The Ipod as a Ritual Object

Today I was reminded of a discussion we began in class regarding public and private space and the way in which this difference relates to the act of listening to music. In particular, the distinction made by Jo Tacci early on in “Radio Texture: Between Self and Others,” concerning “the mundane context of domestic media consumption, and the ritualized use of percussive sounds in rites de passage." Tacci’s ultimate conclusion is that during the act of listening to music, radio in particular, in a typical, home environment, the music has the effect of “conceptualiz[ing] social relationships.” This conclusion suggests that for a fair amount of the time we spend listening to music, we are not actually engaged with the music itself, but rather that we experience sound as “part of the material culture of the home, and that it contributes greatly to the creation of domestic environments". Though I agree with much of what Tacci has to say, I believe that parts of her argument runs contrary to my own personal experience. Specifically, when I initially read the essay, I immediately thought of listening to music on my record player and the way in which this process becomes one of ritual for me in my everyday life. For the most part, every morning when I’m home in California, the first thing I do upon waking up is to make a music selection and play it on my dad’s old turntable from when he was roughly my age. The turntable and the records themselves have all the characteristics of ritual objects, from their more superficial symbolic functions (they connect me to my father and to my extended family through him) to their deeper, symbolic ones (the circular shape of the record is reminiscent of the human life cycle). I could almost argue that my father’s gift of the record player to me when I was roughly sixteen was in and of itself a right of passage. Though I don’t have my record player here in Chicago, I think that in some ways my Ipod serves the same ritual function. Though the Ipod lacks the sense of community that is suggested by the physical characteristics of the record player, I’ve begun to notice that my roommates and I have created a ritual around the Ipod dock in our living room, which, we all share. Though the time frame changes on a day-to-day basis, it can be assumed that at some point, usually whomever returns home from class first will put their Ipod on the dock and start playing music. When I enter my apartment and I hear one of my roommates’ music playing, I am reminded of them and in turn, this ritual serves to reinforce the community that we three encompass. Though Tacci would say that this is again, “contributing to my sociality,” as a “reminder of social life outside of the home,” I fail to see how this necessarily discounts it as a ritual act.