Opera, rock, rap, hip hop or “Take It Easy”

Music defines us individually, generationally and culturally. And, some music tastes spread across the whole spectrum.

Those brought up with classical music and opera tend to stick with it but, like any cultural group, tastes can zig zag across melodic lines.

Youthful rebelliousness has spawned any number of musical genres, spurred on by peripheral things such as dances specific to a new beat, as well as wardrobes. It doesn’t stop there, particularly with the younger generations. Now, body piercings with appropriate jewelry as well as body markings and decor, or tattoos, are greatly influenced by music.

While musical tastes may help delineate generational groups, it becomes less specific as people move through the aging process. Education is of course another major influence.

As a youngster growing up, my family and the socio-economic factors influencing it steered our musical direction. Being a rural farm and ranch family, country music was a natural. Youngsters like me didn’t “cotton” to it because our more hip friends called it hillbilly, an insult.

Many rural folks went to small, fairly fundamentalist churches and that dictated yet another musical genre, Southern Gospel.

Before television, there was radio and before MP3s came phonographs (record players).

Radio offered to rural America (and the majority was still rural then) enough variety to suit most tastes. For our rural America climes, parents dictated what the one family radio was tuned to and in our home, it was specific for Saturday night and Sunday morning. The Grand Ole Opry was broadcast for several hours on Saturday night. We arose on Sunday mornings — eating breakfast and getting ready for Sunday School and church — to the sounds of The Stamps Quartet and Southern Gospel. That put you in the proper front pew mood.

Then, just as jazz and the Charleston lit up the Roaring Twenties, teenagers in the early and mid Fifties turned to the “evil” of rock and roll as we crossed the race barrier and white teens began listening to the likes of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and that early musical linecrosser, Elvis Presley. All of a sudden 1950s teens were “headed for hell” with such musical dance adaptations as the dirty bop.

In our small town, rock and roll and the bop were mitigated somewhat by adult groups setting up dance classes for teens and sub-teens. We learned “ballroom” dancing such as the fox trot, the waltz and the jitterburg (or Frisco). All of this was to the music of the big show bands of that time — the Dorsey Brothers, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Glenn Miller.

Adults were turned upside down by the 1960s and a couple of decades following as rock and the drug culture dominated music and social headlines. An offshoot was folk music, inspired by the “hippie” movement. The Beatles came over to the colonies with their mop hairdos and a revolutionary new sound. Suddenly, British and European groups were in with their different rock and pop sounds.

As that calmed down and opened new paths, hillbilly music changed to country and western as a more “studio arranged” sound came about and captured new audiences. Some C&W performers and fans alike adapted the hippie look and music began bleeding across heretofore strict cultural lines.

Country music changed again in the late 80s and early 90s, so studioarranged that it lost its distinctive sound. As Loretta Lynn put it, “You hear country music today and, unless you’re looking at a video you don’t know who it is because they all sound alike.”

Heavy metal, hard rock, surfin’ music, rap, hip hop and some hybrids have made their debuts, some settling in for the long term with a couple fading away as faddish.

Thankfully, we have developed a great variety of music in this country. You can hear just about anything you want.

Now, I’m ready to chill with The Eagles’ “Take It Easy”:

“Lighten up while you still can

don’t even try to understand

Just find a place to make your stand

and take it easy.”

Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editorpublisher of more than 50 years. He can be reached by email at wwebb@wildblue.net.