Motown Impact On Culture

Jingyi Weng English 151

Which musical movement had the largest impact on music, culture, and business? Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" or Berry Gordy's "Motown"? One may believe that Berry Gordy's "Motown" had the biggest impact on music, culture, and business.

Berry Gordy's "Motown" had the largest impact on music on behalf of its direction and redefinition. Berry Gordy's "Motown" impact music through cutting across divisions of race, region, and class. According to Schloss, Joseph G. et al., "unlike the music of earlier black-owned record companies, Motown's music was not directed primarily at black audiences." Gordy is characterized

Berry Gordy's "Motown" impact culture through the practice of multiculturalism, which is the presence of, several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society. Motown's music was aimed to address to the widest listening public, as along with Gordy's passion to control the direction of the music, "the Motown sound embodies the promise of the movement even to the present day: a music that brought black and white together through song (Schloss, Joseph G et al. 2012)." Thus, people see the convert messages passed from song's lyrics and people start to become aware of the discrimination and prejudice people of color faced in everyday life. For example, ""You Can't Hurry Love" is a song about the importance of waiting. Formally, the song keeps us guessing-waiting for clarification of the functional relationships among the different sections" (Schloss, Joseph G et al. 2012). The "wait" is symbolized as the civil rights, which people of color were fighting for. Hence, it also directly states Civil Rights Movement is a part of African Americans' culture. Another way, Berry Gordy's "Motown" impact culture is the definition of Rock 'N' Roll and race. As introduced by Schloss, Joseph G et al., "At this point, you may be wondering why Motown-an African American owned record label that featured African American music

According to Schloss, "Gordy had an uncanny ability to surround himself with first-rate musical talent in all areas of the record." His passion for control brought him a group of people, who are loyal to him and were talented, thus, his network was able to help Motown's music to become popular. In addition, Gordy's diverse audiences had shaped Motown's music into a form of rebellion, which was against the social norm that people of color speak up for their rights. Therefore, not only "his entire Motown organization had the ability to create a black music aimed right at the commercial mainstream that somehow never evoked the feeling, or provoked the charge, of having sold out (Schloss)," was also able to "give a definite African American slant to the pop-flavored songs that were characteristic of Motown (Schloss)." In result, "the sound of young America" was the work Gordy's "Motown" had contributed to the music industry.

Page Break Work Cited

History.com Staff. “Civil Rights Movement.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement Schloss, Joseph G. et al. Rock: Music, Culture, and Business. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2012.