Music, Power, and Practice

Neida Charles
Eng 003
January 29,2016
Entry #1
Professor Santos

                         The article Music, Power, and Practice by Maureen Mahon   highlight the impact power  has in the music industry. In the article, the author uses great rhetorical questions to  make her point. One great question she brought up  that made me think is  who has creative and economic control?” (Pg 328). Artists have a bunch of people that are guiding them but sometimes that is not to their advantage.  In most record label  there is  the chief executive who is in charge of the whole company then you have the president who looks over the affair of artists, then the artists need the support of  AR department and such. These people View their artists as their product “Extra-musical factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality”(pg 328) influence how they are being marketed and what genre they are put into. For example, Rihanna is from Barbados she is black and during the beginning of her career she was put into the R&B Category and  her music wasn't as sexual. Her music slowly transitioned into pop.Her new identity was "bad girl” . Most of her lyrics are very sexual. Especially the songs from her album” talk that talk” were very raunchy. Songs such as suck my cockiness aren't as  meaningful.She became more sexualized.Which is a pattern in the music industry.

I believe a lot of the people with  high power are men and view women as an object so therefore, of course, they are going to make their artists put out sexual content.Feminist just want equality among gender.It is possible that if there are more female with high power in the music industry many female artists would be marketed differently.  Is it possible that Rihanna wants to put our more meaningful content but her label thinks it won’t sell so they make her choose  other content? Yes

So many people have dreams of becoming a rapper, or singer or just to be part of the music industry but are they willing to alter their personality to fit the category being given to them. Are they willing to give up their power as an artist? These are a lot of questions most people don’t think about. I believe that the music industry is a cut-throat many records label  see  their artists as products.They are always looking for the best next products most artists come with  expiration dates. After a while they get too old or if they are not willing to do what the record label want. They are drop and  if they don't  have a loyal fan base. They become forgotten, or a “ one hit wonder”. 

      I remember the R&b boy band in the 90s  Soul for real and their song " candy rain" which is one of my favorite songs. Their record label claimed they took a break? It's been 20 years what artist for  a two-decade break?  I saw them being interviewed by madam Noire  and when she asked them why they haven't been putting out music. The answer was " we were drop". Most of them went back to the hood and any of them went to jails and just became another statistic. Most artists are there temporarily because they fit the current image.