Life without music can be boring!!!!
What do you think? I have heard and personally found out that music forms almost every part of our daily lives. Music can be many things, music can be a medicine for the soul, a motivation for the depressed, a cause of joy for the sad, a language for expressing feelings and many more. One more special thing to note about music is that it's for all, no age bounds or sex bounds.
One special age group is the youth. The youths are viewed as special in the community for many reasons first because it's the age group between childhood and “adulthood”. Once a child grows to become a youth, many things change in his life. The youths seek independence from those who used to pamper or watch over them and because of these seek for freedom, youths always get influenced by many things in their environment. I would love to deal with how music influences youths.
Talking about how music influences the life of youths, we also have to consider the type of songs which they listen to. Music is broad and every type of music often has a message to pass through the lyrics, music videos and instrumentals. For me, I feel three items make music: the song(the lyrics), the song video, and the instrumental.
Now let me break everything down.
THE SONG:
Certain music contains wordings that corrupt the mind. Such lyrics can motivate one to abuse drugs, and develop an uncontrollable urge for sex and others reading through or singing them can arouse a youth to think negative things and those influence the youth negatively.
There is also certain music that the wordings are so encouraging and can even make someone planning suicide change his mind. So how music influences the youths also depends on the type of music.
It's left for the youths to choose which song type they love listening to and how they want it to affect their lives.
THE VIDEO:
Certain music videos influence the youths badly and some positively. Just imagine watching music videos with certain forms of nude scenes, a normal human being must begin to develop that urge to practicalize something.
Many of the youths have their idol when it comes to the music industry. Just a few of the musicians in the music industry don't do drugs. Tell me how a youth can't be influenced by his idol who can't sing without having a “log” of marijuana in his mouth.
Some music videos where the artists overspeed sports cars can influence the youths badly but a music video where the artists visit the gym can make one take regular exercise seriously, this is just another instance.
This is what I've noticed, every song's lyrics and the following music video always try to align. So every song with negative lyrics will always have a kind of video that can corrupt a youth watching or listening to it.
INSTRUMENTAL:
Most song’s instrumentals are such that they can make someone move his head, and dance while some can make one sleep off. For me, I believe most of the youths love songs with instrumentals that can make one feel like dancing. Youths in my surroundings call such songs “Lively songs” and any other outside of such “Dull songs”.
Youths are known for being a strong and energetic group of people. Always looking for ways to expend energy, so music that can help them do so are those types I call the Lively songs. Such songs are rap, afrobeat, reggae, and lots more.
To conclude, I must say that how a youth wants music to influence him depends on his choice of music. Everyone has their choice of kinds of music to listen to, and such songs always have parts to play in their lives.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry for the #afro-inleo initiative #18.
Images are generated using AI.
To know more about the initiative: @afri-tunes/influence-of-music-on-the-youths-afriinleo-initiative-18-gq2