Music and Art: Bringing Nations Together

Music Bands: Bridging the Gap

There was a time when all music bands tended to stay in their home country, particularly those who were non-American. The impact of smaller, more alternative bands being able to present their music to the world has been huge! Suddenly, anyone can buy a cd of music from India, Russia, or Japan, without having to even travel to the country.

When music bands first began to cross borders, they usually did so with countries similar to their own. A West German band might play in East Germany, for example, or a Canadian band would do a tour in the US or England and vice versa. While still sharing, it was limited. Then came the international tours, where one band would perform in dozens of countries around the world and the music created a link between them all.

Now, you`ll find that singers, musicians and entire music bands are able to perform in nearly any country, no matter their origin. It`s a huge leap forward for a world that was once so full of racism and fear of other cultures. Now, cultures can share between themselves and are the richer for it. Cds, mp3s and other forms of music have spread this multicultural message around the world and people are discovering entirely new genres of music that they never even knew existed, yet hold a powerful message.

Borders are inconsequential when it comes to music. The internet has basically created a potential link between every single country in the world, but with language barriers, there are still issues to be faced when sharing information. That`s why music and anything artistic is so important. Watching a video on YouTube that is set to music, rather than words, conveys the same message to anyone who watches it, no matter where they might live or what language is their mother tongue. Music and art can reach everyone.

Art: Combining with Music

Artistic endeavors such as drawing, painting, sculpting and animation have always been methods of communicating between two people who had no language in common. Museums have known this for a long time and frequently present foreign art in their shows, creating interesting attractions and exposing entire countries to new talent and cultures.

However, while art and music are wonderful on their own, there’s nothing as powerful as the two combined. We’ve seen it time and time again, where art is set to music to create something that is so much more than either of the two parts.

In many cases, the music is what inspired the visual art. Many sculptors listen to music as they work, allowing the creativity of the compositions flow through them and into their sculpture. The same goes for painters, who often have a favorite music band that they listen to when working on a painting. It’s a powerful medium to work with and just listening to it can help artists create more incredible works of art. Then again, sometimes music and art simply flow together to tell a story, a tale that the world can enjoy without having to understand English, or French, or Russian, because music truly is a universal language and when combined with visual art, it provides a method of conveying your message, whatever it is, to the masses.

How We Use Music and Art

A huge number of people who use the Internet use it to view videos. That means the potential for creating a video that is pure art and music and having it seen around the world is huge. People love the combination and when there is no language barrier, that means the video will often be sent to friends and family around the globe, turning it into a viral message that passes over borders without fail.

While the Internet has made it very possible to share visual art and music with anyone, there are more mainstream methods, as well. Children`s choirs, for example, are one way that we have enjoyed musical art from other countries. It’s not uncommon for concerts and music videos from many countries to be played on one television channel. Even museums usually incorporate some form of background music into their cultural displays, making them that much more powerful. It’s impossible not to feel something as you gaze at Genghis Khan`s armor in a museum display and hear the same sort of music that he would have heard, or view a Hindu funeral pyre while listening to Indian music. It evokes an emotional response that makes what we are looking at that much more important and real to us.

This isn’t just true of things in a museum. You will find that emotional responses can be garnered even from more abstract images and music. It’s the combination that works to create a new feeling, to pass something from the creator of the piece to the listening viewer.

Whether mainstream or independent, music and visual art have spanned the globe and reached millions of people, bringing nations together under a love of all that is musical and artistic. It`s been a way to blend cultures and expose people to new ones and the combination of music and art has turned our world into a place that is much smaller and much friendlier than ever before in history.

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