MUSIC INDUSTRY

Music industry

Music industry

Exploring the cultural, economic and political elements influencing entrepreneurship in the independent sectors of the music industries

Some types of contemporary music mirror the decline in our value system. The "pop" or "hip-hop" culture is characterized by explicit sexuality, habitual use of profanity, and depiction of extreme violence in music and all other forms of entertainment. The most powerful social form of today's culture is the internet, which breeds all things immoral. Music As Culture exists to celebrate those parts of contemporary popular music that are not simply about returning a profit, but are about our cities, our heritage, our shared experience and ourselves as people. Music As Culture aims to provide a voice at a time when critical decisions affecting music, creativity and copyright are being made, usually from a purely commercial point of view.

There is a long history of the connection between music and politics, particularly political expression in music. This expression can use anti-establishment or protest themes, including anti-war songs, although pro-establishment ideas are also used, for example in national anthems, patriotic songs, and political campaigns. Many of these types of songs could be described as topical songs. Unlike many other types of music, political music is not usually ambiguous, and is used to portray a specific political message. While the political message in political music is apparent, it is usually in the political context of the time it was made—which makes understanding the historical events and time that inspired the music essential to fully understanding the message in the music. Since political music is meant to be heard by the people, it is often meant to be popular. (Hesmondhalgh, 1999, 56-77)

A range of contemporary classical composers of socialist or Marxist sympathies have attempted in often quite radically different ways to relate their politics to their work. Primary amongst those from the earlier 20th century are Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, both of whom moved away from atonal idioms that had become prominent in their time, feeling these to alienate audiences, towards music and music-theatre that had roots in popular musics (for example cabaret songs), though with sophisticated harmonies that reflected their musical background. Of post-war composers, the most significant of the earlier generations were Luigi Nono and Hans Werner Henze, both of who wrote a wide range of works that combined music with texts, theatre, and electronics relating to political issues viewed from a Marxist perspective (for example to do with events in Cuba, Vietnam and Chile in Nono's work). Nono brought this subject matter into a dialogue with a relatively abstract music derived from his own earlier serial compositions, from his pioneering work Il Canto Sospeso (1956) onwards, whilst Henze relaxed his earlier formalism in favour of a more eclectic approach to musical style, as for example in his large scale cabaret-like work Voices (1973). (Hesmondhalgh, 1999, 56-77)

A range of slightly later composers in West Germany, including Helmut Lachenmann, Nicolaus A. Huber (both of whom were students of Nono), and Mathias ...