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.
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