The importance of live music to culture

The constant closure of venues that have housed many gigs important to local popular music history is indicative of how local governments and councils choose to honour their musical heritage. In recent times musical revolution has gone hand in hand with most cultural revolution, from the association of punk music with the political unrest and vast unemployment of 70’s Britain to the use of hip hop by black America to create a public and accessible voice. These musical trends have not only accompanied these social changes, but have often provided catalysts for political transformation, such as the protest songs of the early 1960’s becoming a rallying call for the civil rights movements. By ignoring these elements of popular music and the relevance it has to modern history, the true impact it has had will be forgotten.
Live music also acts as an important part of most social circles, especially the younger sections of western society. As many teenage groups identify themselves by their taste in music, the associated live gigs provide an important means for like-minded people to interact in a relatively safe environment. Many community activists also regard music as a positive and easily attainable way to keep teenagers from more harmful aspects of youth culture, such as crime and drug abuse.
The other major importance of live music is the boost it provides to the economy. Not only to the performers that rely on this as their main source of income (as mentioned before, vastly more profitable to an artist than record sales), but many of the large scale shows have an entire industry that relies heavily on the revenue that live performances can produce.

The importance of music to culture is at its most evident when it is taken away.
The expulsion of Jewish music from German culture during the Nazi reign over Germany is a good example of how removal of music can be used as an instrument of oppression, as it took away a major economic and communicative tool for the Jewish community that was a strong part of Jewish tradition.
Another example can be seen in colonisation of Australia. As the colonists began to arrive in Australia, they brought their songs, which were quickly adopted by the aboriginal community. The indoctrination of western music in aboriginal culture meant that they began to loose their traditional songs, which where of great importance as they were often used as a means of story telling to pass on important information. This loss of song-based story telling was further removed from the culture as the westerners increasingly exploited Australia and its native peoples .

Technology has had a massive effect on the indigenous music in certain cultures. Gamelan music of Indonesia was based on relatively small area’s having their own set of gamelan instruments tuned to their own standards of tuning. Each village had its own musical culture and style of playing which had developed through oral tradition. When the audiocassette tape was introduced to Indonesia it meant that for the first time each gamelan performer could record and distribute their particular style of gamelan. This meant that other gamelan performers could then incorporate aspects of other gamelan styles into their own music, which slowly created a more homogenised version over a large area (Katz 2004). A similar thing has happened in the UK, were once individual towns and cities would have had their own songs and musical culture, as industrialisation prospered these various folk traditions eventually blended into one another.

The live music legislations and destruction of venues mentioned earlier could be seen as a means to oppress certain aspects of British culture. The media fuelled fear of youth culture seems to encourage certain types of music to be targeted as detrimental to society .
The venues and other musical establishments related to pop culture still have to achieve a massive level of popularity (akin to that obtained by The Beatles) to gain any sort of protection or notoriety from councils. This would deny the chance to enrich any area’s modern history, which would be considered important to many local people.
With most music now having an online audience and more people having access to the internet than ever, local musical cultures may disappear to be replaced by a global equivalent, where musical styles won’t be created in different cities or countries but on various websites and online cultures. This is already happened with genres such as 8-Bit, which have a much stronger online community than an analogue equivalent.

Weather Britain is or isn’t losing its live music culture is open to debate, but the vulnerability of live music is definitely an important issue on many levels. While gigs and bands seem to be good stead when it comes to amount available, the loss of many long established and potential venues will eventually have a major effect on the amount of gigs that can happen in any given town. This along with the recent laws will place further stress on the music community. In spite of all these new restrictions, musicians with even a moderate level of passion while find a way to perform. Even the most restrictive countries with little to no resources often have a rich live music, often linked with local and religious tradition. Given this, live music will nearly always find a way but could be of a great benefit to communities if given the respect, attention and protection it deserves.