THE PLACE OF POPULAR CULTURE - MUSIC AND THE CITY Essay

THE PLACE OF POPULAR CULTURE - MUSIC AND THE CITY - Essay Example Even though music could be said to be part of the very traditional facets of culture, there is no denying the fact that the changing trend of music whereby it had become more versatile and dynamic has made it jumped into a new array of description, which is the popular culture description. New York is one place that has a culture of its own. Through the power and potency of music as a global communication tool, the culture of New York City has been projected by various artists and songstresses who pick various themes about the locality of New York City and amplifies them to the larger world. In this paper, the concept of cultural geography is scrutinized with a link of it to culture and how the local musical space of New York City has helped in projecting the cultural values of the city. This will be done with specific analysis of the song, A Bavarian in New York by Triumvirat. Cultural Geography and how culture is linked to place Even though cultural geography generally comes under the field of human geography, it is largely rooted in the phenomenon of culture and actually revolves around it. This is because cultural geography delves into cultural outcomes and norms that exist across spaces and places (Knox and Marston, 2012). Cultural geography also refers to the relations that exist in spaces and places differentiations as pertains to variables of culture such as religion, language, economy, and morality. Through cultural geography therefore, it should be possible to distinguish one place from another through the inputs of their cultural practices. In effect, culture is directly linked to a place because culture helps in giving a place its differential identity from other places. It is not surprising therefore through tourism, people travel across spaces and places to experience the cultural dynamism of other places. When debating the issue of cultural geography, reference is commonly made to countries, eve n though most cities have their own influential cultural geographies. Cultural geography can therefore be narrowed down to cities very easily, especially when reference is made to cities that are found in cosmopolitan countries like United States, where States and Cities try to leave independent of each other. With this said, New York City comes to mind easily as one city with so much to offer in terms of cultural geographic identity. Why music has a strong place in Geographic Orientation The discussion on cultural geography would be most inadequate if music as a variable of popular culture is not discussed. This is because music, particularly local musical spaces give music so much power and influence in the cultural geography of any given city. In reality, music has the kind of strong place it has in geographic orientation because music can be used as a very powerful communication tool beyond the mere purpose of entertainment. Discussing music as a variable of culture, aspects of music such as theme, language, rhythm, genre, and message can all be identified. Through themes of music, musicians are able to use their works of songs to highlight specific cultural themes that exist in given geographic orientations. This way, the attention of all people hearing the song is quickly drawn on the unique themes of the said geographic location, such as a city. The rhythm and genre of music have also been associated with certain geographic