Mustang Rambles

My wife and I went to breakfast this morning at a popular restaurant in the area. An older couple sat down with their two teen-age granddaughters. One of the girls had her Ipod or MP3 player firmly plugged into her ears. I shook my head at this act of disrespect and then began thinking about why kids have to have music going 24-7 or is it 168 now? Three possible answers ran through my head and I thought I would throw them out for thought and feedback.

1. Do our young still have a deep primeval memory or genetic kink that makes them act like primitive tribes everywhere. Tribes that all require music and dance as the prime medium of entertainment, especially in courtship matters that begin at pre-teen ages and run through middle youth. This music and dance also sufficed to transfer religious and social mores down the generations in non-literate groups. One other advantage was that it took some of the competition out of the huts and into the dance arena where harmless competition could wear off animosities, anger, and perhaps, even bloody revenge. Is that still happening today?




2. The second trend that went through my mind is that this musical rebellion against the parental generation is peculiar to the developed countries of the world. It is a statement to the parents that teens are not bound to the mores and customs of their elders; that they are indeed, masters of their universe and do not intend to be mere clones of their parents. Music of the new generations has little or only an adverse relationship to the social mores of the elders.
   
   I remember well one day when I was listening to “The Witch Doctor” which included lyrics such as: “Oo,eee, oo ah ah, oo, ah walla walla bing bang.” My father ridiculed the song as nonsensical and juvenile. Being quick on my mental feet, I challenged him back with, “And what was so smart with ‘abba dabba dabba said the monkey to the chimp’ and “Yes, we have no bananas today”, and “Three iddy biddy fishes in an iddy biddy pool”, and finally, “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy”.
   
   I was fortunate enough to have a teenage club nearby where we would dance every Friday and Saturday night. I was basically a teenager who had been given a gift. My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a community that would have a “sock hop” every three months or so. She was socially denied her generational gift. I enjoyed my music in the 50’s and 60’s but quickly outgrew it in the late 60’s where volume of sound was substituted for quality of musicality. When you look back on each generation, there is a musical shift and dance shift, but still, each generation of young people creates their own distinctive musical niche and this binds them together.




3. Still, it was not so much the quality of the music, what was important was that it was our music and not our parents’ music. It set us apart from society in general and made the statement that our generation was going to be different and the world would be better for this.
   
   The need for the constant stream of music, and by this I mean the constant use of Ipods or MP3 players which have followed the early transistor radios, Walkmans, portable CD players, is a rejection of society as a whole. While listening they don’t have to deal with the millions of daily social contacts that occur in just walking down a street, sitting in a restaurant, or dealing with relatives. The music just shuts society out and insulates them against the stress of social intercourse.
   
   On an even deeper level, it may be the ultimate panacea for thought. For those who think and consider the ramifications of social interaction have much more stress and worry than those who are blessed by no or little interaction. Music forms an important barrier for those unwilling to expose them to this stress. By constantly listening, by being an uninterrupted receptor for loud, rhythmic noise, the brain can be lulled into minor activity excited only by extreme sensory input such as a loud noise or firm touch, or perhaps stepping in a cold puddle. Young escapists can hide behind a bastion of music oblivious to the responsibilities of being a human being in a human world. They have to give nothing, they have to risk nothing, ergo they gain nothing.

Since I’ve matured, my car radio is silent. The CDs I own are rarely played, and I have only five songs on my mobile phone. I may play them once every two weeks. Only when engaged in repetitious chores in the yard or in the house do I allow music as a brain filler. Otherwise, I listen to the world. In the silence I have found a wonderful universe of thought and conjecture. In silence, I have peace.