Free «Influence of Modern Music » Essay Sample

1. Describe and/or speculate on the impact of MTV on entertainment and our culture in general.

At the beginning when MTV was introduced, it had a limited audience. MTV tried to popularize the cable television which was not broadly available in early 1980s. MTV effectively started describing popular culture as popularity and scope of cable television expanded (Banks, 1996). This made the whole music industry to become famous in an unprecedented way. This means that MTV helped the music industry break the color barrier for popular music on television. Some of the artists who became very famous in that period include Michael Jackson, Madonna and Duran Duran.

1. Why did British stars dominate the early music videos? Use specific examples.

British dominated in music videos because first, most of the famous and great artists like Michael Jackson and James Sullivan had settled there and were doing great especially with the introduction of MTV which greatly popularized them and made them dominate the music industry in general (Banks, 1996). Another point is that Edward Marks and Joe Stern who promoted sales of their song “the Little Lost Child” in 1894 that was clipped by Thomas George who projected a stream of images on live performance first established music videos in British.

1. Was MTV a positive or negative influence? ...Explain.

It should be clear that MTV was a positive influence to the musical scene as far as modernity is concerned. This is because, MTV came up with the new recording styles and popularization of musicians which helped most of the musicians like Michael Jackson gain fame and be a worldwide star (Banks, 1996).

1. Which of these two identities do you think will be the rock we read about in the twenty-fifth century - image or social/political...why?

There is no doubt that the rock music of the twenty-fifth century will be more image than political or social. This is because much of the concentration of the music is on fashion and dance than politics (Gish, 2002). Moreover, most of the messages passed on by the rock musicians do not focus on politics, it mainly focuses on image-how people should dress and dance new released rock music.

1. Rock will fade and become more static, like jazz, and the new electronic styles will become the new popular music of the United States. Do you agree or disagree? ...Explain.

I greatly disagree that rock music will become more static leaving the new electronic styles to dominate. This is because rock music is a home of dance styles and fashion and it still remains the main influence of popular dance styles which are then copied by other musical genres (Fornatale, 1987). Moreover, rock music is still evolving and shifting away from social/political music to image where fashion is given the first priority just as mentioned above. Therefore, as much as rock music is still the main influence of dance and fashion, it cannot easily become static. Note that it still has a lot of fans who love it like crazy and cannot let it become static.