Cleanin' Out My Closet

When I worked in the inner-city I found most kids listened to music that many adults would shake their head at and say "That's just so wrong". Typically, we'd try to get them to not listen to it and find something more "suitable" if you will, for their ears. Garbage in, garbage out, is the thinking.

However, I began to see that, like my own generation, music can also explain a great deal about what that kid is going through. Why are they attracted to that group or performer? What is it about the music that draws them into it? It might be the beat, it might be a guitar lick-it might be the lyrics.

In a recent article for Policy Review, Mary Eberstadt writes about the message that the music sends-and that we need to hear. She states

To put this perhaps unexpected point more broadly, during the same
years in which progressive-minded and politically correct adults have been
excoriating Ozzie and Harriet as an artifact of 1950s-style oppression, many
millions of American teenagers have enshrined a new generation of music idols
whose shared generational signature in song after song is to rage about what
not having had a nuclear family has done to them. This is quite a
fascinating puzzle of the times. The self-perceived emotional damage scrawled
large across contemporary music may not be statistically quantifiable, but it is
nonetheless among the most striking of all the unanticipated consequences of our
home-alone world.

It seems we'd all do well to listen a little closer.

Do you know what your kids listen to and why?
(thanks to Amy Welborn for the tip)