Being Musical: Nature or Nurture?

I explore what it means to be considered musical and how this feeds into notions of talent or acquired skill. I share a story of my own musical development, which, unlike most others in this book, was not encouraged by my parents but by ‘non-parental others’ (Atkinson, Beyond Bourdieu, Polity, 2016, p. 96). Using the idea of affective recognition as a cycle of positive reinforcement, a reason why mothers and their children engage with music in the first instance is explored. Finally, I look at who makes this subjective call that shapes future musical engagement and self-perceptions about musical ability and argue that it is mothers who are the primary determiners of whether children should receive music tuition or not. I show how these decisions are made over generations, implicate lives and musical trajectories, and sometimes create tensions within families.