So Tiger finally came out from the woodwork last week (no pun intended) and publicly apologized for the multiple affairs that sparked a huge scandal last November. He not only apologized to his mother, wife and family, fellow players, sponsors, and fans, but also included a special and specific apology to kids that he inspired as a role model and those whom he actually helped through his foundation, The Tiger Woods Foundation.
Before I had seen the actual apology, I had run across this Bloggingheads video (part of the Opinion section in the NYTimes Online) which discusses Tiger's apology and it's affect on kids. One question that came up was whether or not kids should have role models who are famous sports stars, actors/actresses, musicians, etc.
What do you think? Personally or as a librarian or both! If we encourage kids to interact with various media then we must also expect that they will be influenced by or have opinions about the people they encounter in those various types of media.
Growing up, Dennis Rodman was my role model. My room was covered in Chicago Bulls posters, pictures cut out from Sports Illustrated and other sports magazines, and even a life size stand up of Rodman in action (I'm sure you guys are getting an 'interesting' perspective into who I am from the nature of my recent posts ha-ha!). I went down to our local and very small bookstore when his book Bad as I wanna be came out and was turned away because the book peddler didn't think it was an appropriate book for a 13 year old girl to be reading (little did she know I just turned around and bought it somewhere else!).
So what was it about Dennis Rodman that made him a 'role model' in my eyes? Well #1: he was a hell of a basketball player and I had been playing basketball since I was 6 so I respected that. #2 and most importantly: he wasn't afraid to be who he was--he stepped out covered in tattoos with a different color of hair each week and killed it on the court (you must remember that heavily tattooed basketball players were rare in the 90s, unlike today when you have dudes like Allen Iverson and Chris Anderson among countless others). Off the court he partied hardcore and did drugs, but I tended to ignore that side of him because I was only interested in who he was on the court. Whether what I saw as positive role model traits actually existed in who he was and how he represented himself, it didn't cause me to be a bad person or kid--I didn't drop out of school or start drinking and partying heavily, or anything like that (though I am heavily tattooed but I wouldn't attribute the motivation for that to Dennis). Basically, I think it came down to me being realistic about who he was both on and off the court and simply choosing to admire what I saw were the good traits that he had to offer.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Adam Haslet interview
This morning, on my way to work, I was listening to NPR, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123542128, and Morning Edition. They were running an interview with a first time novelist, Adam Haslet. His book, Union Atlantic, has just arrived on the bookstore shelves.
Most of the interview was only mildly interesting, mostly because his novel, written and sent off to the publisher, before the collapse of the large banks in 2008, is about just that – the collapse and possible bailout of a major bank in the US and the implication to America’s economic system if it is allowed to fail.
However, what really caught my ear was when the interview turned to human nature, culture and fiction.
"The world is so insanely complex and fast and distracting, and one of the things I think a good book can do is slow the reader's attention down a little bit and give them a chance to think through some of the consequences of these changes which otherwise are so quick that all you can do is react," Haslett says.
So is literature the answer?
"It's an ameliorative," Haslett says with a laugh. "I don't think it's an answer, I don't think it will solve our problems but I think how we pay attention to the world matters and if you can spend time inside an imaginative world then there's a calmness and an ability to think.”
That is what caught my attention. That is exactly why I love realistic fiction. It allows me to slow down, escape for a short while from my too busy life – school, work, son’s wedding, and think about someone else’s life. But it isn’t total escapism. I am drawn into someone else’s life but then invited to stop and think of how this would play out in real life. What would I do in such a situation? There is a certain freedom in the fact that it is make believe and yet, realistic enough to draw me in and make me think.
That would not be the case with fantasy fiction, for me. I have not been able to identify with the characters in fantasy – at least not yet – and that is an important ingredient of the enjoyment for me.
This can also be said of film or, video. A good fiction played out on the screen allows me to get lost in it, leave my world behind for a time and live in someone else’s but at the same time allows me to slow down enough to think and feel, just like a book.
Film and video, however, bring another element to fiction, as we learned this week. The scene, characters, and sounds are not left up to our imagination as much as I thought. We still need imagination to suspend our lives for awhile and become one of the characters, but we are provided many of the details by the director who puts all of this together. As the short video in our study guide suggests, Mise-en-Scene, if well planned, can bring another element to our viewing.
So, I learned tonight that I think I react viscerally to good realistic fiction because of my interpersonal nature. And, I still think that is true to a certain extent; I agree with Haslet, in that. Additionally, I think, as does Haslet, that good realistic fiction can slow us down and make us think about our world, how and where we fit in it. However, I now know that many of my visceral reactions are there because of the staging of the director, cinematographer, sound man and costume designer. Somehow, that is not quite as romantic!
Most of the interview was only mildly interesting, mostly because his novel, written and sent off to the publisher, before the collapse of the large banks in 2008, is about just that – the collapse and possible bailout of a major bank in the US and the implication to America’s economic system if it is allowed to fail.
However, what really caught my ear was when the interview turned to human nature, culture and fiction.
"The world is so insanely complex and fast and distracting, and one of the things I think a good book can do is slow the reader's attention down a little bit and give them a chance to think through some of the consequences of these changes which otherwise are so quick that all you can do is react," Haslett says.
So is literature the answer?
"It's an ameliorative," Haslett says with a laugh. "I don't think it's an answer, I don't think it will solve our problems but I think how we pay attention to the world matters and if you can spend time inside an imaginative world then there's a calmness and an ability to think.”
That is what caught my attention. That is exactly why I love realistic fiction. It allows me to slow down, escape for a short while from my too busy life – school, work, son’s wedding, and think about someone else’s life. But it isn’t total escapism. I am drawn into someone else’s life but then invited to stop and think of how this would play out in real life. What would I do in such a situation? There is a certain freedom in the fact that it is make believe and yet, realistic enough to draw me in and make me think.
That would not be the case with fantasy fiction, for me. I have not been able to identify with the characters in fantasy – at least not yet – and that is an important ingredient of the enjoyment for me.
This can also be said of film or, video. A good fiction played out on the screen allows me to get lost in it, leave my world behind for a time and live in someone else’s but at the same time allows me to slow down enough to think and feel, just like a book.
Film and video, however, bring another element to fiction, as we learned this week. The scene, characters, and sounds are not left up to our imagination as much as I thought. We still need imagination to suspend our lives for awhile and become one of the characters, but we are provided many of the details by the director who puts all of this together. As the short video in our study guide suggests, Mise-en-Scene, if well planned, can bring another element to our viewing.
So, I learned tonight that I think I react viscerally to good realistic fiction because of my interpersonal nature. And, I still think that is true to a certain extent; I agree with Haslet, in that. Additionally, I think, as does Haslet, that good realistic fiction can slow us down and make us think about our world, how and where we fit in it. However, I now know that many of my visceral reactions are there because of the staging of the director, cinematographer, sound man and costume designer. Somehow, that is not quite as romantic!
More Information
A frightening development from ideas like the one we discussed on this post: a school in PA is accused of using the webcams installed in students' school-issued laptops to spy on them at home. (that link will take you to a list of articles that includes statements from teachers/principals and some of the trial details)
Teen Tech Week
I got a link to this article in my latest ALA Direct e-mail, and thought it was especially fitting for our topics! From In the Library With the Lead Pipe (a blog I've just discovered but am looking forward to browsing through a bit more!):
Teen Tech Week is held from March 7-13 this year. For those of you who haven't held or participated in this event (myself included), and are planning on working with youth, it might be worth a gander at the ALA/YALSA site for the week (that's the link under TTW up there). There are program ideas and resources, publicity tools, and a wiki, among other things.
And as Robyn Vittek, the author of the article, says, there is little to criticize about Teen Tech Week. It's an initiative to get teens into the library in an interactive way, as well as a push for librarians to find new and exciting ways to integrate technology into their youth programs. Ideally, a YA librarian would be doing this anyway, but especially in libraries with smaller staffs and budgets, it can be difficult. This initiative is
From her conclusion:
"One of the newest national initiatives, Teen Tech Week has been celebrated by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) since 2007. This year, Teen Tech Week is March 7–13. According to the YALSA website, “The purpose of the initiative is to ensure that teens are competent and ethical users of technologies, especially those that are offered through libraries such as DVDs, databases, audiobooks, and videogames. Teen Tech Week encourages teens to use libraries’ nonprint resources for education and recreation, and to recognize that librarians are qualified, trusted professionals in the field of information technology.”1"
Teen Tech Week is held from March 7-13 this year. For those of you who haven't held or participated in this event (myself included), and are planning on working with youth, it might be worth a gander at the ALA/YALSA site for the week (that's the link under TTW up there). There are program ideas and resources, publicity tools, and a wiki, among other things.
And as Robyn Vittek, the author of the article, says, there is little to criticize about Teen Tech Week. It's an initiative to get teens into the library in an interactive way, as well as a push for librarians to find new and exciting ways to integrate technology into their youth programs. Ideally, a YA librarian would be doing this anyway, but especially in libraries with smaller staffs and budgets, it can be difficult. This initiative is
From her conclusion:
"The exciting thing about Teen Tech Week is that it gives us an opportunity to explore and learn to use all of the websites, gadgets, and formats that our library is purchasing, our teens are bringing into the building, and we are reading about in professional journals and magazines. It is a chance to let the teens know that libraries and librarians are not all about books. We are interested in learning about and sharing all types of information resources, and prove entertaining and cutting edge programming and services that occasionally dip into the philanthropic or even (gasp!) educational arenas. When you choose to participate in Teen Tech Week, it’s not only the teens who “Create, Share and Learn @ your Library.” The staff will as well."
On a life spent illegally downloading music
I remember the first time I used Napster. I was in ninth grade, spending the night at my friend Lindsey's house. "Listen to this," she said. She had downloaded a dozen or so songs by a band I'd never heard of, called Dashboard Confessional. (I thought the singer was a woman.) My family, devoted Macintosh users all, didn't have access to Napster (much less a CD burner or a sufficiently fast internet connection, even in the dialup days) - Lindsey's new toy was a revelation. We spent the entire night downloading music, one song at a time. By the next morning, we had downloaded four songs. Awesome.
By the time I got to college, things were in even better shape for the young and broke. My college unwittingly played host to "the network" - thousands and thousands of movies, games, television episodes, and songs shared among every student on campus. Some particularly industrious hosts held close to a terabyte of stuff all by themselves. Others prided themselves on having new TV episodes up and available within hours of their airing. Nobody had cable or Netflix, and only a handful of us patronized the super-cool record store downtown.
So I'm one of those people - a child of the digital generation who downloads music illegally without a second thought. Kind of. Like a lot of people my age - mid-twenties-ish - I still spend plenty of money on my music consumption. The difference is that I spend most of it on concerts and T-shirts. I still buy music. I paid $5 for that Radiohead album a couple of years ago, because that's how much a Radiohead album that isn't Kid A is worth to me. Last week I downloaded James Mercer's side project, but I'll probably pay money for it when it comes out in March.
"But those aren’t baby bands who had to do it themselves from the start. Newer acts may well be cottage industries — in wired cottages — for life." (NYT)
Sure, when I see a good local band at a bar or club, I buy their CD - but that doesn't happen too often. For one thing, I am not hip enough to go out three times a week. For another, most local bands are pretty terrible. Most of the music I listen to I heard on TV or the radio - same as ever. The difference is that if I hear a song I like - on a TV show, on the radio, whatever - I go online and download it for free. But what's changed, really? As a kid, I taped songs off of the radio all the time. The difference is that now, there is way more out there to download, right? Thanks to the internet, every whosit with a guitar has a chance at fame! If anyone ever hears it. I totally thought that the whole MySpace music thing was going to change the world, but it hasn't. The tastemakers are the same people, but now they're in worse financial shape than ever, so they're promoting even fewer artists.
So, unless you're really good at marketing yourself - or unless your label (if you have one!) thinks you're The Next Big Thing - you're basically screwed. Sure, you can buy my friend's band's CD on iTunes, but does anyone? (I did, Noah!) Sure, Radiohead's stunt worked, but that's because they're Radiohead. And I notice, with the kids I work with, that everything they listen to is manufactured. The younger kids and the 'tween set listen to Disney popsters and Taylor Swift, the teens are into whatever rap guy is big at the moment. There's way too much garbage out there for us to become our own tastemakers. And so the world is basically unchanged. There was no MySpace revolution. The pool of what we actually listen to has only gotten smaller. Other than the occasional tidbit on NPR or tiny college radio stations, when is the last time you heard independent music on the radio?
"But the flip side of disintermediation — not having to rely on any middleman for approval or distribution — is a near-infinite slush pile. All the filtering that used to take place out of earshot, in A&R and club bookers’ offices, can be bypassed." (NYT)
ON THE OTHER HAND! There are artists that succeed - that have gotten their "break" on YouTube or MySpace. Not many of them, but it does happen. I do know a handful of teens - again, not many, but a few - who are into making mash-ups, filming their own music videos for their favorite songs and putting them on YouTube, and tweeting to (with?) their favorite artists. None of this could have happened before the internet. The music industry has changed, but it's not the artist who suddenly has power. It's the consumer. Much like we see in television - with fan movements bringing back cancelled shows (Chuck, Jericho), fanfiction writers re-writing plot points for their fellow fans, and consumers making choices about how they want to watch their favorite shows (TiVo, Hulu, BitTorrent) - listeners are now better equipped than ever to listen to music the way they want to. Pay for it, steal it, interact with it. For the first time, we can dig through that slush pile ourselves if we want to. There are countless websites that can direct you to the good stuff, most of them run by random people out in the world - not the record execs. Not Simon Cowell.
It's not a revolution. Our music tastes, as a culture, haven't suddenly diversified. Most of us still listen to whatever the record companies put on the table. But we don't have to. And that's pretty cool.
P.S. PBS: It's Sarah McLachlan. With an H.
Interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/08/long-tail-myth-download
On another, TOTALLY NSFW note, this blog.
If you didn't get enough inane and/or deeply offensive rap lyrics from that PBS site, I recommend you check this out. Commentary ranges from seriously hilarious to roughly as offensive as the lyrics, but whatever. Also, does anyone else look back fondly on the days when "Drake" was Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi? And can we just take a minute to note how totally not gangster Degrassi is?
By the time I got to college, things were in even better shape for the young and broke. My college unwittingly played host to "the network" - thousands and thousands of movies, games, television episodes, and songs shared among every student on campus. Some particularly industrious hosts held close to a terabyte of stuff all by themselves. Others prided themselves on having new TV episodes up and available within hours of their airing. Nobody had cable or Netflix, and only a handful of us patronized the super-cool record store downtown.
So I'm one of those people - a child of the digital generation who downloads music illegally without a second thought. Kind of. Like a lot of people my age - mid-twenties-ish - I still spend plenty of money on my music consumption. The difference is that I spend most of it on concerts and T-shirts. I still buy music. I paid $5 for that Radiohead album a couple of years ago, because that's how much a Radiohead album that isn't Kid A is worth to me. Last week I downloaded James Mercer's side project, but I'll probably pay money for it when it comes out in March.
"But those aren’t baby bands who had to do it themselves from the start. Newer acts may well be cottage industries — in wired cottages — for life." (NYT)
Sure, when I see a good local band at a bar or club, I buy their CD - but that doesn't happen too often. For one thing, I am not hip enough to go out three times a week. For another, most local bands are pretty terrible. Most of the music I listen to I heard on TV or the radio - same as ever. The difference is that if I hear a song I like - on a TV show, on the radio, whatever - I go online and download it for free. But what's changed, really? As a kid, I taped songs off of the radio all the time. The difference is that now, there is way more out there to download, right? Thanks to the internet, every whosit with a guitar has a chance at fame! If anyone ever hears it. I totally thought that the whole MySpace music thing was going to change the world, but it hasn't. The tastemakers are the same people, but now they're in worse financial shape than ever, so they're promoting even fewer artists.
So, unless you're really good at marketing yourself - or unless your label (if you have one!) thinks you're The Next Big Thing - you're basically screwed. Sure, you can buy my friend's band's CD on iTunes, but does anyone? (I did, Noah!) Sure, Radiohead's stunt worked, but that's because they're Radiohead. And I notice, with the kids I work with, that everything they listen to is manufactured. The younger kids and the 'tween set listen to Disney popsters and Taylor Swift, the teens are into whatever rap guy is big at the moment. There's way too much garbage out there for us to become our own tastemakers. And so the world is basically unchanged. There was no MySpace revolution. The pool of what we actually listen to has only gotten smaller. Other than the occasional tidbit on NPR or tiny college radio stations, when is the last time you heard independent music on the radio?
"But the flip side of disintermediation — not having to rely on any middleman for approval or distribution — is a near-infinite slush pile. All the filtering that used to take place out of earshot, in A&R and club bookers’ offices, can be bypassed." (NYT)
ON THE OTHER HAND! There are artists that succeed - that have gotten their "break" on YouTube or MySpace. Not many of them, but it does happen. I do know a handful of teens - again, not many, but a few - who are into making mash-ups, filming their own music videos for their favorite songs and putting them on YouTube, and tweeting to (with?) their favorite artists. None of this could have happened before the internet. The music industry has changed, but it's not the artist who suddenly has power. It's the consumer. Much like we see in television - with fan movements bringing back cancelled shows (Chuck, Jericho), fanfiction writers re-writing plot points for their fellow fans, and consumers making choices about how they want to watch their favorite shows (TiVo, Hulu, BitTorrent) - listeners are now better equipped than ever to listen to music the way they want to. Pay for it, steal it, interact with it. For the first time, we can dig through that slush pile ourselves if we want to. There are countless websites that can direct you to the good stuff, most of them run by random people out in the world - not the record execs. Not Simon Cowell.
It's not a revolution. Our music tastes, as a culture, haven't suddenly diversified. Most of us still listen to whatever the record companies put on the table. But we don't have to. And that's pretty cool.
P.S. PBS: It's Sarah McLachlan. With an H.
Interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/08/long-tail-myth-download
On another, TOTALLY NSFW note, this blog.
If you didn't get enough inane and/or deeply offensive rap lyrics from that PBS site, I recommend you check this out. Commentary ranges from seriously hilarious to roughly as offensive as the lyrics, but whatever. Also, does anyone else look back fondly on the days when "Drake" was Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi? And can we just take a minute to note how totally not gangster Degrassi is?
Monday, February 22, 2010
The personal importance of lyrics . . .
This comment was too long to fit in the comment box as a response to Sue's "Same Old Same Old? or a Whole New World?" post, so I was forced to post it separately.
Sue wrote: "And yet, some things are very different than they were. I used to have to listen to a song over and over and over again to try and figure out what the lyrics were. There were endless debates: did he say “Rolled up like a deuce” or “Rolled up like a douche”? (How sophisticated we thought we were to be able to say that work without giggling…) Nowadays, the lyrics are there for you with a click if you want them. I’m not entirely sure why that seems important to me, but it does. I’d welcome others’ thoughts on whether this instant availability of the lyrics matters."
Personally, knowing that lyrics are instantly available (whether you actually use them or not) has been and is somewhat important to me: I'm a fan and frequenter of Lyrics on Demand. Because I came to exist when I did (1983) and started getting into music at a time (early 90's) when lyrics were made readily available in the booklets included in the cases of tapes and CDs (and now as .pdf files when you download an entire album through iTunes), I've never known a time when lyrics weren't at my finger tips and thus have always been able to access and use them in different ways. Before I explain how I use lyrics and why they were and continue to be important to me, I should mention that lyrics were usually available for music that was current and popular (on tapes and CDs) while I was going up, but not necessarily for music prior to the advent of the tape and CD, though not all tapes and CDs guaranteed the inclusion of lyrics. That didn't matter to me when I was a teenager because I didn't really care about music that wasn't popular during that time, but it became increasingly important as I grew older, gained more interest in older music, and wanted to engage with the lyrics more intimately.
I grew up in rural southern Colorado, a half Mexican, half Swedish only child listening to a slue of random music that sometimes seemed to have a place in my life and sometimes didn't. My dad listened to the following: Tejano/Ranchero music out of New Mexico and Texas, traditional Mexican folk music, disco, 80's hits, country (early George Strait, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, Hank Williams Jr.) and what was then starting to become 'older country' (Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings). My mom, on the other hand, listened to Oldies (40's through 60's), what is now considered Classic Rock (Beatles, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, CCR, etc) and 70's & 80's hits.
While I was and still am heavily influenced by and enjoy all of these different genres of music, when I was a teenager, the last thing I was going to be associated with was anything that my parents listened to: their music was lame, the lyrics didn't speak to me, and I couldn't relate to words or the music. Instead I was deeply interested in and loved Hip Hop and Rap music. In middle school I was breakin' and jammim' to Hip Hop from MC Hammer, Slick Rick, 2 Live Crew, Outkast, Warren G, and Salt -N- Pepa. As I got 'older' and moved into high school, I got over Hip Hop and became obsessed with Gangsta Rap from rappers including The Wu Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, The Notorious B.I.G, Tupac, and The Big Tymers.
I was drawn to Hip Hop and Rap because not only was it 'cool' but the sound was one of a kind: the beat rattled my soul, the words penetrated my brain, and the bass stopped my heart. I prided myself on being able to know the words by heart and rap along to the song with my friends. It was fun and rebellious to give my birthday and Christmas money to my friend's older brother so that he could buy me the explicit lyric Rap CDs that my parents forbid me to buy and listen to (they lived in a shoe box in the back of my closet). But given my background and upbringing, which was pretty 'white picket fence' in my opinion, I couldn't and didn't personally relate to the content of the music, but for some reason it moved and inspired me and I was addicted.
Whether the music was bumpin in my car, on my stereo in my room, or through my Discman's headphones into my ears and directly into my cerebral cortex, I could usually always hear the lyrics clearly and understand them, but this wasn't always the case: sometimes the beat was so sick that I was too distracted to hear what the rapper was saying or I only payed attention to certain verses in the song because they were catchy or were my favorite part of the song. Of course situations like this made having the lyrics convenient to consult to clear up ambiguity or to focus on parts of the song that didn't jump out.
But they also went above and beyond that purpose for me: they were poetry when read alone, they were a guide that allowed you to read along and listen closely to the music and experience it in a way different from just listening without them. I could hear the song and enjoy it and I could read the lyrics of the song and understand the message or get the meaning, but listening to the music and reading the lyrics simultaneously brought it all together and could elicit deeper feelings, understanding, and emotions, especially when done through headphones. The beat and melody transported me to another world and the words became more than words, they became truth.
Like other Hip Hop and Rap fans from my generation, I have lost interest and respect in the current direction that Hip Hop and Rap has taken in the modern industry. I yearn for raps and beats from 'back in the day' when there was something to be said, real messages to be delivered, and lyrics worth listening to. Although in my opinion the content/message of songs and the lyrics found in most mainstream music today isn't as poetic or deep as it used to be, having access to lyrics in any form is convenient and can be both enjoyable and meaningful for teenagers or anyone.
Sue wrote: "And yet, some things are very different than they were. I used to have to listen to a song over and over and over again to try and figure out what the lyrics were. There were endless debates: did he say “Rolled up like a deuce” or “Rolled up like a douche”? (How sophisticated we thought we were to be able to say that work without giggling…) Nowadays, the lyrics are there for you with a click if you want them. I’m not entirely sure why that seems important to me, but it does. I’d welcome others’ thoughts on whether this instant availability of the lyrics matters."
Personally, knowing that lyrics are instantly available (whether you actually use them or not) has been and is somewhat important to me: I'm a fan and frequenter of Lyrics on Demand. Because I came to exist when I did (1983) and started getting into music at a time (early 90's) when lyrics were made readily available in the booklets included in the cases of tapes and CDs (and now as .pdf files when you download an entire album through iTunes), I've never known a time when lyrics weren't at my finger tips and thus have always been able to access and use them in different ways. Before I explain how I use lyrics and why they were and continue to be important to me, I should mention that lyrics were usually available for music that was current and popular (on tapes and CDs) while I was going up, but not necessarily for music prior to the advent of the tape and CD, though not all tapes and CDs guaranteed the inclusion of lyrics. That didn't matter to me when I was a teenager because I didn't really care about music that wasn't popular during that time, but it became increasingly important as I grew older, gained more interest in older music, and wanted to engage with the lyrics more intimately.
I grew up in rural southern Colorado, a half Mexican, half Swedish only child listening to a slue of random music that sometimes seemed to have a place in my life and sometimes didn't. My dad listened to the following: Tejano/Ranchero music out of New Mexico and Texas, traditional Mexican folk music, disco, 80's hits, country (early George Strait, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, Hank Williams Jr.) and what was then starting to become 'older country' (Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings). My mom, on the other hand, listened to Oldies (40's through 60's), what is now considered Classic Rock (Beatles, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, CCR, etc) and 70's & 80's hits.
While I was and still am heavily influenced by and enjoy all of these different genres of music, when I was a teenager, the last thing I was going to be associated with was anything that my parents listened to: their music was lame, the lyrics didn't speak to me, and I couldn't relate to words or the music. Instead I was deeply interested in and loved Hip Hop and Rap music. In middle school I was breakin' and jammim' to Hip Hop from MC Hammer, Slick Rick, 2 Live Crew, Outkast, Warren G, and Salt -N- Pepa. As I got 'older' and moved into high school, I got over Hip Hop and became obsessed with Gangsta Rap from rappers including The Wu Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, The Notorious B.I.G, Tupac, and The Big Tymers.
I was drawn to Hip Hop and Rap because not only was it 'cool' but the sound was one of a kind: the beat rattled my soul, the words penetrated my brain, and the bass stopped my heart. I prided myself on being able to know the words by heart and rap along to the song with my friends. It was fun and rebellious to give my birthday and Christmas money to my friend's older brother so that he could buy me the explicit lyric Rap CDs that my parents forbid me to buy and listen to (they lived in a shoe box in the back of my closet). But given my background and upbringing, which was pretty 'white picket fence' in my opinion, I couldn't and didn't personally relate to the content of the music, but for some reason it moved and inspired me and I was addicted.
Whether the music was bumpin in my car, on my stereo in my room, or through my Discman's headphones into my ears and directly into my cerebral cortex, I could usually always hear the lyrics clearly and understand them, but this wasn't always the case: sometimes the beat was so sick that I was too distracted to hear what the rapper was saying or I only payed attention to certain verses in the song because they were catchy or were my favorite part of the song. Of course situations like this made having the lyrics convenient to consult to clear up ambiguity or to focus on parts of the song that didn't jump out.
But they also went above and beyond that purpose for me: they were poetry when read alone, they were a guide that allowed you to read along and listen closely to the music and experience it in a way different from just listening without them. I could hear the song and enjoy it and I could read the lyrics of the song and understand the message or get the meaning, but listening to the music and reading the lyrics simultaneously brought it all together and could elicit deeper feelings, understanding, and emotions, especially when done through headphones. The beat and melody transported me to another world and the words became more than words, they became truth.
Like other Hip Hop and Rap fans from my generation, I have lost interest and respect in the current direction that Hip Hop and Rap has taken in the modern industry. I yearn for raps and beats from 'back in the day' when there was something to be said, real messages to be delivered, and lyrics worth listening to. Although in my opinion the content/message of songs and the lyrics found in most mainstream music today isn't as poetic or deep as it used to be, having access to lyrics in any form is convenient and can be both enjoyable and meaningful for teenagers or anyone.
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