Music

I see music as a powerful force in the everyday life of most of the people. Different types of music have different influence on people, some entertains them, make them move where other music mediates them and defines social and cultural experience. Over all, I consider music as one of the unique factors that unite people from all over the globe.

Music does not have a fixed meaning, for example: music composed and developed in Europe produce different meanings in the Middle East. In addition, music is not a static culture form, it changes with time, space and context. It evolves constantly in order to accommodate people’s tastes. Nowadays, there are many different types of music around the world such as: Rai, Hip Hop, Techno…and a lot more, each type of music has a loyal group of people who will always listen to it. That’s how music play an important role in the articulation and construction of people’s identity. For example: you can easily differentiate between people who listen to heavy metal and others who listen to classic music. Usually heavy metal fans are very open, mostly they are dressed in black untidy clothes and they have tattoos all over their bodies. On the other hand people who listen to classic music are more conservative and mostly they are wearing high class suits. Hence, music is not only something people listen to. It has a huge effect on the way they live and communicate with others.

Music has changed a lot in the Middle East. In the previous century Arabic music was classical ordinary music. It used to be full of emotions, love and crucial meanings. In the past, only people with great voices used to sing, however, today any one can pay for producing a video clip and sing and that’s how the art of the Arabic music was destroyed. These days, most of the Arabic music is meaningless.

Watching all the new worthless video clips will influence the people’s values and way of thinking. New Arabic music and clips are all about the sexual relation between men and women, and that has a negative effect on our cultural principles. What is shown on T.V doesn’t describe the real Arabic love and life. Arab musicians and singers are just copying things from the west, and that’s totally wrong because East will never become as West. So here is the problem, the new open music is confusing us because it is creating new life that doesn’t exist.

Still there is a high quality Arabic music and people can listen to it and enjoy it. I think people should be more carful in choosing what they watch and listen to because music has a great influence on peoples' behaviors

videoclips

Nowadays the effect of media cant be underestimated in our lives specially the youth. Media is the major source of knowledge for most of us. Even if we believe that the media cannot influence or change our beliefs or moral values it does strongly influence us. Most of us consider TV as the main source of entertainment, most youths nowadays are not interest or aware of what is happening in the world internationally, all of their interests are directed towards musical video clips, which is a really dangerous issue from my point of view. I even find it weird to relate the video clips that are present these days to the word music. All what it represents is provocative figures with really poor voices and with extremely sexual lyrics, that have no any meanings whatsoever. The musical channels claims that they are not having a planned agenda to brain wash the teens. However, they portray figures that are so different than their backgrounds and beliefs causing a huge gap in their lives and creating conflicts between the teens and their society. From my personal experience I don’t think I was not influenced deeply by the musical video clips and that goes back to the way I was raised, I criticize them the whole time and laugh often on them and get entertained also by them. But I cant deny the amount of the time that I wasted on watching those silly video clips. What I mean is that nowadays the youth is not ignorant or stupid and they can differentiate between the right and wrong but the greater influence is the amount of time that is wasted on these video clips that keeps our nations behind

Music Videos in Our Lives

Hey everyone,
Nowadays, no song succeeds without having a good music video. We are living in a world that is highly visually connected, and thus visuals matter in the success of any song. While we are viewing some decent, artistic and meaningful video clips, we are also subjected to a huge dose of indecent and improper videos that offend the conservative Arab societies. Many young so-called singers that are missing talent, and insisting on being in the music business, tend to make video clips that have sexual connotations that include dancing and wearing revealing clothes.
Although these video clips are subjected to great criticism, they remain to be produced and broadcasted, because they are targeting a large and critical portion of the society, which are the youth. Their aim is to affect the youth's thinking and change their interests, so that all they care about is songs and video clips and would have no political awareness, and thus could care less for their stolen land and shedded blood. They want the youth to be only concerned with videos and the latest styles and gossip and forget about the Arab's issues and cases. They are producing a generation that is careless and not ready to build their countries and defend their rights. I believe that decent music videos that meet the codes of our societies are most welcome, but we are not going to accept improper clips that are forced upon us to damage our youth.

Hello every one, music is an entertaining topic to talk about. I love music; I have a favourite song for each mood! I think music is inspiring, it sometimes makes us relax and other times makes us run! As for music clips, I can’t say I don’t watch them, because I do, but I only watch them when I am really exhausted to do any thing useful in my weekend, so my sister and I sit for T.V and make fun of all the silly dolls trying to show as much of their bodies as they can, ironically they are thinking it’s hot! Sometimes stupidity makes me laugh rather than just feel sorry.
Speaking about English or American video clips, I can say that their video clips has been liberal since sometime, I mean that it didn’t happen recently it happened long time ago when people decided that religion and traditions have to be separated from real life because its practical to do so, and also according to their methodology its accepted because each person is free to do whatever they want in countries of democracy, of course one thing led to another and western people, in my opinion, are going to end up appearing naked on T.V under the name of freedom, of course such acts are going to destroy essential meanings and values that are crucial for the wellbeing of a society ,however its still their thing .
The problem, in my opinion, lies in Arabic music clips, and specifically recent Arabic video clips, because obviously most of them are copying the western ones, as a result, you watch visuals that has absolutely nothing to do with the written lyrics! The video clips visuals are typically copying the western ideas of half naked people dancing around, and then comes the lyrics filled up with meaningless words put together, not because of the meaning, but only because they have the same sound, and finally music in the background, honestly it sounds like the one who wrote it doesn’t really know what he/she is talking about, and the ones who is singing it wants the world to know that they can dance!
Finally, I believe that every thing reaches a peak, then it goes no where but down, it’s life. So even if the phenomenon of -Thousand new video clips per second- is getting to be really increasing, I think it’s going to end after all, because it’s not normal. I have to say that there are exceptions and that we can still notice some good music clips, but rarely. Also I can’t criticize unless I totally stop watching these video clips because after all, they wouldn’t have gotten popular if it didn’t have it’s audience,even if they think negatively about them they are still audience. Hope that wasn’t too long!

Music Before and now

I believe that Music represents every age and its social and political life. For example, in 1970’s till 1980’s the songs are almost classic and the main theme was true love, faithfulness and fulfillment. Moreover, the main purpose of Music in that age was for the elevation of the soul and for entertainment. Video clips are rarely produced; people depend on radios to hear their favorite music. I remember that there was only one or two radio stations in each country and all the people listen to it. In addition, the songs were very preserved it doesn’t contradict with the Arab traditions and cultures that much. Parents were not afraid to let their children listen or see the Video clips. But today it is the opposite; I think it is because of globalization and the blind imitation from Arabs.
Arabs are tying to imitate the Western countries thinking that it is the best and it is more popular, but that’s wrong. For instance, Most of the stories in the video clips talks about a boy flirting a girl or the opposite. These clips pictures flirting as a positive way to get what the boy or the girl wants. Moreover, it pictures women as a tool for amusement and sex. Most of the songs today doesn’t represent the reality and the public life in the eastern countries; it always gives us a fake belief a bout life. Maybe it is because of war and the political system in the Arab world or maybe people are trying to escape from the tragedies and live in denial. But from my point of view, I think that the purpose of these Video clips and songs is the material profit and nothing else.

Music Videos

Music is something important and famous from long time ago. The effect of these videos depends on many factors. The videos effect may be different from on society to the other or from one person to the other. Our view and analysis of the video is the factor that determines the effect of this video on us. In fact, there are lots of video clips with different direction or meanings. We may see some Islamic video clips which ask us to go back to our values and religion. But these videos are not popular like the western videos. The western videos mostly have a sexual contact, which for our values and society may seem out of range. While for western people this thing may seem normal. But I think that these videos affected most of the young people in our Islamic societies. Now we all can see that young men and women dress like westerns. The relationships between men and women became a regular thing. In fact, even the Arabian video clips started to be like the western video clips. That almost music is not music anymore, it started depending on the beauty, dancing and acting parts. So no one can say that this has an effect on the whole society or no it depends on our personality, and the way we analyze things.

Music clips

I think I'm being very accurate about myself when I say: I don't watch music videos. The reason is first of all, I have a limited category of musics I like which is something that have deep context. Musics which have are almost as deep as poems. In a poem, lines are very small and highly meaningful which make them interesting. In a musics, lyrics usually repeat themselves and they don't go into depth. So, words repeat themselves not only in that particular song, but in lots of other songs.
Knowing this, I rarely listen to musics which are repetitive, how can I be watching them?! I can visualize what the singer says in his music. The video clip repeats what he is already singing it by showing them to me, which is very boring to me. I'll be interested if there are video clips which can offer something more than what is already said in the song. Otherwise I just don't watch video clips.

Video clips are highly influential on their audience. In general, people are not interested to change because if they look different in society among others, they will be pointed at and they will go under the spot light. However, changes will occur if it was started. Someone has to just start a change and others will be influenced by them. This is the part where mass media becomes effective. One of the requirements for a successful topic is that it has to be new. Thus, mass media is always looking for new issues to offer. Video clips are the starting point of something new in the society. When they show them, people get influenced by video clips and start following what video clips have started.
Unfortunately, we have a lack of judgment with the new things offered to us. We think it's fine to be adapted to anything new since someone is already doing it.

Music Videos and its influence

Nowadays, music videos are kind of the biggest influence on the youth and society as a whole. One thing for sure, is that it widened people's horizens and opened up their minds to things that were never acceptable before. For example, in the early 90's, very few Arab singers could dare and shoot a video like "Haifa Wehbi's" videos with temptations that goes to this extent. Today, people seem to accept, or atleast ignore it, with out dealing with it in an extreme way. On the other hand, I do not think music videos or even the music industry should target or influence the politics and society; music was made to be for pleasure and entertainment not to create a political party that contradicts with people's traditions and values. Afterall, we all want to enjoy a song with out anyone coming up to us and argue about it, music should be a voice for love and peace more than it should a voice of challenge and temptations; however, unfortunetly it does influence and it does create many problems in some places of the world, you can not deny the fact that many extremists deal with this as one of the main issues the Arab countries face, while in fact, we should turn our heads to much more important issues that affect our society in a more negative way than the music industry as whole does.

music videos

thsi is wissam hassan's post ,he still have some problems

Music videos nowadays became very popular; we can get access to them everywhere at any time. In the international perspective, most kind of music “ Hip Hop, Pop, Rock” started to become identical in terms of the subject or the theme. These music videos are directly connected to the teenager’s behaviors and have a great influence in terms of the following:
Advocate the abuse of the drugs and alcohol as a way to find to allocate the happiness as you can see in much hip-hop music with gives image a negative image to kids and teenagers.
The are many music videos such as death metals who imitates Satan therefore become his worshipers, there lyrics and videos focus on the physical abuse of one’s physical body and present suicide as “ a way to connect to the death world.”
Sex and physical attractiveness, which are very powerful method to confirm the idea of control, violence towards women especially to teenagers, is part of the popular art. Women became some sort of a toy that only speaks one language, which are sex, drink and partying.

In terms of the Arab world, to be honest, there is no difference between our music and the western music. They all promote for the same idea, love, sex and violence. We all agree about this when mentioning Maria, Haifa Wahbe, and the new Rageb style. Music videos became a money industry with all the new Music T.V. channels that are made to show video clips that are requested by people using text massages. For what I think, we have reached a low level of dignity and self-respect and our morals became part of the sand dirt that we step on.

Young adults, and teenagers are the main victims of this propaganda especially in the Arabic world. They got so exposed these videos clips that everyone wants to like as “cool” as Dana or as pretty as “Nancy Ajram”. Violence became the new childhood; our minds became so narrow that we start seeing those music signers as our role models. The music video industry has shifted towards a whole new approach; it brainstormed and took away the innocent of the youth.

Music Videos

For it seems to me Music is something that you listen to and this hearing stimuli our feelings and imagination; however, with the rising revolution of television Music became more of a visual communication means. When watching music videos one will notice that in most cases that the music aspect became secondary and the performance is the focal point. Music doesn’t have to be well played, the music industry doesn’t necessarily require singers to have a strong and powerful voice all you need is the looks, body and dare to expose your self as an object, a good if you might say so. Now one might assume that the target audiences for those music videos are the teenagers and young adults so the influence and effect will be mainly on this specific group but that is not the case.
If we take teenagers and young adults for example, they see those singers if we aught to call them that and they portray them as idols and role models. Imagine an entire generation having people like Christina, Britney, Haifa wahbi and jad shoairee. With almost no clothes on and provocative lyrics and outrageous behavior they brainwash our youth. Teenagers don’t want to only dress like them, talk like them, act like them they want to be them. This idolization can reach to extreme danger on the young generation where girls look at the bodies of those singers and construct this goal to have the same body and this leads in a lot of cases to anorexia and bulimia.
If we take adults, men for example start to fantasize about those unnatural plastic women that they see on those music videos some even reach to the point of forcing their wives to not only act and dress the same but to also physically transform with surgery to look slightly identical to those singers.
I believe the music industry brainwashes the society and lead it to hit rock bottom and to me there isn’t much of a difference between international and national for they have became almost the same. At least you don’t have to live with the idea that some of those national singers are Muslims and are representing Muslims in an outrageous repulsive manner.

Music Industry!!

Hi Everybody,
In my opinion, the Media and in particular the Music industry, actually sets trends, it subtly leads society but ironically follows it too.The ideas the media gets for the music videos is becuase of public demand and whats going on around them in the world most recently, but because these videos act like a catalyst in speeding up the reaction and spreading these trends, techinically it does "LEAD" the society.
Mostly young girls and boys start to get influenced by singers or dancers, starting to want to be just like them!

It definitely shapes and influences the cultural values, to a great extent. A lot of videos connote, political issues, indirectly. Others are just trying to attract more people to buy and view them. But an example of a video that shows something interesting is the video of 'PINK'S Stupid Girls'!! She sort of spoofs how other girls or singers (like Madonna) in the industry fake or overdo certain things. I liked that video. On the other hand, there are videos like, 'smack that' by Akon, or 'Love dont cost a thing' by J.Lo, that make people doubt their values. People start questioning themselves and wonder, is it right to dress like that? Can i do it too? Should i get so many piercings as well?, am i allowed to just strip, or take my shirt off on the beach!?
A hundred questions for a hundred million reasons, all planted by the music industry because of their videos and media popularity, in children, youngsters and adults heads.

There are a few videos with a political agenda, like i said 'Pink's Stupid girls' and then there are those, which just try to satifsy what people actually want to see now.
Also, not everything you see on T.V is real, most of it is illogical presmises or Fantasy. But people dont understand that. Especially music videos are very influential.

This is just something i think about it.
Thanks.

Music Videos

It would be completely ignorant of us to ignore the effects that music videos have on people's lives. We can pretend that they are not influential but that would be just plain stupid. Back home, I would sit and watch Rotana, Melody Hits, Nojoom TV,VH1, BET and MTV religously. I like to sit and compare the different genres to one another. When it comes to Arabic music, we usually see the same things over and over again. A lot of nudity and unnecessary erotic dance moves that never fail to offend the culture we live in. However, you can't deny how entertaining they could be, whether it's Nancy Ajram's journey to find her loved one, or Elissa/ Haifa Wahbe's new Pepsi ad, or even a random semi-naked woman dancing for an ex-partner. As meaningless as most Arab video musicals are, they are still undeniably entertaining!

When it comes to comparing the Arab media to the Western one, the differences exceed their similarities. In the West, they've got variety; different artists for different genres targetting different age groups. Sadly, in the Arab world, the targetted audience is always the same. The music may differ sometimes, but in this case it's the presence of various audiences and not numerous genres that float the boat. Another sad thing about the Arab media is their lack of originality and their love for trying to pass imitations of others' work and ideas as their own. Not only does it lack originality, its rarely ever rich in any kind of political gestures or influential icons. It's like they've got their priorities mixed up, they tend to focus on attaining audiences rather than the content of their work and the quality of their productions.

Music Videos

I'm really not someone who sits and watches music videos. I don't really see the point. Artists use their music to express whatever it is they want to express, and we as the audience perceive what we hear in our own different ways; I don't see why they should paint a literal scene on what it is they are trying to say. Nonetheless, music videos are booming and are very popular; and they're even recognized by famous award shows like the MTV Video Music Awards.

When speaking from an international perspective, popular artists like Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce, and Shakira come to mind. I am not a fan of such artists, but they are all well-known by international standards. Their videos focus more on sensuality, trying to make their videos more appealing to their targeted audience, and it works. Sex sells, and they know it (The Pussycat Dolls come to mind). These artists shouldn't really be called "artists"; they're more in the category of "performers" as all they really do is perform. I find these videos to be extremely pointless and shallow, and because they have a mass audience, they continually succeed in making the world shallower everyday.

On the other hand, you have artists like Green Day and U2 who take a more political approach with their music and videos. It's always nice to know that some people use the influence they have on a mass audience to send an actual message and to make a difference, rather than just flaunt themselves on our screens and make millions of dollars for nothing.

And although I said earlier that I am not a fan of music videos, you do come across some that are rather interesting. The punk/emo group Panic! At The Disco is a good example. Their music video for the song "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" won the Video of the Year award at the MTV Awards, and I must say it was well deserved. Their quirky style is different and appealing, and it's a refreshing change from all the mainstream videos we're bombarded with these days. I think being a bit more daring when producing a video grabs people's attention more nowadays.

As for a more national/local perspective, I'm really not familiar with Arabic artists and musicians. All I do know is that the Arabic videos I've seen so far just try to imitate their western predecessors, and the results are shameful and disgusting to view. Sometimes they're just hilarious. The sad thing is that they do have quite a strong influence on their Arabic audience. These "artists" (if you can really call them that) are widely known and loved. There are people who actually devote their time to send SMS messages to the TV channels that broadcast these music videos. These videos only aid in making our youth shallower everyday, and they divert us from things we should really be concerned about. I still haven't seen an Arabic music video that I thought was artistic, different, daring, interesting, or visually pleasing in any way.

I have come across an Islamic video that I liked though. I don't listen to Islamic "songs" or Anasheed, but a friend sent this to me, and I think it's well done. It's not the greatest piece or work, but it's appealing, and I think more of these should be done. I thought I'd share it with you guys as an end to this post http://youtube.com/watch?v=cHNxEqiorkw.

music videos

From what I’ve noticed so far the favorite theme of music videos is love – teenage love, fulfilled love, unhappy love, etc. No matter what is portrayed in these videos, love is usually the protruding topic. Invariably, music videos also deal with a lot of teenage issues (since usually teenagers happen to be their target audience) – party life, neglecting parents, problems of fitting-in with peers, family issues…
Although these are usually simplified to a certain extent, and at times also give a false image on reality.
This is where the cultural aspect of such videos can be debated. For example, Western music clips often show girls in excessively skimpy clothing. Now, if someone from a different cultural background is watching this, they might get a very negative impression and think, “These American girls are so indecent and easy”, etc. This kind of image will get permanently implanted in their minds.

However music videos are often also like a “dream-come true”, especially for those in developing countries. Let’s look at various Bollywood music clips as an example. They always show wealthy, well-dressed, happy and beautiful people, whereas the majority of India’s population is poor. However through watching such videos people get hope – they start to believe that their lives will also be as colorful and cheerful one day. I think that this is usually pretty positive, as hope gives people a new kind of existence. Without it, life would be meaningless.

Music Videos!

Many Arabic singers are doing the same thing as European an American ones with their video clips, words (mostly about love and relationships) dancing etc. unlike the traditional Arab singers that stand with their band and sing (Oum Kalthoom). Some, like Sami Yousef, sing more religious songs in English using Arabic phrases from the Quran which unlike other Arab singers/ songs are more traditional. His videos are still modern but more traditional in the sense that it shows people praying, the Mosque, kids etc., while others that show couples, more skin and a party environment. These types of videos influences my culture and values because as a Muslim I can relate and understand the message of the videos (such as those by Sami Yousef) and that helps me to remind myself of my origins and values as a Muslim.

On the other hand, the Arab music clips that re less traditional and more Westernized have a great leap from the Arabic and Islamic traditions and culture, having more emphasis on relationships and physical intimacy showing a false picture on these aspects of life to the youth unlike Sami Yousef’s videos that show for example, physical intimacy in the better light.

Moving on to the Western music videos. A majority of them are about relationships, their love problems or happiness (such as the R&B, Hip Hop and Rap genre) were many show more body and physical intimacy than others, which I personally think can/do direct attention from other things we could be doing instead! In my point of view, I don’t think many music videos have a political agenda, because many are shown in countries that are generally against what are shown in those videos. I feel that the music industry are just trying to satisfy the audiences wishes because people have different tastes and it is only fair to provide for each type. People want to see beautiful girls and good looking guys singing and dancing. People want to see a song about religion with a story being acted out in the music video to emphasis an aspect being viewed.

I agree that music videos can be a useful tool in increasing people awareness of their social problems with essential regard to the developing countries as a lot people watch music videos so they will view them sooner of later and they can teach people lessons such as those by Sami Yousef. Not all Western music videos are about relationships (depending on the genre). They show the lifestyles of African-American and poor people in slums which an influence the audiences actions and perspectives on society when they see what is actually going on through these videos.

Video musicals and you

There are so many successful music channels nowadays and they have us to thank for their success. The reason why is that music is a big part of everyone’s life today. Music controls the way we think, talk, act and the things we do everyday. For example, since rap music videos have become more and more popular I have seen a major increase in the way teenage boys dress, act and talk. They look exactly like the rappers in the videos. Another problem with music videos having a great effect on society is that (especially in Muslim countries) it makes things that would usually not be accepted in society, such as dancing in revealing clothes and unacceptable intimacy more acceptable, as children grow up watching these things on television and it becomes perfectly normal to them and as a result they lose touch with their culture and tradition.
Some artists use music to get people’s attention as that may be the only way, especially with the younger population. After the war in Iraq I have seen a major increase in the number music videos which contain a message or footage which makes people very emotional! So yes I do think that music videos can be used for a good cause, such as raising political awareness! Or music can also help people forget about problems they have to face at a certain stage in their life or bring more attention to it. For example, if a girl lives in a developing country and sees other girls from the west acting in a way that she would never be allowed to, this would definitely make her more aware of what she doesn’t have.
Regarding what I said about music affecting culture, I do not think that’s always the case as someone can enjoy a music video without it affecting their culture, of course depending on the strength of an individual’s personality. People should stick to what they believe in while at the same time enjoying other people’s way of living.
Finally, yes the music industry is there to provide entertainment, but also there are many other reasons, such as the enormous amount of profit music industries make and the publicity it gives the artist.
Sara Saddig 22463

video musicals and you

Does the media (music industry in this case) lead or follow society? Think of yourself all the blogging for this theme
This is our theme of the week. view as many as you can of the video musicals (international and national) come up with an opinion on how far do you think the music industry in its present shape does influence our cultural values? Consider this with special regard to youth, relationships and physical intimacy.
other factor can be considered which is youth and political awarness and political participation. some peopel argue that entertaiment always have a political effect in the sense of its ability to direct our attention and interests. Would you agree that they have a political agenda?
Other peopel on the other hand argue that they in the music industry are trying to satisfy the audiences needs and wishes.
Do you agree that the music industry can be a useful tool in increasing people's awareness of their social problems, with especial regard to the developing countries? How?

The big infulance of nowadyes music & video clips

Hi every one this is (Nora Khalid) opinion about these them which is excellent issue to talk about it:
The music industry opened up a new front in the war. As I see it nowadays they are many kinds of music and video clips all of them are the same they don’t have some thing new, or even some thing we can learn superior thing from it as we see the singer she lay on the bed, crying and some times kill her those thing I feel it effect our relationship and don’t have any item to help out people to have or to improve their relation ships ,moreover, we see most of the Arab singer naked or wearing shame clothes trying to make it similar to the Europeans video clips which reflect a terrible image about Arab in the western world because they are Muslims and all these act not acceptable in our religion . In my opinion these kinds of music and video clips doesn't help us in any whey of learning it led people to learn so many bad thing because most of the video clips were show off . In my opinion it has a huge influence in our culture specially the teenagers because it affect their manners a lot because it give them ,or it shape their thoughts in specific circle it doesn't help them to create or to think in a proper way it led them to feel life is misery and every thing around them are black and sad because they don’t have especial issue to inform or lead them to learn from, or at lest to remember a positive thing about it since most of the video clips were similar if we watch it we can't spirited from each other that’s why we should do some thing to improve our music and video clips to not give the