Ionios IB

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====== Blank Generalisations are Blank ======

Many people live under the misconception that “music is dead nowadays”. That’s a pretty broad statement. Firstly, you have to define what do you mean by dead. Dead, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is something that now is not living, which means that that “something” will also stop evolving. But that’s clearly not the case about music. There are still new genres born, new artists, new sounds. Therefore, the use of the word “dead” is rather irrelevant in that case. But let’s talk about some facts.

It is definitely true that musical periods are becoming shorter and shorter. Baroque lasted 3 centuries, Classicism 150 years, Romanticism 75, and now, we live in the era of Contemporary music, in which the genres don’t even last for a decade, like, for example, techno music. Surely, that’s undoubtedly true. 

People also say that music has become simplistic nowadays and doesn’t have the same effect as it did even in the 50s. That is partially true. Certain music, yes, it is simplistic and kind of static, but not all kinds of music are. We will examine these not-simplistic genres evolving later. Till then, we will talk about the effect of music. 

Music is a part of a broader concept which is called art. Art has some restrictions. Firstly, you cannot always take art out of context. Art is generated because people feel a specific emotion when being under specific circumstances and they feel the need to express this emotion of theirs. You can’t take that emotion out of the circumstances that gave birth to it. Secondly, art is usually made for a specific purpose, which always meets the social and political reality of the time it’s being created. Having that in mind, take for example jazz back in the early 1910s’. Jazz was generated by oppressed, uneducated Afro-American slaves who were maintaining their African heritage through music in New Orleans. Jazz was a revolutionary kind of music from both the sociopolitical and the musical aspect, it was created after these specific circumstances, and it was used by African Americans as a form of expression. This is what they needed back then, this is what art gave them. Later, in 2004, punk-rock band Green day released an album called “American Idiot”, criticising the presidency of George Bush and the war in Iraq. This what the circumstances needed, this is what art gave them. And now we reach today and its “simplistic” music. For anyone who hasn’t noticed yet, we live in the time where mind control is flourishing, brainwashing is thriving and capitalism is reaching a climax. Simplistic songs with a danceable beat, simplistic singable repetitive lyrics and pretty young ladies singing with autotune and wearing as many clothes as their dignity, is the hottest item the music industry has to give, right? Well, yes, to an extent again. This type of music is extremely profitable, it’s easy to dance to, and if people do not care about good quality, the “artists” won’t care to spend time and money to get them good quality. So what do we get? We get less than 3-min songs that I could possibly create on my pc in less than half an hour, with dumb lyrics with bad grammar and we also get worthless famous people. However, that’s only the one side of the story. Can good music be found today? Yes, if you do your research you’ll find many great artists in every genre, but now we’re going to go back to these “not-simplistic evolving genres” I was talking about before.

If you look at the history of music, an innovation was always keeping the whole thing going. Beethoven was the first one to start expressing his feelings through his music and Bach was the one experimenting with harmony during a time were your classical harmony book would be honored by musicians like the Bible. So, today, what’s that innovation? Well, today, people are experimenting with the way they treat sound in general not only music. Think of soundtracks. Think of how music production has evolved that much to produce a Hans Zimmer and his great Inception soundtrack. But soundtracks are not music, right? Well, wrong. Music is not only what’s popular, that’s the thing. Music is taking a completely different direction nowadays, which means it’s evolving. Which means it’s not dead. 

Music is going along with humanity. It’s evolving. It’s not dead yet. It’s no use being snobbish and saying “today’s music sucks” because you listen to that “old” rock music so you’re cool. Looking at only one dimension of things is never cool anyway.

//written by Marina Alexopoulou//
Ionios IB

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