Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika: Never heard of that in my life. Wouldn't know it if it hit me in the face.

I'm with Scrump that if nobody identifies with a song, what's the point? Of course, the variety of personal experience in any given audience, even if they look similar on the outside, is almost limitless so it's very likely that any decent song will mean something to somebody.

There are a long of songs/types of music that I like even though I don't necessarily relate to them. I don't really identify with most, say, sea chanteys or with the specifics of a lot of the old British broadsides (although I think they are very interesting historically, mythologically, and anthropologically). I can think those are great songs but, even if I understand why they might mean a lot to somebody, they may never feel like "mine". The women's music thing that was so "in" when I was in college eluded me completely, no matter how many people told me that it would absolutely change my life. I thought a lot of them were very talented, I just never had any use for Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls, Patti Griffin, etc., but they sure meant a lot to my college friends and I understood why even if I, personally, didn't need them.

Conversely, there are songs I don't like that still mean a lot to me for sentimental reasons. I would hate Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes" (which I think is a good song, I just don't like it stylistically) and Rosalie Sorrels' "Baby Tree" except that my dad sang them to us all the time when we were little.

I've always been a travel song person--trucker songs, train songs, some cowboy songs, that sort of thing. My feminist college roommates were irritated to no end that all of my favorite songs were recorded by men, but men more than women seem to record that kind of thing. Oh, well. I grew up in a family that loved to travel and feel very much at home on the road. I also lived near railroad tracks and my dad has always been into cars and trains. It just happened that it was his daughter that shared this interest with him more than his son (my brother is temperamentally much more similar to my mother; I take after Dad). I grew up in the West and the South and when people sing about mountains (Kate Wolf's "Across the Great Divide" and "Telluride" come to mind), plains, deserts, dust storms, and "wide open spaces", I know exactly what they mean and it feels like home.