Shows for little people: why seeing live music early matters
Artists such as The Wiggles help kids learn how to listen to live music.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Liz Giuffre, Macquarie University
The mass media invented the teenager during the 1950s and 60s – and thus emerged a whole new audience for popular culture. What we’re seeing now is the recognition of children as an ever more important audience. Musicians and performers, including many on the program at the Sydney Festival, are tailoring their shows to meet the needs of their young fans.
Of course adolescence was nothing new back in the 1950s – but teenagers became an identifiable group who were targeted by people selling music, advertising and live performance in a way that they never had been during this time.
The follow-on effect has been quite remarkable, with 50s and 60s teenagers – AKA babyboomers – continuing their teenage patterns of music and media consumption.
As Andy Bennett and his colleagues have noted of the emerging era of Aging and Popular Music Studies, “in the…
Read more