Poster's Perspective: Music According to Jason Nyguyen

Jason R. Nguyen

Dual-PhD Student

Folklore & Ethnomusicology / Communication & Culture

Indiana University-Bloomington

I come from a family that appreciates music and can even be considered musicians (my mom loves to sing and my dad has been known to pluck out a few tunes on the guitar), as long as one doesn't use the highly professionalizing mentality of music practice in the United States. Of course, they generally bought into this latter mentality, because the ability to perform music (especially classical music) in highly skilled ways suggests in our culture that you are intellectual, cultured, and successful. As a Vietnamese immigrant family, these were important qualities that my parents wanted to confer on their children, so my two sisters and I started learning how to play the violin since about kindergarten. I dutifully played violin throughout primary school and into college: first chair at my high school, first chair in the county, second chair when I got to college. So I've had a successful run as a musician.

But by the end of college, violin had become less important to me. It started to have less relevance in my life. Since I didn't plan on going to a music conservatory, violin and classical music had very little relevance to my social life, and I had already proven my prowess well past the point where greater skill could provide further social capital for someone not planning on a career as a professional violinist. So what was the point? Did I just waste all those years of my life?

Of course not. I wouldn't have traded those experiences for anything. But I think we have to think differently about what music is and what it does to truly understand its value and for me to make my case about the importance of music in my life. We have to understand that our society tends to privilege virtuosity and great skill in music as the reasons for doing it, when those values don't really add up to much of anything in terms of social or financial capital unless you're the absolute best of the best. No, playing violin was at its most valuable to me when it was part of a web of social relationships, when I was participating as part of a group of people trying to achieve an end together: perform an opera, learn a hard piece together, enjoy each other's company, have fun, etc.

Tom Turino refers to "participatory music" in Music as Social Life as being "about the opportunity of connecting in special ways with others and experiencing flow" and "not merely the informal sideline to the 'real' event [...] but rather they are at the center of social life" (2008, pg. 35). This approach to music and its possible value goes against the grain of an individualistic and market-oriented society, but I think it is at the center of finding value in music for anybody but the most elite of musicians. Indeed, my outlook on music in general has shifted entirely from that of my parents. Not simply a tool to teach me discipline or a social practice that confers a certain amount of respectability, music needs to matter in the social relations you make. What ties I still have to my days playing the violin are ties to people: friends I made in the orchestra and wonderful, dedicated teachers. Consequently, when and if I have children someday, I will most certainly urge them to play music, but I will point them towards music and dance that they might enjoy outside of such specific contexts. Perhaps they will learn to play the violin as I did, or maybe they would prefer to beatbox and rap. Maybe one will find greater joy and camaraderie in the school band, while another decides to start a punk rock band.

For me, music doesn't so much change a life as interweaves inextricably with it. It is meaningful when one can't imagine anything before or after it. What was my life before music? There wasn't one.