Music, a Barthesian Signification.
It is something that appeals to everyone, of every community
and every taste. It constantly traverses between micro and macro planes, and
one can engage in both simultaneously. It says a lot about a person: what group
they are part of, their interests, maybe what kind of moods they are prone to
and personality traits (micro), and is opened up to something bigger than the
self when it is cultural, social, and economic, and religious (macro).
Music has a symbiotic relationship with mood: either influencing
a person’s state or induced by the person’s mood. Genre of music certainly
contains psychoanalytical facets relating to one’s personality: the aggressive
personality listens to metal, the relaxed personality listens to mellow and
smooth music, et. Cetera.
Whatever types of music people choose to listen to, they are
instantly associated with a ‘music culture’ or subculture (punks, goths,
hippies, metal heads, etc.). It is of importance that this personal association
is sometimes on purpose, and sometimes not. The listener is therefore initiated
into a community in which certain genres or other qualities are deemed as being
part of.
Music exists in different modes that can be classified into
genres, and even subgenres. Sometimes genres diverge, and sometimes they merge
to create something new. When divergence or convergence occurs, the audience or
community in which genres were accepted a
priori are sometimes not so accepting of what emerges.
Take the example of “gypsy-punk” as coined by the artists
Gogol Bordello. It is neither truly gypsy nor punk, but it has qualities of
both. The gypsy community sees the rise of gypsy punk as an offensive bastardization
to gypsy musical roots and traditions. The punk community see it as very far
from the fast, raw, and angry qualities usual of punk music and would even say
that the only ‘punk’ aspect of gypsy-punk is its fast
tempo. However, this convergence of the two genres has found a community of its
own: gen.5 immigrants with a yearning for something traditional infused with
something contemporary.
The popularity of genres in turn is reflective of its
listener, their tastes, age, preferences, likes and dislikes. What else music
say about the people who listen to it? Listening to music can be an elitist
sport, or it can be something one casually engages in from time to time.
Music is a cultural, social, and economic, religious, local,
and global.
Everything about music is social. Even if a person is by his
or herself, they are sharing and engaging in someone else’s vision. Music is
social though concert/ performance /show, burning a cd for a friend or ‘sharing’
it on social media networking sites, remixing it, collaborating on it, its
purchase. Music is representative of a community’s voice and concerns. There
are those who feel entitled to free music, and others who feel the need to pay
to support artist’s creativity and efforts. Music is a cultural display:
through instrumentation, rhythms, vocals, and languages (among other qualifiers)
which form a unification of something cultural, traditional, or genre-based. A
spiritual connection can be made through music, such as is encountered in the religious
rites of byzantine chants, or church quires. It can let the listener tap into
something ‘perfectly’ constructed through pitch and tempo of singular and/or
overlapping sounds.
Music moves
people. Various dances, or ways of moving to music, are identifiers of a genre
and culture (or subculture); the way one moves is in accordance with the sounds
of instrumentation and/or vocals. Sometimes you move smoothly in accord with
beat and rhythm (like belly dance), but sometimes moving spasmodically is also
in accord with beat (the St. Vitus dance).
We can deduce that music is a way of communication, and that
it goes beyond the use of any particular language. Listeners can engage, and
most importantly enjoy music even in
a language they don’t understand.
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