One thing that soon becomes apparent to anyone who knows me
that I am very passionate about music, sometimes to an obsessive degree. I believe that this is a completely justified
attitude for a number of reasons, as I think that music plays a large role in
the lives of the individuals who engage in it. This is for a number of reasons;
firstly a great deal of music holds the power to change our mood and general
outlook. We all, whether we admit to it or not, have particular music we listen
to when we feel down which cheers us up, of song we play when we are in a good
mood as they mirror and enhance our feelings at that time. This I believe as
can be put down to the way in which it reminds us that we are not alone, and
that others share our feelings and ideology. But perhaps the greatest reason
that I have for why music is so important in life is that it grants a platform
to those who would not get their points across otherwise.
I
really enjoy live music, and go to quite a lot of gigs. There is one thing that
is key to moving any gig from simply being good, to being great, and that is
the having a strong connection with the crowd. However the last two artists who
I had the pleasure to see live, created an extremely strong link with the
crowed through utilising a shared ideology, by talking about issues which have
affected many of us. ‘Funeral For a Friend’ did this extremely well when introducing
their song ‘history’, which they described as
being about standing up for your rights and the rights of others,
creating a strong connecting amongst their audience by talking about growing up
during in a troubled time in wales , where a poverty was a huge problem. This
speech resulted in a large applause, which felt strange to take place a gig.
The
other artist who saw live recently, was Kate Nash. Despite being recently
dropped by her label, due to her second album, which featured indie pop music,
selling poorly. This she claimed opened up the opportunity to record an album
that addressed issues that she felt actually needed to be addressed within
society. These themes varied, one issue
that resonated with the audience such as having friends who just aren’t good
for them, offering the advice that if you only look out for yourself, you will become
a more caring person. It is attitudes like this which are also reflected in her
song ‘Fri-end’, that can be seen to create a shared ideology with her fans. However
she did focus on issues on that were more relevant to sociological, this being
the fact that women are less likely to succeed in the music industry, an issue
that she is attempting to attack head on. One way in which she stated she was
aiming to do this was through visiting secondary schools and helping start up clubs which offered girls
the opportunity to learn to play instruments, as well as giving them the chance
to compose and preform their own music, in an attempt to change the current
sexist attitudes in the music industry.
Overall,
I believe that music is a powerful force, and that there are many opportunities
for research to be carried out in this field, whether it is aimed at the
structure of the music industry or the ideology that artists put across. One
writer who I consider to be influential in this area is Francis Steward (2012),
who talks about ‘implicit religion’ in the context of ‘straight edge punk’ , I see
his idea, that music can take on some of
the characteristics of religion, in terms of the way its followers place their belief
in it and see it as a constant feature of their life, can be expanded upon to
create a more accurate picture of the role music plays in our society.
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