Entering The Post-Modern Era Essay, Research Paper

How does a people determine that a movement to a new era has occurred? Although there was no newspaper headline announcing the beginning of postmodernism, it is very evident that American culture took a turn in the 1960’s, and, as always, the arts began to reflect the changes in our culture.

The amount of information easily available to us has risen exponentially in the past few decades. Postmodernism has grown out of the amount of useless knowledge that everyday people now possess because of the high speed access of information through internet, TV, and many other sources. Mixing rock, rap, and romantic styles of music seems as silly as the need to know anything one could find on almost half of internet sites. Of course, most information found in modern mediums is relevant, but the speed at which you can access it as compared to a hundred years ago clearly depicts a new era of culture. With a new era in culture, one will definately find a new era in the arts.

Genre mixing is a product of high-speed information access. It is very easy to sample new and different styles of music than it ever was before, forcing musicians to be influenced by diverse types of music. If a rock band

listened to both BB King and the Sex Pistols, one will most probably hear both blues and punk influences in their music. So, it is easy to understand that easy access to wide selections of musical styles forces composers to mix genres of music when creating new music.