Question

Everyone has experience with stages of the life cycle, ethnicity, gender, and spirituality and knows that music represents their innermost thoughts and selves.  Your journal entry for this module should be reflective and should express how music represents these areas of your life. Compare/contrast your experiences with music in these situations with how these experiences are expressed musically in a more global context.  Make sure to use vocabulary from the class to communicate the attributes of music. Your answer post should be a minimum of 300 words long.

Answer 1

In the course of history, music is the greatest creation of mankind. Creativity in the pure and undiluted form is the true definition of Music. Music is an important part of our life as it is a way of expressing our feelings as well as emotions.

Some people consider music as a way to escape from the pain of life. It gives you relief and allows you to reduce the stress. Music is a powerful therapy that will make you calm down and in the moment of joy, it will make you cheerful.

Furthermore, it develops the mind and boosts your self confidence. Music plays a more important role in our life than just being a source of entertainment.

Historians sometimes consider songs as more or less straightforward “reflections” of the society and culture in which they were produced. These songs are then used to illustrate what historians already think they know about that society and culture. Thus, an anti-drinking song like “Come Home Father” (1864) might be interpreted to mean that nineteenth-century Americans were concerned about alcohol and opposed to its abuse.

In other words, culture and music flow together. What our parents used to dig, kids of today would deem as lame. And in a few years, the music we think is cool now will probably be outdated. It's nothing against the music. It's just a representation, a manifestation of what's constantly changing around us. With that said, we need to be very aware of our modern day culture, but more importantly, we need to be intentional about the cultures we want to create and cultivate with our music.

Moral impact

Merriam-Webster defines morality as "beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior." A quick Google search on the impact of music on morals will yield many results on the negative impact it has on society, especially in the realm of rap and hip-hop music. But in all styles of music nowadays, there are a plethora of songs with lyrics that glorify sex, drugs, and violence. While research can't concretely link the cause-and-effect behavior of listening to these songs with directly inducing this type of behavior, many researchers and people agree that it surely encourages it.

I believe that morals and behavior, especially in teens, aren't completely steered by the lyrics they're listening to, because there are so many factors to building a moral compass. However, music can definitely play a significant role in determining what seems to be right or wrong, okay or not okay, and good or bad. Because of this, we need to become wary about the messages that we are putting out with our songs.