Essay On Popular Music

Music is as old as human societies and its use within societies pre-dates the development of complex languages. The first music is assumed to have come from the human voice, with instruments developing later along with different forms of material culture. Some of the oldest musical instruments have been found in parts of India and China and some of the earliest functional uses of music were within religious rituals and practices.

‘Popular music’ is one of those terms that somehow manages to be both precise and elusive in its meaning at the same time. Both the terms ‘Popular’ and ‘Music’ have been the subject of constant scrutiny over history and even today. They have been the subject of intense cultural conflict over time, space and place. But ‘Who has the power to define ‘what counts’ as popular music today?’. Although in definition, popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music. Musicologist and specialist in popular music Philip Tagg defined the notion in the light of socio-cultural and economical aspects:

Popular music, unlike art music, is:

• Conceived for mass distribution to large and often socio-culturally heterogeneous groups of listeners

• Stored and distributed in non-written form

• Only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes

It provides the ‘hook’, the apparent novelty or uniqueness of the song for the consumer. Pseudo-individualisation disguises this process by making the songs appear more varied and distinct from each other. Examples of pseudo-individualisation include improvisation, such as that associated with certain forms of jazz, and the ‘hook’ line of a song, the slight variation from the norm which makes the song catchy and attractive, and gives it the resemblance of