Arcade Fire Rock Band - Essay Example

Arcade Fire Rock Band Arcade Fire is a Canadian-based rock band that comprises family members. The band consistsof the husband, Win Butler, and the wife, Regine Chassagne. Other members of the band include Will Butler, Win’s brother, Jeremy Gara, Tim Kingsbury, and Richard Reed. The band, sometimes, includes collaborators and additional percussionists. As an entity that began in 2001, the band has increasingly gained cultural and commercial prominence. Classmates, Win Butler and Josh Deu, formed the band out of mutual passion in music. Although the band began in 2001, their Funeral Album of 2004 thrust their music into the mainstream attention. Thereafter, the band has won awards such as the 2011 Grammy Album of the Year. Other major awards include the Brit Award for the Suburbs Album. It is essential to highlight that the success of the group relies on a cultivated skill of creating, not just sensational single songs, but well-composed albums. This paper is therefore aimed at researching on the extent to which this band portrays several cultures and sub-cultures of the Canadians. Arcade Fire revitalizes the essence of live performance in contemporary music. Before DJ’s gained popularity, a live performance was a standard way in which audiences consumed music. It was also a sense in which fans easily connected with their favorite musicians. The live band promotes the one-on-one interaction between musicians and audiences. This form of music is usually described as natural because the audiences receive the raw feel of vocals and instruments. It is essential to highlight that the Arcade Fire band utilizes various instruments such as drums, guitar, piano, cello, violin, xylophone, and harps. The band members possess multiple skills such that they easily switch duties during performances. The Arcade Fire band is renowned for captivating live performances whereby band members erratically change instruments and scramble over one another. In its performances, the band plays several genres of rock but like mostly the Indie rock which the group is widely known for, and entertains its audiences through. By specializing in Indie Rock, the group’s performances highlight the continued historical significance of sub-cultures. Indie Rock emanated in the 1980’s, in the US and the UK. This form of Rock music is exceptionally diverse thereby including sub-genres such as jangle pop and indie pop. This explains why music cultural analysts refer to Indie Rock as Alternative Rock. In as much as this form of Rock music began in the 1980’s, it only appealed to the mainstream tastes in the 1990’s (Dawe 46). Indie’s Rock began as sub-culture music because it broke conventions associated with traditional rock music. The genre combines the usage of elements of other genres such as the use of jangly guitar sounds. It also encompasses retro elements borrowing from the 1960s bands as well as a DIY amateur-like sound. The usage of the term ‘’indie’’ in North America and UK refers to a retro-sounding elements, ‘Anglophilic’ and ‘twee’ music. Conventionally, breaking way from traditions takes a considerable period as fans express lagging expectations in music. This arises out of the fact that a consistent genre produces its conservative musical audience. Indie Rock closely relates to the development of Punk Rock. Punk rock developed in the mid 1970’s in the US and the UK (Fulcher 104). Punk music entails short and hard-edged songs and liberal instrumentation. Their themes were often anti-establishment in their aggregate nature. This might have coincided with the growth of the hippie cultures in the 1970’s. Countries such as USA were seeking new meaning that was different from the established order. For instance, the sub-cultures rebelled against the capitalistic competition that non-conformists perceived as constraining freedom. The Arcade Fire band has helped towards liberty of tastes in contemporary music. In the current entertainment setup, every individual has almost similar access to every artist, album, and songs. In this sense, genre distinctions are fading. As a genre splits into smaller units, in terms of sounds, it tends to be more ephemeral and less impactful. The band invests in corporate ethics as a means of building their own brands. In the recent times, there has been an increasing awareness on social and political issues. This emanates from the consciousness that individuals should be living lives beyond their immediate selves. In addition, even corporations are inculcating social practices within their core profit-making activities. Consumers of both commercial products and music are keen on the commitment of their brands towards solving inherent societal problems such as poverty and war. The Arcade Fire band has thrived on this consciousness to participate in notable charitable activities. For instance, the Montreal-based rock group has steered fundraising and advocacy campaigns for global health equity. They conduct such campaigns by performing music-free commission. In addition, they organize television advertisements to raise a Global Fund used in fighting Tuberculosis, Malaria, and AIDS. It is crucial to underscore the band’s commitment in promoting the understanding of Haiti’s plight. Regine, Butler’s wife, has exploited the band’s popularity in highlighting the complex emotions involved in being a Haitian (Edwardson 87). In the song, Haiti, Regine portrays how she painfully leaves her wounded mother. Arcade Fire has manifested political consciousness in an open support for President Obama. For instance, the band conducted free concerts for President Obama during the 2008 primary elections. Pain and eclecticism has fueled the Arcade Fire music. There are deep emotions and pain that embeds in the lyrics of the band’s songs. The music seems to reminisce about the past’s idealness in a romanticized sense. The debut Funeral album had songs describing the life of the band’s dead family members. In addition, the songs describe an idyllic past, which is free from modern pressures. In the neighborhood song, the singers lend appeal to a simple life that does entail any hint of modernity. Words such as babies, colors, hymn, heart, and mind give value to an intrinsic lifestyle that surpasses attachments such as wealth (Beaudoin 134). On the other hand, the songs sketch a utopia in which the current world recreates itself to give value to the past life. The neighborhood song describes a scenario whereby snow buries people in a community such that only two people remain in the world to ensure the Earth’s posterity. This plot is similar to the Noah’s story in the Bible. In the Ark story, God destroys the Earth in order to leave a pair of every living thing’s species in the world. In as much as the band revitalizes a vintage attitude in their songs, they have hugely benefitted from the online marketing strategy. Online platforms unify musical audiences since the internet is available to many individuals. Through the internet, Arcade’s fans in far places of the Earth can connect with the band’s compositions. The band’s music is available through websites such as AOL Music Canada videos. This allows for audio and video downloads as long as fans possess Internet connection in their physical settings (Byrne 1). Besides, the iTunes MP3 downloads is a key system that the band has utilized in marketing their music. This is an internet payoff system whereby music lovers purchase and download music from the iTunes store. Work Cited Edwardson, Ryan. Canuck Rock: a history of Canadian popular music. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Internet resource. Fulcher, Jane. The Oxford handbook of the new cultural history of music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print. Dawe, Kevin. The new guitarscape in critical theory, cultural practice and musical performance. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. Print. Beaudoin, Tom. Secular Music and Sacred Theology. Collegeville, Minnesota : Liturgical Press, 2013. Print. Byrne, David. David Byrnes survival strategies for emerging artists — and megastars. Wired Magazine, December 18, 2007. Web. March 11, 2014. Read More