Modern Impact of Music - Essay Example

Music Interview Music and culture are closely intertwined in the society, with music being a sensitive product, capturing all peculiarities and changes in culture, keeping traces of social processes and carrying them down the years. To my thinking, referring to the music is necessary to understand any generation and any time period, and this especially concerns the recent century, as humanity has improved and broadened its opportunities and knowledge in dealing with sound. “Cultural interpretations and understandings are embedded in musical texts and performances— records, tapes, music videos, concerts, radio airplay, rock films, and so on” (Shuker). In this way, spirit of each epoch of the 20th century’s American history with its dynamics of a melting pot can be easily senses through musical legacy. Due to impact of social and cultural factors of modern days, our generation has come to give its affiliations mainly to contemporary popular music possessing easy-to-remember tunes, unpretentious lyrics and strong appealing dance rhythm and . Dynamic dance songs accompany us every day in many public places, even if we don’t listen to them willfully: shopping malls, cafés or earphones of our fellow passengers in the underground. Development and popularization of such type of music has been gaining momentum for at least a decade. Pop music in this narrow sense has been a reflection of emotional state of the society and an imprint of its popular culture. On the other hand, each epoch of music history has its underground stage offering an alternative view on contemporary cultural values. However, it has been claimed by researchers, that modern society has become more prone to narcissism with all the more songs containing “me”, not “we” and all the more people living and feeling alone. In addition, modern songs contain more antisocial words than songs used to in 1980’s and even 1990’s. Personally, I have always valued various genres and trends in music, considering that they all pose some value for our culture – either supporting modern canons or denying them and adding a pitch of freshness and novelty. However, similar to the lion’s share of our generation, I prefer modern music, that is being “forged” in the present-day cultural and social environment – including both popular and underground music. However, my friend and interviewee called Tao Yi has a different type of affiliations, being a passionate fan of “old school” rock music that used to rock the world between mid-1970’s and late 1980’s. Being my best friend and high school classmate, he turned out to be a perfect interviewee for me as a person whose musical affiliations are rather unusual on the general background of our generation. Tao Yi a music enthusiast of particular interest for this paper, because he identifies himself with the genre which is not very widespread and typical among people of our age and culture. However, his tastes in music are an essential part of his identity, and this will be discussed further. The first question I asked him about his music preferences concerned his favorite bands or musicians. Here, he enumerated a great number of bands whose popularity was in the full swing in the second half of 1970’s and 1980’s: AC/DC, “especially in Brian Johnson’s era”; KISS with their rocking songs and extravagant appearance; Scorpions and Whitesnake with symbiosis of heart-piercing ballades and rocking “Rhythm of Love” and “Give Me All Your Love”; Judas Priest with powerful riffs and Rob Halford’s peculiar vocals, and several pop or “glam” metal bands including Motley Crue and RATT. “I could keep on enumerating them for ages”, he said. Judging by his answer, one can easily trace his affection towards good old bands that were in all their splendor almost two decades ago, enjoying armies of fans. However, these genres aren’t very popular these days, as their popularity withered on the verge of 1990’s with emergence of grunge. As it is the youth that play the key role in formation of new music genres and styles in accordance with their current need and moods, grunge, that came to displace old school rock music, fitted better in the world outlook of contemporary youngster. Keeping this in mind, I asked about the origins of Tao’s affection towards this music, because major part of its audience consists of people of the previous generation, our mothers and fathers who were young at that rebellious and extravagant period. Judging be my friend’s response, I can conclude that family background might play an important role in development of music preferences: my friend reported much influence on the part of his father who had contributed much to the array of his affiliations, acquainting him with classical works of Led Zeppelin, KISS, AC/DC, Jimmy Hendrix and others. Evolution and growing popularity of such genres was sparked by the impact if rebellious spirit of the youth seeking to declare their position and go against the rules fixed in the society. Generally, since 1950’s with intensification of civil rights movements, blues and then rock-n-roll had been the music of protest, and the same feature is typical for most sub-genres and styles that evolved from rock-n-roll. To add more, rock-n-roll in its nature is the music of unity and symbiosis, drawing cultures, races and even generations together and being a hybrid of previously existing styles. As far as my friend falls out of the typical target audience of hard rock, heavy metal and hard’n’heavy, it’s reasonable to consider these preferences as a part of his identity and through the prism of factors that actually formed target audience for bands of this kind. In the course of globalization and development of technologies and communication, popular culture continued to progress and evolve. As globalization turned the world in a global community and blurred cultural and national distinctions (that was especially typical for the U.S. as a multinational country), search of identity became problematic for the youth. Furthermore, MTV emerged as an international music channel, and that set visual aspects of music on the foreground (Szatmary). As a result, music bands got extravagant and unusual appearance, particularly, glam metal bands like RATT, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and Cinderella attached much importance to their image which made their performances even bolder. Soon, glam metal was also called pop metal and was mainly associated with popular culture, similar to arena rock. To my thinking, it isn’t surprising, because the overall mood of songs and texts in particular was rather free-and-easy and somewhat rebellious. Undoubtedly, good old school was so attractive for people due to its ability to rock and transmit emotions, amplified and vivid. The key question that was the subject of our discussion with Tao Yi is the reason of his preferences, i.e. why he chooses this genre and this time period. To his opinion, first of all, old school rock music has the drive modern bands often lack; trying hard to achieve commercial success and recognition, they lose individuality and thus become uninteresting. Tao stressed the “general rebellious, yet attractive” spirit of the music, saying that – listening to AC/DC, Bon Jovi etc. – he opens that “rocky” part of his identity, the rebel hidden inside. Moreover, he believes this kind of music to improve his mood and make him feel more confident in his life. Thus, I can conclude that old school is so attractive for the generation, that didn’t witness it in its golden age, yet discovered this musical period after its decline, because of the spirit of the epoch transmitted to nowadays via media; drive rocking the body and the atmosphere of the old good days of parents’ youth. However, it is rather unusual: nowadays’ music seems to meet the listeners’ needs for distraction from problems and raising relevant topics. Despite that, my friend argues, that nowadays’ rock music lack genuine emotions and is often the copycat of classics. Having interviewed Tao Yi and done an additional research in music of his preference, I would like to mention several conclusions. Firstly, formation of musical preferences can be influenced from the outside, e.g. by parents or friends. In our case, taste in music was encouraged by parents who transmitted their perception of good old hard rock days to their son. Secondly, affection towards this genre is motivated by deep personal perception of the music and the fact that it somehow discloses and matches a part of my friend’s personal identity. Whereas he failed to find a favorable option at the modern global stage, he prefers to resort to the music that is considered classical in its style. And thirdly, music preferences are often associated with various subcultures identifying views and needs of an individual. Moreover, pop culture of the current historical period reflects the social and cultural conditions musicians and listeners live in. Works Cited: Shuker, Roy. Understanding Popular Music. New York, NY: Routledge, 1994. Szatmary, David P. Rockin’ in Time: A Social History of Rock and Roll, Fifth Edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2004. Read More