Select an area of activity in your life from the following options: your social life, your culture, your religious or spiritual life, your political views, your sense of patriotism or nationalism, or your creative life. To help focus your thinking, you must choose one of these for your paper and name it in your first paragraph.

Then, explain in prose how music functions in that part of your life.

Use Merriam’s theory. Write about musical function using the theory we read about in the summary of Alan Merriam’s book (on Canvas as “Merriam’s Musical FunctionsPreview the document”) and which we’ve been using in class. You don’t need to write about all ten of Merriam’s functions. Try exploring just two or three in-depth.

Important: Use specific examples to support your points, referring to musical features as necessary. For example, name a particular song, not just a genre of music (i.e., The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” instead of just “rock ‘n’ roll”). This is important; a paper without specific examples is not a well-written paper.

Finally, compare and contrast what you’ve written about music and its function in your own life with one of the music traditions we’ve studied in class. How are the functions similar and/or different?

Throughout your paper, be sure to cite your sources — especially the textbook, where you can find information on the music traditions we’ve studied in class — using footnotes, not in-text parenthetical citations, according to the Chicago Manual of Style (Links to an external site.) and include a bibliography (which doesn’t count as one of the pages of your paper). If your paper lacks footnotes or a bibliography, your grade will be penalized.