People's relationship with music is extremely personal. Everyone comes from different places in life with difference experiences and different definitions as to what music and being a "musician" is. I explored this idea when interviewing two of my fellow colleagues Nathon Irving (Bachelor of Music - First Year) and Mark Chi (Bachelor of Science - First Year). Both consider music to be a prevalent part of their life, but the way they interact with and talk about music are minutely different. You can watch the interview below:
I first started by asking each of my colleagues what music meant to them, and these were the responses I got:
Nathon: Music is my best friend. It was there for me when I had no one. It's been there with me and for me. I could always express myself through music, always find music that impacts me and makes me feel like I'm not different, makes me feel normal. Mark: Music is like a different language used to communicate emotion, feeling, and connects people together.
These two responses were very interesting especially when looking at these interviews in the perspective that Nathon actively is studying music, while Mark is not. I would say Nathon's relationship with music seems much more personal and rooted in his personal experiences while Mark's is a more general assumption as to what music means. This is interesting to me because I would have expected it the other way. I feel as though sometimes studying music would have a more of a "textbook" definition as to what music is and someone who considers music a large part of their life without studying it in school would have a more "self-defined" idea of what music is. This was interesting because I think it spoke to the fact that lots of people who study music despite being "formally" trained still consider their relationship with music to be incredibly intrapersonal. I think the reason why people who don't study music formally might offer up a general, abstract definition of what music is could be because they want to validate their musicianship by speaking profoundly on music.
Furthermore, another thing I think was interesting was that both my colleagues offered up very different yet similar their definitions of what a "musician" is:
Nathon: Someone who has some sense of musicality... Someone who loves music, respects music, and encompasses themselves with music and tries to use it as a tool in their life. Mark: Someone that enjoys music and...Someone who really connects with music and sees it as a craft, a craft that they try and master.