The Social Effect of usic

The social effect of music is that it supplies a mechanism of common experience of the social structure and indeed may help shape that structure. Music can be interpreted as exerting social effect to the degree it is the core shared element that makes weak ties possible. The response to music is undoubtedly idiosyncratic in that music is the object of an individual's universe of values in the judgment or experience of what is right, beautiful, or good. This can be explained with reference to network structure, however, by way of the concept of structural holes, or "unlinked pairs" within a network. For example, while all members of a network may be linked by the same music, individual network members may be listeners to, or critics, performers, composers, marketers, and publishers of it. Because the relationship of members of the group to music may not be identical, the difference in the character

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roup identity, its emotional impact can be interpreted as limited to a specific population linked by ethnicity, subculture, or religion. As Cohen and Laor (1997) state, "[L]iterature and music, qua their mother tongues, carry with them group myths and rituals that serve as the foundations of social identity" (p. 10). Music shares with other cultural artifacts the ability to reach across or complicate socially constructed identities and function as something of a bridge between micro and macro sociology. For example, on the strength of its Western-canon symphonic repertoire, the Israeli Philharmonic, firmly grounded in the culture of the eastern Mediterranean, achieved world-class recording and touring status (Bohlman, 1989). Meanwhile, according to Cohen and Laor (1997, p. 14), Jewish traditional mystical/liturgical music, or nigun, is in danger of disappearing even from highly traditional Jewish communities because of lack of interest. Elsewhere, a film called The Darker Side of Black (1993) documents origins of American hip hop and rap culture in "Jamaican dance hall culture and reggae" (Grundmann, 1995, p. 29). Jamaican reggae and American hip hop also made a European connection: Whereas American hip hop has many funk influenc
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Approximate Word count = 1634
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)