Busy time has more or less ended so hopefully I’ll have the updates up a bit more frequently in future.

I was listening to the radio a couple of days ago and heard this lady ring in complaining about the effects of rock music on the “Youth of today”. Her arguments were laughable, including “no-one has ever come out of a classical concert and shot someone”citing the Columbine massacre as an event of this kind. Wagner? Hitler? Yes.

It did however make me think about what effect music can have on any of us, and what influence it can hold over the way we think and act. For example a lot of parents are worried about gangster rap and music that glorifies violence, calling for it to banned. However, for me personally I find it more important to look at where this type of music is coming from in the first place, and why people choose to listen to it. Censorship isn’t going to solve the problem if the music is a result of an underlying attitude or ideal.

Generally, an artist writes a song about what s/he feels, as an expression of taught or emotion, to begin with at least. Certainly once you get to the mass market stage it can be argued that some music has no real feeling behind it, but at the roots of a genre the music is an expression of the feelings of an individual, or a group. So music with an affinity to violence has grown out of a person who feels the need for violence to express themselves. Why do people feel like this? And why would someone else choose to listen to such music? I think a parent should really be looking for the underlying reason their child is drawn to that kind of music.

Once things get big time and media pressure etc causes people to start listening to music that glorifies violence not out of choice, but out of conformity, then you have the possibility of people developing those kinds of ideals and feelings without really realising it. Is music on its own enough to make a young person pick up a gun? I doubt it, but music is a large part of culture, and culture shapes us in many ways we may not appreciate.

I know I’m not saying anything new here, just highlighting that it is wrong to blame music solely for problems, but appreciate things may have effects on us that we may not initially appreciate.