Popular music can most certainly be a force of change in culture! While music reflects the thoughts, feelings, and values of the person or people who created it and therefore comes from culture, music can also instigate change on a greater scale than one person's more intimate actions alone. Consider the effects one person's ideas have on their own compared to the influence ideas have when made widely accessible through music. For example, hip-hop artist ...
Popular music can most certainly be a force of change in culture! While music reflects the thoughts, feelings, and values of the person or people who created it and therefore comes from culture, music can also instigate change on a greater scale than one person's more intimate actions alone. Consider the effects one person's ideas have on their own compared to the influence ideas have when made widely accessible through music. For example, hip-hop artist Macklemore has used his music to draw attention to issues such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial injustice. Some genres of popular music have developed as an agent of cultural change seeking to bring counterculture to the forefront. Punk rock developed in the 1970s as a way for working-class youth to voice their discontent with working-class society and big-name rock and roll counterculture.
Music can also be an agent of change in cultural tastes. Many artists like to use regional instruments or musical styles when creating and performing popular music. When a popular artist incorporates elements of music that aren't currently part of the dominant music scene, they can help introduce people to new musical styles and in turn make them popular. Hip-hop artist M.I.A., who regularly uses her music to discuss social issues like gender inequality, often incorporates instruments and rhythms typical of India and Sri Lanka, places where she lived as a child.
Music can help bring counterculture to the forefront in society and inspire cultural change in a way that is more palatable than speech alone.
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