Soundcheck

I don't use music. I live with it, and I enjoy it. Or I don't.

I think I used music to define every shift in my identity until I got too old and boring to really have an identity. When I was 10 my first albums—Van Halen, J. Geils Band, The Who— symbolized the adolescent rocker I aspired to be. When I was 15 I rejected my suburban milieu by emblazoning every item of clothing I owned with the names of my favorite bands—Minor Threat, Circle Jerks, X and The Germs. When I was trying to define myself as an art school hipster, my indie rock cred played an integral role. If you didn't listen to Hole, Screaming Trees and most of all, Pavement, you might as well be in a frickin' frat!

Using music as an identity seems rather frivolous to me.

As Tom Waits said, "Music is the soundtrack of one's life". I have had a special affinity for music for long as I can remember. But when you're very young, you're passively affected by all the other things going on around you and music accompanies that. When one gets older however, he or she starts actively looking for things to connect with so a person will look for music that especially exemplifies certain images.

I shudder when I hear too much about music as a reflection of identity. It makes me think of High Fidelity and elitist segregation of taste, in the same way people choose fashion to set themselves apart as a better, cooler, more "x" person.

I'm an extremely enthusiastic humanist. Wildly divergent tastes, from the sublime to the ridiculously mundane, from Philip Glass to Dave Matthews, means enjoying all of it.

I AM A GAY BLACK MAN AND AS A TEENAGER GROWING

UP IN THE LATE 60'S AND HAVING HAD GONE TO A SPECILIZED HIGH SCHOOL AND MAJORING IN ART IN NEW YORK CITY....MY MUSICAL ID WENT FROM THE SUPREMES,BILLIE HOLIDAY,DINAH WASHINGTON ALL THE WAY TO JUDY GARLAND.AND BACK WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IF YOU WERE A MALE AND YOU LOVED THE SUPREMES YOU WERE SUSPECT [THIS WAS IN THE BLACK COMMUINITY.....

I was fortunate to grow up in the 60's and 70's. My earlist memories were of listening to my parents music which included popular music of their time: Sinatra, Bennett, Trini Lopez and latin jazz. The Ed Sullivan show exposed me to Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Barbara Streisand, Broadway Musicals and the Beatles. 70's FM radio was fabulous. We had great NY radio stations like WNEW and WLIR at that time played album oriented rock. As a young adult I grew into motown, then r&B and blues - finally folk, disco and onto world music.

I've always loved percussion having danced all my life. Music rouses the soul and all indigenous cultures use music to dance and sing together to create community Wish we did more of that in our modern world.

your point about vampire weekend and authenticity brings to mind another obvious point, namely to do with the hip hop identity and how the word hip hop not only describes a type of music but an entire culture which has for a long time been embraced by white suburban kids who live out that identity completely out of their own context in terms of the way they dress and speak and act in general.

Hi, I listen to just about everything from Emmylou Harris to Motorhead to Bach, Chinese and Japanese classical, traditional and popular African, etc. But I go a step further-I'm a professional musician and I play a plethora of instruments and styles -Japanese shakuhachi flute (Buddhist, folk, and classical music), Hawaiian music on the steel guitar, bluegrass on the dobro, calypso on steel drum, rock reggae, calypso, blues, funk, jazz, oldies, pop, metal etc. on the guitar. I studied classical Arabic music for two years on the oud. I play some Irish jigs and reels on the Irish bouzouki and I play assorted other stringed instruments.

By the way, I would love to be on the show if you think people might enjoy such a musical oddball.

I've always been drawn to music that's cold, mathematical and lifeless such as Magnetic Fields, Vampire Wkdn, Yngve Malmsteen, and David Byrne.

I don't understand why elitism is a dirty word, Its like being called a heretic. Why is it so taboo to claim that Bach is greater than P Ditty? I don't get it, here's a guy teaching at Princeton that is anti-elite, that seems so phoney. without an elite there would be no high culture and the more anti-elite we are in this country the more of a brain drain will exist. This kind of (so called "hip") anti-elitism is no different than the right's anti-intellectualism...dood luck, adrienne weiss

This has been a fantastic discourse. Yes, absolutely I had to avoid country music like the plague to make sure I was not confused with some of the societal assumptions of my Dixie brethren. (so I missed out on Johnny Cash entirely, but caught up by Whiskeytown) But I am certainly happy to judge someone on their music collection, without apology. I do feel there is value and merit to diverse music collections; value to migrating up from Celine Dion to something politically and mentally challenging; value to my perception of the intellectual or emotional level of the music and lyric. If I am able to assess that "music" is lacking redeeming elements, especially simplistic and juvenile, or saccharine... I don't feel elitist, but I feel educated and lucky to have exposure and I don't think these are the same. And I can tell pretty quickly by a music collection if the person is inquisitive, open minded, and has a broad cultural reference - a little irreverence, a little kitsch, some retro, some cutting edge makes for a great discussion mate if nothing else. Also, I don't feel a bit bad about having an oboe and a thumb piano in the same song... the more JuJu I hear the happier I am, from the Hamptons or from Soweto. Phonographs are an American invention, but I am very glad to share with all music lovers everywhere!

I find that I'm not drawn to a particular music genre, but rather to an emotional quality in the music. I like (and use) music for relaxing, for letting go of stress. "Calm" music occurs across many genres, and therefore, I like songs and pieces by many and varied artists, as long as they have certain characteristics - they're harmonic, peaceful, and encouraging. What does that say about me? Maybe that I'm stressed out!

My father thought his gift to me was a business. And it was good. It helped me put my two kids through some of the most expensive schools in the country, throw a lavish wedding party, own a beautiful home, and have a really nice retirement nest egg.

But his real gift to me was music. It was Classical music, like from maybe Haydn up through Sibelius.

Music is a constant in my life: Classical (Beethoven, Sibelius, Copland), modern (Part, Hovhaness, Tavener) , minimalist (all of them), popular (Stones, ABBA, Traveling Wilburys, The Boss), some Country (EmmyLou, Greg Brown,and Kate & Anna).

I am sixty-seven, and now mostly I listen to Enigma, Dead Can Dance, Hearts of Space, the Innova streams on Live365, where I also listen to Kyle Gann's Post Classical and American Music Center's Counterstream.

I think that dad would find me a bit confusing.

>>RSM

How have you used music to express your identity -- or escape from it?

When I was little girl, I used to listen to a lot of punk and emo - like Rancid and Brand New. It was what all my friends listened to at the time- and we would go to gigs at the knitting factory, abc no rio. Warped Tour was always fun every year too. As I got older and the crowd got younger- i started listening to indie to escape the juvenile/ high school crowd seen at punk/emo/warped tour. Now I am a college student that likes Kate nash, ting tings, wombats, and cut copy. I like studio b, bowery ballroom and the merc lounge. I guess I can say I identified being a punk/emo child in my tween/teen years but the sense of belonging didnt really matter as much as i grew older into college.

i think everything one does is a reflection of identity, so all the naysayers above who suggest that using music is somehow less so are offbase.

as for me, i literally grew up a "po' black child" in cleveland. we were mostly exposed to (and loved) r&b and soul music. but, one day, my brother started bringing home rock records (hendrix, neil young, pink floyd) and, possibly as a result of being a middle child who wanted to establish his own personality, i jumped in with both feet. i started wearing worn-out jeans with hippie patches, not getting haircuts (unless my ma made me), smoking pot, etc. now, almost forty years later, i still prefer rock to so-called "urban" music, but my tastes are nothing if not eclectic, i.e. my current musically identity is what *I* think of as "sophisticated" (diabaté, kronos, radiohead, etc.) or at least as much as it can be for someone who isn't actually musical himself.

I remember the precise moment that I chose music over identity. I was 16 in 1980, playing in an avant-primitive post-punk band, loved the Clash, the Pistols, etc. (still do). On a whim, I borrowed a Led Zeppelin tape from a friend wanting to see if there was more there than what the radio played. I was stunned at how great it was. At that time, it was extremely unfashionable to like Led Zep - with the death of Bonham and their last album, even their fans went underground a bit. But I need music - it's my nourishment and my drug - so I kept going. I didn't lose any friends but I'm sure they wondered about me.

I can't tell you how happy I was when Zep became fashionable again in the 1990's. Not only did we get Page's fantastic remasters but I finally could find other people to talk to about the MUSIC instead of why I was listening to stoner music when I wasn't a stoner, etc.

I'm 43 now and have incredibly wide-ranging taste, which sometimes surprises my peers. The other day, one of the (african-american) dads in my son's class came up to me (white) and said, somewhat incredulously, "I hear you like hip hop!" After confirming this, I went on my way with Prodigy's Return of the Mac in my headphones...