http://www.thedailybrad.com/music-sales/
Few Of Us Get Exposed To Different Types Of Music As We Used To When Tunes Were Not Cut, Diced And Aimed At Particular Market Segments.
CHICAGO As I scrolled thru my Twitter timeline last Sunday night, the MTV Video Music Awards-related tweets gave me that gloomy twinge some people get when they realize they are growing older and are no longer in touch with young people's passions.
I haven't watched a music award show in decades and, though Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Katy Perry are familiar from the magazine covers I see at the food shop checkout, their music hasn't reached, not to mention touched, me.
I miss how music used to be more of a communal experience. Today electronic jukeboxes like iTunes, niche of list of radio stations, satellite and streaming Web radio let everyone listen only to whatever music they prefer. Few of us get exposed to differing types of music as we used to when tunes were not sliced, diced and aimed at particular market segments.
Remember when it appeared as if everyone listened to Casey Kasem's Top forty? Today Poster advertisement has so many chartsradio songs, digital songs and ring tones, plus twenty-nine different genres like rock, classical, "Latin," and "kids"I don't know where to begin.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I am a sap for a period when "popular" music, aka pop, suggested delicate societal shifts.
For example, look back to 1984 when huge audiences tuned into the two yearly music award shows and Michael Jackson was winning 1 or 2 VMAs and Grammys for "Thriller." His hit performances at those shows exposed millions to a new breakthrough by a successful and proficient black artist. It was the start of a fledgling shoot for black parity in mainstream entertainment that started picking up steam later that year when "The Cosby Show" started its eight-season run on NBC.
For me, 1985 was the vital musical year. I used to be a world-weary 10-year-old who pushed the car's radio dial to alternative stations that played punk, attempted my best to dress like Madonna, and was totally intolerant of my parents' Spanish-language music.
Their salsa, cumbia, merengue and mariachi corridos consistently filled up the house and accompanied every big family get-together. It was music that I felt required complicated dance moves that I would not have dreamed of attempting, was surely not "cool" and, to my adolescent mind, definitely not American.
And then in October the Miami Sound Machine zoomed up the Poster advertisement Hot 100 with "Conga," which became the 1st single to be concurrently included on Billboard's pop, Latin, soul, and dance charts.
Epiphany time : the trumpet-cowbell-hot-piano-timbale combo was stimulating, not just to me but to people, most importantly my classmates and the people listening to English-language radio.
I will never forget the look on my parents' faces the first time they heard me blaring "Conga" on my boombox. "What are you listening to?" my mother asked, surprised. She called my father over to witness the miracle of my embrace of a musical style I Had previously refused. They really beamed with joy.
I shrugged it off, but conventional audiences happily doing the "Conga" made me embrace a part of my culture that I'd never truly given any thought to. Back then, at least in Chicago, nobody was going around making a fuss about who was Latino or Hispanic. I believed of myself as simply American.
The idolization of "Conga" was like a Michael Jackson moment for me and other Hispanics. The song's recognition laid the groundwork for an even wider audience's embrace of Los Lobos' version of "La Bamba," from the film about Ritchie Valens. Many radio stations played the song, with its folkloric guitar outro, in its entirety.
Those were heady days leading up to Ronald Reagan signing the not-particularly-contentious Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Salsa was on its way to becoming as preferred a seasoning as ketchup. Who would have imagined that a quarter of a century later folks would be truly worried about America losing its actual soul to Latino culture.
Today calls for a new song to remind folks that Hispanic and main line cultures can come together and be enjoyed equally by folks of all racesafter all, there are no census form race designations on the dance floor. Where are you, crossover star? And are you able to hit the Hot hundred in time for next year's MTV Video Music Awards? - as reported tagya.com.
30 Years of Music Sales
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