TBT: Music and Identity
Throwback Thursday: A wise witch looks back
As a Cancer rising, I tend to be the keeper of family memories. In this series, I take a photo from my past and reflect on how time and experience has shaped my current perspective and practice as an art witch.
First day of 8th grade
My earliest microphone was a wooden block. I remember dancing around my family’s living room, aged 4 or so, singing Billy Joel’s It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me into a bright yellow cylinder.
After my performance I would lay down on the floor next to the big speaker so I could feel the bass of Eagles classics like Heartache Tonight.
What fascinated me was not the act of performance, but the music itself. I have always been moved by music and song lyrics, and throughout my childhood and adolescence I established and defined my identity primarily around the music that I, and those around me, listened to.
In my natal astrology chart I have a strong aspect between Neptune and my Sun and Venus. I feel this gives me an appreciation for music but also makes me associate my musical preferences with my identity and core values.
Growing up, my parents played a great deal of music - first vinyl records, then cassette tapes, and eventually CDs. There was often music on before dinner and certainly played during the long hot days of a Southern California desert summer spent mostly indoors. I remember as a child seeing my dad's headphones with a long curly phone-like cord next to the green velvet rocking chair that he sat in to listen to music. My parents put great pride in their music collection, took care of it, and listened to it regularly. I think this also instilled in me an early reverence for the importance of music in everyday life.
My house was filled with 70’s country and rock staples such as the Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and Jackson Browne, as well as pop music outliers like Gordon Lightfoot and Jimmy Buffett. These were the albums I heard on repeat as a child, and they formed the foundation of my musical education.
Around 5th grade I realized that there was a thing called popular music and I felt like, in order to relate to my peer group, I had better figure out what it was all about. Otherwise, how would I get the references to the freshly emerging genre called MTV? I started listening to the top 40 station out of LA, KIIS FM, which included Madonna, Wham, A-ha and Tears for Fears. I still loved my parent’s music, however, and I have always wanted to be a part of the popular crowd yet stand out apart from it. I was still curious about my own identity, and this was reflected in my curiosity about exploring different kinds of music.
In middle school I started hanging out with a more alternative, slightly older crowd who introduced me to early alternative bands like Depeche Mode and the Cure. The sound resonated with me on what seemed like a cellular level. Although my sunny Cancer rising disposition makes it tough for me to pull off a goth look, the vibe definitely formed a large piece of my adolescent heart. I began listening to an alternative rock station that broadcast out of Tijuana and reached most of the southland - the world famous KROQ. KROQ played the best songs from pop radio as well as cuts from college bands like REM, and embraced the newly emerging sound of grunge and industrial rock. Music was the filter through which I experienced the world, and KROQ was by far the primary soundtrack of my teenage years.
By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had been to a significant and life changing live show - the first Lollapalooza festival. I can thank my older brother for taking me to this now historical event at Irvine Meadows in 1991, when I was just 14. Seeing Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry literally light the stage on fire while deranged fans danced around giant bonfires raging above the venue in the lawn seat area… yeah. That spectacle truly cemented my identity as an alt rock audiophile.
And so, when I walked onto my high school campus for the first time, my pee-chee folder was covered with carefully drawn names of dozens of bands, from the well known Talking Heads and David Bowie to the more obscure Dead Kennedys and Echo and the Bunnymen. Immediately, my chosen identity was seen and recognized by upperclassmen who, in appreciating my musical tastes which were almost literally written on my sleeve, endorsed me as a cool person. Not only did this build my own self-confidence, but this cultural cache was the foundation for many enduring friendships, some of which transcended cliques and class because of a shared appreciation for a certain band or song.
But peers weren’t the only one impressed with my musical knowledge. On that same manila-colored pee-chee were lyrics from a Joni Mitchell song based on a W.B. Yeats poem, Slouching Toward Bethlehem. My hippie debate teacher saw it and was impressed that I knew who Joni Mitchell was. My English teacher saw it and was impressed that I knew who Yeats was. Since I respected both these academic authorities (remember, I was a serious student) I was also impressed with myself.
Self-admiration is not a new state of affairs for an Aries sun, I know. But this kind of recognition further solidified the relationship between music and identity throughout my high school years. My allowance and acceptance into social groups was allowed through music, and fostered through my ability to relate to a range of musical influences and tastes.
Today, our ability to listen to and share music has grown exponentially. In 1991 we were still making mixed tapes of our favorite band songs, recorded skillfully between commercials on the radio or via tape to tape from someone else’s purchased copy of the album. I’m old enough that I still had several cassettes that were recorded from my parent’s vinyl collection up until college, when I ditched my cassette player for a 5-disc changer.
Now, it is much more common to use music to establish an identity, especially since social media often provides the opportunity to create an entire brand or cipher of one’s own identity, and music and imagery are one tool in creating that illusion. Today, I am well aware that my beloved bands are old and predominantly white, marking me as an artifact of the southern california hegemony I grew up in. One young Latinx I worked with called me an “old rocker” which I took as a compliment, especially since she was recommending I take the most recent Kendrick Llamar album and go sit on a bench by the ocean and listen to it cover to cover.
To me, that is a kind of respect that I never tire of. To have someone recommend a treasured piece of music to me because they think I will enjoy it or because they know it is culturally significant speaks to the importance I have placed on music in my life. It is a shared language, one that helps me speak to many individuals across lines of identity throughout this lifetime.
