Although artists do not create certain music to cure diseases or to make scientific or technological discoveries, music is one thing society can never live without. To both artists and their listeners, music provides an indispensible beauty that helps fulfill lives, and connect to nature. Music expresses the human condition in the purest way and affects everyone at a personal level. Plato, a well-known classical Greek philosopher once said, “If you want to measure the spiritual depth of society, make sure to mark its music.” Generally performer collaborate songs to represent the popular pop culture, and social issues, and wish for their society as well as their current era. For instance, controversial issues such as sex, violence, racism and discrimination has been represented through many musical genres including the blues, R&B, Disco/Funk, and Hip hop. When comparing previous historical periods to our current era, one can see tremendous differences in how they are exemplified in the genres have illustrated their music to address these specific issues. For instance, when talking about historical period they focus more on messages that are important to black communities such as freedom from racism, sexism and discrimination for example R&B conveyed a fight for freedom and stereotypes. On the other hand, recent genres such as Hip Hop do not portray a message, or if they do portray a message, the messages do not represent black culture as a whole.
The blues is a music genre that laments inequality, while expressing sensitive distress for death of loved ones, optimism for an improved life, trade, and cash. The central idea of blues performances is that after listening or performing the blues, one is able to overcome grief and ov...
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... social norm that the music are created within. Historical period music involved around racism and the dominant race while racism is still around in recent decades it’s not as talked about or blunt in the society.
Works Cited
Nelson, George. The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1988.
Nelson, George. Hip Hop America. New York: Viking, 1998.
God Love Sex: Disco and the Gospel Impulse and “Disco Sucks,” in WERNER, pp. 203-211.
LaGrone, Kheven Lee, “From Minstrelsy to Gangsta Rap: The "N-----" as Commodity for Popular American Entertainment,” Journal of African American Men, Fall 2000 v5 i2 p117
Marcyliena, Morgan. “Hip-Hop Women Shredding the Veil: Race and Class in Popular Feminist Identity. South Atlantic Quarterly, V104 I3, p425-444.
Katel, Peter. "Debating Hip-Hop: Does Gangsta Rap Harm Black Americans?" June 15, 2007 Volume 17, Issue 23.
Perry, Imani. 2004. Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham: Duke University Press.
“Together the matrices of race and music occupied similar position and shared the same spaces in the works of some of the most lasting texts of Enlightenment thought..., by the end of the eighteenth century, music could embody differences and exhibit race…. Just as nature gave birth and form to race, so music exhibited remarkable affinities to nature” (Radano and Bohlman 2000: 14). Radano and Bohlman pointed out that nature is a source of differences that give rise to the different racial identities. As music embodies the physical differences of human, racial differences are not only confined to the differences in physical appearances, but also the differences in many musical features, including language, tonality and vocal expression. Nonetheless, music is the common ground of different racial identities. “In the racial imagination, music also occupies a position that bridges or overlaps with racial differences. Music fills in the spaces between racial distinctiveness….” (Radano and Bohlman 2000:8) Even though music serves as a medium through which different racial identities are voiced and celebrated individually, it establishes the common ground and glues the differences
In the article “ From Fly to Bitches and Hoes” by Joan Morgan, she often speaks about the positive and negative ideas associated with hip-hop music. Black men display their manhood with full on violence, crime, hidden guilt, and secret escapes through drugs and alcohol. Joan Morgan’s article views the root causes of the advantage of misogyny in rap music lyrics. In the beginning of the incitement her desires shift to focus on from rap culture condemnation to a deeper analysis of the root causes. She shows the hidden causes of unpleasant sexism in rap music and argues that we need to look deeper into understanding misogyny. I agree with Joan Morgan with the stance that black men show their emotions in a different way that is seen a different perspective.
The purpose of this study is determine why and how African American music that’s is so deeply rooted into the community is being culturally appropriated. This is a topic that has been the on the foreground of race for years. Activists and celebrities like Adrienne Keene, DeRay McKesson, Azealia Banks, and Jesse Williams helped bring the issue into the national attention. Most of the world or better yet the appropriators have very little knowledge of what the word actually means. In order to understand the problem we must first understand the word Culture and Appropriation. Culture being defined as the beliefs, ideas, traditions, speech, and material objects associated with a particular group of people. Appropriation the action of taking something
Most things have their beginnings in something small: a word, a breath, or idea; but not music. Music begins with a single vibration. It explodes and carries on, morphing worlds of unrelated personas. It lives rampantly in the mouths of millions of unruly and free-spirited teenagers, like a fever. The rock 'n roll trend that defiantly rose against the conformist ideology of the mid-twentieth century left remnants that commenced the start of a progressing society: a culture that redefined the rules of society and pushed social and moral limits while addressing social concerns.
African-American music is a vibrant art form that describes the difficult lives of African American people. This can be proven by examining slave music, which shows its listeners how the slaves felt when they were working, and gives us insight into the problems of slavery; the blues, which expresses the significant connection with American history, discusses what the American spirit looks like and teaches a great deal from the stories it tells; and hip-hop, which started on the streets and includes topics such as misogyny, sex, and black-on-black violence to reveal the reactions to the circumstances faced by modern African Americans.
All of the articles dealt with hip hop as an industry and how that industry is portrayed to African Americans through the commercialization of hip hop and stereotypes in society. The articles also discuss how that portrayal influences the opinions of African Americans to others and themselves.
Swedenburg, Ted. "Homies in The ‘Hood: Rap’s Commodification of Insubordination." Rpt. in That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. 579-591. Print.
...cy." Western Journal Of Black Studies 28.1 (2004): 327-331. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
Music in this century is beginning to have more of an effect to people than ever before. It has evolved into calming and something that anyone can dance to. However, some music genres are becoming too provocative due to the lyrics being hateful to many things. But for some
Music can be traced back into human history to prehistoric eras. To this day archeologists uncover fragments of ancient instruments as well as tablets with carved lyrics buried alongside prominent leaders and highly influential people. This serves as a testament to the importance and power of music, as well as its influence in society. Over its many years of existence, music’s powerful invocation of feelings has allowed it to evolve and serve many purposes, one being inspiring change. American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson once said, “Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of fuel. Sentimental people call it inspiration, but what they really mean is fuel.” This fuel is the very things that powers the influence of Rock ‘n’ Roll on American society, that author Glenn C. Altschuler writes about in his book, “All Shook Up – How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America.” Between 1945 and 1965 Rock ‘n’ Roll transformed American society and culture by helping to ease racial integration and launch a sexual revolution while most importantly developing an intergenerational identity.
5. Rose, Patricia (1991, Summer). ?Fear of a Black Planet: Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990s,?. The Journal of Negro Education, 60 (3).
For Stanley, the blues tell the stories of the African-American community. Some of the stories talk about the harshness of their lives, but they also talk about the good times they had. [People] play the blues to get rid of the blues not to get them." (Lamb, 1). When people play or even listen to the blues, they are letting all of their worries go. They are not worrying about their job, the bills, or their kids. They are just trying to enjoy the moment when the blues are playing. The blues are some people's release from the stresses of their lives.
The cultural theory helps expand the knowledge of “hip hop” as an idea and influence on society. Mark Anthony Neal discusses the development of the understanding of hip hop by dissecting the layers and complexities of the culture, “Hip-hop music and culture emerged as a narrative and stylistic distillation of African-American youth sensibilities in the late 1970s,” within What the Music Said (Woldu 18). Urban history is a large, yet vital characteristic throughout the study of hip hop and its progression; Russell Potter shows how critical the representation of black musical expression and the “history of vernacular speech” is for the hip hop community in his book, Spectacular Vernaculars (Woldu 19). As decades pass and the hip hop scene expands, the history of this culture becomes influenced by more historical movements and creations. However, that is not the only historical significance that runs deep within the hip hop culture. The history and influence of the black feminist movement within the hip hop scene became a demanding characteristic in the development of the hip hop culture. As the gender divide became an evident aspect through the hip hop generation, women, especially female rappers,
McWhorter, John. “Rap Music Harms the Black Community.”Popular Culture. Ed.