80's Music vs. New aged Music
Chelsey Stafford
COM/170
January 10, 2013
Tameka Winston

In today's society our music comes from a different era than it was in the 80's. The genre and style of the generation will follow.
Music comes from the Ancient Greek muses, who were the nine goddesses of art and science. Music actually began around 500 B.C. when Pythagoras experimented with acoustics and how math related to tones formed from plucking strings. The main form of music during the middle Ages was the Gregorian chant, named for Pope Gregory I. This music was used in the Catholic Churches to enhance the services. It consisted of a sacred Latin text sung by monks without instrumentation. The chant is sung in a monophonic texture, which means there is only one line of music. It has a free-flowing rhythm with little or no set beat. The chants were originally all passed through oral tradition, but the chants became so numerous that the monks began to notate them.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, about the 12th and 13th centuries, music began to move outside of the church. French nobles called troubadours and trouveres were among the first to have written secular songs. Music of this time was contained among the nobility, with court minstrels performing for them. There were also wandering minstrels who would perform music and acrobatics in castles, taverns, and town squares. These people were among the lowest social class, along with prostitutes and slaves, but they were important because they passed along information, since there were no newspapers.
Although, the 80’s is different from the new aged music because a lot of young teens are starting to realize that the 80’s actually has meaning and not just random lyrics like today’s music. There has been a lot of research and survey’s that has stated that even 14 year old teens like the 80’s better because they say it had more character and diverse music.
The age group of the 80’s is similar to the new aged music because no matter what generation it is people from the ages of 13 to 30 will listen to what is popular and new. Although sometimes when they hit around 30 they usually go back to what they grew up listening to. The meaning of the 80’s is similar to the new aged music because all the music from the 80’s has a meaning no matter what genre, depending on what genre from the new aged music still has meaning and purpose. They both have real lyrics only depending on what genre from the new aged generation of music. The difference of the meaning of both times of music is that a lot of today’s music like rap, is just random lyrics, or about drugs and killing people, or degrading young women. Older people will tell you that they can’t listen to new music because of how freely said today’s music can be.
The style of the 80’s and the new aged music is similar because they both have a certain beat, whether it be upbeat, slow, fast, however the artist feels the song should be. The song could deliver certain emotions, like sad, angry, fierce, revenge, or even happy. The difference with style is that the new aged music is more open than it was in the 80’s. Back in the 80’s you couldn’t say certain things or offend a bunch of people. Today people have become so numb that with what people say and do, things don’t get to them as much as it would back then. In the 80’s people were so sensitive that you couldn’t talk about killing people, sex, drugs, or even degrading young women like in today’s music.
The musical era of the 1980s like many other decades, the 1980s was a decade where music was a way to chronicle the times and events of the era. In some ways, the musical genres during the 1980s redefined the way many bands and artists made new music and it still continues to influence music today. Many of the musicians during the 1980s have maintained staying power and are still popular today. Other artists enjoyed a modicum of success during the decade and they are not even widely recognized today, save for the television programs that strive to reunite the bands and give exposure to artists of the time.
Following is some descriptions and explanations of the bands and interests that helped to change the face of music in the 80s. Hip-hop dominated the charts during the first decade of the 21st century. That represented a dramatic change from 50 years earlier, when black music had been segregated to the "race" charts. The reason why rap artists appealed to such a broad audience was probably that they boasted, on average, the best producers. Music (whether popular or classical) in the second half of the 20th century had been increasingly focusing on the soundscape, on sculpting the atmosphere, rather than on the melody.
Hip-hop music completed that trend by mostly disposing of the melody and setting the lyrics in a purely atmospheric context. The producer (the sound director and sculptor) was clearly more important in hip-hop music than in other genres. Competition among producers in turn led to a generation of more and more sophisticated producers. Very few rock producers could compete with hip-hop producers in terms of instrumental creativity.
Dictionaries and encyclopedias define music as "an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner." It is also defined as "any pleasing and harmonious sound" and "the sounds produced by singers or musical instruments."
There are a lot of definitions for music and it will take a whole book to explore the subject matter if there is one true definition of music it is this; music is universal and yet it is also relative and subjective. What may be music to one may not be so to another.
Although the 80’s and aged music has their similarities, they also have many differences. They are both music and upbeat, but yet they come from two different worlds. Music is our life; we would not survive without it.

Works Cited
Essentials of Music. (22 April 2002). Retrieved from http://www.essentialsofmusic.com
Kamien, Roger. Music: An Appreciation. McGraw-Hill: New York, 2002.
Sherrane, Robert. Music History 102: Hector Berlioz.
The Juilliard School, New York. (15 March 2002). Retrieved from http://www.ipl.org/exhibit/mushist/rom/berlioz.htm http://webpages.shepherd.edu http://www.scaruffi.com http://www.legendary80s.com http://floatingmountain.ca
Sherrane, Robert. Music History 102: The Middle Ages. The Juilliard School, New York. 12 April 2002. Retrieved from http://www.ipl.org/exhibit/mushist/middle/index.htm

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