Censorship In Music: Annotated Bibliography

Art has been around since the beginning of humankind and it has been and will always be a visual form of human expression, ideas, and morals. Art is subjective and everyone will feel differently towards one specific artwork. But disliking an artwork because it offends you does not mean that you must destroy it. Recently, a white artist, Dana Schutz created an abstract painting of Emmett Till, a 14 year old African American that was killed by a couple of white men because he supposedly whistled at a white lady. Many people have deemed this artwork as a form of cultural appropriation and have demanded the artist to take it down. Despite the controversies of this artwork, art should never ever be censored because it violates the artist’s freedom

In the article, the author mainly illustrated the relationship of the rapid growth of rap music and the development of censorship frame from the 1990s. Rap music, especially gangsta rap, usually connected with deviance such as crime and misogyny. The rap music received public negative perceptions and media discourse. With the rise of the rap music, the content within rap music is a concern in the music industry. The author also discussed the problem which perceptions and opinions of society to rap music are shaped by the mass media reports and claim-makers such as Parents Music Resource Centre (PMRC). Rap music has been demonization as a deviant or informal form of music which gives the audience feeling of disgust and fear. The aim of the article is to give public a better understanding of rap music and its role plays in the music industry. Rap music sometimes represents subculture and political thoughts of the performer so it is important to understand the rap music culture by a neutral sense. The mass media ignores the positive message and meaning in the rap songs and focuses a lot on the deviant as a censorship frame and social control.

Censoring music will limit the creativity and viewpoint of other people; which is causing our freedom of speech becoming eradicated and adds on to the shortcoming of understanding other people’s perspectives. People have different stances on life, and want to canvass the things that they lived through. This is where foul language and censorship is most debated.

Privacy is defined by Dictionary.com as “freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny, secret surveillance, or unauthorized disclosure of one’s personal data or information”. This is something that most people value extremely highly. From everyday civilians to government officials, everybody wants some level of privacy. Many say surveillance technology denies them the right to privacy that they are given at birth as American citizens. However, there should be a small amount of wiggle room when it comes to this technology, in order to protect the country and its people. In “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets”, Peter Singer gives us an insight into privacy in the government. He discusses the

Music censorship has taken many forms in the past, but many forms are overbearing and generally ridiculous. Censorship comes in many forms. The practice of censorship is defined as “...the act of changing or suppressing speech or writing that is considered subversive of the common good.”(Merriam-Webster). Old forms of censorship included not allowing airplay, refusal of sale, and refusal of publishment. The major issue found with those that oppose censorship, is that they have no real grounds to address the problem sensibly. Most focus of censorship, however, is focused on the younger genres of music such as Metal, Punk, and especially Rap.

Although is clearly states in the first amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," censorship in America still exists in a big way. "Music censorship is the term used to describe the act of editing, altering, or preventing the listener from hearing the music as the artist created it in order to either deny certain information or to act as a moral gatekeeper of potentially harmful material" (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~barndollar/courses/spring98/students/fabfive/index.html). The Censorship of

Censorship in music is a topic that has brought about much controversy over the past two decades. There have been many different arguments on the topic, however the question still lingers is should censorship still remain. Before you can form an opinion on this, you must hear both sides of the argument on this much-debated topic. Some people believe that music should be censored so all audiences can hear it without it containing any offensive lyrics. Others believe it should not be censored and musical artists should be able to speak, sing, rap, or rhyme freely without anyone censoring them. "Whether a person finds a work obscene depends largely on his or her moral or religious

Frequent topics of debate in our country pertain to our rights according to the constitution. Namely, freedom of speech and expression is often cause for controversy.

Censorship, is when a piece of art is monitored because the content is not appropriate for society or people of all ages. I believe that censorship hurts the artist and their right to freely express themselves.

I enjoy and love music very much. I feel that music artists should have the right to freely express their work and I feel that I should argue about the censorship attacks on these artists. I’m tired of listening to a good song on the radio with some of the words censored. It ruins the song and I can’t stand it. Some people think that rap is a bad influence and causes the young to behave badly. But I think all this censoring has something to do with racism because it is mostly black people singing the songs. The first website list the good side and bad side of rap censorship. I think half of this site is pretty good to use for my paper. The second website has a

Music has been the cure to many people's bad days.But on the other hand,some not.Music has been around for decades and has become popular now.Not everyone proud of the censored/uncensored music their making now and are in an disagreemnet about some people wanting music being banned.Music has become offensive to many parents and their children.However,the offensive music is affecting the way teens talk and dress,promote violence, and causing students to be unfocused in school.Muisc should be banned because it would give an positive outcomeon behavior,language,and paying attention in school.

Music censorship is the prohibition or suppression of music that is considered politically unacceptable, obscene, or a threat to society. Music and music videos have been known to unnecessarily inappropriate. This has lead to a society that has gotten out of control. People are cursing and treating women badly because of the uncensored music. Censorship in the music industry is an easy way to make America a better place.

Sure, protecting innocent children from exposure of explicit lyrics is best for both parents and children, but a person's creative works shouldn’t be blocked or bleeped on the radio just because another person wants it to. The radio stations that do play the bleeped songs are usually more adult radio stations. Everyone has the option to choose what to listen to, so they shouldn’t listen to the radio stations that upsets them. Parents can monitor their kids for themselves.

Anthony Chiavaroli wrote the essay that I chose to discuss in my response paper about music censorship. In Anthony’s argument he makes the point that music censorship has been appropriately added to music for years and it has been helpful to the industry during that time. Ultimately, audiences are not pleased to be told what they are and are not allowed to hear. That is why censorship should be continued to be used, however limited. I agree with Anthony that music censorship today is just fine the way it is.

When it comes to music topics, the reoccurring subject that always seems to keep coming back is the topic of alcohol. So, when it came to making a playlist about alcohol, I did not have too much of a problem. I decided to take some songs that occurred during the prohibition to compare the styles and types of music from when alcohol was outlawed to now where everyone is singing about it. The playlist starts with a fairly old song called “Gimme a pigfoot”. I chose to start with this song because not only does Bessie Smith have a very powerful voice, but this song did occur during the prohibition. Later in the playlist is a song called “Prohibition is a Failure” to show how well banning alcohol went. After that, many more songs were made about