reply posted on 16-9-2011 @ 06:22 PM by Sphota
Well, where are the protest songs? What happened to that? They were so common in the 60s and 70s, yet today, nothing? Then again, there's a pattern
to this:
1910s and 1920s - ragtime, flappers and excess
1930s - depression and depression era protest music ("Brother can you spare a dime?")
1940s - war, patriotic hymns
1950s - prosperity, but jingoism against cold war, shake, rattle and role
mid-1960s through 1970s - protest music, '___', actual protesting
late 1970s through 2000 - Disco, (Punk,) Hairbands, (Early Rap,) Metal, (Grunge,) disposable pop, boybands, (Gangsta Rap,) Techno
2001-2011 - 9/11, patriotic hymns, recession, depression? more pop music
What am I getting at? I'm not even sure because I'd have to fact check this to really stand by it. But, since I don't have all night, I'll just
get to the point:
The music reflects the times - careless and silly in good times, patriotic in times of war, but also calling for protest in the bad times (including
the times of war). What seems to have happened since the protest movements including the civil rights, is a sort of compartmentalization of taste that
no longer deals entirely with ethnicity or regional factors. In the period after the Vietnam war through today, there seems to have been an over all
multiculturalization of music. By multicultural, I don't mean ethnicity, I mean subculture: punk, gay, preppy, conservative, religious, hippy,
grunge, goth, disco (techno), innercity, ghetto, country, prison, etc.
Whatever the case may be, the less connected we are through our music, the harder it is for us to find "rallying themes" such as those of the Wood
Stock generation - Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and so forth. I'm not saying different types of music are a bad thing, but it's a shame that rather than
embracing them all, we seem to ignore the ones that don't speak to us as a group. For example, a person might not listen to country, but not because
the music isn't good, rather because the message is not in synchronicity with their worldview. The same might go for innercity life reflected through
rap.
The only convergence zone seems to be Pop music - that nebulous, theme-less, anything-goes-as-long-as-it-is-Media-sanctioned, ambiguous category.
Let's not forget what "Pop" is short for: popular. Let's also not forget what the real meaning of "popular" is. It doesn't have to do with the
prom queen and the quarterback (though that is an interesting thing to analyze if we want to look at the core semantic framing that might go on with
that word).
Popular means "of the populous", "known or common among the people". There's your problem in a nut shell. The one "genre" of music that is
"known or common among the people" is the one that is most corporately controlled, most scrutinized by bean counters, "cool" mavens and
fashionistas.
Ironically, to gain the nomenclature "Pop(ular)", one would think the music should be collectively decided by the masses. So, I guess that is my
point pertaining to Lupe Fiasco. I don't watch MTV anymore...stopped right around the time the M stopped meaning music...maybe lasted another few
years after that. At any rate, is his music being played on MTV?
