Mass communication in American music is extremely used on a daily basis. We as people have the opportunities to find a song or artist by just doing a simple search. We have music outlets like Spotify, Itunes, and soundcloud. Mass Communication described by Shawn Grimsley is “A process in which a person, group of people or an organization sends a message through a channel of communication to a large group of anonymous and heterogeneous people and organizations”(Study.com). Grimsley goes on saying that the “anonymous or heterogeneous people can also be seen as the general public or a segment of the general public”. Through the many readings of Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death I can see how important the use of Mass communication can be.
Reading through Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: The Huxleyan Warning, Postman talks about Huxley an English philosopher who tried to warn America about the dangers of media when it was just beginning in the mid nineteenth century. Postman writes “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversations becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; cultural-death is a clear possibility.”(Postman pp.155-156). This really shows the warning that Huxley was talking about. People not seriously talking about problems and seeing serious problems as just another day shows it has become normalized and that itself is a grave problem. Postman says “The nonsensical answer is to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed, to show how television recreates and degrades our conception of news, political debate, religious thought, etc”(Postman p.161). The recreation and degrading of television that Postman talks about is extremely true. The news can be degrading towards specific countries, states, or people but, it can also recreate how we as America view the world, whether it’s a local story or a stories about what’s happening in the world.
I believe what Huxley tried to warn us about has come true and we as a country did nothing to try to stop it. In Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America: We Will All Be Minorities, Takaki explains how he had to show up to a meeting with President Bill Clinton and Takaki was sought to help write up a major speech about race for Clinton “President Clinton facilitated the meeting of a small gathering of civil rights leaders and intellectuals.”(Takaki p.434). President Clinton gave his address that Saturday and was being televised all throughout the country. This shows that the use of technology helps spread news and political standings out all over the country. I am sure many will look back on that day and there probably is video evidence of that specific speech and can be shared throughout generations. This is the power of Mass Communication, News, politics and entertainment that can be shared from generation to generation because there is that evidence.
On May 24th at 11:00am my group and I had another phone interview with Meaghan Leferink the Director of Community Engagement from Seattle Music Partners. I asked my questions first.
I asked “How does Music communicate to each person?” Leferink responded with “Music often tells a story (ex.Operas) and it is important to think about the perspective of the music, who’s playing and why and it is also important to think about the broadness of the Music variety.” I agree one hundred percent with what she said. It is very important to think about the song and what the artist is trying to say. Music as a whole is very vast. There are many different genres and different styles that all could say the same story, whether it’s an Opera or a rap song or even country. They could all have the same background meaning that focuses on one topic. The Second question I had was “How does Music from other cultures speak to people not of that culture?”. Leferink went on saying “ It is definitely an experience. The more you listen to a culture’s music you start to understand what the music is trying to say. Music can be sort of an easy pass to understand another culture, people can feel the emotion from the music without any knowledge of the language it is presented with.”. I think that listening to another cultures music could be a very good experience. Trying to understand the music without knowing the language could take some time. But the more you listen you start to pick up on the tone, the beat, the overall emotion of the music and that itself could open up many doors in understanding music as a whole.
In total Mass communication is a key factor in today’s society. The exchanging of news, ideas, and music is very popularized. Through common interests certain parts of communication can overthrow other topics. Whether it is a very serious story about what is happening in the world, that story can be dusted off and replaced with a new story about the latest scandal of a celebrity. Mass communication helps American music become popularized. Through various outlets like ITunes, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Through Seattle Music Partners I saw that the story of a song is more important than just having it for entertainment. Being able to tell a story through different languages and people beginning to understand it through various listens truly shows the power of music. The power of Mass communication made people connect and interact. Sharing music of other cultures and not only music but, news, games, movies, etc. Mass communication may be harmful to our everyday lives but sometimes it is good because there’s the chance of connecting to other cultures and gaining an understanding of what they go through.
By: Chris Maninger
Interview:
Part 1: https://cascadia.instructure.com/files/98757801/download?download_frd=1&verifier=93vrsr93AXf6ypJDpHK4DVagW7YNeYMcASKv8NVo
References:
- Leferink,M. (2018, May. 24). Phone Interview.
- Postman, N. (2007). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of showbusiness. London: Methuen.
- Study.com, Study.com, study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-mass-communication-definition-theories-quiz.html.
- Takaki, R. T. (2008). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, and.
American Media 