Music - the soundtrack to our lives
Every artist will argue that their medium makes the most important contribution to society as a whole, but when it comes to music, its proponents are pretty hard to argue against. Music has played a massive role in shaping the socio-political structure of many cultures over the last hundred years or so and has given generations of teens a sense of belonging and identity that no other art form has the power to bestow.
Although our tastes and allegiances to bands change greatly over the years, everyone has a special fondness for the music they listened to as a teen. Hours spent locked away in bedrooms mooning over the unfairness of life were made so much more bearable by music, and hearing the first chord or phrase of a favourite song from your teenage years can take you back there in a split second.
Our fashion sense, the friends we hung out with and our overall ‘street cred’ were largely dependent on the music we listened to, and this is a social phenomenon that has not changed at all since music became the voice of the unheard demographic back in the 1950s. Young people became defined by the music they listened to and as genres and sub genres of music have continued to develop over the years, so too have the subtle tags by which fans identify themselves.
These days people don’t just listen to rock music or jazz, they listen to prog rock or free jazz. You don’t answer the question ‘What kind of music do you listen to?’ with a perfunctory ‘dance music’ answer. You specify what kind of dance music it is, and even within your particular genre there’ll be a myriad of sub genres you may or may not want to explore.
However, no matter how progressive, experimental or frenetic your music of choice might be, the one thing all music has in common is the power to move the soul and evoke every emotion from joy to unbearable sadness. Life would certainly be devoid of much of its colour without it.
