My Music is a first-hand exploration of the diverse roles music plays in people's lives. "What is music about for you?" asked members of the Music in Daily Life Project of some 150 people, and the responses they received -- from the profound to the mundane, from the deeply-felt to the flippant -- reflect highly individualistic relationships to and with music. Susan Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, and Project Director Charles Keil have collected and edited nearly forty of those interviews to document the diverse ways in which people enjoy, experience, and use music.CONTRIBUTORS: Charles Keil, George Lipsitz.

Not surprisingly, people listen to music for many different reasons and in many different ways, but the authors express pleasant surpise at most respondents keen interest and intelligence about popular music in general and the astonishing range of individuals interests despite the narrowcasting principles of radio specifically and the media in general. The Washington Post
The subjects here are the weirdest of the weird: ordinary people. The project interviewed people aged four to 83 on what music meant to them, using relatives, friends, ex-employees, and neighbors as questioners so that the answers wouldn t be the usual lies we tell about our tastes. It s staggering. SF Weekly
My Music presents a lively cross-section of lay commentary on music... The interviews are very rich, and not only for their musical content. There are miniature psychodramas, and some clouded glimpses into private lives... My Music is unique in its use of open-ended, more-or-less nondirective interviews, and its focus on the voices of ordinary people...I suspect it will prove especially useful in the classroom. Postmodern Culture