"ROCK MUSIC AND RAP MUSIC IS SUPPOSED TO DESTROY THE MIND"

An idea believed by many people is that music has a significant effect on the way people think. Professional psychologists say that the lyrics used in music today has a brain washing effect. This brain washing effect is supposed to make the listener become so overwhelmed with the lyrics of the song, that the person feels that they have to act on what was heard. Act on what they heard means, that they do what the music tells them to do. Whether whatever they do is accepted or not, the music did not cause this to occur.

When we hear about this effect music has, we immediately think of negative effects. It is common to believe that the type of music that provides unacceptable content is rap (hip-hop) music, or rock-n-roll (head-banger) music. The reason people have this presumption is rap and rock-n-roll both have a reputations of having or using inappropriate lyrics. With both types of music you tend to hear profanity, artists who degrade women, and talk negatively about other people. When people listen to either type of music over a period of time, they are supposed to have the feeling that they need to do what these inappropriate lyrics say or do. Saying music has the power to control human beings is rather extreme. That is like saying that we humans have no responsibility for our actions.

It is understandable that some people are foul, and, they do foul things. Using rap music and rock music as a scapegoat is not right. When we do listen to either rap or rock music, we hear lyrics that are unpleasant to hear, for some people. Usually the artists are speaking about things that happened to them or about things that they are directly involved with. More often than not, they are not trying to advocate such action. They are trying to stop what they are speaking about or make it known to listeners, to what is actually happening where they live or where they are from. All in all, the message that the artists are trying to portray is more positive than negative.

Music, in actuality, is a form of expression. Artists today are expressing themselves just as they did in the days when people didn't say that music destroys the mind. It just so happens that today, there is more people that take offense to certain types of music, and this has become an issue. Rappers and head-bangers are rapping and head-banging as if they were blue singers singing the blues.

Someone should construct a survey, musicians and non-musicians. Ask both groups the same question, "Does rap music and rock music destroy the brain?" The majority of the people who would answer the question affirmative would be non-musicians. Reason being, musicians tend to accept all music as music and nothing more. Non-musicians will tend to believe that music does kill the brain because they don't have the same outlook on music. If we all looked at music in that way, we would not have this problem.