One of the things that I identified most with when Mr. Cantewell was talking was the fact that music is one of the defining things in almost every moment of our lives. Or at least, most people’s lives. Almost every song that I love has some emotion or mental image irretrievably attached to it in my mind. Annie Lennox’s “Walking on Broken Glass” started playing at the same time that I was walking into Virgin Mobile Megastore in Times Square in Manhattan (one of my favorite places) six years ago with my four favorite people in the entire world and every time I hear it now it brings back feelings of love, excitement, and complete happiness. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was one of the songs we played in the car (same four favorite people) while cruising in Winston-Salem, thinking we were bad-asses after we’d told each of our parents that we were at another parent’s house which brings back love again, a little fear, and rebellion. One of the songs from Phantom of the Opera, “All I Ask of You” puts me right back in the Majestic Theatre in New York watching the Phantom try to come to terms with his feelings of love and betrayal for Christine while he watches her with Raoul and almost always puts tears in my eyes. “Green Eyes” by Coldplay reminds me of the first boy I ever loved. Simon and Garfunkel is my mother, Billy Joel is my father, Elton John is my seventh grade math teacher, All Saints is high school soccer practice and Be*Witched is my middle school best friend. The list could go on indefinitely, but the point is that there is a continuous soundtrack to our lives, even if it’s not something that we dwell on in every moment. Even music that we’ve never heard before brings out some kind of emotion, or at least it should. A beautiful aria can bring tears, a fun hip-hop song in a club brings laughter and dancing, a rough rock song brings anger or rebellion, etc. On a broader level, music documents the changes in the world. The gay twenties was exemplified by the Charleston, the angry and rebellious sixties was the hey-day of rock and roll, the very confused eighties…well, yeah.
Now, hip-hop speaks to so many levels of present society. Sex, for one, is a huge part of hip-hop, which really relates to the world today. Sex is rampant in our society and hip-hop talks about it unabashedly. Drugs are also a huge issue that hip-hop artists address, along with racism, the economy, materialism, gangs, violence, love, anger with world events, the tragedy of domestic disasters, and even more. Cantewell expressed concern that the cultural recognition and historical alignment between music and society is lost (or being lost) despite the massive amounts of music available, but I disagree. When future generations look back on the music of today, while they’ll have to cull through an enormous volume of examples, they will be able to understand something about us. So much of our generation is confused, angry, frustrated with the world and our own country, and trying to find some kind of meaning in their own lives. Love songs have always been popular, but many of the ones that people will see from our generation deal with cheating or lying or the hope that maybe there is real love out there. Divorce rates are higher than they’ve ever been, and our many people from this generation grew up in divorced homes, leading them to have difficulties believing that it’s possible to be happy with one person forever. That’s just one example, but it’s an illustration of the fact that it is possible that music today does speak about our lives, you just have to look through more music that you would have in the past. Another thing that pushed me to think that Cantewell might have been mistaken is the fact that our lives are more complicated now than they have been in the past. Not to disparage the problems that people have had in the past, kids have to grow up faster now, the world’s problems are consistently part of our lives, the economy is falling fast, and we’re more connected to everything that past generations have been. Yes, Vietnam was brought into people’s living rooms, but the war now can be found on our phones, our iPods, our computers, our TV’s, our newspapers (virtual or physical), and into every aspect of our lives. Everyone and everything is consistently connected and hooked up to every other person and any part of the world. You can find videos of people being beheaded in the Middle East if you’re so inclined. And nothing’s stopping children from finding the same thing. I’ve gone on a complete tangent, but the point is that the music of today does reflect our society, even if all it’s reflecting is complete confusion.
Maybe music is the most important art form that currently exists. I own books that I don’t remember reading, movies that I don’t remember watching, I’ve seen paintings that don’t bring out any kind of emotion at all, but music is always connected to something. Cantewell calls it activity without an object. It is sound that creates an entire world of meaning and understanding.
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