Anti-Censorship essays

Anti-Censorship essays Its a hot summer day and you are bored to death. Suddenly you see a friend pull-up in front of your house and gesture for you to come and listen to his new C.D. Eagerly you rush to his window hoping to here the sweet melody of Snoop Dogg and the Dogg Pound, or 2Pac with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony but as the melodious sound continues the rhythm is suddenly distorted and the words made unrecognizable. He/she turns to you and says that they had to get the edited version of the C.D. because the store wouldnt allow them to buy the original C.D. because it had a PARENTAL ADVISORY: Explicit Lyrics label on it. Music censorship has been around - in one form or another - since music became an organized art form. In Western culture, it is only in the past hundred years that artists have had much autonomy at all. Most classical and popular music through the 1800's was created under a patronage system - where a rich benefactor or royalty would pay a composer to create musical works. Music was deliberately created to the tastes and interests of the patrons - if the patron did not enjoy a theme or style - the composer simply would not be able to create and perform the music as easily. One of the earliest examples of independent popular music being censored against its creators will was during the 1850's, when Giuseppe Verdi's opera "La Traviata" was altered several times because of "suggestive lyrics." The phrase, "He took the desired prize, in the arms of love," was a little too much for the citizens of Naples and Rome. In both cases the phrase was rewritten to a more appropriate verse. Most of what we know as music censorship started with the development and popularity of rock and roll in the early 1950s. Music is evolving very rapidly. The nature of communication through music is adapting in response to technological and societal changes. Modern issues "did not exist 200 years ago when the First Amendment was added to the Co...