Abstract
This chapter expands the topic of music in boys’ lives through the moving stories of young choirboys. The main aim is to portray the multitude of social and emotional meanings music and singing have and their depth as a resource for self-making. Close attention is drawn to the boys’ emotional articulateness as a vital disposition of their musical habitus to question what practices, beyond the classroom, enable boys to become such accomplished young musicians. The concept of habitus is put under pressure by arguing for a recuperation of the role of agency in the formation of habitus. This is exemplified in the ways the choirboys mobilise their musical habitus as a capital, but which has varying degrees of value.
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Notes
- 1.
A vast body of literature exists regarding children’s singing in the early years which is generally concerned with either the voice from developmental perspectives (for example, Davies, 1989; Phillips, 1992; Rutkowski & Miller, 2003; Welch, 1997) or children’s musical practices from sociocultural or ethnomusicological perspectives (for example, Campbell, 1991; Grimmett, 2008; Marsh, 1995). The title of Campbell’s (1998) groundbreaking ethnography Songs in their Heads: Music and its Meaning in Children’s Lives might suggest an investigation in children’s singing; however, she uses children’s vocal practices as well as other forms of music-making to illustrate the personal and social meanings of music for young children, which is much broader aim than mine.
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Hall, C. (2018). Becoming Choirboys. In: Masculinity, Class and Music Education. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50255-1_6
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