To play a soundtrack: how children use recorded music in their everyday lives

Abstract

This article looks at how children between three and six years of age use recorded music in their everyday lives. In Norway, where the project is situated, most children in this age group probably have access to CDs and/or Mp3 files, both in their family homes and pedagogical day-care facilities. Thus recorded music and the way it is used by children presumably have an impact on the children's relation to music, their musical tastes and attitudes.

Linking up with the research field of children's culture and resting upon qualitative inquiry (observation and interview), a play or listening situation including four children and the soundtrack from a children's TV-series is explored. The notion of affordance serves as an important approach, allowing me to address both what the children do with the music and what the music does for, to and with the children.

Keywords:

• recorded music
• children's culture
• everyday life
• affordance
• atmosphere

Notes

1. Jon-Roar Bjørkvold is one of very few within a Norwegian context who has explored the functions of music in children's everyday lives. In his thesis of 1981, Bjørkvold addresses how children use singing for expressive purposes. (Title of thesis: Den spontane barnesangen – vårt musikalske morsmål: En undersøkelse av førskolebarns sang i tre barnehager i Oslo.)

2. ‘Här kommer Pippi Långstrump’. Music: Jan Johansson. Lyrics: Astrid Lindgren.

3. A focus group interview (Halkier 2007) involving stimulated recall (Haglund 2003).

4. The interview was designed as a focus group interview (Halkier 2007).

5. Geir Bøhren and Bent Åserud. Interviewed by author. Minidisc recording. October 2003. Oslo.

6. ‘Radiating’ is a term used by Böhme (2006).

7. This can be elaborated by discussing intersubjectivity in play (Mauritzson and Säljö 2003) and interpretive reproduction (Corsaro 2005).