by Lynne Conte

Created on: June 19, 2007   Last Updated: December 27, 2007

The importance of music in our lives

The importance of music in our lives are through its melodies, tunes, lyrics and voices of the musicians recording or performing. Instruments along with unique voices make a musical composition that people can relate to.

Many pianos established the Tin Pan Alley in New York City around 1885 on the corner of 5th and 28th streets. It became well known for publishers who had offices in the Tin Pan Alley district by the end of the century. Tin Pan Alley symbolizes the cacophony of many pianos in publisher's demo rooms characterizing sounds of hundreds of people pounding on tin pans making a mixture of meaningless sounds.

Tin Pan Alley is an urban legend and the name is attributed to a newspaper writer by the name of Monroe Rosenfeld who was impressed with the street-side stage for hired piano players performing new songs available in sheet music. Selling songs is the term for Tin Pan Alley meaning a district associated with musicians, composers, and publishers of popular music. Rosenfeld wrote articles using the term Tin Pan Alley during the 20th century because people could relate to the articles of popular music.

In American culture a succession of commercial songs were produced by Tin Pan Alley that made an enormous amount of money developing the rise of film, audio recording, radio and television demanding different genres of music.

The importance of music in our lives are talent and creativity that made the Tin Pan Alley come alive. Marketers and publishers directed the concept, whereas, the people loved the music wanting to hear more. Tin Pan Alley remained for decades with music publishing but relocated from 28th Street to upper Broadway at the Brill Building. The Brill Building is located at 1619 Broadway in the heart of New York City's music district. The Brill Building was named after the Brill Brothers who owned a clothing store and in 1931 during the Depression rented space to music publishers. During the 1960s, the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses that consist of songwriting, publishers, arrangement (lead sheets and copies), demo studios, record companies, artist's managers, radio promoters and artists.

Sounds made by many pianos playing different tunes are compared to sounds of banging tin pans are the reference to Tin Pan Alley that eventually described the United States music industry. Areas within a major city with a high concentration of music publishers or musical instrument stores, such as, Denmark Street in London describe Tin Pan Alley. Britain's Tin Pan Alley began in 1920 and every third Sunday in July since 2004 to this day holds a Tin Pan Alley Festival on Denmark Street in London, England. The importance of music in our lives is the festivities, beautiful music and entertainment creating history and a future for people to enjoy.

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