Recording Identity
Questions of identity are at the forefront of current thought. Indeed, we are constantly reminded to consider and reconsider our identities when reading a newspaper, go to the supermarket or choose our favourite play-list. Most of us are aware that businesses use the importance we attach to these chosen identities to generate income; delivering self-centred products that make us feel as though it is personally addressed and created for us and thus, by acquiring this, that we stand out from the crowd.
However, when asked to record our identity, and think of the ‘protected data’ form we are sometimes asked to fill in, we may have a different view. Although there might be questions regarding our age, our income, our gender, sexual orientation groups, or perceived ethnicity, there is an understood consensus that identity it is the way in which we define ourselves.
We arrived at this idea of self-definition through the work of theorists such as Erik Erikson (1959), Michel Foucault (1972) and Stuart Hall (1996), to mention just a few. Through their writings we came to recognise that our self-definition include concepts such as shared belief systems, belongingness, discursive practices, self-negotiation and social mediation; yet never quite arriving at a singular place of identity, but at multiple spaces of desire (Hall, 1992; Järviluoma, 1996). Furthermore, we also know that we constantly change, thus our identities are in constant flux; adding, defining and redefining information as needed. Thus regardless of the number of ways we choose to define ourselves (mother, father, musician, banker, Muslim, Christian, sister, brother, etc.) we move fluidly from one space of our identities to the next, without ever letting go of its underlying foundation.
Of course, the building blocks that we use to form these identities draw on elements such as memory, history, space, place and the continuation culture; what we remember about a specific place, and what happened in a specific space, contribute to forming our cultural memories from which our identities – and musical identities – are drawn.
Not that we constantly think of our identity placement, or of our desire to have a space for identity. Rather, it takes place through situating ourselves in different spaces, different social interactions, getting deeply involved in various activities, such as playing a game or sharing a joke; enjoying fully what we do, instead of constantly thinking of who we are.
The Recordings
These recordings thus add to this deeply nuanced debate. For, although some of the practitioners recorded here wanted their music presented as ‘authentically’ as possible, the fact that they were recorded out-of-context, in state-of-the-art recording studios, already diminishes this notion. Furthermore, some of the ideas presented here are historical revisiting’s; showing where concepts were drawn from in a bid to display the musical identities portrayed. Other practitioners, however, involved with musics that are currently undergoing a shift in musical organisation and representational thinking, wanted to under-line this in their compositional and performance outputs, re-negotiating musical identities in the globalised 21st century world.
In view of debates such as these, the recordings, images and films presented here acts as snapshots of musical moments; fractions of time wherein cultural codes are recorded – before being scattered further afield.
Jostine Loubser, January 2018