Is Musical Style Involved in Communicating Meaning? Part 4

 

            Is Musical Style Involved in Communicating Meaning?  Part 4

Although it is true that every garage or basement musical group is not necessarily a skillful communicator of a particular style of music, many of them are because they apply the style patterns to the building blocks of the music they are composing, arranging and performing—thereby the music becomes a communicator of the desired meaning.  Since the time of the Coryville jazz groups in New Orleans and the Chicago and Kansas City jazz inventions, jazz has been successful in transmitting sexual meaning to its listeners.  The same success may be said of the rock-n-role of Elvis Presley and those who followed him in that style.  Probably the most successful communicator of sexual meaning, without doubt has been the many sub-styles of rock music. 

          For a Christian musician to make a claim that the aforementioned music styles were and are not capable of communicating their desired meaning is naive and short sighted.  To contend that these styles of music were and are benign and therefore not capable of communicating meaning is to deny music’s great power which is delivered with the help of these style meanings.  The music part of music molded by style becomes a powerful communicator of musical meaning which is related to the real world around all of us.