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Style and movement has constantly reflected the society at any given time of its existence. Starting with the ancient Romans, who at around 200 BC already had a democracy meetings, senate and music that spoke how great Caesar was, while the Germans, Russian, or British still wore animal skins and killed each other on the streets, singing the songs to their pagan gods, and finishing with the modern day rave and house movements that brings hundreds of people to those cult tunes popular today. In the following essay I am going to speak about how the music style or any particular music movement reflected the society at any given time, present various findings on the given topic as well as express my personal opinion. The primary reason why style and movement reflects the society at that time is because, style and movement are the derivatives of the given society. The early years of America were marked by sad slavery episodes when the blacks did not have any time to come up with sophisticated tunes but rather used surrogate drums and spoke the words of woe. This was the first time when blues and jazz came into existence.
With the spread of the Black culture, Bibi King was the most popular blues singer that attracted not only the black but also the white singers. When the blacks received at least formal equality, the wave of protest movement ceased to exist in the society for that particular time (LaPointe, 2001). But I would like to add that black music nevertheless started to grow in popularity. Another famous black trumpeter Louis Armstrong fascinated the jazz world with the masterful performance, yet at present is hardly remembered possibly for the fact of his origin. Style and movement usually signify social health of a particular country, just like, according to Mike Breen a pimple pops up to show that something is wrong in the body (Breen, 2002). During the Korean or Vietnam wars, these pimples were very much seen all around the USA.
At the same time the style of war has been present in the country as well. The style permeated clothes (khaki and military camouflage became very popular), art (scenes of war), and science (the style focused on the development of the military). The Hippie stood for love not war and started to support music created by Elvis Presley. At that time, the white musician picked up on the popular black tunes, yet adopted them to the needs of the whites who still were willing to rather see a white person performing than the black.
The war motives and let it be style represented by rock culture and groups like Eagles, Metallica, and the Scorpions with songs like Bird of Prey, Wind of change that depicted the military at war, found great popularity in the US with the modern day fans being present not only in the US but also around the globe. At around that time, Reggie and Bob Marley who sang about freedom, peace, marijuana, and happiness in the absence of war were highly accepted and liked. With the threat of war coming to the end, these styles that worked in the opposition to the current government policies also virtually ceased to exist. Starting from 1980 s though, the USA had lost its leadership position in music thus adopting the European styles of electronic music, while retaining leadership position in Rap culture. The most popular style was rave, a free do what you want style of the late 1990 s represented by teams like Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, as well as independent DJs. The rave culture unfortunately is associated with the free use of drugs and unprotected promiscuous sex: something that represents freedom for any culture and thus is accepted by the youngsters universally.
It should be noted that the US nevertheless, had remained the world Rap leader with singers like Eminem, Dr. Dre, Tupac, and the like leading the pack. The rap culture is also challenged by the boy / girls bands that create a distinct stylistic appeal of exposing sexy body or claiming to belong to sexual minorities. The boy / girl bands claim to belong to the new style soft rock and usually serve to expose the US problem with sexual discrimination: exposing females (or young boys) that achieved success despite the society's pressure against such groups. According to Kelly Wright who wrote a book about boy / girl bands, Britney Spear for instance is trying to excite the male audience to the maximum, at the same time without giving any chance of sexual gratification for any of them (Wright, 2002). In such manner she believes she punishes the old farts and young goats who view women only as sex machines (Wright, 2002).
In conclusion I would like to say that at present, one can see various music movements and styles present in the modern day America. The rap, rave and soft rock (as represented by teen bands) seem to have gained the most popularity in modern day USA. The style and music movements have reflected the situation of the USA in politics, economy and society, exposing the main problems in these areas. The music and its style were and will be the main indicators of the status quo in the country and will always change with the years to come.
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Research essay sample on Boy Girl Bands Society At Any Given Time Style
