Musical identities in action:Embodied, situated, and dynamic
This article provides a critical overview of musical identities as a research topic. A broad distinction between identities in music (IIM) and music in identities (MII) highlights how musical engagement is central to identity construction. These concepts are integrated with recent advances in psychological theory derived from enactive cognition (4E cognition) to propose a new framework for understanding musical identities, Musical Identities in Action (MIIA). This framework foregrounds musical identities as dynamic (constantly evolving, dialogical, and actively performed), embodied (shaped by how music is physically expressed and experienced), and situated (emergent from interaction with s…
The Meaning of Redundancy for Opera Choristers - an investigation of musical identity in the context of job loss
This study looks at the impact of job loss for seven professional opera choristers. The individual aspects of such change are not always addressed by traditional methodologies. Motivated by these concerns, this study takes an idiographic approach using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). IPA is concerned with the subjective meanings that people ascribe to experiences, but also recognises the active role of the researcher in gaining access to that window of experience. Three main themes emerged from the data analysis but, for the purpose of this presentation, only one theme will be discussed which is ‘Issues of Identity’. This theme looks at the differing levels of importance ass…