Music is entertainment but not only. It also has a strong social and communicative power. It can affect our mood, but also our ideas and our way of thinking.
This effect is amplified considering that it can reach a large number of people.
We talk about it with Mico Argirò, questions and answers for a comparison between those who listen to music and those who create music.
We know that music brings people together and strengthens a sense of unity. As has been repeatedly in the past, even today it happens that some songs are used to convey messages with strong social content, to claim rights and oppose oppression (are unfortunately current situations of conflict and repression where forms of resistance are identified with songs that become the symbol), why music helps to feel stronger?
It is a very ancient thing, it comes from the rites of the first populations, tarantism and many forms of primordial and popular religiosity. Music has three fundamental components that channel our life: rhythm, harmony and melody. In the rhythm there is everything that starts from the drums of the rituals of passage up to the low of the discos. In harmony there is color, interpretation of emotions. In melody there is feeling and there is, very often, the text. These three simple (and absolutely complex) elements underlie how, of course, music vehicles our emotions and feelings, instinct and reasoning. The music loads us, that we are at the oars of a Viking ship or in a stadium, consoles us when we are sad, it wraps us when we are well.
Apart from the fact that there are no absolute rules always valid for each one, are there any general characteristics that make a song a mass identification tool?
It depends very much on the relationship that is created between the song and the social group, in how that song translates into music and words the feelings, the thoughts, the lives of the people of that social group. And it depends on the genre, the artist and what is considered sincere, the situations, the social group... I do not think there is a recipe, it is more a conjuncture of all these elements. When a large but united group of people says "This song is about me". To cite Kant improperly is "the agreement between the object and the subject", only here the subject is a group of people.
Not always the messages transmitted have positive value, I think of the new generations of rappers who in Milan have become the inspiration and glue of gangs that clash in an often violent way. How do you assess this phenomenon?
Guys today have a pent-up rage that I totally understand, even I have it deep down. Left completely alone, without families, without school, without real groups, sometimes without anyone at all, between lockdown, adolescence, social, find in some types of music expression to these solitudes, even the natural frustrations of youth, to the sufferings of life. And the adults don’t understand , because they never understood, they didn’t understand when it was it happed with rock, they won’t understand now. I do not condone violence, but I understand it and understand how some genders can become catalysts of this catharsis.
In your opinion, how spontaneous are these movements and how subject are they to some form of exploitation?
I believe that some movements are completely spontaneous, others are driven for purely commercial purposes. In each of the two cases always then comes the capitalism that sniffs the opportunity. A group of people who recognize themselves in the same ideals and in the same music also dresses in the same way, have the same idols, watch the same movies: they are a niche market to sell to. So the magic of catharsis is lost in merchandising, in consumption. It fades the sense, dilutes the meaning, in favor, as always, of money.
Today we close here not to dwell too much but with the intention of returning to talk about this and other topics in a forthcoming appointment.
