Homogenizing Popular Music

A friend recently mentioned how we have lost our musical roots, our ethnic musical roots. As I thought about this I realized that it is true, once you get outside of the large metropolitan cities where there are still ethnic neighborhoods that hold on to and celebrate their ethnic roots the "air waves" are filled with popular music that fits into one of the music entertainment industries "what sells" formulas. The air waves are controlled by a small number of large corporations which means that there are fewer influences on what gets air play. Many of the small local broadcast stations that remain now purchase their programing from the large media corporations. These large corporations are the ones that are now fighting for control of music on the world wide web.

But take some time and actually listen to some radio stations and watch some music videos. Listen and watch different genres, rap, country, hip-hop, rock, Christian - you will find more similarities than differences in style and images. The biggest area of difference is in verbage.
As I was going back and forth from BET Uncensored and CMT I found that the main difference was in the way that the people were dressed. On the BET video the women were barely clothed and paraded around for the men, the men were dressed in oversized clothes, couldn't figure out how to wear their baseball caps and had big rings and big jewelery around their necks. Then on CMT the women were barely clothed, paraded around for the men, the men wore cowboy hats, pointy toed boots and had big belt buckles. Other than the emphasis on different beats the music was quite similar and the verbage and images on both were just plain trash.

As fewer corporations gain control over the air waves, and other broadcasting technology our musical choices become more homogenized. Our ears become less discriminating and music becomes a background filler for our lives rather than an artist expression of our souls.