"Drawing from four decades of research examining the social worlds of rock and popular music, Joseph Kotarba has truly created his magnum opus. Written in a clear and accessible style, he speaks directly to readers and captures their attention like an impressive guitar riff. He masterfully weaves ethnographic details from the field, documenting everyday life interaction with music as it punctuates enduring markers of meaning throughout the life course. A classic in the making, Music in the Course of Life provides vital insight into key sociological concepts that explain our evolving dance with music from early childhood through our aging years."
Dr. Robert Owen Gardner, Professor of Sociology,
Linfield University, Author of
The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life (2020)
"Sociological studies of music have often emphasized youth subcultures or intense dedicated fans of particular musical genres. But music, Kotarba shows us, is a powerful lifelong experience shared by everyone. This book provides a novel symbolic interactionist approach that treats music not as a subcultural phenomenon but as an integral part in the course of life all the way from early childhood through later elders. With sensitivity to the full range of the course of life, Kotarba vividly demonstrates the importance of music to the construction and maintenance of the self, through self-being, self-becoming, and self-remembering. With wide-ranging examples across multiple genres and a lively, accessible, writing style, Kotarba invites us to enjoy the sociology of music as much as we enjoy music itself."
Dr. Wayne H. Brekhus,
Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri"
Music in the Course of Life is a fitting crescendo to Dr. Kotarba's lengthy and powerful career as a symbolic interactionist who sees music as a key feature of the everyday life experience of culture. His updating of life course theory is a creative integration of contemporary interactionist thinking on the self concept. This book is a collection of stories, Dr. Kotarba's and those of his respondents, that nicely capture the magic of music in all our lives."
Dr. Norman Denzin,
Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois"This book really sings! Dr. Kotarba demonstrates the magic and meaning of music inherent throughout the entire course of life. Using insights from everyday life sociology, he integrates a wide range of literature on music experience with evocative personal stories gathered from respondents of all ages and from his own engaging stories as a social researcher and a music fan. I was particularly taken with his insight and thoroughness in depicting music as a portal of compassion for the elderly with dementia and those near-death. This book will be of tremendous value to all those-researchers and laypeople alike--interested in the reflexive relationship between music and the self."
Dr. Carolyn Ellis,
Distinguished University Professor Emerita, University of South Florida
