Ethnography and Analysis of a Musical Performance Essay

Ethnography and Analysis of a Musical Performance - Essay Example Like the typical vocal system of metal bands, the vocal harmony was existent and the final sound resembled to a feminine voice even though all the performers were male. The loudness of the voice was extreme to add excitement to the atmosphere of the concert. The performances were certainly high pitched. This paper puts the spotlight on the indispensible role of music as a way of promoting intercultural relationships between the citizens and nations of the world. Analyzing an event gathering musicians from two continents clarifies the function of music as a way of supporting Internationalism and solidarity between all the people of the world. This paper aims to defend music's role as a melting pot of different cultures rather than an enemy of the authenticity of different cultures. An ideology is known to be a group of ideas, values or conceptions to which agree a large amount of people. Different ideologies often come into conflict with each other. Globalization aims to help differen t cultures coexist by promoting cultural exchange between different civilizations. Music, being a cultural activity that is tightly connected to identity, plays a very important role in helping the world overcome civilization related conflicts by proving that the 'global' is more important than the 'national'. The event took place in order to celebrate Halloween. That occasion motivating the creation is a universal celebrating. Music, being attached to festive atmospheres, spread the feeling of unity between the elements of a given culture. However, in this multinational event music's role extends to cover assuring cooperation between various cultures. Like any event gathering artists from different areas of the world, one of the main purposes of this concert is to give the performing artists the chance to discover eachother's music techniques and to possibly experiment mixing with these genres. The Venue of the concert was in MAO Club. The general atmosphere that reigned in Beijing throughout of the performance was the typical atmosphere expected from a metal festival in any place in the world. The overall atmosphere was unconventional, wild and quite extreme, "The strong stimulating beats, the coarse, rough loud vocal delivery, the wild singing of nonsense syllables, and the music's direct, unrestrained and liberating quality" (Taylor,2007: 33). The concert being held in China means logically that the biggest part of its attendance was of Chinese natives. The Chinese audience however grasped that western form of music and fully interacted to it proving that music has no nationality. In the twentieth century, the revolution in means of communication introduced to the Chinese people the various musical techniques of Western music and the new ideas of the entertainment business. This led consequently to the creation of some sort of "star system" in China at least in big citie s. The public was then introduced to means such as "mass-circulation newspaper and glossy magazines, movies, radio and the phonograph" (Gunde, 2002: 96) helping to create a mass popular commercial culture. Nowadays, Chinese youth finds in that genre of music their individuality as they let down their hair and dance along to the music with their friends and enjoy this feeling of freedom. In addition to that, the three opening acts were Asian bands that felt that western