Music And Cultural Canons

As an individual living in the 21st century, I find that I am constantly hearing different sounds no matter where I am. I can be walking on the street and I will hear music coming from passing cars audio systems or when I am at a restaurant I will hear music masquerading as background noise. Regardless of where I am and what I am hearing, I know that I am listening to music. Music is defined as an organized collection of sounds that can vary from culture to culture, which means that what is considered music in Canada might not be considered music in a country like Iran and vice versa (Walker 2018). Though music can be seen as just a form of popular entertainment, it is important to understand what music is and what it is capable of doing.

Secondly, music can be used as a way to express emotions and tell stories, which can be used to pass down cultural information, such as values to subsequent generations (ibid). Thirdly, music can be a way for countries to unify and promote themselves (UN Habitat). Although every culture creates music, not every cultures music is well known because of hegemony. This paper will examine how educating a countries citizens about their own music and cultural canons provides a way for them to promote their national identity through celebrating their culture, while simultaneously rejecting the hegemonic norms. This paper will first discuss why I chose this topic before discussing what hegemony and culture are. Next, this paper will discuss multiple case studies of how different countries have focused on promoting their country’s music through musical education and local content quotas. This paper will conclude by presenting suggestions for countries that are looking to reject the hegemonic popular music that is occuring due to

What I find most intriguing about music is that like food and other cultural materials, each culture produces its own category of what they consider to be music which is then made available to the public. To understand music it is important to understand what culture is. Culture is a complex topic that has three different schools of thought, which are Whiggish, Marxist and Neo-Marxist (Epprecht 2018). The dominant approach is the Whiggish approach which believes that culture is the marker of civilization and hence includes the customs, traditions, values and ways of life of a certain group of people who are from a specific region of the world (ibid). This approach believes that there are canons or experts who are known to be perfect examples of a certain component of culture, and these are the people that everyone in a country should know of (ibid). In the case of music, the canons are the artists who are producing music that reflects their culture’s views. Since music is culturally specific, it is important to look at which culture’s music is most