Youth Subcultures

Are subcultures influnced by music? Sarah Thronton believes subcultural capital to the social standing of young people while being 'in' with the in crowd has long been a part of the process of declaring our musical allegiances. This sugguesting that subculture is something that youth may follow so they can state their choice of music with others like themselves, yet still being a rebal and different to a majority. Subculture is a group of people with the same set of beliefs, behaviours and way of thinking, which differentiates them from other people and a larger culture of the area they live in. Subculture is often associated with the symbolism attached through clothing, music and other visible objects the members choice to represent their culture. Today, it is easy to identify subcultures because their style particularly clothing and choice of music may often be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes, as businesses will often try to capitalize on the subcultures idea of cool. For example Grungers and 'Hoodies and Baggy jeans', Goths and 'Leather and anything black', Punks with their 'Hair Dye and colourful clothing'. Yet when businesses start to capitalise on products associated with a certain subculture it sometimes results in the subculture dying and as its members adopt new styles which its yet known to mainstream. Music based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process, so what may be considered a subculture at one stage such as jazz, goth, punk, hip hop and rave cultures begin to represent mainstream taste for a short amount of time until ther next 'craze'. Grungers with Rock music, Goths with Metal, Indies listening to Indie music, Chavs listening to House and RnB. And the lastest being Emos which are associated with depressive rock or chessy pop rock. The list could go on. I believe subcultures could exist without music, yet they wouldnt be as powerful. Music is a voice and way of expression. People in subcultures listen to a certain type of music because they feel it is something they all relate to. Without it, they maybe relate to one another in the same way, yet it doesnt mean they wouldnt find another form or relating to people who share the same nature.