Annabelle and her mentor, Dr. Fran Hagstrom, meeting over Microsoft Teams.

Annabelle Linker is a senior honors college undergraduate in the College of Education and Health Professions, majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders with a minor and Music. She and her advisor, Dr. Hagstrom, are researching “How Music Shapes Our Identities and why it Matters: Case studies of professional musicians”.

It’s an odd time in the world. As a nation, our sense of identity has been deeply impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Our lives have changed; no more are we meeting in person, but rather on Zoom or FaceTime or Microsoft Teams (as you’ll see from my advisor and I in the photo below). All of us can relate to a shifting sense of self during this crisis. Now more than ever, when uncertainty is abundant, I think our research into music and its place in our identities is timely.

Brain research has shown that music uniquely contributes to neural functioning. But what happens when one loses the ability to produce music? Dr. Hagstrom and I are researching the lives of four professional musicians and comparing their sense of self throughout their lives and the medical challenges they faced.

We’re currently diving in deep via publicly available audio/video interviews, news articles, books, and social media, using narrative analysis to find themes of self-identity throughout each professional’s career and after their respective diagnosis’.

Of the four chosen,  Dolly Parton, who was called “The Hero of 2020” by Vanity Fair for her ongoing monetary support of vaccine production for COVID-19, is the only one who has not suffered from any extreme medical issue and is still able to perform. We’re using her as a comparison of a healthy professional musician and her sense of self versus those of her same caliber who were diagnosed with life-altering illnesses. The other three include Glen Campbell, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, Julie Andrews, who lost her ability to sing due to vocal surgery gone wrong, and Linda Ronstadt, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

It’s well-known that music can be a positive in our lives, from improved mood via listening to it, to improved brain function from learning an instrument. What we’re interested in seeing is how those who have centered music in their lives as a deep-seated sense of self are changed as their abilities to interact with music are changed. And how might we persevere and be preserved by music even during these changes (like Glen Campbell, who had a prolific career and was still able to play guitar in his final days of dealing with Alzheimer’s)?

COVID-19 has been a challenge for all of us. I know that my selfhood has been altered due to our current reality and inability to partake in the tasks I once enjoyed. But I’ll be here, continuing to research how music shapes our sense of identity, while navigating our current, masked landscape with my headphones on and my favorite songs playing in the background.