How Might Music Make a Positive Impact in Society?
The new genre public art is a type of art that is socially engaging, provides interaction for a diverse audience through mass media, education, and use of specific constituencies. The new genre deals with the profound issues of the artists’ time such as relationships between races, homelessness, and gang welfare. It uses both traditional and nontraditional methods to communicate and to interact with a broader audience. Lacy provides a way to differentiate this type of art from other types of art. Lacy discusses the structural models, and cultural pilgrimages and metaphorical journeys of the artists. Some of the examples of the new genre is the use of spray paint to communicate messages to the public.
Musicians can adopt these concepts by incorporating issues affecting the society in music and providing education about these issues through songs. Methods of demonstrating art in public places can be adopted in music through public displays of musical pieces. Some of the changes that would need to be adopted to create ‘new genre music,” would include using both traditional and nontraditional methods of passing the message in the songs, ensuring the music captured public interests, and focused on issues such as educating the society about things that matter to them.
Lacy’s concepts of the new genre public art can be compared to concepts discussed by Gaye Green about the use of the new genre public art for education about the toxicity of the world. Green referred to the toxicity of the environment as well as spirituality toxicity affecting people and how art can be used for sociological healing purposes. Lacy’s concepts can also be compared to those of Kevin Jesuino who identified new genre public art as that which challenges the ideologies of commissioned public art. It also changed the view of public art from expectations of sculpturing it to the demands of the public to hat the artist intends it to mean.