Creating a Musical Taste

'Tis the season for me to be worrying about what to get my little sister for Christmas, which is always a tricky business, because it has to be good. This year I've settled on some CDs I think she'll like. It's not the most original or unusual idea, but I'm actually very pleased with it, because Christmas, like all gift-giving occasions, is an opportunity for indoctrination. My sister is a young and impressionable 15, and I can't quite resist the temptation to make her into a little version of me--a project toward which she is somewhat ambivalent, but generally very accommodating, in that her hair is the same color as mine, she lives in the same town as I do, etc. There is no better or more significant subject for indoctrination than the music that is such a profound part of my history and identity. Nowadays, music is a great source of happiness and interest for me. In high school it was also part of my group identity, a defining characteristic of the subculture or community of which my friends and I declared ourselves a part.

Back then, a friend pointed out to me that there are few questions more loaded than the casual, "So, what kind of music do you like?" Similar questions ("What are your favorite movies?"), more basic ones ("Where are you from?") or even more personal ones ("Do you get along with your parents?") do not carry as many connotations, accurate or otherwise, as the most average answer to the question of musical taste. Consider the associations evoked by the following possible replies:

"Oh, you know, Ani DiFranco, the Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell."

"I go to a lot of Phish shows."

"Um, you probably wouldn't have heard of most of it. Do you know a band called Dead Barbie? How about Thirsty Roadkill?"

"I love '80s music. Like Madonna and that song about 'Eileen.'"

"Marilyn Manson."

For the most part, we have left these straightforward categories behind, but in high school, when we were less sure of ourselves and our identities, you could learn a lot from this question. Certain music provided very helpful associations, some more far-reaching than others. Liking Ani DiFranco was code for liberal politics and perhaps long flowery skirts or overalls. Liking Marilyn Manson meant you wanted to scare people. Liking Dave Matthews meant very little, perhaps on purpose. Bands no one ever heard of had their prestige, and if they had scary names, you were one step ahead of the game.

Nothing meant more than Phish, the mother of all identity bands (and, as such, the daughter of the Grateful Dead). It suggested a lifestyle, a way to dress, a particular disposition toward certain experimental drugs. In high school, the boys who liked Phish would go around drawing the Phish symbol on library desks, bathroom walls, their hands--wherever they felt the need to mark their territory. Phish was a ready-made identity, offering a whole subculture to anyone who was prepared to shell out for CDs, let their hair grow out and have a good time. Back then I found it a little creepy, because the people who fell into this crowd were often the school's semi-lost souls, and deciding to like Phish seemed an unreliable way of finding oneself.

All of these associations still ring true, but nowadays people don't need the crutch of group identity quite so much, and those of us who are very much into our music have mostly expanded beyond our initial categories. There are plenty of people who like Phish just because the music is good, and whose collections also include Miles Davis and the Go-Go's (well, maybe not the Go-Go's). The day I walked into my town's music store and bought both the new Indigo Girls album and the Beastie Boys' "Ill Communications," the clerk told me I won the prize for breadth of taste, and I knew I'd made a breakthrough. That said, there was something disingenuous in my suddenly picking out the Beastie Boys at age 16. As an established member of the Indigo-Girls-and-Ani-DiFranco crowd, I was fully aware of and attracted to the incongruity of my knowing all the words to "Sabotage." I was consciously choosing to assume a slightly unexpected identity. I never listened to that album very much, anyway.

When my sister was ten, she shocked and dismayed me by asking for a Janet Jackson album for Christmas. I took her hip-hop leanings as a decisive divergence from my way of life. Ever-proactive in the department of my sister's cultural development, I was instantly on the job, and on Christmas morning she unwrapped a new Janet Jackson CD and a new 90-minute mix tape from me, titled "Girls with Guitars." Within a few months, the mix tape had triumphed, and she was passing feminist folk music along to her friends--kind of scary, isn't it?

This year, it's a little different. Despite a persistent affection for Third Eye Blind, she's turned out very well and can perhaps even be trusted to choose her own music. Five years ago I gave her a folk-girl identity in the form of a mix tape; now my highest ambition is to share with her some songs I've really loved. In the end, this is a higher ambition. If she loves those songs as I do, then they are a more lasting form of indoctrination--a real gift of self, if you want to give it a less totalitarian spin.

Jody H. Peltason '01 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. This is her final column.