Popular Music In Spain Essay

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In the nineteen sixties, Spain was living under the rule tyrannical rule of Dictator Francisco Franco. During this time, around the world music was changing lives and expanding across cultures. The young people of Spain were dealing with a rocky political climate, as well as a vast upheaval in the economic structure of the nation. It was inevitable that the way people perceived themselves would shift with the world around them. There were so many economic and social changes going on, however, that it can be difficult to nail down a specific social imaginary for the youths in Spain. This does not mean that they were not there, but that they simply need to be examined through a more comprehensive overview of the historical and social context …show more content…

Just because this type of music (Los Brincos, Chica Ye Ye, etc.) is “simple” does not mean that popular music was any less meaningful or important to the development of social imaginaries. The development of even having popular music shows important strides in Spain developing its own unique and specific culture. Social imaginaries are not boxes for people to fit in neatly, but instead are multi-level Venn-diagrams that can look like a mess if you do not know how to properly analyze them. The 1960s were a time of great change for Spain, and through the medium of music young people were able to find their voices in the midst of political and social upheaval. While Franco was promoting the idea that, “Spain was different,” in order to appeal to the world around him, Spain actually was changing. This emerging middle class was using the culture from the world around them to create forms of popular music that at the start emulated the foreign bands, and over time was able to become something uniquely Spanish. Bands made types of music that the nation could be proud of, and identify with. So over the course of the 1960s, the people themselves created social imaginaries to dwell

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