Popular music practices are, in academic research as well as in folk theory, generally associated with informality and leisure time, but also with youth, rebellion, the shaping of identities, and freedom of expression. The aim of this article is to examine how notions of freedom are linked to band-playing and popular musicianship and how these notions relate to gender. First, the article lays out a critical constructionist framework and presents arguments for its usefulness. Thereafter, the article shows how readings of previous research literature reveal two competing discourses depicting popular music practices on the one hand as “freedom,” on the other hand as “constraint.” I conclude by discussing how unproblematized and romantic assumptions of popular music as “free” may function as exclusionary normalization, arguing that such assumptions need to be scrutinized.
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