Pop in(to) the bedroom: Popular music in pre-teen girls’ bedroom culture

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research with seven young girls in Adelaide, South Australia, this article examines the centrality of the bedroom in the girls' exploration of popular music and cultural identity. In particular, it explores the popular music practices of two of these girls, nine-year-olds Kate and Rosa, in the space of their bedrooms. I argue that, by way of serious play, the girls enact and represent alternative possibilities in this immediate life space. The hard work in their musical play was not only observed in the process of fieldwork, but was also captured by the girls themselves using still cameras and tape recorders provided as part of the research project. The resulting materials from this ethnographic approach highlight that although girls' bedrooms may seem rather ordinary, the musical practices that take place in this experiential space are complex, highly nuanced and far from trivial. As I demonstrate in this article, the girls' play in their bedrooms is accompanied by an underlying seriousness, what Turner calls the 'human seriousness of play'.