Freedom of Speech and Expression in Music Essay

Introduction

Freedom of expression and speech opens tremendous opportunities for modern singers to promote their vision of life and the world around them, announce unique personal values and beliefs. The freedom experienced by teens is unprecedented, and it frightens adults. Despite ideas of love and happiness addressed by many singers, some of them motivate young adults to commit crimes and commit suicide.

Thesis

Musicians are responsible and accountable for fans and their actions because in the modern world music and lyrics become a tool of propaganda that has a great impact on the circulation of ideas and social values.

Messages of violence and suicide

Musicians are accountable for the actions and behavior of their fans if they motivate and inspire them to commit crimes and acts of social disobedience. During music concerts, audiences, especially the young without supervision, shout, boo, cheer, eat, and drink their way through the shows (Duffett 75). Despite these claims, there is a point of view that fans are responsible for their actions themselves, influenced by social conditions and background. If a person does not think about a rime or violence against others, he/she cannot be inspired by a song to do so. Thus, for most fans, a singer or a group is an idol they admire and pray for.

They believe everything he sings and says, his ideas become the main doctrines and values for millions of fans. For instance, Snoop Doggy Dog is an idol for millions of black rappers around the globe who follow his way of dressing and living. In one of his songs, he states: “Two in the morning and the party’s still jumping/cause my momma ain’t home / I got bitches in the living room getting it on” (Gin and Juice). Before freedom of speech, such freedom did not extend to all society but was prohibited.

Musicians and singers are responsible for high rates of suicides among fans motivating fans to solve their problems committing suicide. Following Scheel and Joh: “adolescents with preexisting problems may seek out rock/heavy metal music because the negative themes reflect their feelings” (253). The end of the 1990s, with its explosion of youth culture, saw an accompanying explosion of suicides. As in every decade, it identified those who were part of that culture and excluded those who were not. The sheer number of expressions associated with suicides, and their originality and exuberance prevail.

For instance, Ozzy Osbourne’s song “Suicide Solution”, This song sees suicide as the main solution to all problems in the life of a person: “Wine is fine but whiskeys quicker/ Suicide is slow with liquor”. The main problem is that this song appeals to the emotions of listeners and motivates them to commit suicide: “Thought that you’d escape the reaper /You can’t escape the master keeper”. Such messages, rituals, and symbols allied the person with an immediate solution, giving him an immediate identity in the chaos of life. Once there, fans experienced the freedom and the difficulty–of an environment controlled largely by their music idols rather than by adult authorities. Much of social life, at large and small is controlled by music idols and groups (Duffett 75).

Musicians are responsible and accountable for fans and their behavior because they promote through songs a certain way of life and thinking. They appeal to potential target audiences demonstrating unique clothing styles and slang so popular among teens. The teen enjoys an explosion of rich language associated with various elements of youth society: rap and early hip-hop music. Rap had a variety of words for money (booty, bucks, dead presidents), for guns (steel, click, piece, flamer), for relaxing (chilling out, mellowing out, kickin’), for the police, and for aiming insults at someone (to dis, dog on, toast) (Stack and Gundlach 253).

As singers screen more sexually explicit and violent videos, as rap expressed its fatalistic view of the city, as singers perform their suggestive dances and songs, melancholic music comes under scrutiny as a probable cause of rapes, murders, suicides, and violent acts by teens. Society opposes the sex, drugs, and violence of rock music. Following Stack and Gundlach: “the analysis of individual-level data connects being a country fan to known suicide risk factors, the country has strong indirect effects on suicide, and country exhibits an interaction effect with divorce on suicide” (331).

Summary

In sum, music and songs contained messages of violence and suicide inspire and motivate fans to follow patterns of behavior promulgated and promoted by their idols. Musicians are responsible and accountable for fans and their actions because they influence their values and social images. With economic good times come more money available for having fun, especially for teens in towns and cities; rural teens, dependent on the family farm income, have a harder time, but by the end of the decade they too find ways to enjoy movies and dancing. Crime and suicide become the only way for most of them to solve daily problems.

Older teens, with access to automobiles and perhaps the independence available on campus, savored their new freedom and privacy by abandoning the lands of group socializing that. Musicians are responsible for messages they send to audiences because they create a new subculture for millions of people establishing its main tenets and values.

References

1. Duffett, M. Transcending Audience Generalizations: Consumerism Reconsidered in the Case of Elvis Presley Fans. Popular Music and Society, 24 (2000), 75.
2. Scheel, K. R. Joh, W. S. Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Suicidality: An Empirical Investigation. Adolescence, 34 (1999), 253-255.
3. Stack, S., Gundlach, J. Country Music and Suicide — Individual, Indirect, and Interaction Effects: A Reply to Snipes and Maguire. Social Forces 74 (1995), 331-336.