Research and Development Supporting the Music Talks Project
It has long been understood that music listening plays an important role among youth, particularly as part of their socializing activities, but just how important is music for young people? Can we safely assume that European youth find music to be important in their lives, or is music’s importance decreasing with the rise of new media? Might this vary widely depending on which part of Europe is surveyed, whether in Scandinavia, the Baltic countries or the Balkans, for instance? The EU’s Erasmus Plus-funded Music Talks project is enabling us to obtain a more precise and updated understanding of youth attitudes toward — and participation in — music as a basis for future innovations to nonformal education programs. These insights are achieved through our analysis of responses from a total of 377 completed questionnaires from Norway, Latvia and North Macedonia, along with 30 public Music Leader Profiles generated from qualitative interviews among 30 prominent leaders of diverse urban youth music activities in Bergen, Riga, and Prilep.
Music Talks is an EU Erasmus Plus funded partnership between institutions and NGOs in Latvia, Norway, and North Macedonia with the aim of developing innovative teaching materials for working with young people (ages 15-25) in non-formal education, with a focus on developing young people’s skills to discuss important issues through music as a tool for civic participation. The project partners are: Baltic Regional Fund (NGO, Latvia), Info front - Prilep (NGO, Macedonia), Tava mūzikas skola (music school, Latvia) and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Norway). Collectively, with a background in music education and youth work, the four European entities are joining their missions to develop an innovative approach that will boost social skills and facilitate inclusion through meaningful discussions about music among young people.
Executive Summary
To begin, as context we should note that this is among the first international-comparative studies of youth music attitudes in Europe since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is regarded as the most socially disruptive event since WWII. Among the more significant findings from this study were that across all three European countries youths report similar ways of sharing music with peers, favoring face-to-face over other methods. Additionally, over 80% of respondents indicated either “agree” or “strongly” agree in response to the statement “Music listening is an important and meaningful activity for me personally”. This result indicates a remarkably strong consensus, particularly when compared with the broad range of responses offered to such prompts as “I am politically active and concerned about my community”. Indeed, overall youth respondents indicate much more certainty about music mattering to them personally than their political activities or concern for their community. Still, we also note that those youth who frequently discuss music with peers are statistically more likely to be politically active and concerned about issues affecting their community. Fully 88% of respondents indicate they discuss music with friends “maybe a few times per month” and over 57% say this is closer to “a few times per week”. When it comes to listening to traditional music from their own country, a more complex picture emerges, with Latvia and North Macedonia showing some similarities while Norway stands out with some notable differences. Specifically, Norwegian respondents were least likely to indicate that they “strongly agree” with the prompt that they “listen to traditional music from your country”, comprising only 15.5% (versus 26.9% in Latvia and 26.4% in North Macedonia). Norwegian respondents were also most likely to indicate “Unsure” in response to this question, comprising 25.6% (versus only 13.9% in Latvia and 13.6% in North Macedonia). Less than half of respondents reported that they were personally able to describe music in a “technically detailed way” yet around to thirds reported that they like when others are able to do so (65.6%); this finding may suggest that there is an interest in learning how to more effectively describe musical sound.
Preferred ways of sharing music with peers were similar across all three countries, with respondents strongly favoring face-to-face over other methods; moreover, older youths were slightly more likely to share music via a link (URL) than younger participants. Another intriguing finding is that nearly 42% of participants admitted that they sometimes choose to conceal their true musical preferences. Some significant differences were encountered in the comparison of older and younger participants, as well as according to level of musical training, but overall there were notably few differences across nationalities from very different parts of Europe (Scandinavia, Baltic, and Balkan states). Our interpretation of likely reasons for these findings is offered later in the report.
Methods
Questionnaire
We administered our 35-question online survey to youth groups (ages 15-25) engaged in both music activities and non-musical settings in the three cities of Riga, Bergen, and Prilep. The survey instrument, completed by a total of 377 participants. The survey collected basic information about the respondents’ nationality, gender, age and level of musical training, and then explored attitudes regarding the importance of music listening, music sharing methods, music and self in social interactions, attitudes toward traditional and unfamiliar music, and music in civic engagement. In some cases, access for the data collection did not pose a problem, but in others we found great efforts were needed to reach prospective respondents at a time when they were willing to participate, which we attribute to challenges associated with the Covid-19 pandemic as well as “survey fatigue” in some institutions. Latvian chocolate was determined to be generally effective in motivating participants to complete the surveys.
As shown in Table 1, we managed to obtain a well-balanced representation of participants from the three countries (Norway 34.7%; Latvia 28.6%; Macedonia 36.6%). Participants were also compared in terms of two relatively equal categories of younger (15-18 years old: 53.1%) versus older (19-25 years old: 46.9%) as well as male (52.5%) versus female (46.4%) respondents.