Intergenerational transmissions and sharing of musical taste practices

ABSTRACT

This study explores the lived dimensions of musical taste emerging from interactions over the life-course within the nuclear family. We address this subject using intergenerational transmission as a conceptual frame of reference simultaneously highlighting the dynamic and situated nature of musical taste, thus promoting a pragmatic approach. Our aim is to identify the moments, the contents, the goals and the processes linked to intergenerational transmissions. Interpreting the data from 18 parent-young adult dyads reveals: a parental mark imprinted mainly through impregnation; age and generation structuring musical taste (more at the level of listening devices); a low level of parental malleability; heterogeneous intergenerational interactions within the nuclear family, and the transmission of ‘old devices’. Finally, in line with practice theory, we show that the processes of intergenerational transmission with different agents involved can only happen with the support of objects, ‘doings’ performed with objects, and meanings associated with objects.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergenerational transmissions
• musical tastes
• nuclear family
• pragmatic approach
• listening devices

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the two anonymous JMM reviewers for their insightful comments and numerous suggestions, which led to significant improvements of this article. This research is a follow-up of a very first and much more limited study achieved in 2016 with the help of Michael Korchia, Melisa Luna Fernandez and Marie Kindt.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms were used for any mention of participants' family members.