Reggae into the contemporary American society Essay

Reggae into the contemporary American society - Essay Example The culture of a particular community refers to the way of life of the community. It consists of the beliefs, traditions, and customs that are unique to a given community and the achievements that are associated with and valued by the community. It also entails the incorporation of ethical codes of conduct in coexisting with the others in the society. The culture of a community is actually, what portrays their human nature and distinguishes them from other animals in nature. It is thus of some value and the community has the responsibility of ensuring that it is preserved so that the due respect is accorded to it. Regardless of the culture from which and individual hails, the common point is that a desirable culture should provide an individual with a sense of identity and the individual should be able to understand the dynamic nature of the world and be able to adjust to the changes encountered. Folk culture refers to the natural way of life that is defined by an ideal culture in a given community. This culture emphasizes on the human values like honor and the principle of reasoning and a view that the natural setting should be valued and considered wholesome. The spirit of hard work, self-discipline, and excellence are some of the aims of a folk culture, and which have currently lost grounds in the majority of the modern culture. Others include individual responsibility and loyalty to the authority. There are various ways through which communities preserve their cultural heritage to uphold their identity. The traditional cultural preservations include some ritual practices, traditional folk dances, folk tales, and folk music (Jankee, 2). The themes of the folk songs pointed out the cultural values like brevity, loyalty, and hard work. They often contained information on peaceful coexistence among the individuals in a given society. These traditional folk cultural expressions developed into the modern expressions with some deviations. Much of the human values that were emphasized by the traditional folk songs are not stressed in the modern Western cultures. The modern culture happens not to view nature as it was viewed earlier and neither does it allow nature to take control of life as in the olden days. There has also emerged a relation between the cultural expressions and grass root developments especially in the developing nations. The development of folk cultural expression in the Modern American society The different cultural expressions that are witnessed in different parts of the world are all concerned with the issue of defining the identity of the community. The need to answer the questions â€Å"Who am I?†, â€Å"Where do I come from?† or â€Å"Where I am going to?† provides an insight to the earlier developments of the folk cultural expressions. The folk tales that were used were creative tales that had symbolic meaning that reflected on the values of a given cultural community. The developments of such fo lk tales often emerged when the community was faced with some difficult situations. As they pondered to develop a solution to problems, pictures and illusions of what would work best ran across the minds of the old legends. Continuous focus on these images helped develop a complete folk tale characterized by imagery (Kleymeyer, 25). The contents of nature were often used to describe certain characters that can be of help during difficulties. For instance, in must of the traditional folk tales, a hare was often portrayed as being weak but very intelligent (Kleymeyer, 25). It would always use its wits to influence the mightier animals in the jungle or to escape some danger. On the other hand, larger animals like elephants and hippopotamus were portrayed as having a lot of energy but not intelligent enough to realize the crafty nature of hare. The picture that was