Music and Cultural Values

1220 Words5 Pages
Music and Cultural Values Imagine a world with no music for entertainment. Today music plays a big part in our society not only as entertainment but also in everyday life. People listen to music every day in their vehicles, on the radio, and mp3 players. It has become so routine that we don’t always realize how often we listen to music. There are many different genres of music and everyone has their own personal preference. Roger Scruton, professor of moral philosophy at St. Andrews University, explains in his article “Music and Morality” the different genres people listen to and how they make them feel. Lane Jennings, research director of SAI productions, writes in his article, “Digital Music: You Are What You Listen To”, that in a study conducted among students and coworkers, that when people’s personal music libraries are shared they add popular music to make them feel more accepted among their peers or cooler. James Rosen, author of the article, “iPods and Dirty Underwear”, writes out of his own experience that people add music to their music collections that they aren’t particularly fans of, but music that is popular and would make other people think higher of them for owning. People enjoy listening to music because of the way it makes them feel. Depending on what mood a person is in, different genres of music provide different feelings. Scruton’s article, “Music and Morality” describes a few of the different genres and the effect they have on people. Scruton states that pop music is the most popular genre in today’s society. Pop music is so popular because it provides an upbeat tempo that people want to dance to. Scruton argues that pop, heavy metal, and DJ music are alike in that a person dances to the music with themselves. It is not like older style music where a person dances with a partner. This new style of music has an upbeat tempo that makes the

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