Music on our minds

Effects of the music industry on youths

By Sayie Ollivierre

Music is a very important part of the lives of most people in the world today. Some persons cannot go a day without some sort of music. It has become a very important aspect in the world and has taken a hold on the youths of the society. It has become a very big issue in schools, churches and other institutions.

  Back in the old days the music that was popular used to be conscious and understandable vibes, things that people can relate to and understand. Artistes such as ‘Bob Marley’ ‘Whitney Houston’ ‘Celine Dion’ and others produced nice, understandable and meaningful music.  The music in this generation can be good, but, the majority of music has negative effect on our youths.  Nowadays artistS such as ‘Lil Wayne’ ‘Vybz kartel’ ‘Popcaan’ ‘Eminem’ ‘Drake’ ‘Rhianna’ ‘Niki Minaj’ and not forgetting ‘Jay-Z’ and others, who the majority of young persons look up to and are attracted to, produce a whole bunch of lyrics that people cannot understand, things that don’t make any sense at all, and we seem to like that music because our friends like it and because it is the “new thing’ and everyone seems to love it. I strongly think that the music industry has a very negative effect on the youths today.

  I feel this way because I see it everyday. I see everyday young people are being transformed by the music they listen to. They are influenced by the song writers, these artists who produce these songs that are popular and have a very strong effect on young people who buy these songs and help these singers to make a lot of money. Although there is Christian music and other conscious music that some young people listen to which help to uplift them, and there are some persons who don’t really listen to music but do it when they are bored to keep them occupied, the music these days still have a very negative effect on us. For instance when some artist sing songs and say things such as “shoot him in his head”, “kill him and watch him bleed” and “I cant take it anymore, I cant take life I just want to die”, young people think in the way they think that the artist is thinking and they begin to relate it to what is going on in their lives. So example someone who might be going through a little problem would intake this and even have the urge to do something violent or something that may cause harm to them.

  Some songs produce bad lyrics towards women, they speak about women as if they are a bunch of useless people or some sort of toy and they can do anything to women as they want to. Even some female artists degrade themselves in that manner. When persons like “2-Pac”, “Biggie Small”, and “kartel” sing about “smoking my weed” and those sort of things influence the young men especially who look up to them that it is okay to do. These young men sit down and worship these artists and suddenly, unconsciously at first they start thinking about doing what the song says. They might end up actually smoking, or doing something else what the song says to do, therefore leading to them forgetting who they really are and doing what they listened in that song.

 Additionally some songs influence our young people into sexual activities. The artistes sing so sexually and raw that they make young people think and feel that what they are saying is okay. It then suddenly seems okay to a young man or woman to sing along to these songs and it even gets more okay to do what the song is saying. Therefore these behaviors lead to our young generation becoming degraded, young women can get pregnant and mess up their lives and education, STI’s could pass around like wildfire, it can even turn some persons crazy when they come to realization of how their lives have changed , it can also be the cause of some young people becoming juvenile delinquents.

  We have been looking at how music these days affect us; here are a few illustrations of how this happens:

When we were kids growing up now starting to know ourselves our parents dressed us in baggy clothing and anywhere we go what type of clothing did they men wear? Everyone knows the answer to that “The baggy pants”. And the women: “bell bottom pants”.

 Some years ago a trend came out and even some songs sang about favorite artistes they sang about the well known and popular “PENCIL FOOT”.

I find it a little funny that because and artists sang a song about a pants and then suddenly everyone starts wearing them. Another example from back in the day also; when we were kids we never ever wanted our parents to put a “SNAP BACK” on our head, no child or young person would want their friend to see the down the road in one of those hats. But Look at what is going on now Tyga and Popcaan these famous artist sang a song on that old time hat and now young people are paying up to $100 for one of those hats!. So we can clearly see the influence that these songs have on our young generation.

 

  To try and solve these problems here are some of my solutions; I strongly think that parents play a vital role in monitoring the type of music that their children listen to. They are the ones who should bring up their children in the right way and we all know that music is part of a child’s life when he/she is growing up.

 Also parents should not only monitor the music that their children listen to, but the behavior, we all know that music can change an individual so you as a parent should know how you trained up your child  to be and they way you want him/her to grow up. Music can change a child’s behavior and make them become completely different individuals. So it is the duty of the parent to make sure that the child’s behavior is stable. For example; take a parent who is a Christian, very strict and extremely religious, by the time they see that their child’s behavior has changed just a little they would take immediate actions to get their child on the right track. On the other hand take a parent who is not that involved in their child’s life they leave them to make their own mistakes and learn from it if they see a change in their child they might not have the urge to bother with the situation although it might be on their mind they would not seem to take action until it is very serious, to the extent that the child might do something crucial to him/her self. So basically what I am saying is that parents play a vital role in everything their children do , no matter if you are a single parent or a parent who doesn’t want to tell their child how to live their lives, so they let them make good or bad decisions, a parent who is strict and on guard. All parents have the duty to protect their child from harm and danger and from becoming the individual they didn’t train them to be.

 Another solution is that if you are a person who believes that listening to this song is totally wrong, and then you have control over yourself to not listen to that song. Some religious people don’t listen to music at all, period!! Some people who listen to music have the power and authority that if they think that a song is inappropriate they should not listen to it. There are some persons mainly adults who listen to the type of music that these artist produce so the artist themselves won’t stop making songs that they know would make money, however they do know that young people listen to their music so I think they should try and produce some music that is appropriate at times.

   In conclusion we have looked at the negative impact of the music industry on our youths today and a few examples. Now if those artists are the type of persons who this generation of young people look up to then for my opinion I would say that this generation of young people is getting worse and worse each day. These artists don’t have any respect for themselves or the persons who listen to their music. All they care about is making their money from us they don’t care what happens to the youths or the world. Let’s make a choice, let’s choose right from wrong.