How Modern Music Has Shaped Youth Culture

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How Modern Music Has Shaped Youth Culture
Introduction
Culture has been defined as the acquisition of certain practices, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values etc. which are adopted for use by people and become the normal way of life. Plato posited Culture comprises of symbolic systems which are adopted by a certain group and used to define existence. These symbolic systems are shared across the group and define the way by which that particular group understands the world around them using certain cognitive processes, past experiences and common behaviors which dictate their way of doing things.
Culture is however not static, and is influenced by every element of society. It has been noted to transform over time and in different societal groups, hence showing stability over a given period of time and uncertainty. Culture cannot be pinned down to a concrete culture for as much as it is societal; it is fragmented into different adoptions with regard to the particular group in focus. It can be used to generalize a certain population due to shared commonness. Similarly, it can be used to differentiate between groups of the same society. Culture is multifaceted and can only be understood when in focus of a substantially acute population group due to its diversity (Bennett 15). Culture is hereditary and contagious, meaning it can permeate and take shape just like water. But its likening to water would be degrading as culture is a more superior aspect in itself, working towards an influential role of its potential owners and at the same time being influenced by its actors. One of the subgroups of society is the youth, and cultural studies have greatly endeared to this group as it is the group which is mostly influenced by culture as they try and forge their own ways in an ever changing world. This paper focuses on how modern music has shaped youth culture. The paper will indulge itself in definitions of the elements of the research i.e. youth, youth culture and modern music before expounding on how modern music has shaped or influenced youth culture.
Youth
The youth can be categorized into six influential stages. These are adolescence, maturity, puberty, pubescence, teenager and juvenile. For purposes of this paper, the term youth will be confined to these six stages of growth.
Adolescence has been defined as a period of maturity, a linkage between childhood and adulthood. Although this period ahs no defined period, it is a period that is very important for the individual for it greatly influences the meaning of the world and how the child will perceive it. Maturity is an ever continuing process which a person goes through as they grow. This stage marks the development of social, cognitive, physical and emotional growth. Puberty is that stage of growth where a person becomes sexually mature and is able to reproduce. This stage is marked by a realization of sexual meaning and outcome coupled with sexual urge. Pubescence is a stage marked with development of physical elements in response to sexual maturity. Teenage is a period between thirteen to nineteen years of age. Juvenile stage is regarded as the stage where the child is legally not recognized as an adult, and this stage’s lifespan differs in most countries depending on the legal polices that have been adopted.
These stages of growth which have been categorized as youth have been researched to have the most cultural effects in human beings as it is at this point in life that an individual starts to acquire identity, and is most vulnerable to group influences. Understanding the term youth is important as it will enable in the comprehension of certain ideologies that have been proposed about adoption of cultural practices and behavioral tendencies. The youth has been noted to be explosive and adaptive to influences from the external environment and their vulnerability to social process change is enormous. The youth have been observed to be rebellious, and especially towards normal practices as they try to forge a new path towards life distant from that followed by their forefathers. This can however be explained due to societal change with regard to industrialization and technology which has played a great part in defining youth culture. Rebellious nature of the youth has led to adoption of sub cultures and countercultures.
Youth Culture
In lay man terms, youth culture can be defined as that culture that is particular to the youth and defines their way of life. To this end, youth culture is typically the symbolic structuralism that defines aspects of character, behavior and attitude of the youth. The youth as earlier discussed can be distinguished as a block population, a monolithic structure from which culture can be examined, ascertained and associated. Youth culture has been studied in efforts to justify trends in the social set up, in trying to analyze and place behavior and way of life to a certain ideological certainty which will enable comprehension of this stage of population. However, the spontaneity with which trends of culture arise has made it difficult to pin this evolutionary process to a certain occurrence and it is ever changing. Researchers have had to contend with this evolutionary process and resulted to trying to understand the history aspects of youth culture in order to explain the patterns of change in youth culture. In order to comprehend youth culture, history has to be addressed and attention redirected to the sub cultures that have come up in modern times (Kjeldgaard and Askegaard 240).
History of Youth Culture
Youth culture has continued to develop different avenues as times progress. It has been noted that youth culture trends have gained a sub culture as modernity sets in, although this has been accounted for with the invention of technologies and societal trends and influences (Feldman 12). The youth have adopted different cultures as the years advance and this has been exhibited through different practices that were shared amongst the youth in each period (Steinberg 22).
The youth culture exhibited in the pre modern days was exclusively congregational where young men would own the night creating and wrecking havoc in the towns and villages. This was a characteristic of behavior that was largely exhibited by men who neared wedlock and were allowed to congregate after work during the evenings and hence developed a characteristic behavior which was largely attributed to over indulgence and impatience with the institutions set up. This uncontrolled wild acts during the night sparked outrage among the clergy who then endeavored to guide the youth into moral actions that were acceptable by the society. This period was marked by an exclusion of the youth from adults due to their increased violent acts hence developing a youth culture in its own right.
The 18th and 19th century marked a revolutionary approach to the formation of new youth culture. This was because it is during these periods that modern capitalism took its toll on states hence creating a shift in normal practices. Society transformed in all aspects i.e. economically, politically and socially to mark a turn in the general accepted practices of culture. Youth culture as took a twist of fate during these periods and marked the beginning of points from which youth culture realized fro groupings and adopted sub cultures could be studied. The church played a great role during these periods and comprehended the stages of child development with regard to morality. It was during the 18th century that Sunday schools came into being in an endeavor to aid in spiritual and moral upbringing of children during adolescence so as to help the youth in acquisition of morally upright behavior and guide towards righteous living. Industrialization also played a part as it facilitated the rural urban migration for families in order to participate in this economically uplifting process.
Life in the city was not similar to that in the village and it proved a turning point for the adoption of culture among the youth. Youth gangs were created during these times as employment for the youth became an apparent reality, yet inaccessible to all. Two youth cultures emerged as a result i.e. an approved and rogue culture. The approved youth culture was distinguished through a cultural world that was made for the young adults and supervised by the older generation. The latter, rogue youth culture was characterized by a cultural world that was built and maintained by the youth without the involvement of the adults. The development of professionalism and education specialization created another cultural change for the youth during this century.
The youth accessed education and left the traditions of trade apprenticeships and farming, hence gaining a different moral guidance approached which led to the publication of most literature on youth culture. The new institutional guidance of school as opposed to religion created a different cultural institution and relationship formation with the youth. The youth adopted a more professional outlook after they were cultured in the schools, which would later become institutionalized as the times progressed.
The nineteenth century provided a cementation of the institutional culture of the youth and made it compulsory fro all youth to go to school especially in Europe and the USA. School in this sense became part of the youth culture, with every child expected to undergo this institutional change. Biology and psychology scientists progressed in their discovery of the stages of human development and the behavioral aspects that were linked with these. Youth labor was no longer prioritized as immigrants started to flood the job market hence reducing the demand for labor. As the youth started to focus more and centralize in education and school instead of the workplace, scientists started to develop a more comprehensive study on youth culture. Institutionalization of the youth provided an avenue fro the conception and realization of a mass youth culture (Griffin 253).
It is however important to note that the conceptualization and placement of mass youth culture during these periods was however not ‘mass’ as suggested since some of the youth from immigrant races did not have the opportunity to attend school as this. Racial bias in the education system does not only explain the adoption of dissimilar cultures amongst the youth in different cultures during these periods, but has had a domino effect even in today’s youth culture and sub culture. Schools provided an environment for socialization and this worked towards providing an identity for the youth. The identities formed in school ensured that mass culture would thrive away from the glaring light of primary care givers. Coupled with physiological changes that correspond to adolescence and puberty, and the socialization space of similar people in terms of age, rebellion against parent authority was strengthened and marked the 19th century. Sharing experiences led to socialization of the youth distinct from any other group, leading to a youth system which strengthened the bonds of culture and forged common experiences and influences.
The twentieth century provided a more comprehensive period for the study of youth culture for the stage had already been set fro a social system that allowed for a mass culture. This period was instrumental in discovering certain distinctive elements of youth culture (Austin and Michael 6). First of all, youth culture cannot be taken to be a mass description of all the youth population. It was noted that the youth were not a homogenous social group, and that youth culture could not be construed to be a mass way of life for all youth in society. Instead, youth sub cultures were developed to distinguish between the different cultural adaptations of the youth. Secondly, youth culture was distinguished through the effects of the media on the youth. Commercial products that the youth were exposed to produced a distinctive cultural adaptation for different segments of the youth.
Hence, it was imperative not to bundle up the experiences of the youth based on the commercial products that were being disseminated through the media and instead view each aspect of cultural adaptation in its own merit and under different classes of youth as opposed to a homogenized view of all youth to be similar in their consumption of media messages. The third distinction of the 19th century with regard to youth culture was the need to redefine the meaning of youth. The youth was extended to encompass even young adults in higher institutions of learning regardless of age accumulation into adulthood. The criterion for this was due to the continued dependence of these youth, even to a reduced extent, on their families for support.
College proved to be the first original institution to produce a mass culture. New practices and behavioral adaptations that were similar for a group of youth emerged during this period in the colleges and hence configured to generate a mass culture. High schools predominated in the development of youth cultures such as clubs and societies. More youth progressed in their education beyond elementary level, a commonness that seemed to become a norm and later a cultural adaptation which would be regarded as a necessity for future advancement and life development. The media during this period started adapting their products to the youth since they offered a definite market. As Austin notes:
The consumption of movies, novels, and music (and later, comic books and television) became an expected part of youth. While the majority of research has focused on the effects of commercial popular culture on youth, popular culture's role as a shared and identity-generated commodity among youth has been investigated to a much lesser degree. Youth cultures do not consume popular culture commodities in a vacuum; their consumption forms the basis of affiliations (e.g., fans and collectors), a wide variety of social rituals (e.g., friendship and dating), and the everyday stuff of common conversations (para 12).
Mass youth culture would generally come into the fore and accepted in the Sec...