By Saba Zia Hassan
Music has always been a part of us. Music has grown with us over the years and it has found a way to connect with us. People can relate to music, using it as an emotional outlet, or a way to express us. Music changes the atmosphere, uplifts your spirits, changes your mood and attitude, helps you exercise, run, and dance, jump for joy and swim, in short, everything.
Since time immemorial, music has been embedded in life. It seeps into arts and culture, finds expression in language, and has great affect on lifestyle. The origin of music dates back to the earliest of civilizations, thereby making it difficult to pinpoint the exact date whence it started. Robert Schumann, a German composer, noted “perhaps it is precisely the mystery of her origins which accounts for the charm of her beauty.”
Most music is influenced by different aspects of culture, including social and economic organization and experience, climate, and access to technology. The emotions and the ideas that music articulates and the attitudes towards music players and composers all vary between regions and periods.
As time progress many things change, along with culture and technology. Time has changed vastly; it’s not particularly a bad thing. The way we listen to music has changed drastically throughout the past seventy years. For a very long time records and the radio were the predominant means of listening to your favourite songs. Despite numerous advances in technology, many artists today still release their albums on vinyl records as well as MP3s and CDs because many music fans still believe that vinyl records provide the best musical experience. The technology for records began in the 1800’s with wax records and phonographs, and as technology advance the size, speed and material of the records changed. In the 1970’s until the 1990’s 8-tracks and then cassette tapes became another popular media with which to experience music due to their portability. Although they were developed in the 1980’s, CDs (Compact Discs) and CD players did not become a popular way to listen to music until the middle of the 1990’s when the technology became more affordable. CDs replaced tapes due to their greater storage capacities and better sound quality. CDs were the most popular way to listen to one’s favourite songs until the middle of the 2000’s when computer and Internet technology advanced significantly to make MP3 format and MP3 players more viable means of entertainment. Apple’s iPod was released in November of 2001 and changed the way we listen to music forever making it forever portable and allowing us to infinitely expand our music collections. With more and more advances in computer technology and increased internet capabilities, we have the ability to instantly listen to our favourite songs at a relatively low cost or for free with our computers, phones, MP3 players, and tablets thanks to instant streaming services like Pandora and online shops like iTunes or Amazon. Television also influenced the way we listen to music with artists being able to reach national audiences through performances on talk shows, music showcases, and music videos on MTV. Now with popularity of video sharing websites like YouTube, many artists are being discovered through this medium and established artists can connect more quickly and deeply with their fans.
Though music might seem to have “changed”, but its effect and necessity in our lives is growing more than ever. As truthfully and beautifully quoted by Friedrich Nietzsche –
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
She is a second year student pursuing Bachelor of Science in Physics (Hons.) at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. She believes that the youth of the nation must gear up to scrutinize and reform the present condition of Indian Society. She hopes that with her thoughts and ideas, she would bring some improvement in the society, no matter how small it is. Besides writing, she is also fond of composing poems. Gleeful at heart, she likes meeting new people and is always keen to learn new things. Contact her at: leo94.31july@gmail.com
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