Hooked on the Blues: Technical and expressive continuities between life and music

Abstract

This article proposes a very specific approach to music, defined as a cultural, material or symbolic tool that intermeshes with certain people’s life experience. From that standpoint, music may be seen as one of the essential keys for interpreting a biography. The theoretical argument, described from a cultural and mediational perspective, is exemplified in the relationship established between musician and instrument. The singular value of each interpreter’s personal and non-transferable encounter with musical mediators is addressed, and the possible interweave between musicians’ technical and actual life horizons explored. The significance proposed refers to the specific ways in which music may translate world experience and model affect. The objective is to establish the relevance or possibility of expanding or nuancing the view of music as the outer representation of inner emotions through the conceit vitality affects, a term that stresses the dynamic and temporal dimensions of the emotive meaning of music.