music+society

When I think of music and society, I automatically think of what is popular among society. And then I start to think, what does society know anyway? Nothing. Trying to pair music and society is difficult for me because it's just another way to categorize music, which I don't really like to do. Society can be divided many different ways, and there are genres of music that we probably don't even know about yet. I'd be here forever if I really tried to write about music+society seriously. So I'm going to talk about it non-seriously. And so begins the classification of the unclassifiable.

American society is often tied to pop and rock music. European society is linked more with classical music. Middle-eastern and eastern society holds with religious and ceremonial music. These are just a few ways that an American would think of music and society; but people from other cultures will most likely have differing thoughts. With more study of cultures other than my own, I'm finding that caste systems within the Western music world are less common in other societies. For example, we have blue-grass and country music which is of the lower class, along with rap which could also be considered on a lower rung of the social ladder. Above that would be folk and rock and roll with a little more poetry and musicality, thus serving somewhat of a more sophisticated audience. Even higher in society we find classical and religious music. Something interesting about our culture, however, is that that religious music is slowly becoming less important to the masses than classical music (or at least I think so). This is not necessarily a bad thing (classical music is on the rise!), but it is unusual compared to most other parts of the world. Most cultures are much more tied to their sacred music than Americans and some Europeans. But, maybe I think religious music is disappearing because I'm not a part of religious society. A churchgoer would probably disagree with me. But backing up a little, within the hierarchy of music, we have even more division regarding who should to play the different types of music. For example, it caused kind of an uproar when Jessica Simpson switched from pop to country. And when Apocalyptica first came onto the scene, there was a good bit of controversy over their music among classical music. How do you think die-hard Metallica fans responded? I'm not saying we're the only society that has these unspoken rules of performance, but I'm realizing more and more that outside of Western culture, people value professional performance much less than we do; societal participation is more important. I really like that concept. It takes music off of the pedistal that we tend to put it on so that it's not seen so much as an art form that you have to be skilled at to do and integrates it as a part of everyday life, a commonality. Some of you might be thinking, "But that's what makes music so cool, the fact that it is an art form." Well, sure, but I'm not of that mindset. I don't like liking things because their special, I like them because of practicality and simplicity. And music that is performed daily from birth would probably seem pretty practical and simple if you were the one playing it. . .our society should try that!