This article is centered around the issue of gender and music. Music, as a means of communication, also contributes to the social construction of reality. If we are interested in music as a sociocultural phenomenon, the issue of gender constitutes a special dimension which cannot be ignored. Throughout this article, I give some results of an inquiry carried out on young people of Barcelona in autumn of 1995. Among the different objectives of this inquiry was to obtain information about meaning and functions of music in Catalan society. Some of the questions dealt with the role played by music in gender relations. Concretely, the results of this inquiry provide us information about the use of music as strategy of gender identity as well about functions music can play in a society which is characterized by the asymmetrical nature of gender relations; i.e. music as expression and at the same time as resource of maintenance of specific gender relations.
Barcelona; gender; music; youth