What Is A Musician?

In the 1950s, when rock was developed, one of the first groups to drift to it was teenagers, being attracted to its themes of rebellion and non conformity. Certain groups of individuals have sprung up around certain musical styles. For instance, punk, techno, and ethnic music all include some type of subculture that embrace an entire lifestyle.

In order to understand why punk came about the preceding periods will be considered. The baby boom after the war had resulted in a large amount of people being born at the same time. A knock on effect later down the line resulted in mass unemployment for young people. The punk era showed angry,

During the mid-1900’s many different types of music emerged and became popular. Each type of music that was popular brought along different social and political issues. Between 1950’s rock and roll, 1960’s psychedelic rock, and 1970’s disco, America was undergoing a great deal of changes. Among these three genres of music, rock and roll posed the greatest challenge to the status quo, with its bonding of African-Americans and white people in listening and dancing.

The attitude common in the subculture is the resistance to selling out, which means abandoning one’s values and changing in musical style toward pop to embrace anything that’s mainstream capitalist culture in the exchange for money, status, or power. Punk rocks’ common thinking wasn’t only anti-authoritarism, and not selling out but also non-conformity, direct action, and a DIY ethic. The DIY attitude was pointed towards stepping forward and speaking without any restraint. To fight with warrior qualities to achieve what you were striving for. The kind of thinking and motives for punk rock subjects was to not settle for what society made acceptable and standard but to think and work outside of the box that was holding them in.

Both disco and punk “encouraged energetic public action”.[3] Disco entertained people, and punk led youth aggressive. These built the rise of punk and disco in the late

And now we have the decade of the yuppies, the decade where affluence, fashion, and charity were just as important as the music. This decade also witnessed “newer” genres like Hip Hop, Hair metal, and New Wave. If you don’t like 80’s music you’re *like* a total dweeb! Fer sureee.

Right after the fun relaxing 1960’s and excitement of the american dream it all came crashing down in the 1970’s. Political distrust and economic unrest took its toll on the citizens of the United States and so they found refuge in the arts. With the Nixon watergate scandal, withdrawal from vietnam, inflation, the oil crisis, and increasing ‘slum’ areas the american dream began to fall apart, many people awoke to the idea that the United States was not as great as it supposedly was. Many activist groups sought change and people, especially the youth, took comfort in new art forms and ways of expression including disco, postmodern art and punk and grunge styles.

A musician’s ultimate purpose should be to create a combination of words and sounds that can heal the soul. This is why I spend countless hours after school and on weekends recording, writing, and producing music. When I get to college I will major in music production, yearning to be with other musicians who share my passion. Music gave me a home when I did not have one, now I know where I

The transition from the 1960’s to the 1970’s was a rough one. A decade characterized by the supposed defeat of poverty and racism as well as the conquest of space, was subsequently and surprisingly followed by a decade of chaos and disorder in the world. The country was running out of promise, the troops were running out of Vietnam, and the President was running out of office. Luckily however, the emergence of great music simply could not be affected by the unfortunate economic and social issues going on in the world at the time. The surfacing of both funk and disco characterized the time period starting from the late 1960’s into the 1970’s, and although each music movement had its own style, its own

The theme of teenage rebellion is prominent among early rock ‘n’ roll historians, who imposed the language and social consciousness of the late-1960s onto their interpretations. According to them, rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s enabled teenagers to protest against the conformity of the era and also their parents’ music. Arnold Shaw in The Rockin’ 50s considered teens’ rejection of pop music an outcry against Cold War acquiescence.[3] Carl Belz claimed rock ‘n’ roll was folk art that functioned as a voice of the people, namely teenagers. Like Shaw, Belz saw rock ‘n’ roll as a “protest art” against prevailing popular music.[4] Rock ‘n’ roll also displayed that it was folk art because its audience was drawn to it instinctively, rather than through sophisticated aesthetic standards for judging the music; the dance beat was more important than musical technicalities.[5]

Punk has always been about more than just the sound of the music people were making during that era, although the sound was a huge factor and played an interwoven part of the entire ordeal. Punk split itself from the traditional rock of its time, sonically, by deciding that clean guitar riffs, processed vocals, and any sound product that didn’t come straight out of the instrument/artist wasn’t “real enough”. Hanner stated in “Unpopular Culture…”: “Musically, punk and hardcore are characterized by short, strident, up-tempo songs performed with consistent, straightforward instrumentation, meaning a lack of synthesizers, guitar effects, or post-production audio modification.“ As a result Punk became the gritty, noisy, dirty and unique sound that everyone can instantly recognize. Punk was also an ideology. It was something people lived by and something that had a very blatant and in your face message of being anti-government, anti-establishment, and basically anti-authority all together. This exact sentiment is described in the same article by Nathan Hanner in “Unpopular Culture…”:

The most well know band like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Genesis, all took a huge hit during the 1970s. During this time it was usually always played in the wide open where everyone could always hear it. In 1976 rock and roll started to give a disco feeling to it which created the genre punk rock. The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and many more originated from this genre. Glam Rock which also came to be in the seventies was described as rock and roll with lipstick. The music in the protocolar genre shined with a glitter like feeling. Led Zeppelin became really huge in the 70s recording up to ten albums, but broke up in the 80s when one of the members died.

It is argued over whether rock n' roll is a counterculture or not because it was widely popular amongst children and adults alike at it’s prime and ultimately did not present any radically different ideas, but what can’t be argued is rock n' roll’s seniority and perfected tone. While there is much to be said about the bands that proudly wear the label punk or rock n' roll as a button on their acid washed jean vests, something has to be said for the history and subculture that defines each respective genre. Punk refutes social attitudes that have been perpetuated through willful ignorance of human nature, and rock n' roll is just a trend that people followed because of it’s attractive ideal. If it were not for punk, voices as strong and influential as Billie Joe Armstrong or Sid Vicious would never had made an impact on millions of angry citizens who were surfeited of systematic oppression and capitalistic ideals. Counterculture has always been political and driven by the underground, whether it be the Lolita girls of Japan, the Kontrkul’tura movement in Russia, the Nambassa lifestyle in New Zealand, or the Basque Radical Rock movement in Spain, but nothing quite compares to the raw grit and blood that goes into being punk, the ultimately universal counterculture.

At the start of the 1960s the first generation of children born after the “baby boom” generation, was so large in size that socially and culturally their desires became hard to keep up with. The growing teenagers instituted a rebellion, by ignoring their parent’s old-fashioned customs in favor of the rock & roll and rhythm & blues lifestyle. British rock band the Beatles was a particular favorite of theirs. Inspiring changes in clothing, new color palettes and a “mod” approach to the landscape of art, which affected the designs of magazines, posters and advertising. As posters that associated with the psychological drug experience made their way into various music outlets. (www.illustrationhistory.org)

The origins of Punk Rock have been stated as unknown. However, true “punk” has long lived in the hearts of the youthful subcultures in America, the United Kingdom, and Australia, since the late 1960’s and early 70’s. During this time, Punk Rock, which was influenced by Rock and Roll, offered its upbeat compositions and in-your-face lyrics, which brought some intelligence to the get drunk, get laid mentality that prevailed. Much like a shot of adrenaline to a dying heart, Punk Rock regenerated the “danger” in Rock and Roll that had become salable and overemotional. As a NBC reporter stated in 1977, “This is punk rock and its purpose is to promote violence, sex and destruction, in that order." Yet, it was rapidly becoming the voice of