Hip Hop vs Country & Western - Essay Example

? Hip Hop vs. Country and Western For many centuries, music has been one of the most sought mediums for personal expression with musicians finding new ways to share their feelings and beliefs with the rest of the world. As time went on and the world and its people continued to change, musicians began to create and welcome new genres into the already diverse music realm. Out of these modernized creations, hip hop and country and western were born. Hip hop and country and western music, both of which have become increasingly popular in the past few decades, are two very distinct genres. Reaching out to different crowds, each genre contains unique messages and remarkable ways of representing them. Despite their differences, the two distinguishable genres also have their similarities. Hip hop and country and western touch upon various aspects of life, ranging from love to death and everything in between. While both genres can show the negative and heartbreaking characteristics of love, hip hop might take a harsher perspective while country and western tends to take a more uplifting, positive point of view. Some music critics, including the musicians themselves, argue that hip hop shows the reality of life situations and country and western music reveals what people wish would take place instead in those situations (Palmer, 2005). Hip hop might explain what went wrong in a failed relationship, yet country and western will explain the good that might come of the relationship ending. This concept is due to the fact that it is believed that those that listen to hip hop are more seasoned to the hardships of life and those that listen to country and western are more optimistic for things to improve in the future (Palmer). Though each genre has their own unique way of expressing these life events, they both focus on sharing similar stories. Whether it involves a hip hop artist growing up in a tough city or a country and western singer being brought up in a rural area, the songs of these artists reveal what life was like having to deal with social or economic situations, growing up in their varying neighborhoods, love and death, and just simply getting through life in one piece. The sole purpose of the music that these musicians put out is to share with others what life was like for them, and how life continues to be. Similarly, the artists of both hip hop and country and western vary with the point of view of their songs. In some songs, the singer may be narrating their own stories, putting themselves at the center of a tale that happened to them or else placing themselves in a scenario that happened to someone that they knew. Yet in other songs, the singers are narrating stories that involved other people in their lives, or even putting into song an event that they obtained from the news. A common occurrence in regard to point of view in both of the genres is the narration of fictional events that happened to fictional characters, which serves the purpose of most fiction stories - to teach a life lesson to the listeners or to reveal something about life to the audience. No matter the story that is being told, how it is being told, or the genre that the story is being told in, hip hop and country and western exist to share these compelling stories and make them known to their audience. Another likeness between hip hop and country and western is that the singers usually have damaged personas (Rausch, 2011; Cusic, 2008). A hip hop artist and a country and western star may have come from completely different backgrounds, but they both could have faced identical issues with violent family members or personal drug and alcohol abuse. Oftentimes, these characteristics are why the musicians chose music as their expressive outlet to begin with, which is usually the basis for many of their songs. Since these musicians, regardless of their genre, sing about events that they struggled through in life, connections are going to be found between the two genres. Hip hop and country and western find similarities with each other in regard to the stories that they tell and the lives of the musicians, though there are unique qualities that set the two genres apart from each other. The most noticeable of these differences can be found in the sound and structure of the music. Hip hop relies more on speaking instead of singing; the MC in hip hop songs may perform the song in a sort of sing-talk on occasion, but most of the songs are done in regular talking. This type of ‘singing’ is more commonly referred to as rapping. This, however, is something that is never found in country and western, where the musicians resort to constant singing. Also, hip hop uses DJs and turntables to produce the sound of their music while country and western music depends more on the acoustic guitar, as well as drums and piano. This is primarily because country and western artists want a balance between the lyrics and music (Jensen, 1998), but hip hop artists want to focus less on the music and more on the lyrics. Hip hop artists feel that by having less background noise, their listeners will be able to easily pay more attention to what they lyrics are conveying (Rausch). Likewise, country and western musicians believe that they can strengthen the importance of their story or message by balancing music with the lyrics (Jensen). The structure of hip hop music is rather static, especially in comparison to country and western music. Hip hop music seldom has choruses, nor is it apt to repeat verses over and over again. In a way, hip hop is very poetic; it says what it must, and then moves on to the next vital thought in a new line or lyric. There is no variation in form. Though it is not discussed, it can be speculated that, based on other characteristics of hip hop music, the lack of variation is due to the artists not wanting to focus on any specific part of their story. On the opposite end of the spectrum is country and western music, which prides itself in its use of strong choruses with the intention of focusing on certain, often vital, aspects of their story. The fans of hip hop and country and western music also show the similarities and differences between the two genres. The fans of each genre usually resemble that genre; fans of hip hop music have a style that is distinct from fans of country and western music. More often than not, people flock to a genre that they can relate to. In this case, hip hop fans prefer hip hop if they were raised in cities or tough neighborhoods. People who grew up or live in the country or on farms tend to prefer country and western music. However, what really draws fans to certain genres of music is what the music is saying to them. As such, someone born and raised in the country can find similarities between their own lives as well as with the lyrics of both country and western and hip hop music, which is similar to the connections between artists from both genres. Despite their stark differences, both genres share many of the same people. Hip hop and country and western music are completely different genres, from their messages to the ways in which these messages are conveyed. Regardless of these strong differences that set one genre apart from the other, the two have many similarities that make them relatable to all sorts of people; many people are fans of both genres due to their interconnectedness, as vague as it may seem to those that prefer one genre over the other. The people behind the music and their lives - past, present, and future - have similarities that can be related to by people of every background, but it is the way that these stories that are presented through music that make them unique from each other. References Cusic, D. (2008). Discovering country music. Westport, CN: Praeger. Jensen, J. (1998). The Nashville sound. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Palmer, T. (2005). Country fried soul: Adventures in dirty south hip hop. New York: Hal Leonard Corporation. Rausch, A.J. (2011). I am hip-hop. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Read More