The Functions Of Music In Society

Intro
In this blog I am going to discuss the functions of music in society and how it has been used in various areas such as religion, dance, live music, films,performances and even youth culture. I will also discuss how/whether all this has changed over time and hopefully end up with a good idea of how important music is in our society.

The Beginnings

All our emotions are closely related to music as every different feeling we have will make us sound and act different giving other people a different feeling. This is what music does, it gives emotion and makes people change moods. In prehistoric times (the stone age) music was used as a key factor for communication, people would use music to hunt for food, or even survive. When hunting they would have used music to herd prey into a trap. Bones from wooly mammoths were the main hunting tools used but after realising the 'beautiful' sounds they made the people would collect animal skins and more to make drums, drum sticks, flutes and horns.

Moving up in time

Moving into 500ad-1400 music became a bigger part of society, religion had come along and people would worship their god through music. The catholic church was growing and a way to worship was using 'gregorian chants', named after Pope Gregory. These chants didn't have any particular rhythm, tempo or solid beat. They were just monophonic melody's which means they only had one melodic line. An example of a gregorian chant is this...

Name of track: Salve Regina.

These chants would be sung by choirs in churches. 

As time has gone on many different musical styles related to worshiping god have come along, after the gregorian chants thing like Mass, Hymns, Gospel, Christian Rock and Reggae have developed. They are all ways in which people can worship what they believe in. Here are examples of each genre..

Mass:

Hymns:

Gospel:

Christian Rock:

Reggae: 

Time To Entertain

These days, a lot of music is related to dancing, in fact there's a lot of people who won't listen to music unless it makes them want to dance. Dancing has been around since ancient times, photo's of ancient egyptians and greeks show this..

Im sure it wasn't only the egyptians and the greeks who used to dance of course, i think it is a natural reaction to dance to a good sound so there would have been dancers worldwide!




In the 1400's during the renaissance period, dances were a popular thing in society. The upper class group of people considered dancing 'an essential social grace' and a lot of tutors were employed to teach different dances to them, as well as music and other things such as sports like martial arts and fencing. The lower class weren't able to pay for tutors etc so they would learn dances by just watching and trying to memorise them. Dances generally occurred at social occasions such as weddings and balls, or in court where the men and women would perform dances in front of royalty. Here's an example of how people looked and dances in the renaissance period..

In the present day dance is all over the place, there is countless amounts of dance style's. There is no more upper class or lower class dance, anyone dances how they want to dance. On the television we have dance contests, clubs these days playing dance music are filled with thousands of people expressing themselves through dancing to the music. It has become a major thing in society. This video shows how big dancing in society has become..

The Live Effect..

In society, live music is a great way for music lovers to get together and enjoy what they listen to in the rawest way. When we listen to music through our vinyl players, CD's, MP3's etc it is enjoyable but when we see what we like best performed by the artist it gives us all our satisfaction needs. Over time, the live music scene has grown massively and now we can enjoy amazing performances in incredible atmospheres such as this one which I experienced in summer 2011..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6wE1oq1zTQ&feature=related

Before we got CD's which we can simply just put on at home wherever we have a player which now isn't really hard to find, people would gather around at home in their living rooms or kitchens and have an hour or two to listen to their favourite radio presenter on their family radio...look how happy they look.

But as time has gone on the idea of listening to music with your family, apart from going to a live performance with your brother or someone, has deteriorated. It's arguable whether its a good or bad thing because we have now got I-Pods etc where we can listen to pretty much as much music as we like through this tiny personal device without great difficulty but you could say that this has torn apart the way that society get's together to listen to music other than going to a huge festival.

SHHHHH

From huge festivals and bass booming clubs we can enjoy as a society, there has been some very unique performances. 'Avant Garde' would be the way to describe it. This basically means "advance guard" or "vanguard" 'which is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative'.

In music though, it is associated with composers or artist who 'think outside the box' and work outside of popular music. A great example of this is Mr John Cage who created this masterpiece, prepare your ears...
                                                                                   

I think that this performance gave people a completely free choice in what the wanted to hear, although it is silence, this gives you the ability to imagine whatever you like and therefore no one will have the same idea on that piece of music, it will be completely different for each and every person which truly makes it a masterpiece. 

Young Guns

Growing up is the thing that makes you who you are, and in society music can be a big part in this for a lot of people. Depending on what you listen to, it normally reflects on how you act or see life in general. In the mid 1900's e.g the 60's and 70's music was really a big influence on the youth or the world, you would get groups like the Mod's and Rocker's, Hippies, Punks and Skinheads.  

In modern times the whole identity and subculture thing doesn't see quite as intense. There is definitely still different groups, in fact a lot more subcultures have emerged since the 60's and 70's with groups like Metalheads, Hardcore, Junglists, 'Moshers', Goths, Skaters, Stoners, Chav's and more! But they don't stand out as much in society because it has become socially accepted that there are many different styles about. This doesn't mean that what style of music people follow or what group they are in will not reflect on how they live it just doesn't become glorified by the news etc anymore. Here are some examples of the different styles of music past and present...

psychedelic: hippie..

Rockers

Mods

Metal, Hardcore

Jungle, DnB

'Stoner'..Reggae, Dub

Thanks For Looking..

So there's my take on the Functions Of Music in Society, I hope you enjoyed what you read and hopefully learnt a bit from it! Here's a nice song to play you out. It is quite relevant to society too....