The Making of your Musical DNA
In our recent interview with Treephones’ Stephen Trothen, he said “the music you “listen to between 17 and 23, is the thing that makes your DNA”. Of course, this idea is nothing new. David Berry, in his book On Nostalgia points to Morris Holbrook who said that “people tend to feel the greatest nostalgia from 14–24”. Berry goes on to note that nostalgia is a way of “creating the self, something like a greatest hits compilation of what we want to be, who we think we are”. In short, “you are what you desire”(On Nostalgia, Berry). Like DNA, your connection to nostalgic memories is part of the physiological making of you. Music is part of your human condition.
Petr Janata, a psychologist at University of California–Davis, explains that our favourite music “gets consolidated into the especially emotional memories from our formative years.” He calls this a reminiscence bump. The bump is defined as “a phenomenon that we remember so much of our younger adult lives more vividly than other years, and these memories last well into our adolescence.” He goes on to point out that “when we look back on our past, the memories that dominate this narrative have two things in common: They’re happy, and they cluster around our teens and early 20s.” This, of course, explains why adults cling to the music of their discovery as the epitome of music.
So, it really should come as little surprise that our greatest nostalgia should come during our pubescent and early adulthood. In puberty, we quite literally change in all manner of ways. Not only do we sprout hair, grow uncontrollably, and vocally swerve between Mike Tyson and Harvey Fierstein, but we figuratively start to push ourselves to a greater understanding of who we are and what we think about the world around us. We are on unsure footing, but only through that unsure footing do we begin to see what we are like and what we can become.
Musically, puberty is perhaps the most obvious part of one’s musical direction. Being a bit of music dictator as a young parent, I rarely let the “wheels on the bus” go round and round in my vehicle. Instead, I remember conditioning my daughter into asking for Sarah Harmer, Stars, or The Delgados to be played “again.” However, imagine my dismay when she went to school and returned talking about Justin Beiber! Yet, as a 16-year-old, her own musical discoveries are beginning to come to fruition, and now I find her recommending artists like Inhaler, Wallows, or Woah to me. Her experience made me think of my musical journey. As a zitty-faced pubescent teen, I consumed Def Leppard, AC/DC, and Guns & Roses with abandonment. I liked it because it was kinda edgy, my parents didn’t like it, and it was — in my early estimation — “real.” In retrospect, I also liked it because I was beginning to grow as a music listener. It was not the music that has come to define me, but it was the start of that journey.
That journey would continue. And, it is that next stage that Trothen notes is so important. Early adulthood is where our musical DNA is truly forged. Psychologist Jeffery Arnett notes that early adulthood “is a period of the life course that is culturally constructed.” He furthermore adds that “adult commitments and responsibilities are delayed while the role experimentation that began in adolescence continues and in fact intensifies.” Early adulthood is not about the burdens of mortgage payments, bills, and RRSP contributions. It is instead a time when you live in a crappy apartment in the city and proudly go the entire day on coffee and jalapeno poppers. You live for the weekend when you will find a club that plays “your music” and where you dance with “your type of people.” This, for Treephones, and many of us is the time when we start to establish our musical DNA.
When writing this, I was reminded of a former student of mine named Eva. Throughout her teens, Eva “had a lot of social anxiety and hid this by keeping people at a distance.” When she first walked into my grade nine class, she hid at the back of the room. Reticent to the world. In her estimation, “I had trained my body to be small and somewhat dark in appearance to fend off any unwanted attention or interaction.” By grade 12, Eva had found some outlet in dance, and she was a far different young lady. However, it was in Early Adulthood when Eva found the music that would help her establish her true musical identity. African djembe drumming. “When I walked into my first djembe workshop in my early twenties I was absolutely terrified.” Yet, as she played, “the feeling of creating this sound with my hands was exhilarating. Everything that we played and learned simply felt in tune with my body and I quickly craved more. I walked out of that workshop with a surge of energy and a vibration running through my body of excitement that something just felt right.” In reading Eva’s recollections, I am struck by the image of a young, unsure girl, who through music, grows.
Soon, this new community would shape her further. She noticed a change in her body language. “I had to sit tall in stature so that my technique was better. I had to be loud and attract attention to myself to get the notes I needed with my hands.” But, more importantly, she notes that to “achieve any rhythm, I had to play alongside and together with others.” For a young lady who identified herself as “socially awkward and distanced” the music was now foremost. “It never mattered to the people around me because I was speaking through my body and these rhythms, in turn, spoke for me.” Daniel Levitan has said that music is about “belonging to a certain social group” and that this “melds the music to our sense of identity.” That community is strikingly evident in Eva’s reflection. It was there to support her and help her grow. But, perhaps, more importantly, is that through this sense of identity, Eva was able to build an enviable confidence and find some kind of existential truth.
But, that is what the music of our formative years does. In the energy of dance, we find an identity devoid of hangups and reason. In the songs of early adulthood, we learn empathy, heartbreak, and pure joy. For Eva, the music of the djembe is her. As she continued to play, and the energy grew, propelling her to open up “emotionally” and “socially” she found “without realizing it” she experienced “an unfolding.” Looking back, she notes that this “started at that first hit of that drum.” A drum that was hit in her early twenties and still beats in her today. The beat of the djembe is part of her DNA. Whether or not it shapes us into being, or where or not you are shaped by it. Music is you.
