Music in Everyday Life

Rating:
Summary: how people use music in their lives
Review: This is an excellent study of how people use music to structure their lives. DeNora is interested in how people use music to create identities for themselves, change their mood, and structure their interactions with other. I was particularly fascinated by her remarks on the use of music in neonatal intensive care units to help the little ones stabilize their body states, and in her study of how aerobics instructor use different kinds of music to structure a workout. She also talks about how stores and malls use music to create an identity for the enterprise and to alter customer mood in a way that favors shopping.

Rating:
Summary: Nice idea, but could go further
Review: This is definitely an interesting and welcome attempt to look at some of the everyday musics of the modern West. The author seems to have overlooked the large literature on music in everyday human life outside the West, or in Western folk traditions. While there is no need to write comparatively, or even to cite that research much, the book might still be better informed by lessons learned there, both musical and methodological. As a result, the book, despite its interest, sometimes reinvents the wheel and is occasionally theoretically weak.