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Hendrix Turning Points

Decent Essays

In the second grade, I told my mom I wanted to play guitar. Watching School of Rock may or may not have affected that decision. A couple weeks later, my mom brought home… a violin – Guitar Center had run out of guitars, she claimed. And though it wasn’t exactly what I had asked for, I ended up liking the violin, and came to appreciate classical music. But my other musical tastes stuck with me, and quickly expanded – my iPod soon contained rock, jazz, alternative, heavy metal, hip-hop, rap, country, and everything in between. As I listened to various musical styles, I gradually picked up more instruments – electric guitar, bass, classical guitar, and so forth.
Music has certainly filled up my life. It’s a way for me to relax, focus, have fun, …show more content…

At first, I thought he was just messing around with the distortion on his guitar to make cool sounds. But as I read the comments, I got the sense that I was missing some major part of the interpretation…and I was. Hendrix wasn’t just making cool sounds on his guitar, he was using the distortion and the sound effects to imitate the machine guns and bombs of the Vietnam War, and the performance was intended as a protest of the war. In this light, his national anthem was a musical masterpiece, managing to capture the turmoil and chaos of the 60s with 4 minutes and an electric …show more content…

Each song and each genre has meaning, and that meaning doesn’t necessarily have to be incredibly significant for the music to have value. At its core, music is a vehicle for the expression of culture. Each genre or style of music represents different beliefs and different communities. When I listen to a song, I feel as if I’m having a conversation with the artist, where they tell me all about their way of life. This is what makes music powerful. A song can take me to places and time periods I would never be able to see in real life. In music, I experience a separate side of the exchange of ideas that I’ve come to love through Youth in Government and

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