It is..

... interesting to see that newspapers such as the Telegraph finds it necessary to explain the word 'emo' for its readers. I take it as a strong indication that society is still far from understanding the genre and its followers sufficiently.

"What is 'emo'?

Emo, which stands for "emotional, is a youth movement based around dark music, dark clothing and a dark view of the world. (...) . While most fans simply enjoy the music and dress, others take their fascination to a sinister level.
They indulge in self-harming and become obsessed with death and suicide."

If you would like to read the full article describing the suicide of 13 year old Hannah Bonds which I blogged about earlier this week, please see Popular schoolgirl dies in 'emo sucide cult'

Think critically, listen carefully and watch out.

According to a newly issued report from The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 'teenagers listen to an average of nearly 2.5 hours of music per day' (Parker, 2008). Now knowing what they may be listening to, it is important to understand how we can help fight hatred and lower such horrid suicides as the ones mentioned earlier on the blog this week.

While emo and murder music may in itself be harmless as they are merely tunes being played, people should pay close attention to their surroundings and look for indications that friends and family are not changing their behaviour, or even getting signs of depression from listening to especially emo music.

As stated by M.D., Vincent Iannelli, author and writer on About.com:Pediatrics it is important to distinguish between adult and teenage symptoms. Where older people tend to outward their aggression, it is often seen that children and teenagers become more silent and moody - often also easily irritable.
Iannelli composed a list of symptoms one should look out for when watching media exposed teenagers:

• Persistent sad or irritable mood
• Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed
• Significant change in appetite or body weight
• Difficulty sleeping or oversleeping
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation
• Loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt
• Difficulty concentrating
• Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide (Iannelli, 2004)

The lack of attention could possibly affect schoolgrades and especially parents should regularly keep an eye on their childrens hobbies and interests. Furthermore it should be mentioned that while children recover quicker than adults from depressions, the risk of recurring depressions is very likely.

But people can do more than just monitoring their surroundings. Being an active part of an organization focused on fighting the hatred of murder music is also an option. With a little research most local organizations can be found, otherwise there is the Egale community located in Canada, but also working across borders to put a pressure on governments to ban murder music completely. Private people can also make a clear statement by openly not tolerating and going to concerts of well known murder-inspired musicians as Buju Banton, Sizzla and Elephant Man. Spreading the message that lyrics such as the following are simply not acceptable:

Buju Banton:

"Oral sexer, lesbian and queer must be assassinated
I am going to shoot you in the head, you are going to meet up with my big gun
shoot queers, my big gun goes boom" (Brown-Martin, 2004)

While it is close to impossible to ban emo music in the same way as murder music, everyone should be encouraged to think critically about what they hear, and what they expose other people to. Is self-pity, self-harm or even suicide values we want promoted as good things in our society? If not, let your voice be heard and show the world that life is worth living, and we should all be able to live here no matter of sexuality, ethnicity or religion.

If you would like to read more about symptoms of depression (whether caused by music or something else) please visit the Teen Depression Research Study issued by About.com.
____________
Brown-Martin, Graham. Murder Music. Ammocity.com. Sep. 10 2004. http://www.ammocity.com/artman/publish/article_195.shtml

Iannelli, M.D., Vincent. Symptoms of Depression in Children and Teens. About.com: Pediatrics. Feb. 11 2004, http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/mentalhealth/a/depression_stdy_2.htm

Parker, Tara. Under the Influence of... Music?, NYtimes. Feb. 5 2008, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/under-the-influence-ofmusic/

Emo: Teenage suicide.

DailyMail (UK) reported in May 09 2008 and again in Jun. 11 2008 that yet again, some teenager had committed suicide while belonging to the sub emo-culture.

These are just two examples out of plenty which have been given media attention over the past few years.

Both articles mention that being 'emo' was a big part of each teenagers life. The girl started cutting herself in early puperty, and told her parents that it was an initiation into the Emo fashion.
The boy however, was a well-functioning young man with a quiet schoollife and his parents had no idea of this obsession with the emo genre.

Why each of them decided to end their life can be found in the original articles, I think they're quite self-explationary but also a big warning that something is sincerely wrong when teenagers find that music encourages them to commit suicide to get to a better world.

Boy, 13, hanged himself (DailyMail.co.uk Jun. 11 2008)

Girl, 13 hangs herself (DailyMail.co.uk May 09 2008)

Hate Crime: 15 year old boy killed.

To illustrate the importance of banning murder music and everything that promotes hatred, I would like to direct your attention to an article released in February 2008 in the NYtimes.

A young boy, age fifteen, was shot and killed by a fellow classmate for being gay. Now, while it may seem a bit far off to conclude murder music was the direct cause of this tragedy, I would like to quote executive director of the Transgender Law Center Masen Davis for his statement:

"The gunman is as much a victim as Lawrence [the shot boy]. He’s a victim of homophobia and hate" (Cathcart, 2008).

It is this homophobia and hatred murder music connotes and the slaughtering of Lawrence simply proves that we live in a world where we certainly do not need any more of this discriminating music. Furthermore, Ellen Degeneres, a famous talkshow hostess briefly touches the incident in her primetime television show.

If you want to read more about Lawrence, about the incident and how trial went. Please follow the link to NYtimes own website for the original article.

For further research

If you would like to dig further into this topic, I can only recommend you to go visit these pages:

Emo links:

Allmusic.com
- This very short article describes the origin of the emotional music as we know it today. It's cluttered with good hyperlinks to alternative websites that can be used for further investigation.

EmoWiki
- While probably going to kill me for linking so blatantly to a wikipediapage, I must say this one is actually rather good for a swift, in-depth overview. Dont let the wiki scare you off! This site is well-cited and covering a fair few issues regarding emo's!

Murder music links:

Ammocity
- While I know I've linked to this specific site quite a few times, I can only encourage everyone to go and have a read. Not only does it come with a translation of the often foreign language used in murder music, but it also suggests plenty of additional websites to visit and various articles in the bottom of the page.

Egale
- This organization focuses on banning murder music and frequently posts about their demonstrations. If you want to read about their work and how to become an active supporter, please visit this site.

StopMurder Music (Canada)
- This small document lists the ideas and visions behind the organization StopMurder Music (Canada) and describes the causes and effects of allowing murder musicians to perform in your country.

Music links:

NYtimes
- Whether we want it or not, we have to realize how much music actually affects us, and this article covers the very basics and is easily understandable.

ACT
- Associated Counselors and Therapists not only describes how music affects us, but also comes with a nice little list of issues connected to young people and media.

Murder music

WhoWhat&Why?
- Murder music

Murder music is quite unknown to a lot of people - and thank God for that. Mostly because it has been rightfully banned in plenty of countries, but also because it happens relatively underground. Yet, musicians promoting this kind of murder-hatred still appear on various stages around the world, and this is why I would like to highlight the issues with specifically murder music.

In contrast to emo music, murder music is not about YOU. Its about OTHERS. Essentially your hatred to another race, sexuality or religion. And as the name suggests, yes, violence is suggested as a mean of 'getting rid of' your enemies.

Some of the most (in)famous artists of the murder music genre include Sizzla, Buju Banton and Elephant Man. Each and every one of them have been critized by several LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual) groups for allegedly inciting murder through their lyrics.

The issue of homophobic lyrics by certain reggae artists have been hotly debated in the media through the last couple of years. Multiple anti-groups have been established and fighting for the rights of the genres victims, yet across the world, plenty of concerthalls still accept musicians who have a reputation of belonging to the murder-genre.

Most recently the artist Buju Banton have been showing interest in touring Canada with his latest album. Both Egale and Stop Murder Music-organizations have been trying to force the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to deny his entry without success.

Akim Larcher, spokesperson for Stop Murder Music (Canada) expressed his concern on GBMNews when he said: “Buju Banton has continued to perform ‘murder music’ whilst on tour in the Caribbean and has recently said that gays and lesbians are part of social decay" (Hound, 2008)

Banton's probably most popular song is called Boom Bye Bye and is a good example of how murder music works:

(Two man) Hitch up on an rub up on
An lay down inna bed
Hug up on another
Anna feel up leg
Send fi di matic an
Di Uzi instead
Shoot dem no come if we shot dem--

(Its like) Boom bye bye
Inna batty bwoy head
Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man
Dem haffi dead
Boom bye bye
Inna batty bwoy head
Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man
Dem haffi dead (Buju Banton - Boom Bye Bye)

______

Hound, News. "Murder Music" artist back in Canada, GBMNews.com. Sept. 10 2008, http://www.gbmnews.com/articles/3819/1/aMurder-Musicquot-artist-back-in-Canada/Page1.html.

Emo music

WhoWhat&Why?
- Emo music

So you've heard the term "God, that is so emo" before, but do not know what it actually means?

Emo is a subtraction of the word Emotional which is used to describe a very specific kind of music originating from punk genres in late '90s.
Bands such as Husker Du, Embrace and Rites Of Spring felt that their music was becoming less and less personal, and wanted to protest against the growing antagonism and violence in the hardcore scene by writing songs that were confessional and - yes - emotional (Bastow, 2005).

Boiled down to the essence of the emotional music it is you the listener, the musician, the artist or whomever is paying attention who's placed in the middle and given attention. The sort of "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I'll go and eat worms"-kind of attention.

Emo music have become more and more popular in the later years. Some of today's hottest bands have strong emotional tendencies and thousands - if not millions of fans across the globe. My Chemical Romance and Simple Plan are probably the widest known at the moment, but more and more emo bands have been making a succesfull career over the past years.

So, what is so bad about emotional music? - Let people listen to what they want!

Well, sure, I agree with you there. But erh, have you really listened to some of those lyrics? Seen the images and videos of young people attempting to re-act their favourite emo song? No? Well have a look:

'Stop my breathing and slit my throat, I must be an Emo.
I don't jump around when I go to shows, I must be an Emo.
Dye in my hair and polish on my toes, I must be an Emo. I play guitar and write suicide notes, I must be an Emo.' (Adam And Andrew and their song Dear Diary)

Now yes, I would agree that emo music is harmless if it was not for the thousands of clips, lyrics and pictures you can find around the net documenting several (especially teenagers) whom have taken this genre as an entire lifestyle, cutting themselves, excluding themselves from a social life and from ever being 'happy' in its full sense.

In the coming days I'll be looking through the pile of articles regarding teenage suicides, all connected to this kind of music.

___

Bastow, Clem. 'Emotional Rescue', theage.com.au, Dec. 16, 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/music/emotional-rescue/2005/12/15/1134500941604.html.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, Emosic!

Having noticed the increasing amount of news about children and young people who're often accused of being directly influenced by their favourite music genres, I decided to shed some light on how exactly music can affect people - specifically teenagers within the 14-18 age frame.
Moreover, I would like to discuss and analyse the usage of two specific genres; murder- and emotional music (Emo music) as both of them are frequently used in the debate as to whether or not music enforces certain opinions on people.

In my fieldwork and for the discussionpart of the project, I will mostly be focusing on recent newscoverages of teenagesuicides and hatecrimes in which music have been more of less involved as cause of the behaviour.

Finally I will be reading and reviewing lyrics, musicvideos and attitudes of a handful of bands connected to the two genres.

I hope you'll enjoy your stay. Feel free to add, comment, link or alike to the blog. Feedback is very much appreciated.