Ideas and action..

I read something today... something that made me think of music.

"An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea. "

If one makes music and develops it from feeling, I feel the music has purpose - whether or not it fits popular acceptance or if it fits in the boundaries of conventional wisdom.

Gangster rap Identity

Gangster rap, or hardcore rap, is generally considered a subgenre of the larger category of rap music, which itself is a subcategory of hip-hop. In my point of view, gangster rap is differentiable from other rap music in that it makes use of images of urban life associated with crime. According to the Encyclopedia explanation, most of the gangster rap associated with the genre of violence, drugs, materialism and sexual promiscuity.
As the hip hop movement has gained recognition throughout the United States, it has established itself as one of the fastest growing social groups anywhere. In the late 1990s immediately following the murders of both Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace, two nationally known gangster rappers, a propaganda campaign escalated against rap music and the hip-hop culture. Although gangster rap only represented a small percentage of the hip-hop culture at the time, all hip-hop and rap music was instantly stereotyped negatively as being ‘gangster-like’. Why? Well, I think this gangster version of hip-hop was the highest selling and most recognized form of hip-hop music among the majority class. And many critics have determined that this is because America is in love with sex, drugs and violence. Hip-hop artists have used their lyrics and poetry to influence the rejection and reconstruction of the gangster identity that plagues their social class. This is accomplished through the redefining of negative characteristics assigned by the majority class. In most cases, these redefinitions include pointing to the majority class as the real holders of these negative characteristics. The redefining of these ‘gangster-like’ images through hip-hop lyrics helps to reconstruct the gangster identity by questioning ‘gangster-like’ behaviours and which social class actually has these behaviours.

Soul/Funk music and Civil Rights

Sometimes while discussing Soul and Funk music we tend to forget that the music did not exist in a vacuum. The music was a product of the existing environment of the time in which the musicians who created it lived... If the period of Soul is roughly defined as 1955 - 1970. It very much parallels the Civil Rights movement. I would maintain that Soul music and the Civil Rights movement had a duel impact on each other. One example that I can think of right off the top of my head is A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke. Another would be the image of Aretha Frankin singing at the funeral of Dr. King. When Chuck Berry announces to the world that he is in fact "A Brown Eyed Handsome Man" in 1956, he is telling the listener that he is a Black man, who is here to stay. Just a few short years later Berry Gordy took Chuck's notion and turned it in to a record company that would quietly achieve all of the objectives of the American Civil Rights movement while never uttering a single sentence about it !! Stax records was perhaps the ultimate, as a unique black/white partnership created gut bucket raw Soul music for the masses. I would also maintain that Funk music and the "Black Pride" movement had a duel impact on each other. Some example that I can think of right off the top of my head is recalling for the first time seeing a Black man (JimiHendrix) wearing an Afro, hearing the inspirational lyrics of Earth Wind and Fire. The connection between "the music, the people and the one", was never more clear.

A Hard Day’s Night

What can you say about the film that started it all? Where pop rock became worth listening and not just dancing to? Where John, Paul, George, and Ringo became firmly established as individual personalities as well as the premier entertainment troupe of the 20th century?

If anyone wants to witness the phenomenon that was Beatlemania in the 1960s, all they have to do is view A Hard Day's Night. A Hard Day's Night is probably more responsible for the Beatles' enduring image in our culture than any single song they made.

The story of "Hard Day's Night" is thin by design. We see the Beatles in slightly fictionalized form, with a manager named Norm and a roadie named Shake, traveling by train across England and ducking into a studio to make a TV appearance. Paul has his grandfather along, a codgy old troublemaker who nevertheless is "very clean." The irony of the movie is that the old guy, played by British TV star Wilfrid Brambell, is the one that continually ruffles the feathers of society while the Boys themselves play things fairly straight and legal.

Is it the best Beatles film? I think this is the best film actually featuring the Beatles for who they were and what they were about. Great music, too. The sequence on the train with I Should Have Known Better still works as a video, with all the baggage-car bric-a-brac thrown in for ambiance. Then there's Can't Buy Me Love, which shows the Beatles in full-tilt boogie mode after momentarily escaping their studio confines. And I Love Her has some of the film's greatest camera work, very moody and intense in its focus on how well the Beatles worked in a TV studio setting. Filmed with humor, great tunes and fast-paced editing, A Hard Day's Night usually never fails in delivering smiles and pleasure. If anyone who are music fan, and a rock and roll buff, the film is a must!

Music and Gender

There can be no such thing as genderless culture. One's social sexual identity, or gender, is a very central concept in music, linked with interaction between the sexes. I think the girls or woman are much more violent and hot-tempered than the men. For example, the maledictory songs against unfaithful lovers are addressed in far greater number to men than women. Moreover, women in music are still prisoners of their sexual roles. An ageing female rock star is almost impossibility. For example, Tina Turner is the shining exception, but she is black. Someone already on the margins through being black, gay or diverging from the norm in some other way, can bend the limits. However, Many songs, and women singers, feature cross-gender situations, such as Madonna, or the 'Female Warrior' ballads. In these songs women were extending their space. Although women are known to have occasionally smuggled themselves into the armies and navies of earlier centuries, the disguise songs do not operate primarily as records of actual practice but as a challenge to the gender coding of dress, work and terrain.

What is music?

What is music?
According to dictionary, music is "the art of arranging tones in an orderly sequence so as to produce a unified and continuous composition". In reality, music does not have any one concrete meaning. I think music has different meanings for different people. Music is unique in each person's life. For example, to a musician, music can be their life or a passion. They eat, breathe, and live music. However for others, music can be a hobby or a pastime. In my point of view, music is something that arouses interest and is pleasurable. The casual fan may learn about music, how to read music, how to sing, or how to play a musical instrument, but they do not have the all encompassing passion a musician possesses. Music is a means of relaxation for some, while others simply enjoy listening to the sounds, melodies, and rhythms that music brings to their ears, minds, and hearts