Opinion Breaking through musically

Western music’s evolution from medieval,renaissance,baroque to the classical opera,operetta and philharmonic symphony to today’s rock,rap and jazz happened amidst immense discomfort in their musical world. Classical masterpieces emerged mostly from Eastern and Western Europe since 1740.

Georges Handel was among the precursors who set the foundation of Western classical music.

Simultaneously from the 1600s,African music from the enslaved African community in the US opened another musical chapter with rhythm as the base. Black music started as spiritual,and evolved incorporating work-songs,ragtime and minstrel shows during the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Blues and Dixieland were born in the late 1800s,while jazz and gospel began in early 1900s. After World War II,the black influence invented rock and rap music. African American gospel music,the collective humming voice of the black community in church was not considered aristocratic by Caucasians.

Over centuries they were used to hearing songs sung in characteristic monotone as in country music. In the 1950s,Elvis Presley created a new musical era of discomfort when he brought black gospel music and rhythm into mainstream society as rock ‘n’ roll. He also broke the rules of musical performance and disapprovingly got dubbed ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ for gyrating suggestively.

Like his father,Elvis became a truck driver,working for the Crown Electric Company. One day he stopped his truck at the Memphis Recording Studios where he had heard that anyone could record a 10-inch acetate for $4. He was 19,smitten by music and recorded his composition ‘My Happiness.’ That was the beginning of an extraordinary journey that ended with his being crowned the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

He wanted his music to stir up everybody’s dancing shoes because the atmosphere after World War II was morose. His sensational singing style became controversial with American puritans calling it the devil’s music.

Another discomfort in music came from the Beatles in 1962. John Lennon,James Paul McCartney,George Harrison and Richard Starkey (who took the name of Ringo Starr later) were born into working class obscurity in post-war Liverpool. They took the world by storm.

An Evening Standard interviewer queried John Lennon about religion and his apolitical reply was: ‘Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that. I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first,rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.’ Pandemonium broke loose. Disk jockeys in the southern American states encouraged a God-fearing youth to destroy Beatles records and memorabilia at bonfire rallies. Within a week,30 US Bible Belt radio stations banned the Beatles from airplay. Lennon created discomfort at the risk of breaking his group’s career at the height of their success.

The shock was momentary though. Lennon inspired a whole generation to think fearlessly,openly and clearly. He also touched a raw,discomfiting nerve in a social atmosphere stifled with a telling generation gap.

Musicians and singers comprised a new kind of creature who emerged to kill gloominess in Europe and America in the second half of the 20th century. They brought discomfort with a message. Singer Mick Jagger,now over 60,is still creating discomfort with ‘I can’t get no satisfaction.’ He’s taken his 40 Licks World Tour to wake up newer generations across the globe.

There was a cliché that the Punks were less a musical genre than a state of mind. In their discomfort creating heydays from early 1970,being a Punk fashion victim became fashionable. The Punks remained an underground music sect up to 1976. They demonstrated individualism and even revolted against older sub-cultures like hard-rockers and hippies. Being an anarchistic,anti-power movement,the Punks were amazingly successful in establishing a trend that influenced industry and lasted beyond their generation. For 40 years the Punks have been considered the trend that brought colour into European fashion and music.

But today the music industry faces a commercial dilemma about how to better encash music when computer downloads and recording from TV has become the music lover’s way of getting music. As per Synovate’s 2010 study,MTV in 1981 ushered in a new way for fans to connect to artists. About 57 per cent of people surveyed said they watch songs on TV but the computer is fast catching up with 46 per cent people getting their music from it.

In India,38 per cent people use their mobile phones to listen to music. About 73 per cent of Indians polled say they watch music videos,mainly Bollywood music,on TV. Bollywood still rules the roost so we have not seen many artists make breakthrough change in the music scene here by creating the kind of discomfort that the West has experienced.

The flourishing entertainment business worldwide is a perpetual discomfort-creating machine. Being a perfect performer is never enough; the masses will endow the artist with commercial success only if they can remember the discomfort the artist created when reaching out to them.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at

http://www.shiningconsulting.com