Introduction: Making Masculinities Through Music

Abstract

This book is about the interaction between masculinity, class and music education through the vantage point of choirboys’ musical life stories. This introductory chapter brings the reader into the book’s terrain of sociology, music and education. The main questions explored in this book are articulated, which are about how the specific kind of masculinity of this group of boys is ‘made’ through their experiences in learning to become a choirboy. The scene is set for the book’s investigation of the relationship between young boys’ masculinity and social class and how music can do the social and cultural work of constructing masculinities in early life.