Modern Music: Does It Represent Our Culture

Modern Music: Does it represent our culture

I wish I could play a guitar or violin to rejuvenate your mind. Yes, that's how we value music in our lives. Our subconscious minds wantto find peace and tranquility through the beautiful harmonies of music. I welcome you all today to tell you the importance of music.

As our topic is concerned about the reflection of culture, let us be clear about the definition of culture. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, culture means the ideas, customs and social behavior of a particular group or people. Considering this definition, if we think of Bangladeshi culture, we used to think of plain paddy fields and cows roaming around. Sometimes the fishermen are fishing or the rural housewives are doing their chores. Is that our culture today? Certainly, we as a nation have progressed beyond that. Since the turn of the last century, societal change has become a very frequent occurrence. Outbreaks of war or changes of geopolitical systems caused people around the globe to adopt new ways of living, which changed their cultures too.

Culture cannot form by itself; it is built by the people. At the same time, the music industry has taken a new shape, creating new genres of music. 'Modern Music' is the term we used to denote the music of our times. Definitely the instruments have changed, as have the lyrics. Does it create any conflicts with the culture? Change is the only certainty in our fast-paced modern world. Whereas the culture itself has changed, why is there confusion regarding the music? To make it clearer, let me give you an example. My grandfather had a camera which could only capture as many pictures as the film would allow. Today, digital cameras allow us to store thousands of pictures in storage devices that are tiny, taking pictures of quality unimaginable in my grandfather's day. Should I not utilize today's digital camera for the mere feeling of nostalgia that my grandfather's camera provides?Similarly, why shouldn't music progress along with the times?

So why is there this constant tension between young people of our generation and our parent's generation about what music should be? There seems to be a fear that Bangladeshi culture is being lost because our music is becoming more and more influenced by Western music. But should that not be heralded as a dawn of a new era of Globalization? Through the internet and the advanced telecommunication technologies at our disposal today, we have access to the media of every nation in the world. Whereas it took wars and conquering to have one culture influence another before, now all we need to do is log on to the internet. It is only natural that the cultures of the world will be influenced by another. In the 1960s, the world's most famous band, The Beatles, toured the Indian subcontinent, and their music became heavily influenced by the culture of the subcontinent.