Are Blackness and Whiteness useful concepts in the study of Popular music?

I feel blackness and whiteness would be beneficial concepts to study considering the fact that usually these terms are only associated with certain genres, with Blackness being allied with genres such as Rap and R&B and Whiteness being with genres as Rock. Though even nowadays you can see that is no the case with artists like Eminem and Jimmy Hendrix blurring the lines. Shank went on to state ‘There should be no argument that the transformation in popular music that we associate with the rise and development of rock were the result of white fascination with black music’ this relates to the fact that Rock n Roll drew inspiration from such music as blues. Overall though it could be stated that each concept has a particular rhythmical make up and vocal sound of its own as Hatch and Milward state ‘pop music has always depended upon the interaction between white and black traditions’ and due to music’s nature of being a universal language, pop music has developed with a range of traditions give rise to new sounds.

can popular music achieve genuine political change?

Whether or not Popular music can achieve genuine change is debatable, but it is most definitely fear by some with a political context. Straw and Street stated that ‘pop becomes the expression of its political and social context’ an example of this could be shown by Billie Holiday’s rendition of strange fruit, a poem written by a Jewish teacher who saw a photo graph of lynching. This song was refused release on her label Columbia as they feared that its message was too powerful. Though never by itself Pop music is major ingredient in a politically influential stew, this is usually accompanied with ingredient such as moral panic. Stanley states moral panic as a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests’ An example of this was when ‘Rave’ music such 808 State: Pacific 707: 1988, was linked to acid rave parties where many claimed the intake of illegal drugs was taking place and resulted in 1994 Criminal Justice Act, which essentially banned the play of ‘of music which had the traditional make up of ‘Rave’ music. Overall by itself pop music can not achieve genuine political change, but coupled with something else, it often does.

Does the emergence of the digital download signal the end for the music industry?

A similar question has been asked with the technological advancement of each audio medium, Ever since the emergence of the first recordable medium, the cassette this has been a lingering thought in the Music Industry’s mind and although it those day it was just the odd person copying there favourite song or making a Mixtape for a friend or potential partner, The Industry has fought hard against what it believes is Unauthorized sharing of copyrighted music. Now originally realising it was too hard to monitor things so they placed a levy on cassettes but with the advancement of technology, so came nthe advancement of the battle. With the emergence of the MP3 and the progression Internet the birth of P2P (peer to Peer) software such as Napster and Kazaa which many predicted would be the fall of the industry, but if such numbers were true there would be 100% drop in sale and applications like Itunes wouldn’t have a sales record of 10 billon tracks worldwide (Feb 2010) Though the rate of piracy has increased so has the range of audience, giving people an opportunity to sample music before they buy it, find music that is no longer on sale and access none copyrighted music