The rock'n'roll era and beyond Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The rock'n'roll era and beyond - Essay Example The identity does not only include personal identity, but also regional, national, gender, ethnic and cultural identity. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to briefly present an overview of how music can reflect a generation identity. It will also analyze two artists from different decades and how the two musicians connect to listeners at specific stage of life and finally. Finally, the paper will discuss what music reveals about the changes and continuities in the perception of that age identity. In discussing the identity in music, we need to ask ourselves whether it is true that everyone has a musical identity. Few people say that they lack interests in music or liking of the music whatsoever. Most have strong liking of music and dislikes depending on the type of music. Taste for music have always been shown to related to age, music training level and some aspects of cognitive style and personality. Most people listen to music of different levels of engagements to regulate th eir moods in different contexts while they are also involved in other activities. It may seem reasonable that in analyzing the musical identities to look at all the concepts of the people. The broad patterns of musical preferences among people and also the transitory likes and dislikes form the integral part of our music identities (Jennings 1991). It is widely believed that the taste and preferences in listening form the most important part of most people. However, this may not be so among other people in the society. Furthermore, domain music importance varies very much in self-identities. This level of variation may depend on the level of involvement such as the musicians themselves or the solo performers. One of the factors that play a role in teenager’s generation identity is music. They identify with artists and different musical styles to reflect their individual identity as a generation. Over many generations, you will find many parents lamenting on the type of music their young ones listen. Over a period of a hundred years ago, it was jazz, followed by big band, rock n’ roll, then funk, electronic music, rap and finally hip hop. The parents mostly complain about the noise that the young stars listen to hence refusing to listen or understand â€Å"that music.† It is true that music can connect us with each other if we open to listen, understand and receive it. Therefore, in finding identity, people of different age groups do tend to prefer particular type of music. In the 1950s in its last half, as rock ‘n’ roll of the Americans began to assume its hegemony over the airwaves and the habits of the young people of buying records across the whole of the industrialized world, this popular new brand of music began to be primarily perceived as a phenomenon for the youth. This perception was reinforced in the 1960s by the development of the youth movement, which expressed itself self-consciously through distinctive forms of p op and rock music. Many believed that this conjunction resulted to the success of the rock music. It was primarily due to the young stars articulation of their sense of identity mostly based on the idea of age and generation. In the word of Frith (1978), the sociology of rock cannot be separated to the sociology of the youth. In the 1970s, the youth to music relationship differed significantly along a number of dimensions especially in social class, ethnicity and gender (Murdock et al