The attraction of music - reflecting our soul?

Subject: The attraction of music - reflecting our soul? Tue Nov 18, 2014 1:14 pm

The attraction of music - reflecting our soul?

For me music is art, it's emotions. Lyrics is persons' interpretions of life and life stories. It's sadness, pain and anger. It's joy, happiness and love. A song with an insignificant lyrics isn't insignificant. I think it has its purpose, as every other song. I don't think any words are empty in the sense that they doesn't mean something, even though they may not mean what they're actually saying.

When I meet new people I want to know what kind of music they enjoy listening to. Most people I've met listens to pretty much everything. Sure, that goes for me too. But when you scratch the surface there's always genres that are more or less appreciated by the person. It might not say much about someone - or it might. What do you think? Can music reflect "the soul" of a person? With soul I here mean experiences, personality, values etc... How come do we have different taste of music and what makes us like some kind of music more or less than other?

Music in my opinion is art and popular music is the greatest art produced in the twentieth century, its medicine and the ultimate platform for free speech. Popular music has been used many times as a communication tool at times of social unrest, its intelligent and non-violent, its the ultimate method of protest.

Popular music since the mid fifties has mirrored the society that created it, its easy to track the rise in sophistication of popular music through the sixties, seventies and eighties, the human race became much more sophisticated and educated than ever before during these times. The popular music of today and the last decade is meaningless and dumbed down just like the society that created it, as humans become less intelligent popular music becomes meaningless and irrelevant, it mirrors the society that created it.

I cant communicate with people who don't appreciate popular music, i find them vapid and empty headed and rarely do they ever offer an opinion on anything. If i hear the word "genre" i immediately assume im talking to a moron, popular music shouldn't be separated for retail purposes. The beauty of youth is that they hate or ridicule everything that came before them, and they change whats happening and it often mirrors society, im hoping that we haven't dumbed down so far that young people forget what their role in society is.

My world without music would be a dark one.. or a real quiet one. I believe as well that it is an art. A kind of art that not only expresses the emotions from the creator, but elicits unique emotions from the many listeners. It's an emotional communication that sometimes words can't express.
I enjoy the lyrical kind and the not so lyrical kind. Different days, different plays, different beats to the mood, discoveries of things I've never heard. Gee, I don't think a day goes by that I'm not pumping some kind of beat into my ears. Even now as I type this...

I've wondered this question some time ago, about if we are what we listen to. Does that man with the cowboy hat and huge belt buckle and pick up truck pump country music down his ears while drinking whiskey and riding bulls every Saturday night? Can I picture him rocking out to rap music? Or how about Latin Dance? I think not; the country music goes with his outfit, it adds to his effect, his culture. He has effectively become his music.

Or maybe it's how one grows up? Growing up, I wasn't forced into any one type of music, and I enjoyed all kinds, but when I found rock, well, as broad of a category it is, I've always just been real partial to that. Like I found the one thing I was missing in my musical diet. And I believe that it has imbeded a personality in me, if rock music can do such a thing. Can Christian music turn you into a devout Christian? Er, no more than death metal will make you go on a killing rampage. The people do this, not the music. We evidently choose to be what we listen to.

The music we listen to, most of the time does a pretty good job of reflecting us. We wouldn't listen to it if we couldn't stomach it, and when we do listen to what churns our stomachs, it can get interesting. But I think, on some kind of subconscious level, it's not the music shaping us rather we've made the music based on our shape that was already there. We create our musical mirror. We want to be reflected in the art, and in turn we search for things that would reflect us best. Thinking about that doesn't make much sense when I think back to the cowboy example; you obviously don't have to dress or act like one to appreciate country music. He could be a real jazz lover. So it's not your one defining quality, but a glow to who you are. An accessory to your personality.

Trying to answer why some musical categories sound better than others is like trying to understand why we are partial to certain foods or smells. Not one person is the same, and it's our brain makeup/chemistry (and maybe a little marketing and fads) that does all this determining, but ultimately up to us to just simply decide if the music we choose to listen to puts in a better place now than five minutes ago.

I'm sorry to answer with this sort of off topic kind of expression. I guess one could call it some kind of collective art? http://www.mtv.com/news/1999637/sweden-flogsta-scream/

I'll give you some of my thoughts of what you've said too...

I think the Stockholm screaming thing is funny, if you did it here they'd arrest you, you'd be offending someone or stopping someone from sleeping or some other pink n fluffy nonsense.

They'd just think it's a panther out here...or a dying cow.. or a drunk red neck. No one would think twice really...

Wasn't sure where to post this, the thread title seemed to suggest this was the right place.

This was recorded at a Hole gig several years ago, apparently Courtney Love was a total bitch throughout the entire gig and then she decided not to pay the sound man. So, the sound man did what all good sound men would have done, he isolated Loves guitar and vocals and put it to a film shot on the night and slapped it on to youtube. haha. Everyone knows you should never fuck with the sound man.

Talentless doesnt quite cover it does it.

How funny is the guitar.

^ Wow.

I could fall down the stairs drunk with a guitar in my hand and sound better. But only slightly.

Cheavy wrote:: ^ Wow.

I could fall down the stairs drunk with a guitar in my hand and sound better. But only slightly.

Haha........

Thing is Cheavy, you're always falling down the stairs drunk with a guitar in your hand so you're probably pretty good at it by now.

There goes my free room in Florida for a week in July.

Smile

Well, it's not even a full set of stairs. I'm only working with porch steps.

And you couldn't have picked a better month. There's nothing like choking on the oppressive humidity.

» Music Videos
» Fanmade Music Videos
» Tomasz Stanko - Music for K (1970)