{Handing this in on Monday. CnC would be nice...? 8D;;}
There was once a time where the word "peace" meant something. Meant more than just a circle with lines in the middle garishly plastered on preteens' outfits. Meant more than just two fingers put up in a dry attempt to look cute in your Facebook profile picture. There was a time when peace wasn't just a marketing buzzword.
Peace used to mean music. Music brought people together in a way no other thing ever could; when there was a melody reverberating through your ears and around your brain, shattering your opinions and melting the basic human instinct to compete, true peace is formed.
However, the slicing robotic noises of this day and age that people call "music" are a mockery of the raw sounds that came from scratchy guitars and microphone stands in the 60's. Everything I hear on the radio now has some kind of computer effect, whether it's simple autotune disguising the fact that the singer can't sing, or loud, imposing pitch drops and synthesized beats. A large part of the magic and mystery of music back then was how on Earth the guitarist's fingers could move that fast, or what a talented voice that singer has, but now, everything can be sped up, slowed down or edited to make it absolutely perfect without even trying. Now I can never trust whether or not something is real.
I suppose one can defend their own tastes; "well, music can be anything. It's something that sounds right to the ears. It's something with meaning. Computer editing doesn't change that." Well, this generation seems to have squeezed all the meaning from their songs as well. When you listen closely to the lyrics on the radio, you'll find that every song is about sex, money, partying, or every now and then, love. Occasionally one brilliant gem will shine through the others with an original idea, but you'd have to sit through all the other noisy songs to find it.
It's moments like this I wish I was alive before all the computer editing started. Like back in the 60's, with Janis Joplin warbling songs about peace in front of millions at Woodstock, a music festival in Bethel, New York, aiming to end the war. That was around when the British Invasion came along, with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many other bands writing clever references and breathtaking imagery into their songs.
Music isn't just sound. It never was. Music is Chuck Berry hopping around on one foot on the stage. Music is the unknown meaning behind Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower". Music is a boy searching up chords to a sappy love song to serenade the girl he loves. Music is the Beatles' guitar solos bleeding into revolutionary vocals pleading for people to come together and be civil for once in their mortal lives.
I have to wonder, as I sit through another terribly altered song on the radio, what genre of music will be popular next. Will it go downhill from here? Or will some miraculous event turn things around?
Subject: I Want Another Woodstock - Editorial for school 
2011-03-04, 9:59 pm
