Music Culture: An editorial opinion on the current state of music culture.

Recently, some more intensely heated conversations about music, the genre and the culture of it, have come up between my friends, and I feel inclined to speak my mind in a slightly more formal manner via our good blog here. Seeing it being music related, I feel it should be welcome to the site.

Music, as with all communication media, can be interpreted two ways. As a form of entertainment, and/or an art form of high regard and can be truly appreciated. Now, the two both intermingle and not throughout time, and this is perfectly fine and good, if not ultimately necessary. But, when a media is used as a social tool, not as art form or entertainment, then it is quite possibly the biggest perversion of something pure that I can think of. It is almost a molestation of sorts, using and abusing something pure and innocent for the sake of personal or social gain. This is best explained in examples, to show how good something can be done and what can be done to destroy it.

Bobby, some figure of our mid-pubescent, early teen childhood. Bobby has heard for the first time a new realm of music, for the sake of it, known as hardcore punk. Now, Bobby absolutely falls in love with music and everything it stands for. The sound he hears, the atmosphere it emits, and the messages it sends are all bliss to him. His life completely changes and becomes apart of this new culture, still inevitably partaking in normal society, but with these new ideals deeply rooted into his personality. From then on, his curious grows and finds more music and different music and enriches himself with all things that he finds interesting, and becomes more diverse because of it. Now, this is the perfect example of what music is as an art form. The ability to emotionally, whether in instance Bobby which is life change, to the ability to bring some emotional and intensified thought to the table for only a brief few moments is what makes something gain the identity of a work of art.

A much simpler example is necessary to explain the medium as a source of entertainment. Music in dance clubs, making people want to get up and move. The hysterical mock-ups Weird Al Yankovic concocts, making people fall over laughing. These are perfect examples of using music as entertainment, as a vice or tool to fill the boring voids they may have in their lives. Something that can make people forget their problems for a minute and enjoy something simple, and magnificent in it's ability to hypnotize it's fans for that time. Nothing is more needed in life than some sort of entertainment throughout your day to bring out of the element of monotony that is the daily grind.

These two archetypes are now easily manipulated into popularity and celebrity tools, and it sickens me to see the watering down of such an important enrichment in peoples' lives. The Bobbys of our time are quickly diminishing, and with that come the out-spurts of people that are taking a medium and using it for the sake of social acceptance. As a quintessential badge of honor to show to your importance, proving to them how cool or original you are based on what music you like. Living life behind a mask of conformity is bleeding dry the fountain of originality, and if it continues, the issue with musical carbon-copies will even grow even more and become such a huge threat to music as a whole. Guaranteed, we have our cycles of what is in and out in music, but with the advent of social networking and the internet, that line is beginning to diminish, making what used to be underground cultures and genres of music into the mainstream.

So, what do I say you take out of this whole issue? Realize there should never be a time whether you should sacrifice your opinions and taste for music based on who or what will like you for it. It is both a sad example of your easiness to conform, and your perverse abuse of something bigger and more beautiful than you or I can even begin to imagine.