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Volume 6, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2397-6721
  • E-ISSN: 2397-673X

Abstract

I teach the sociology of popular music online to undergraduate students. My course is intended for upper division students, some of whom are sociology majors, but the majority of whom take the course as an elective, largely out of personal interest in the topic. I use my textbook, (3rd edition) as our primary text. We cover a range of timely topics, but a – if not the – link among them is the family as a context for all facets of the popular music experience, either directly or indirectly. Overall, I use a life course model to organize a discussion of the important role music plays in all segments, stages episodes, etc. of life. I prefer to use the concept of by which the total experience of music varies through life, but is only determined to some degree by age, the classic life course variable. To point, family is a feature of all music spaces, again directly or indirectly. Family can be found in all segments or spaces of life. Being refers to the space, generally occupied by children, in which people accept the music provided to them by adults and use it as building blocks for an emerging sense of self. Becoming refers to the way later adolescents and adults actively manage their music through categorization and evaluation. Been there refers to the ways the elderly accept music without much need for self actualization from it. I have organized this article chronologically, in terms of the evolving role the concept of ‘family’ holds in the life history of my work conducting research on and teaching about music. My forthcoming book, (Routledge, 2022) applies experiences from my 50 years of teaching and research on popular music to flesh out this model.

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2022-03-01
2024-04-23
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): family; higher education; life course; music; qualitative research; rock ‘n’ roll

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