I have an ear. Firmly fixed on both sides of my head. Ditto for the rest of the human species, and although their ears remain open for the better part of their natural lives, their ability to understand the basic niceties of life has always been suspect. Music has also been an essential part of that ear, and like most things human, its modern day applications have been far from satisfactory. It is possibly the only single thing that has the capacity to touch our entire range of emotions.

Music has been around ever since man learned to express his deeper emotions with shouts and screams and other discernible brouhahas with whatever he could lay his hands on. Anyone from the crudest barbarian to the sophisticated socialite has an inborn capacity to enjoy music. Over the centuries music has indeed evolved, but that development is both debatable and divisive.

Several cultures developed their own types of music, and as the awareness of the inhabitants of this planet expanded, the various forms of music began to mingle and intertwine. Music evolved over time, and eventually, the great composers such as Chopin, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Ravi Shankar came around and really showed how powerful music could be.

More time passed, music changed more. Eventually, we get to the present day, where the picture before us has come to represent nothing but a thinly veiled sales gimmick. If music tells a story about the time in which it was written, ours says some pretty startling things about this era.

Music now revolves around this concept of 'Pop.' Whatever is popular at the time falls into this category. Pop music isn't even real music. Most of the songs sung by pop stars are written by other people, if the songs are even sung by them at all. They are not musicians, they are simply scavengers and vultures out to take the hard earned money from an unsuspecting public, so their kids can listen to brain numbing noise all day, buy their merchandise and clothing lines, and waste their time wishing they could be something or someone which is really nothing more than a miniscule part of a continuous commercial break.

Pop wasn't always a bad thing. It used to just be a section containing the most popular albums of the time. Now the most popular albums sound like cats and dogs in the middle of a territorial and jurisdictional dispute. There are only two types of pop stars right now: boy bands and female pop singers.

The boy band phenomenon is the continuation of the "pretty boy" movement pioneered by George O'Dowd, otherwise commonly known as Boy George. The boy band phenomenon had males getting in touch with their emotions, and glorified the pretty boy image to sickening heights. Cliques and rabbles and gangs and other associations associated with adolescent insecurity started dressing and acting the same, to the point where it became virtually impossible to distinguish between a girl and a boy.

Spiked, messy hair, tattoos, piercing, and the all-pervasive colour blue. Machismo really takes a turn for the worse when boys-who-would-be-men in boy band land start wearing baby blue tracksuits, shoes, hair dye, become colour coordinated, wear colognes with fruity, citrus scents and balk at making important decisions. There are the occasional institutional problems when the best friend resembles the girl friend, or any girl, for that matter, but it's still cool to be different.

Then there is the issue of female pop stars, who find glory and fame not in their songs, but in trampy midriff shirts, tattoos and synchronized aerobics. The adoration of female singers appears to be something of a cyclical phenomenon. In the mid-nineteenth century, prima donnas were celebrated and revered in operas of the bel canto ("beautiful singing") style, which showcased their vocal abilities.

When the bel canto operas were revived in the mid-twentieth century, diva worship resurfaced. Now, the millennium has brought diva deification to popular music. Supplanting the original term from its classical roots, music video channels and record companies use the awesome star power of female pop divas to make obscene profits and no one really knows who's laughing hardest - the companies, the "stars" or the banks.

There are two other forms that stand out above the others in terms of sheer aptitude for exasperation: rap and punk. Rap is a horrible travesty to fall upon human civilization. First of all, it isn't truly music; it is an indecipherable form of violent rhyming poetry with background noise. Some people argue that it takes great skill to rhyme.

I fail to see the issue here. I can do it all the time. And so can most kindergarten kids. Most of these deriders are mindless lemmings that are influenced by everything and nothing in the same breath. Granted, it does take some skill to rhyme consistently and well, but these lyrics do nothing but degrade women, promote drug use and violence, and advocate other deplorable activities. These 'artists' are terrible in another sense; they acquire a legion of followers that love to emulate their lyrics, clothing, and actions. In addition, they perpetuate several racist stereotypes and stigmas.

The next genre of bad music is punk. If you emphasize noise and remove melody, rhythm and talent, you are pretty much left with the sound of today's punk bands. Punk is really nothing but a bunch of juvenile boys moaning about girlfriends cheating on them and past relationships gone sour. This is just the current generation's way of being rebellious. Every teenager and high schooler has to consider being a rebel, because if he isn't, he won't fit in with everyone else.

However, after a while he would undoubtedly notice that for every social action, there is an opposite reaction. He may begin to compare society with punk rock in its decadence and unfairly conclude that it will be only a matter of time before we have killed ourselves off through war, chemical poisons and radioactive waste, violence, and a lifestyle filled with stress.

There are two glaring problems that separate modern music from the past: no one plays their own instruments any more, and the lyrics are squalid. Guitar riffs are often stolen directly from other songs. The instruments are also not the focus as they should be; the focus is on venomous lyrics and other foul breath that spews forth from the mouth. That point may be arguable, but my contention for all of the above is that the main focus is not on the music at all, but rather on the image associated with the singers.

Back when great bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and others ruled supreme, musicians actually played their instruments, and played them outstandingly well. Songs usually had introductions that lasted more than twelve seconds, as well as musical interludes throughout the course of the song. Music had a mood back then, with each band having a distinct sound.

Now, too many bands sound the same. There is too much screaming, too much swearing. Most people shout and scream and swear a lot, but it never really sounds like music to the ears. Songs are sadly no longer about anything, and bands do not have distinct sounds any more. Most sound similar, and just scream at a microphone. One of the first observations might be that this era has lost whatever innocence previous times had.

In the quest for artistic expression and freedom, it would seem there are no more rules left to break, no more taboos. Many people find it difficult to tell the difference between some modern art and pornography. Does this mean that the human race has changed? Perhaps when we have completely forgotten our past, scrapped everything prior generations hold dear, when we reinvent everything from scratch each year, then we can honestly conclude that the human race is no longer what it was.

Popular music is suffering from a horrible sickness of the spirit. the idea is to shock through cruelty and obscenity. People don't classify music by sound anymore, but by sensibility and attitude. The real turning point was not the birth of rebellious rock or the sour angst of pessimistic generation X-ers, but when counterculture went sour, and popular music began attracting people who were less interested in music than in using such a powerful medium for culturally radical purposes.

We reap what we sow, and if we're filling our heads with garbage, what comes out is what you put in. The present music forms reflects a culture suffocating on its own waste. Specifically, all modern civilizations are predicated on an ethos of disposability, and it is inevitable that signs of trash should permeate music, lyrics, and the lives of musicians. Rock and roll is the dominant art form and thus the mirror of a throwaway society.

On the other side of the coin, there also seems to be some things that tie us together. Needs for food, shelter, love, rebellion, security, order, etc. can be found in all eras and civilizations. Love songs, hymns of praise for Nature and God have been sung since humankind first found its singing voice. In the quest for understanding comes a reach toward a higher power, along with a desire to satisfy earthy yearnings.

Maybe what is in our hearts has not changed that much at all.