StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

Social Solidarity through Pop Music - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
Culture has the power to separate us, or it can exert the power to bring us closer together. High school athletics can promote a feeling of belonging to their school and create a unifying force among the students. Major League Baseball, America's pastime, will find New York residents solidly behind the New York Yankees, while Los Angeles residents experience a spiritual revival as they cheer for the LA Dodgers…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98.9% of users find it useful
Social Solidarity through Pop Music
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Social Solidarity through Pop Music"

Download file to see previous pages

Of the many artists, Bob Dylan and John Lennon exemplified the experience and in fact Jimi Hendrix had an album titled "Are You Experienced". This expressive revolution brought an audience together through a common bond and satisfied the pop music listener's quest for solidarity. It is not too much to say that the 1960s were the root of the expressive revolution of sacred realism through music. Breaking traditional forms of folk music by combining folk music and rock music, Bob Dylan was one of the most influential artists of the era and together with the Beatles were able to ignite a pop music revolution.

The music was powerful and was able to unite listeners into a 'collective consciousness" by just appreciating their music together. Strangers passing on the street would be drawn together as friends by the acknowledgment of a familiar song. This collective solidarity gave the listener authenticity as well as a verification of a meaningful existence. This justification for one's life became the sacred authenticity that a generation was in search of. Breaking the mold and blending new styles opened the gates for listeners to detach from the tired past and experiment with their own identity.

For Bob Dylan, unlike many artists who pursue only one style of music, Dylan did not stick with one genre. His music can be divided into many different genres such as folk, folk-rock, gospel, and country. Dylan's early music was inspired by a famous folk singer, Woody Guthrie, who had a great influence on the young Dylan. In a Los Angeles Times interview, Dylan said, "Woody's songs were about everything at the same time. They were about rich and poor, black and white, the highs and lows of life, the contradictions between what they were teaching in school and what was really happening" (Hilburn 2004).

This indicated Dylan's understanding that integration meant collective. We were all one in search of a common medium. Dylan expressed current social issues through his lyrics as opposed to many traditional folk singers' upper class oriented music. His music was well blended with traditional instrumentation such as acoustic guitar, and harmonica. In addition, Dylan broke the stereotypical ideology that folk music cannot exist without its traditional form. By 'going electric' at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan defied the norm and explored a revolutionary act that was widely criticized as a commercial sell out.

However, Dylan had opened the door to his own identity and had invited millions of listeners to join him. Those that had been categorized for decades were free to become a part of the new consciousness. As Eyerman and Jamison contend, "The musician, songwriter, or composer must first learn the notation and the melodic and rhythmic procedures of the tradition in order to make music; otherwise it could not be passed on. But, at the same time, artistic creation requires that those rules be broken, or at least amended, so that the tradition can be rejuvenated by adding something new to it" (29).

Dylan was able combine our cultures in a way that gave us an unspoken agreement and a silent bond that would soon become sacred. This bond would become a large part of our new identity. In his Los Angeles Times

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Social Solidarity through Pop Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words”, n.d.)
Social Solidarity through Pop Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1514927-social-solidarity-through-pop-music
(Social Solidarity through Pop Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words)
Social Solidarity through Pop Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1514927-social-solidarity-through-pop-music.
“Social Solidarity through Pop Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1514927-social-solidarity-through-pop-music.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Social Solidarity through Pop Music

Pop Culture Only Serves to Destroy Society Values and Morals

People share experiences through popular culture and achieve social solidarity.... Name Corse number Date: Position Argument on ‘pop Culture Only Serves To Destroy Society Values and Morals' Introduction pop culture is the culture of people's everyday lives.... A Central Claim Related To pop Culture Popular culture only serves to destroy society values and morals.... It is through popular culture that certain commonly held beliefs and standards are reflected....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper

Stravinsky and Primitivism

There are many different forms of arts; music is one of the arts that a great person by the name Stravinsky practiced in the early 20th century.... His works and the works of other people from that period, mostly made use of traditional music forms.... This was often to pay tribute to the form of music of the earlier masters like Tchaikovsky.... Stravinsky's professional life, which was at most in the 20th century, included many of the modern classical styles of music....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Is Hip Hop a Culture

And so, it was recognized that the kids of the Bronx and other such beaten-down neighborhoods could shape their violent urges into creative ones, and crews focusing on dance, graffiti, rap music began cropping up in the form of Zulu Nation (Rahn, 2002).... Over time, this image of Hip Hop has not changed much and instead, has been propagated by music videos that glorify sex, drugs, and weapons.... Moreover, many music videos frequently portray rich Black men visiting clubs and bars, dancing with barely dressed women rapping about money and sex....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Cultural and Critical Perspectives of Rock-N-Roll

To understand cultural perspectives of a form of art, a music genre or cinema, one need to go to the root of evolution of the art.... A true genre generally assimilates the social issues of the time and reflects the society of time for a long time to come. … music has always been an integral part of social life.... Study of any particular form of music draws parallels with the study of society and civilization in general.... The era of slavery and western imperialism has given birth to the several mediums of expression such as music and carnivals....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Police Subculture and Cops and Cop Critics

hellip; The author indicates the culture of the police service through the initial training process, efforts of the organisation to transform recruits into novice members.... She criticises their existing conceptualizations for 'their inability to account for differences in culture, their neglect of the active role played by officers in the reproduction or transformation of culture, their failure to situate police culture within the political and social context of policing, and their silence about the scope and possibility for cultural change' (Chan, 1997; p....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Public Enemy's Can't truss it

In addition, he talked on how they cannot control what they create in the music industry and because of the presence of the media, they can neither control on how they run their lives or their state of mind-what they are thinking.... This has changed ever since through the years as an increasing number of rappers have taken control of their marketing and business opportunities....
5 Pages (1250 words) Research Paper

Personal Brand and Brand Persona

Ann is a perfectionist, she likes slow and soulful music, dislikes public transport, her cake is that she likes candy at night and has some before she sleeps.... Julien is hardworking, he likes hip hop music, especially Jay-Z he doesn't like lazy people.... His quirk is that he studies, best under loud music and as a Christian young man he believes God.... The various platforms contain various information about me so through the various the platforms people know different things about me. On Facebook, people know… On Twitter, my friends and Followers know that Im witty and friendly based on my twits as Im not shy when it comes to leveling my opinion....
2 Pages (500 words) Article

Fashion: Expression of Group Identity

n this paper, I will trace the evolution of western fashion through stages of sociological backdrop and its relation to ideas of gender, beauty, sexuality, power and identity.... Hence, the use of mass media to influence fashion trends that suit the capitalist purpose of developing group identities will be explored through examples from television programs and fashion magazines that in essence embody popular culture.... Further, in the consumerist society, the wide variety of fashion commodities that are available to all sections of the population – not necessarily limited to the elite and the bourgeois – means that the expression of the body through commodities follow some standard patterns....
10 Pages (2500 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us