Essay on Music and Authenticity

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NIMRA IKRAM
STUDENT ID: 11030390
ENGLISH PAPER# 2

1. This essay (http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/meredith-graves-perfect-pussy-talks-2/) discusses the issue of artist authenticity as it applies specifically to gender. Describe the rhetorical situation here. What are the different ideologies in conflict with one another? What are the dominant commonplaces of each?
Choose a representative of one of these relevant ideologies as your audience, and answer these questions: How important is authenticity in music today? Why? And to whom?

When we listen to popular music, some songs strike us as "real" and others as "fake." Since a number of years, the quest for authenticity, for the "real," has become a dominant factor in musical taste. Authenticity is a multifaceted concept that has a broad range of implications for people who play and people who listen to music. Everyone has a different notion of this concept of authenticity. Even those who agree that performance by the singer is one critical aspect of a truthful work, likely feel that there is something more that accounts for authenticity.

The given essay, written by Meredith Graves, discusses the issue of artist authenticity as it applies specifically to gender. The writer ponders upon the discrimination between male and female music artists and reflects upon how it is to be a female music artist, who usually faces a ridiculous amount of criticism over the course of her career with media having a double standard of viewing her persona in comparison to male artists.

Artists usually tend to have a total different persona and nature then the one they portray and make everyone believe in, but it usually is looked upon as an awful thing and something worthy of immense amount of disapproval as far as female artists are concerned. Music artists who aren’t exactly what they show people they are, do not only become the center of attention but also receive severe criticism and judgment. Unfortunately, it only happens when a female artist is suspected of not being herself. They evaluate and critically judge every female musician whether she is or not eligible to be questioned upon her authenticity as a performer while a male artist, no matter how fake he is or how much he pretends to be something that he is not or even if he confesses to be carrying an invented personality, is always looked upon as a figure of awe and success. Even after the cat is out of the bag and truth is revealed, male artists are never a target of negative commentary but when a female musician is in any way fake, she’s denied creative agency, written off as uninventive and talentless. Real women with fake names are somehow considered exponentially less authentic than completely fake men portraying a personality that they wish they had or that they invented with their creative minds just to be accepted and more liked by the media.
A lot of people talk about the authenticity of music but generally it doesn’t really affect the music itself. Every person and culture has its own version of music they consider "real." And I think everyone has their own definition of what makes a song "authentic." A lot of teenagers claim that authenticity isn't terribly important to them as enjoyment of music comes down to the pleasure they get from consuming sounds and there is no way of knowing whether someone is playing a part or really being themselves through their music, especially if they are listening to a song without having done any research on the singers background or life. As far as it sounds good to their ears, everything else doesn’t really matter. The only thing affected by unauthentic music is the singer itself. If someone is writing songs, passionately taking stances on issues that they don't really mean and a contrarian belief becomes known, it is possible that it could take some of the luster off. If a singer keeps on going about an issue that they really don’t care about, this would definitely result in
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