Everyone has listened to music at one point in their life. The effect that music has on people is phenomenal and such that the absence of music unimaginable. My musical experience is interesting as I have different tastes and sounds from different cultures. When I was growing up, I liked children’s jingles that mostly accompanied cartoon programs on television. On answering the question on my musical experience I realized that I had so much to learn about music from different generations and cultures.
My first stop was my grandparents. They had an interesting taste and view about the music they listened to in events. Their type of music was more focused on social issues and vocal prowess. Their music dealt with social cultural issues and traditional values of the society. Their music was based on live performances and it was not easy to find a record of my grand parent’s type of music. Most of the music came from folk tales and interesting narratives. Indonesian Culture is rich in interesting narratives and culture. I was lucky to stumble upon one of my grand father’s records and sounds in the records were interesting.
The musical composition was distinctive and the sound was uniquely native. This was different from the current music that has a blend of pop culture. Music from grand parent’s time was played in the 1950s and is rarely played in the media. I heard my grandparents complain that the current musical culture is noisy compared to the music they heard. Times changed and the sound of music evolves at a fast rate.
The sounds that were once catchy in the early days may be irrelevant to the current music listeners. I realized that the music my grandparents listened to was rich in culture and more educated than other music. I asked whether they used to dance to the music that to me sounded like it had a slow tempo and non provocative. My grandfather was interested in showing the dance moves that used to be the prevailing trend. There was not much difference in the amount of energy applied in the dance moves. My grandparents find the current tempo music too fast and complex.
My parents seem to associate with the music that I listen to some point. Their view of music is quite different from my grandparents. I remember my mother sing lullaby songs for me when I was about five years old. The sounds were ethnic and the songs evolved through time as I see my aunties sing the same song to my new born cousins. Lullaby songs have lived through time as they have been passed from one generation to the next. I asked about the origin of the song and my mother told me that the music had been sang to her and her mother. Music sang for lullabies and folk tales have lived through generations and will continue to evolve through time.
I used to listen to my parent's choice of music when I was about six years old. According to my mother, I used to enjoy and sing along with them when they listened to the radio or records. I remember the experience of listening to my parent’s choice of music. Vernacular played an essential role as almost every song on the radio had our local dialect. I grew up liking the music and would find myself listening to the music. This influence started to diminish at the age of eight when I started watching cartoons on television. I started liking the music that preceded the children’s shows that came on television.
My parents controlled much of the music that I listened to in my vicinity. The culture and type music my parents listened had evolved about twenty five years before my birth. I went to school to sing the same songs my parents loved. We would imitate our parents’ dance styles and try to out dance one another. I disliked listening vernacular music once I was exposed to television. I remember declining to listen to the music my parents sang to me when I was about eight years old. Other children had the same notion as we started sharing what we watched on television.
There were shows like Spider man and other super hero shows that caught our attention. None of the children were interested in sharing their vernacular experiences or listen to native music. This went on till I was twelve years old. I remember influencing my younger siblings into listening to my own choice of music. My younger brother would sing along whenever he had me sing my favorite tool. My musical taste changed as I grew up as I started sampling other musical tastes once I reached thirteen years of age. I did start to listen to music from other media especially the music that was played on television.
I was interested in music with high tempo that would make me dance so much. This was the trend for other teenagers as everyone was interested in sharing their new learned dance moves. This was an interesting time in my life as I learned about American and other cultures. The lifestyle that we watched from television was a free spirited and interesting to learn. There are instances where media personalities introduced game shows to showcase dance talents. I was interested and got the opportunity to participate in the event. This was a significant experience in my life.
The main source of the kind of music that teenagers of my age liked was from television. Television controlled most of the lives teenagers lived and anything else that influence the youths was sourced from trendy magazines. I started appreciating some local music that was in tune with the lifestyle and culture that I was accustomed to. Some local musicians made their music sound like music from the pop culture. It sounded interesting even though it was fused with vernacular sounds. I started to appreciate local sounds and ethnic sounds. It was interesting to listen to high tempo music with an ethnic influence.
The choice of music in family gatherings was not always what I expected as older members of the family listened to what suited them. The elders were given the opportunity to listen to their choice of music at first before they retired. The younger members of the family were given the opportunity to listen to their choice of music after the elders left. At the age of twenty the choice of music is strongly influenced by what is distributed by International media like MTV.
Many youths listened to sounds like dancehall and hip hop that is sourced from American pop culture. The type of music that the youths listen to is based on dance moves and systematic choreography. The youth’s experiences and the surrounding environments are influenced by the music they listen to from the media. This notion changed as I got to the age of twenty one as I started to listen to other genres of music. These genres were not from the local music scene but they sounded different from high tempo music.
Some of the musical genres include jazz and classical music which was listened to by older people. I learned to appreciate the sounds while integrating my options with local tunes that I found to be similar. I realized that some of the tunes had similarities to the music my grandparents listened. The difference was in the dynamism and the use of instruments. I felt the music that my grandparents played would sound the same if they had instrumental accompaniment.
There was a band that undertook to perform the old neglected songs and they sounded just as new as other sounds. I remember sharing the new sounds with my grandfather and he would not tell the difference. The sound was as fresh as he used to enjoy it in his hay days. I realized that music evolved around time and instrumental accompaniment. Some students have heard similar experiences like mine but others have a different experience in consideration to their exposures. Exposure to different types of the media is essential in influencing a person’s musical taste and likes.
