Music Censorship Needs To Be Stopped

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Music Censorship Needs to be Stopped
“Censorship is based on fear.” Johnny Clegg, a South African musician and songwriter said this in an interview about his music (What). Music censorship has been around since music has been mass produced (Volz 16). Censorship is wrong for a number of reasons. People who are for censorship typically don’t know what censoring is, or why they ban some forms of music. There have also been many songs banned in the history of music that are now seen as no longer offensive. Censorship has also been a big topic in times of national disaster, the most recent example was September 11, 2001. Music is a free expression of the ideas, emotions, and views of individuals and of people, because of this, music censorship is a violation of human rights. Despite government attempts to ban certain types of music, under no circumstances should lawmakers dictate what we can and cannot listen to.
You may be wondering to yourself, why is music censored? Throughout history, reasons for censorship has come, and gone. The issues that are most typically faced in today’s world are sex, violence, drugs, and political reasons. Many songs have been banned for sexual content. Songs like Prince’s “Purple Rain” for having reference to masturbation (Nuzum NPR). This issue arose in 1985 when Tipper Gore and others formed the Parents Music Research Center (PMRC) where she accused all rock musicians of being devil worshippers, mass fornicators and advocates of suicide, and public and promiscuous sex, although research shows that there is more sexual, and drug references in R&B and rap (Nuzum NPR). The sixties and seventies influential band, Velvet Underground’s debut album (mid 1966) was delayed for nine months due to drug and sexual content. Up to this point, other artists were forced to alter their music to get the album to be mass produced by a record label, but in 1967, Velvet Underground released their...