The Rise and Fall of Music and Evolution

Musical communications are a fundamental element in human evolution. Since the dawn of time, rhythm and lyric have been used to convey things such as tribal stories, emotions, religion, or ideals. It is something so deeply rooted in our culture, so important to our evolution, that something such as the invention of recorded music should be hailed as the ultimate powerhouse technology. 

As we discussed in our Journalism One class, before music was recorded there were many alterations -purposely or not-that sometimes distorted or even completely changed the song. That's hundreds upon thousands of ancient musical pieces that are lost forever, and something we'll never be able to experience. Which is a foreign concept to all of us in this new age of record and mass communication. We live in a world that quickly advanced from losing most, to knowing everything. There will never be a time, three or four hundred years from now, where our ancestors will ponder our culture's music, wondering what it may have sounded like. 

During the class period, there was a brief moment where the editing of today's music world was brought up. We live in a golden age of 'perfection'. Not that there wasn't already 'perfection' standards set in previous centuries, but now it appears more prevalent than ever. We see this influence heavily carried over into the music industry. Before the 1890's, music was more inconsistent. There was more improvision  during concerts (which could only be viewed live), inconsistency in songs as musicians changed up pieces that maybe they were bored of or wanted a new spark, and the art of music was valued as a beautiful thing in which you were human and had human flaws when performing. But as we slowly crept later and later on after the 1890's, recording studios started to pop up. And after recording studios came  editing equipment. Music evolved into mass communication, and now could also be bought and sold. Becoming a commodity to the public immediately made business men jump on the bandwagon and start trying to appeal to public tastes. Whatever sold the most records made the most money, and therefore music started to be engineered towards certain markets. Which leads us back to the original statement of how we live in a hyper-age of  perfection that bleeds over into the music industry. No longer are artists allowed to have human flaws when performing, or be as raw as they once were. Now recording studios either enforce or heavily advise for the use of things such as auto tune. Voices are manipulated to sound unrealistically smooth, in order to appeal to the human ear. Should this be a concern, or does it just further advance our evolution in technology?

Based on the various subjects we discuss in class, and analysis of how humans have evolved so quickly in such a short period of time, I would say we are headed to concerning territory. The rise of electronic music and robotic sounding voices trails back to AI and the normalization of unattainable perfection. The more we feed back into unrealistic expectation of reality- enforced through processes of mainly social media- the more we truly lose touch of our emotional connections, social skills, and being at piece with one's self.