The Importance of Music

Music, a cultural expression, a personal outlet to the world. It's all around us, in films, on television, commercials, video games, ringtones, but what is the significance of the music? Can a song change the world? Arguably the greatest song writer of all time, Bob Dylan doesn't think so. In the 60's, protest was the word associated with Dylan and his music, he was deemed the voice of a generation. Since no dramatic eruption of change happened that would mean his protest song's failed, no one likes being a failure, I guess. Unlike Dylan I believe music can change the world.

Song can be used to inform the other wise, ignorant majority of the world. Not inform, the way CNN takes an epic event, and changes it into a seven word sentence that scrolls along the bottom of the screen as to not interrupt Larry King and his ridiculous so called 'interviews'. Musicians make an event or an idea into a song, a prayer, a statement that will be around for thousands of years, not the 8 second clip that news creates.

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” originally by U2 is about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, specifically The Remembrance Day bombing (Enniskillen bombing) when a bomb was detonated by the IRA, a radical Provisional Irish Republican Army, during a Remembrance ceremony honoring those that had died serving the British military . During the filming of Rattle and Hum, U2's frontman Bono says, “ I'm not sure that song should be in the film, Sunday Bloody Sunday, because that day the day of the Enniskillen bombing will soon long since be forgotten. People will not understand the way we felt on stage.” Well Bono's fear has not yet become a reality. To this day that song has been covered by a dozen bands, it has become a protester's anthem, and was even named on Rolling Stone's top 500 songs of all time. Songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” have created an image of 'brothers, sisters, mothers torn apart' by war. It has given people who weren't alive at the time, the chance to relive and learn that horrible day and learn from their mistakes in hopes to not recreate history.

Bob Marley the godfather of all Rastafarian music as we know it today has probably the most love-filled and religious message of all popular musicians. His message reached further than marijuana and the black oppression. As a half-white, half-black man growing up in Jamaica he was faced with a struggle between both races. “I don't have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.” He believed that music could destroy racism and hate. His most important songs such as “One Love” deal with the racists stating ' Let them all pass their dirty remarks.. Is there a place for the hopeless sinner, who has hurt all man kind just to save his own?' His message has stood the test of time and today his son Ziggy Marley continues spreading the message of love and hope for the oppressed.

Music gives the people who aren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth a voice. Where else in history has the son of a Black Panther and a crack head become anything more than another black male in prison. Well with the help of Interscope Records, Tupac Shakur got a chance to tell the rest of America what it was like in the inner city on the west coast. Giving four boys from Liverpool, England a chance to become the best thing since sliced bread, music is the most important part of our modern society. The one aspect of media where people can be truly honest, not being scared of being taken the wrong way. In 50 years people won't be reading our papers or watching our shows, but they sure will be listening to our music, the most honest account of the world as it is today.