MUSIC + NATIONAL IDENTITY: A Thread

I've gotten a lot of nice responses to this essay. With teaching, research, and exercise in a funk, this little piece of "me time" is one of the only things keeping me going right now. Thanks for the affirmation. 1/ https://classicalalternative.substack.com/p/whats-that-sound

The main point here is that we invoke national identity all the time when we talk about music, often casually. Yet it's a world-shaping aspect of human life. 2/

National identity most often comes up in discussions about how a piece of music "sounds." "This piece sounds American." "That piece sounds Russian." But what do we really mean by that? 3/

As I always say, it says as much if not more about the listener than it does about the piece of music. 4/

We are always in the midst of discussions about national identity, even now. So I think it's important to understand how that language operates in musical and non-musical contexts. 5/

The rest of my post goes into quite a bit of detail about theories of national musical identity, including @frolovawalker's outstanding work on Russian music. 6/

Why does it matter? As @AubreyBergauer and @classicalbeat (among many others) have argued consistently, drawing the experience of music into the broader fold of human experience can make it more appealing, compelling, and meaningful. 7/

Allowing music to be part of the human story--and telling those stories--is something I think performing organizations should prioritize. Music alone is lonely. What's allowing music to bring us together now is our shared trauma and need for healing, peace, and contact. 8/8