Introduction: Children’s music—an emerging field of research

Abstract

This special issue is about children’s music (barnemusikk). Children’s music is a broad term and may include music produced by adults for children (culture for children), music and musical practices that children and adults engage in together (culture with children), and the music children themselves make and how they engage with it in their own networks and relations (culture by children) (see Mouritsen, 2002, for a discussion of children’s culture in general). The three threads of the definition of children’s culture and, thus, of children’s music, are arguably closely connected. For instance, consider a young child listening to a pop song for children on an iPad while walking rhythmically around the room and singing along to the music. This imagined scene involves music produced for a child audience. Moreover, the scene is taking place in a social setting in which adults have provided the child with a technological device that enables the child to listen to music. This means that both parties—child and adult—contribute to this scene of contemporary musical children’s culture. Hence, one can describe the situation as culture with children. Finally, if the child’s musical engagement is focused (moving and singing along with the music), the scene may be described as music by children.