Please rate my music essay lads. It's an assignment for college - the topic: the evolution of popular music in the 20th century.
In the Romantic symphonies of Schubert, Beethoven and the like, we can hear the quiet-loud shifts that would be utilized heavily (though to much less impressive effect) in the rock music of the 1980s and 90s. Though there is a good case for classical music as the most refined type of music, it is clear that what pleases our ears in classical music is much the same as what is enjoyed in the more primal forms of music.
Nevertheless, that rock music’s defining points in those decades (as in the previous ones) were either the personalities of the musicians themselves or such overused tricks as that mentioned above, points to the fact that rock music then was a dying, if not quite dead, form of music.
Looking at the history of music in recent centuries, the most significant event is surely the introduction of black American styles in the 20th century. Allied with a cultural shift, starting in the 19th century, or even perhaps the Enlightenment, away from religion and the traditional social norms, these Negro styles channelled sexuality into pulsating, gyrating rhythm in the form of jazz, taking sex outside of the privacy of the bedroom into the openness of the jeering, hormonal adolescent crowds. Rock music, jazz’s natural successor, took this primal essence further, furnishing the sound with an ever more primeval aggression. Underlying rock music is the most ancient of human lusts, those of sex and violence, and in the style of music the two become inextricably linked. The appeal of rock music, then, is Freudian.
>>61305507
that's shit. not even more than one paragraph.
is this scaruffi?
>>61305507
>college
>like 3 paragraphs
cut r8 b8 m8
In the Libertines and similarly in the Strokes we see a nostalgic longing for the past glories of the rock and roll genre. In an almost desperate form those qualities of 60s and 70s rock music are re-enacted in these bands in parodic style: the forced rock star personality cult (actually barely existent) of Pete Doherty, the tabloid scandals, the safe and spare sex appeal of young weedy middle class men. The music itself is a more subdued version of the classic rock reproductions of Oasis. Here is the nail in the coffin of the rock genre. The sex and violence that appealed so in the early days in rock music now seems lacking. In fact, it has become benign. Degenerate sexuality and violence are openly celebrated in rap music, to a point where the subjects seem banal; drugs equally. The image of the greasy, skeletal rock star with needle hanging out of arm has ceased to shock. The pop music of today, marketed almost exclusively to unthinking young adults and most importantly to children, has reached previously unimagined levels of crassness. Exploiting children’s natural sexual curiosity, pop music now takes the form of pornography in the music video. The biggest purveyor of musical pornography is YouTube, being, alongside Omegle, Snapchat and other such websites, children’s new primary source of sexual education. The internet certainly does not teach the virtues of chastity or loyalty and love to a single partner. The music video teaches sex as an act purely animal, a brief act of pure pleasure between uncaring strangers (“Last night I had two bad bitches”), as void of meaning as the music itself. Music surely has an important role to play in the death of innocence and childhood, and the triumph of sexuality as a public, meaningless act, something to be sought after, used and then discarded like all the other fleeting pleasures which entertain the modern man and woman.
It's unfinished btw. The two posts I've made are the essay so far. Feedback pls
bump
>>61305572
if you're trolling, congrats on getting more than zero people to take the b8. If you're not, drink bleach and die because you are literally rambling about unsubstantiated bullshit with no structure, evidence, or sentence-to-sentence cohesion.
>>61305653
Everything I've said is absolutely true, though.
>>61305704
Then add unironic pretentiousness and hilariously overboard levels of self-congratulatory bullshit to the list
>>61305507
who is this semen demon
>>61305765
>overboard levels of self-congratulatory bullshit
What do you even mean by that? If you're talking about the post you're replying to, then it has nothing to do with the essay itself (which, btw, I would like to see anyone on /mu/ do a better job of).
>>61305837
>says everything in essay is absolutely true
>essay has literally no evidence at all, just unsubstantiated opinion after unsubstantiated opinion, all presented with the certainty of someone who's actually researched something
If "self-congratulatory" is too complex for you to grasp, try "smug". Your essay is smug as shit, but has no reason to be because it's fucking awful and has nothing to back up any of your points
Banjibro pls. /mu/ is a respectable place, this belongs on /tv/.
>>61305978
Any chance you could tell me what is so bad about it instead of insulting me? That's what I made the thread for.
>>61306003
>/mu/ is a respectable place
top kek m8
>>61306024
Okay, sorry for being a dick. Here's what I think:
Your essay needs to have structure. Make a point by stating what it is you believe, then stating in the following paragraphs why we the reader should believe it too. You do this by using evidence to support your ideas, not just coming up with more unsubstantiated opinions. At the end, return to your central point and go a little further with it, leaving the reader thinking. That's how you write an essay. Your essay is not written like this.
>>61305507
>>61305546
>>61305650
>>61305704
>>61306073
isn't this bitch underage?
are you a pedophile OP?
>>61306275
Loving cunny is not a crime.
>>61305507
>>61305546
lol.
Well, it's pretty entertaining, but your essay is fucking retarded, as if you only surfed 4chan, namely /pol/, and reddit instead of actually buckling down and fucking learning something.
if you're going to talk about the commodification of music, you'll need to talk about its roots and function as folk music, and then how that meets an advanced capitalist state. You will have to talk about recording and reproduction as the most disruptive artistic technology, and you will have to discuss the rise of consumerism in more detail than to just point out the Freudian overtones.
Since you're bringing up Freud, you should watch The Century Of The Self.
In short, you're right, but the version of right you get from listening to other people talk at a bus station. Do some fucking research.
>>61306549 cont.
Oh and you're kind of casually racist, and le wrong generation in the absolute worst way, waxing your bone about romantic music. Good lord maybe you could write for textbooks at this rate. Maybe even a VH1 show.
If you're going to talk about the rise of black music, you'd better give it a lot more context. Watch the Ken Burns jazz series before opening your mouth again- you don't know a fucking thing about the blues, jazz, or early rock.
>>61306549
>>61306618
Preach. OP needs to hear it.
>>61306549
>>61306618 cont.
In short, back the fuck up. Make a smaller point. You're nowhere near the caliber of scholarship you'd need to be at to approach such an overly-broad question with such a bloated and overblown response.
The thing you have about quiet/loud shifts would be nice if you stuck with it and developed that a little bit more thoroughly. Also the bits about personality worship and drug-addled artists would be interesting if you did a little bit of scholarship- have you ever read about Franz Liszt? That guy was the original rock star. And a lot of those romantic artists- fucked out of their minds on drugs and drink.
But those are two separate issues. One is a technical aspect of music born out of the sublime, in the original, romantic sense of the term, and the other is the rise and fall of personality cults in music, which come and go.
Sex and music have been inextricable from the dawn of time. Even baroque, which is normally thought of as the most neutered music by our uneducated populace, has a strong pull between rising and falling action, between the tonic and the dominant, a duality which is easily equated to a binary sexuality.
OP got farthammered off the mat.
>>61305507
read adorno you shitcuck
