Popular Music Subcultures as Religion: A Comparative Analysis

This report explores the intersection of popular music subcultures and religion, examining how musical communities reflect religious themes and cultural identity. The analysis focuses on subcultures such as Grateful Dead, rave and electronic dance, rap and hip-hop, and heavy metal, drawing on research that includes interviews and observations. The report highlights the migration of religious elements into music, particularly in the context of the United States. The report analyzes the cultural impact of hip-hop and the pervasiveness of religious thought in music, with references to scholarly sources. The report identifies the religious aspects of music subcultures, including communal ceremonies, worldviews, and social cultures. The report discusses the role of music in expressing religious beliefs and the influence of technology on music consumption. The report provides a comprehensive overview of how music has evolved into a new arena for expressing religion.

Popular Music Subcultures as Religion

Reason of Sylvan believes
The Sylvan conducted research on four popular music subcultures, namely, grateful dead and
deadheads, rave and electronic dance, rap and hip-hop, and heavy metal and metal heads. The
research is conducting through personal interviews and observations outside the music events.
The Sylvan observes that the music has migrated from the religions which are determined by
analyzing the material to find out the nuances, dynamics, and contradictions of subcultures. The
religion is migrated to musical subcultures for example In America the religious is far diffused
throughout the culture and according to the traditional institutionalized religious belief and
practices the relation of religion has been done from the church to the nightclubs, music festivals,
streets, concert coliseums. The relocation to the nightclubs comprises of oscillation of secularists
weekly to the rite and rituals on the night function of Friday and Saturday.
Sylvan’s thesis
I totally agree with the Sylvan’s thesis related to the religiosity of popular music because
according to the research conducted by Sylvan includes communal ceremony, philosophy,
worldview, code of living, ritual activity, social culture, cultural identity, crucially and sense of
belonging. The popular culture has become a new arena for expressing the religion. The popular
culture is transmitted to the popular music such as electronic instrumentation, corporate
marketing, digital recordings, home stereo technology, and individual way of receiving the music
(Bates et al., 2016).

Argument
The rap and hip-hop are one of the popular forms of religion, and it is an important and telling
connection between the discourse of culture and religious thinking. It also reflects the symbolic
connection which extends into the realms of social culture and cultural identity of an individual.
The music of hip hop is considered as the telling sources of identity for the myriad of
individuals. The sub-genre of hip hop music is recognized as the violent rhetoric and crude. The
personal and social marginalization is identified from the gangsta rap (Lewis et al., 2016). The
community of hip hop is suffered economically and stress hope by religion. The pervasiveness of
religious thought is shown in the deep-rooted connections to the political, social, historical and
popular discourse of action.

References
Bates, J. B. (2016). Local Worship, Global Church: Popular Religion and the Liturgy. Anglican
Theological Review, 98(3), 567.
Lewis, J. R., & Tollefsen, I. B. (Eds.). (2016). The Oxford handbook of new religious
movements (Vol. 2). Oxford University Press.