empty. Others, instead, as the professor of music history from the same Liceo, Prospero Zuliani, sustained that by creating a middle-upper class musically educated could equally provide a worthy public service.
One also asks himself, with some speculation, which could have been Sgambati’s own position on this respect, since he had promoted the foundation of a music Institute in Rome, as well as the position of his maestro, Franz Liszt. Therefore, underlining the analogy of the situation of that time with the reality of the current Conservatories, which became Institutes of ‘elevated culture’ but lacking instrumentalists and populated by a majority of future nonprofessionals. We should question ourselves then again today what should be a correct handling of the public musical education and, moreover, on the goals of the musical education in Italy.

Fin da quando, nel 1877, fu fondato a Roma il Liceo musicale (oggi Conservatorio) “Santa Cecilia”, con il quale l’omonima Accademia istituzionalizzava i corsi musicali gratuiti di Giovanni Sgambati ed Ettore Pinelli, l’autorevole critico musicale Francesco D’Arcais evidenziò ripetutamente un doppio e serio problema: gli allievi di pianoforte erano in numero eccessivamente superiore rispetto a quelli di tutti gli altri corsi e, per di più, erano quasi tutti di sesso femminile.
La presente ricerca ha innanzitutto verificato, sulla base di documenti archivistici, la realtà di tali affermazioni, stilando numerose tabelle che mostrano l’evolversi della composizione delle classi in questo e in altri istituti musicali.
In secondo luogo, ci si è interrogati sulle problematiche, pratiche ed etiche, create da tale situazione ed evidenziate da D’Arcais e altri. A parte i sospetti, avanzati dalla stampa dell’epoca, che dietro al crescere del numero degli allievi di pianoforte ci fosse il desiderio di Sgambati di far assumere, come docenti, suoi ex allievi, era inconfutabile che un così gran numero di pianisti non sarebbe mai stato assorbito dal mercato del lavoro, all’epoca funestato anche da una grave crisi dei teatri d’opera; le donne, poi, non studiavano certo per intraprendere la professione concertistica, ma solo per esibirsi in famiglia o impartire lezioni private.
I Conservatori, dunque, servivano soprattutto a formare dilettanti.
La questione, allora, era la seguente: è eticamente corretto finanziare con fondi pubblici l’insegnamento a dilettanti di classe sociale agiata? D’Arcais, che del Liceo era stato uno dei fondatori, riteneva di no: suggeriva piuttosto di sfoltire le classi di pianoforte (e di canto, ugualmente affollate di dilettanti), per incrementare gli strumentisti d’orchestra, le cui classi erano quasi vuote. Altri, invece, come il professore di storia della musica del medesimo Liceo, Prospero Zuliani, sostenevano che creare un ceto medio-alto musicalmente acculturato poteva ugualmente costituire un meritevole servizio pubblico.
Ci si interroga anche, avanzando alcune ipotesi, su quale potesse essere la posizione in proposito di Sgambati stesso, fin da quando aveva propugnato la creazione di un istituto musicale a Roma, nonché quella del suo maestro Franz Liszt.
Si sottolinea, infine, la similitudine della situazione di allora con la realtà degli odierni Conservatori, divenuti istituti di ʽalta culturaʼ ma sguarniti di studenti degli strumenti d’orchestra e popolati in maggioranza da futuri dilettanti: bisognerebbe interrogarsi anche oggi su quale possa essere una corretta gestione dell’istruzione musicale pubblica e, soprattutto, sulle finalità stesse dell’istruzione musicale in Italia.

Although we concentrate increasingly on the number of visitors that European museums welcome each year, museum audiences are seldom given the floor. It is also rare that a museum’s concepts are based on a discussion with its visitors. The musical instrument museum is a case in point for looking into the ways in which the museum institution might however be challenged if it considers the visitors’ expectations. The museum for musical instruments indeed entails a paradox as it musealises objects that are meant to produce music. And music is based on a practice that is multiple and changing. This process of musealisation reveals itself as particularly problematic for the museum visitors. The following paper aims at showing how, by shaping their expectations, the relationship of music-lovers to music outside the museum jeopardises the traditional model of the museum and might subject it to change.

SUMMARY: SOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY OF ROCK

1 Introduction

This work on the body of rock and sound interactions is the result of the academic and musical research. On one hand is an acoustic archeology of the rise of British rock (60'). On the other it‘s an investigation of the academic possibilities of sociology. In both cases the fundamental the role is played by the ear, that thing that lies behind the ears, a sense as obvious as sight that has been so mistreated by the sound excess of our time and our History. The ear/hearing is the axis of this thesis. It is its perspective.
Based on the sociological theory of habitus as body, history and technique (basically, Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias and Marcel Mauss ), and trying to develop a phenomenology of sound perception (sociological ear/hearing) from the work of some ethnomusicologists (Steven Feld, Charles Keil and Thomas Turino) and using the very sociology of rock (Simon Frith, Motti Regev) or the acoustic ecology (Murray Schafer), I have started analyzing the emergence of rock as the establishment of a new social ear/hearing or sound field that is manifested in its works, in the way of making them or carrying them out and the relationship they have with the situation in which they arise. Through historical cases and analysis, I test, first, some assumptions concerning precisely this capacity of objectification of rock as a cultural event, while on the other hand I try to develop an analysis of the possible relationship between body and the new technologies of music production.

2 Objectives

The main goal of all this work has been to apply a new perspective in sociology (at least in the Spanish sociology). A perspective that we can say it enables to operationalize the weberian maxim of understanding social facts from our own feeling nature, emphasizing, because of the sonic nature of rock, the world of sound and experience. To access this social ear/hearing, I tried to develop an approach that focuses its attention on the sociology ear/hearing, and I have called it sonic sociology or sounding interactions sociology. To achieve this, I started from the bourdian sociology and interest in the study of habitus as analysis of the institution of the social in the bodies and in the fields. First, searching for the impact it has had on the sociological theory of rock and developing a field theory of cultural production linked to the rock industry. And then, introducing the ethnomusicological perspective that has allowed me to think and locate sound phenomena in their cultural and technological context.
As for the complementary goals of this work, they point to the social life of sounds and the way they are lived and their capacity to objectify themselves and their social surroundings, even if that means \to allow the incorporation of elements that, for lack of a better term, we might call non-humans. (Latour, 2008: 107). These goals or intentions are operationalized in a number of assumptions: a technological hypothesis about the relationship between music, body and technology, which postulates that the body, returning to Simon Frith (1996) and his so called stages of musical storage (Folk, and Pop Art), disappears from music as its support with the spread of the pentagram representation, but returns with the emergence of new audiovisual technologies that, while not bringing back the body as a physical body, it returns the body as a place in which the music occurs.
Furthermore, I have presented a number of hypotheses about the objectification of the field of rock. First, as Pierre Bourdieu notes regarding Flaubert 's writing (2002a), the works -and this includes the whole output of rock- can objectify the social space at which are born: not that they reflect the social space, but that they generate and give meaning to it. Secondly, that the hexis of rock .as a bodily matrix of the way of doing things in rock- can play a similar objectification in relation to the social space at which is brewing. Combining these hypotheses about the objectification of rock with the technological hypothesis, we come to the third assumption: the generating formula behind the production of rock in general and the record production in particular is based both on a socio-cognitive generative matrix and the technological evolution that precedes and constitutes it.

3 Results

The first result of the use and combination of these theoretical and analytical perspectives applied to our case is a sociological and conceptual scheme of the rock body during the years of the beat boom (in section 5). Taking the sound interactions as our independent or fixed variable, we were able to draw some general lines of progression of the beat boom situation, with the Beatles on top of it. As seen in sections 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4, the body that bajtinianly emerges from the toilet and rises to a royal position and then retires, matches different fields of musical activity. In turn, these musical fields (using Thomas Turinoes ethnomusiclogical frame) are objectified after the status obtained by these beat boom musicians. Being no more than mere backing musicians in a field of participative and presentational activity in the first half of decade (60e), then they gain recognition as artists through the development of the studio audio art that allows the recording studio in the second half of the decade. This sound production, with its reception and consumption, helps to transform the nature of the rock body and its miraculous qualities acquired during the beat boom (in section 5.3). The table in section 5.1 summarizes these results.
A second result of the combination of these perspectives applied to our case is the matrix of the generative formula of rock (in 6.5). Analyzing the recording adventure of our cases (the Beatles, the Who and the Kinks, but applicable to the vast majority of acts that, in the wake of the Beatles, pounced on to the compositional work, sooner or later, like the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Small Faces, Cream, etc.), we discovered and were able to establish the main lines that constitute the habitus of the rock album of the sixties, focusing on two ideal states, the very stage of the beat boom and the step that benefits from its consequences. The table at the point 6.5 summarizes the results.
A third result was the confirmation that, in effect, both the body and technology are fundamental to rock, to rock music as cultural production and as a form of leisure and consumption (in Part III). Thus, through the analysis of sound interactions occurring within rock .albums and singles, concerts, films and tv footage, different fields of musical activity-, we could delve into the return of the body .moved away by the civilizing process. Finally, when we look at the history of rock, how it developed from the mechanization of electronic music on the one hand, and the so called body release on the other, we note that the body of rock it is there .but confronting the technological hypothesis, it is not: it seems to be there, but is not. When the music is live (folk) we have the body present; in the score (within Simon Frithes stages in the relationship of music with technology, the one he calls art) we have a non-body or a split or idealized body, a supposed one; with the recorded sound we have a \body., a body recovered from certain traces that are technologically captured.

4 Conclusions

In the end, the search for sound traces allowed us to analyze specific cases in the shaping of the social ear/hearing that is generated in rock. For example, it allowed us to see how, in the staging of those bands associated with the music industry, after presenting and studying the creation of a formula for the record production under the paradigm of rock, sound homologies do exist between the records as sound conceptualizations of ideals and their live performances as an attempt to achieve this ideal in a ritual or community time; and also homologies that could be called consonants, homologies between the records and the field of cultural production that is organized and propitiated around them. That is, it allowed us to get closer to the ear, as a stylized or socialized way of hearing, as a fundamental element of social and bodily coordination, as part of the constitution of a field of cultural production. Secondly, this sound archeology allowed us to study and analyze some specific cases: for example, the construction of the voice of rock, at which interact the body and its parts (lungs, larynx, intensities, etc.), physical techniques applied to sound and musical body (shouting, crooning, transposition of the vocal habitus of rhythm and blues, girl groups, call and response, etc.) and technologies (tapes, double tracking, ADT, etc.) in cultural and musical production of rock.
Finally, we can say that popular music in postindustrial age has brought the body back into the spotlight. However, it is not a full come back or at least is not a return to a preindustrial or an ethnological body: it is an altered body, made from the great innovations in communication and audiovisual media, and ites combined with psychotropic experimentation and the new mass phenomena. Although all this technological progress will bring back a body that, under rationalism, had vanished, it will be, as demonstrated, not a complete return but a representation of the body, a remembrance, or perhaps a celebration of its own demise.

Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology; From Phenomenology to Critical Theory
(London: Bloomsbury, 2022)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/g%C3%BCnther-anders-philosophy-of-technology-9781350228580/?fbclid=IwAR3eNUw90xrdaJ44UC1MTKYnSvegjeyBgFbIsY4viZrJdmdlqgYNpHjMPlI

В данной статье рассматриваются характерные черты и основные функции молодежных субкультур. Описываются особенности неформальных объединений в обществе. Молодежная субкультура рассматривается как специфический способ достижения социального комфорта в обществе.

TVÅ SIDOR AV SAMMA MYNT? Tabell 2. Söktryck efter namn på folkhögskolan, Ht 2009 Folk-Antal Antal N Profiler Söktryck St. d högskola sökande platser(medelvärden) Fridhem 450 25 1 Jazz 18, 0 Skurup 340 20 1 Jazz 17, 0 Billströmska 230 20 1 Blandad 11.5 Furuboda ...

This article explores the practices associated with musical listening within the car. It does this in such a way that embraces Tia DeNora’s approach to the social study of music in conjunction with approaches broadly understood as ‘symbolic interactionism’. It focuses upon the musical elements partnered with social interaction that commonly occur with automobile commuter situations. Though, unlike most symbolic interactionist accounts of music that explore the social life of musical phenomena within performance contexts, the following grapples with the situation of musical experience removed from traditional performance contexts and significantly, as experienced without performing musicians. The following presents an interpretation of how music is deployed as an environmental feature of automobile commuting and how this ‘feature’ is deployed by commuters to transform the physical space of the car into a symbolic social space where those that occupy this context are afforded increased senses of comfort and control. I also, link listening practices in important ways to perceptions of the public and private dimensions of car travel.

In the present paper, we intend to investigate the musical choices of Brazilian teenagers. We present the theory that support our thinking, that is based in concepts of identity and musical identities. For the purpose of this investigation, 76 teenagers from a Brazilian countryside region, with age varying from 13 to 16 years old and gender difference of approximately 60% male and 40% female young ones, filled out a questionnaire. With a quantitative approach, we analyzed the answers given to the questions "Do you listen to music? Which gender? Where?". Our data showed that all participants declared that they listen to music, and they do it in a variety of places, but with a significant amount of teenagers saying they usually listen to music at their homes - which comprehend all the answers given that surrounded this context, such as family, home and bedroom. As to the type of music they listen to, we perceived that the mainstream music is their usual choice, with genders such as forró, axé, pop music, [brazilian] funk, among others. We also stress out some particularities in the end of the paper and, to conclude our study, we try to outline the musical identity(ies) of the young people from Ceará's.
Key words: music, youth, identity, Ceará, Brasil.

On the basis of a qualitative study  of 20 Norwegian lullaby-­‐singing parents, this article  explores the human Bildung potential  of parents’ lullaby singing  to their children at bedtime. Some parents may experience a personal re-awakening when singing as they more easily can express themselves openly and rich and get in contact with emotional layers of their own childhood. Secondly, the act may afford a sort of “musical mindfulness" - a unique as well as collective mindful and  calm  self-­‐with other-­‐cultivation.

A compendious exposition of the author's  theory of musical patronage in the  Renaissance and Baroque  complemented by a discussion testing its tenets against  the lifelong relationship of Monteverdi with the Gonzaga family ( English summary  at pp. 474-475),

Music is called a powerful medium of expression. It is Music which is a conscious effort done to represent the human thoughts and emotion. Human cultures, societies, and stages of evolution are mirrored in the variety of music. A researcher's interest to study music as an issue which is the manifestation of human life combining family, love, conflict etc. can be derived from the perception of life events along with the assimilation of social environment she/he belongs to. Music is certainly the strongest outcome of any culture. The folksong as a discipline associated with folk's life and experiences qualifies it to be a worthy area of interest with its evolutionary history and uniqueness. Folksong conveys the way of life, the cultural milieu; is the outcome of the relationship between human and his/her perception of different aspects of life (Khan 1987).Thus there is scope to concentrate on how women and their feeling of desire, separation, sorrows etc. are portrayed in the ...

In this article I discuss how people, as listening bodies in urban spaces, both passively (hearing) and actively (listening) engage with sound and unwanted noise. The uneven generation and perception of sound presents us with an important set of spatial, social, and physiological impacts. Our bodies are guided, damaged, invited, and otherwise shielded by invisible yet powerful forces. These forces have a broad patterning, what might be termed the sonic order of the city. Within the walls of homes, offices, and streets our experience is shaped both by natural sound and, more often, by orchestrated commercial practices such as in-store radio, muzak and the flows of rush hour traffic. This aural stage management takes places through the planning and relative containment of socially, commercially, and industrially sourced sound. This article discusses the broad relationship between these urban soundscapes and their influence on the trajectories of the human body to ask how sound and noise shape our experience and movement through the city.

While a sense of collectivity is inherent in the concept of ‘popular music’, the everyday practices that articulate the social potential of these musics have been under-researched to date. Among them, practices of collective listening, i.e. listening together with friends, relatives, neighbours, comrades, etc., to records, radio, jukebox, cassettes, mp3s... , have attracted less scholarly attention than live concerts or festivals, which undoubtedly convey a stronger image of the bonding powers of popular musics. Yet, collective listening to recordings or broadcasts provides occasions not only for sharing emotions, but also for interacting physically in a relaxed atmosphere that may be compatible with dancing, as well as for exchanging opinions and shaping individual taste in dialogue with others. In this paper I intend to discuss briefly how certain social circumstances, technologies and legal regulations have stimulated collective listening along history. But mostly I would like to offer some historical examples of how specific musics and musical communities have encouraged this practice, in particular during the Sixties and the Seventies. Maybe even nowadays, when ‘popularity’ seems to be defined by the sum of many individual listening experiences, we might be able to perceive signals of a return of collective listening.

This article discusses how the digital age of music technologies has contributed to the transformation of the activities of music listening, highlighting cultural participation in distinct worlds through “adequate music.”

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/LMJ_a_00961

This book presents a provocatively new interpretation of one of New Orleans' most enigmatic traditions, the Mardi Gras Indians. By interpreting the tradition in an Atlantic context, Dewulf traces the " black Indians " back to the ancient Kingdom of Kongo and its war dance known as sangamento. He shows that good warriors in the Kongo kingdom were per definition also good dancers, masters of a technique of dodging, spinning and leaping that was crucial in local warfare. Enslaved Kongolese brought the rhythm, dancing moves and feathered headwear of sangamentos to the Americas in performances that came to be known as " Kongo dances. " By comparing Kongo dances on the African island of São Tomé with those in Latin America, the Caribbean and Louisiana, Dewulf demonstrates that the dances on New Orleans' Congo Square were part of a much broader Kongolese performance tradition. He links that to Afro-Catholic mutual-aid societies that honored their elected community leaders or " kings " with Kongo dances. While the public rituals of these brotherhoods originally thrived in the context of Catholic procession culture around Epiphany and Corpus Christi, they transitioned to carnival as a result of growing orthodoxy within the Church. Dewulf's groundbreaking research suggests a much greater impact of Kongolese traditions and of popular Catholicism on the development of African-American cultural heritage and identity. His conclusions force us to radically rethink the traditional narrative on the Mardi Gras Indians, the kings of Zulu and the origins of black participation in Mardi Gras celebrations.

http://www.ulpress.org/item_224/From-the-Kingdom-of-Kongo-to-Congo-Square.php

Nel ghetto che i nazisti durante la seconda guerra mondiale istituirono a Theresienstadt (in ceco Terezín) poco a sud di Praga, Viktor Ullmann fu compositore prolifico e promotore della vita culturale degli internati. Di origini ebraiche e di cultura antroposofica steineriana, Ullmann nell’Andante della sua Sonata per pianoforte n° 5 op. 45, scritta nel 1943, lascia traccia di una resistenza spirituale al nazismo citando alcuni versi della poesia Vor dem Schlaf [Prima del sonno] di Karl Kraus. Il presente articolo illustra come le tecniche compositive di Ullmann, in particolare alcune sue strategie armoniche, nonché una particolarissima notazione enarmonica, possano divenire anch’esse veicolo di espressione per un sentimento di impermeabilità al dominio materiale e culturale perpetrato dal regime hitleriano. Il testo musicale e quello poetico sono discussi nei loro significati potenziali ed espliciti, nel loro rapporto reciproco e in relazione ad altre opere composte da Ullmann a Theresienstadt, come l’opera da camera Der Kaiser von Atlantis [L’imperatore di Atlantide].

Scholars have addressed the tendency of U.S. symphony orchestras to perform the works of relatively few composers. While many highlight this phenomenon, others note that the nature and extent of this conformity can shift over time, as reliance on the works of certain composers decreases and allows the works of newly heralded composers to be heard. Drawing on the work of DiMaggio and others, we derive hypotheses about field-level factors influencing both phenomena. We analyze more than 86,500 performances given by twenty-seven major U.S. symphony orchestras between 1842 and 1969. Our findings indicate that three factors spur the introduction of new composers into orchestral repertoires: the increased performance capabilities of symphony orchestras, the expanded resources for new music, and the proliferation of music programs among U.S. colleges and universities. We also find that one of these factors reduces the conformity of orchestral repertoires: the increased performance capabilities of orchestras. Our exploratory analyses, then, offer lessons about the organization of the musical canon.

INTRODUCTION
First Wave Of Bass Culture:
This chapter is very much introspective and autobiographical as it explores my pursuit of a career in the music industry. I’m a first-generation British born Jamaican, who grew up in the vibrant, ethnically diverse community of Handsworth in Birmingham. In 1975 I joined the nucleus what became Steel Pulse, Birmingham’s premier reggae band. In 1978 we signed to Island records and later that year to critical acclaim, we released our first album "Handsworth Revolution,” followed by a European tour with Bob Marley.

My upbringing to this point was both British and Jamaican. Which translated into large periods of my teens and early twenties spent, feeling disconnected from the birthplace of my parents and disowned in the place of my birth; like many of my generation I had an identity crisis. My Britishness was dwarfed by my desire to be Jamaican in ways I would learn, are just not possible unless you’re brought up there. To elders and visiting relatives, my best jamaican accent was considered fake, my dress sense oddly English, and my handwriting inferior to that accepted in Jamaican schools: the way I walked, didn't have 'that' bounce, and neither did the music I was making. At the time we - the band, referred to it as reggae. It has since been retitled as British Roots Reggae.

W. Lizé, « La réception de la musique comme activité collective. Enquête ethnographique auprès des jazzophiles de premier rang » in A. Pecqueux et O. Roueff (dir.), Ecologie sociale de l’oreille. Enquêtes sur l’expérience musicale, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 2009, pp. 49-83.

Mixing facts and fiction, Hollywood screen biographies have told the lives of popular music icons at least since The Jazz Singer (1927). However, biopics construct narratives that deal problematically with issues of race. This article aims to describe how representations of African American musicians have changed from 1970s ‘black jazz biopics’ (Gabbard 1996) to more recent films on rock, hip hop and rhythm ’n’ blues acts. On one hand, I analyse the way 1970s music biopics constructed a peculiar new narrative about race and popularity. On the other hand, I show the extent to which films such as Tina (1993), Ray (2004) and Notorious (2009) have subtly modified the racialized distinctions of former biopics, placing black musicians within a cinematic mythology which historically had been reserved to white subjects. The shift from jazz to other music genres, thus, is related to significant changes in biopics’ narratives and visual strategies. However, I argue that music biopics still deal with a distinctive notion of ‘the popular’ (Williams 1983), which frames blackness as otherness and whiteness (Dyer 1997) as just ‘human nature’.

(first publication by Jazz Research Journal and Equinox)

The present study examined the relationship between music preferences, values and musical identities in a sample of 606 Greek college students in the three institutes for higher education in Thessaloniki (Greece). Students indicated the importance of their music preferences in defining and evaluating themselves and their values on an abbreviated version of the Schwartz Value Survey (1992). The questionnaire included 26 musical genres resulted from an exploratory research.

The factor analysis revealed a typology of music preferences with five items: Sophisticated and Complex (e.g. jazz), Native-Greek Traditional (e.g. 'rembetika'), Sentimental and Sensational (e.g. pop), Established Rebellious (e.g. rock), and Non-mainstream Dissonant (e.g. punk).

Hierarchical regression analyses showed that values and perceived importance of music to self-definition (i.e. musical identities) contribute differentially in predicting the music preference structures (e.g. self-transcendence predicts Established Rebellious, conservation Sentimental and Sensational etc.).

The findings are discussed and interpreted in a social psychological framework as well as from the point of view of the sociology of music that has a long tradition in studying the musical taste and the factors that may have some influence on it. The chosen approach and point of view are based on the fact that during the last years it becomes more and more difficult to explain cultural consumption based on the "classical" demographic factors. As a result, there is an increasing interest to explore the common grounds between the omnivorousness hypothesis, developed by R. Peterson, and the homology argument, formulated by H. Gans and elaborated by P. Bourdieu.

This is the first study of this kind carried out in Greece, while the analysis of the relation between values and musical taste is not very common in the literature.

This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the role of music in the creation of a working-class settler community in colonial Australia, drawing on history, sociology and musicology. In particular, it seeks to uncover what music afforded the migrant communities in terms of world building. My research into nineteenth century mining communities in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, has revealed that many working-class musical practices from Scotland, Wales and England were recreated. Analysis of archival sources indicates that the calculated use of music, for instance to claim space at miners’ demonstrations or to raise money for public buildings was common. Cutting across such specific uses is the sense of a working-class public sphere being created and publicised through concerts that were advertised and reviewed in local newspapers. One of these, the Miners’ Advocate, is unusual in providing detailed reporting from a working-class perspective. The study uses James Jerome Gibson’s concept of ‘affordance’ (action possibilities within an environment), as employed by Tia DeNora in Music in Everyday Life, to investigate some uses of music under the broad themes of the individual, identity, respectability and social organisation. It is part of an ongoing study into the many diverse ways in which the migrants mobilised music’s affordances in the creation of a public identity.