In this article when referring to many forms of popular music, what is meant to be implied is the music of the masses, the music of the crowd, the music of and for the people, in terms of what happens in everyday life around them, what goes on, and what they want to hear as a collective. It is not to be confused with the 'traditional' style of once popular folk music that we attribute to the culture of the landscapes of the world, and the indigenous peoples that inhabit them.
In the society we have inhabited since the beginning of the 1900's, and what is sure to continue for a prolonged, yet non-determinable period that is presently still spinning it's wheel, music as an outlet for entertainment and the arts has always left its mark on time periods and the people who lived through them, and whatever context it had, what it meant in the time it was composed and performed by it's authors, has a boundless influence that cannot be denied from historical perspective, whether in the mind of the analyst it serves as something that has worthy value, stood the test of time, or whether it remains just a simple fragment that was superficial, but nevertheless functioned as an important atom in the structural surroundings of the society that was inhabited by living people within that phase.
Amidst the tide of extensive globalisation, all of the geographical areas effected by the outcomes of colonial expansionism and the values of the Enlightenment have become more compact, tightened and dense. The distribution of population radically has began to tend towards the metropolis and the city, whilst the surrounding cultures that originally defined the character and artistic will of the lands, have become assimilated into a non-balanced collective, tending ever further towards materialist perspectives as the voice of finance makes itself clearer.
One of the most established organs of a cultural defination, that being music, has also changed amidst these circumstances. With all forms of integration and demographic change that have occured as a result of said happenings, the aural narratives that were the product of worldwide and historical cultures, have changed in a direction that is parellel to the rapid advancement of technology and urbanization. Often it is here that the terminology of what 'folk' music is can be misleading, whether it be the throat singing of shamanic rite, a hymn to dead ancestors or a verse of honor to old deities, as alternately, if we apply this terminology to the values embraced by many at this given era, that term could easily enough be considered tantamount to pleasing large collectives.
To epochs or micro-cycles that have little or no appreciation for the significance of ancient forms and modes that defined traditional musical styles, there is only appreciation for the events within those densities that will only act as but a brief statement to be chained within time's ongoing span. In a landscape where collectively it's inhabitants are for the most part devoid of an exaltation for their past, and in turn think only of the present moment yet care little for the future, the songs and music that define the ongoing age are crystallised as being legacies of sub-cultures that either fail to define or fully realise themselves.
Apart from a catalogue mass that serves only to please ears, shake bodies and define ignoble customs, there are forms and variants that have and do otherwise offer glimmers of transcendance, idealism and artistry, whilst fundamentally they are overlooked and ignored by a common majority whom more often than not never pursue what is beyond their own comfort.
In regard to the latter statement, it is indeed to an extent a matter of personal interpretation by those who dig and fathom for inner substance, rather than it be a God-given law of what is and what is not, though in most cases in dissent from the simple, purely rhytmic modes of modern popular music, or otherwise using manipulation of it's formulas so that an artistic outcome is the fruit of labour, rather than the base satisfaction of composer or listener.
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