Who's who?

I know I have blogged about it once before, but at the moment I just cannot emphasize enough how much a love the fact that people share their itunes libraries freely with others. (Mine, of course, is strictly personal.) Today I spent the day listening to someone’s ‘Arabic groove’ (their words, not mine). Brilliant! Firstly, it is actually very groovy (can one still say that, without being stuck in the 60s?) and very easy to listen to. Secondly, there’s no way I can sing along (highly embarrassing if done aloud) and I can’t even sit and listen to the words, as they mean absolutely nothing to me. Perfect for working!

Normally you can group people’s libraries into one of three categories: the senior academic (listens to classical and occasionally some jazz, the most modern stuff they have is ABBA), the fresh BA student (listens mainly to pop/rock, usually pretty mainstream) and then the ‘alternative’ phd student (who is trying to be a bit more ‘deep’ and ‘difficult’ than the average person – he or she is, after all, doing some serious research – and thus won’t have anything from the hit lists in the library). Of course these can also be divided into subgroups, and a good bit of gender and queer theory could be applied to it, but I am trying to keep it simple here.

I was thus very surprised when I the other day came across someone’s library, which mostly consisted of Disney music! I looked around. Who is this person? I came up with four possible explanations: 1) a stressed parent (most likely the mother) is sharing a laptop with the kids, 2) someone is doing a major research project on the importance of music in Disney stories (I was, after all, sitting in the Rare books and music reading room), 3) someone in my alternative group has gone way too alternative, or 4) Disney music has suddenly become retro cool (I definitely wouldn’t know) and someone from the young student group is like the hippest person around. Go figure!