Exploring Music Through Culture

An aspect of my culture is perseverance. I believe that perseverance is a major aspect of your culture because without it, life is dead. Perseverance is what makes you keep going each day as each battles encounter. I chose the song The Climb by Miley Cyrus. This song relates to my life a lot and others as well. When I was growing up, I never knew such thing like perseverance. I heard of it before but it doesn’t mean much until now. As teenagers growing up, like Miley Cyrus, never know the real meaning of perseverance. In The Climb, it is all about facing your battles. Keep you head up and lead your path, as it can lead you to somewhere special that you may never know. The objects in this song centers around imagery of a mountain, symbolizing the difficulties of life, and climbing, symbolizing the ongoing struggles of life. Although the lyrics are talking about the journey rather than focusing on the destination, many assume that it is about reaching a final goal. It depends on the mindset of the listener to judge whether the destination is in front of them or it is on the other side of the path. As a child, I have battled many battles during my childhood, especially the violence back them to now. That limits my childhood from spending time inside rather than outside due to the craziness of violence. As I was growing up, I began to develop the meaning of persevering. Each day conflicts come at you and you have to overcome it. In the music video of The Climb, it shows a mountain. That symbolizes the conflicts that you have to overcome by climbing the mountains. The mountains are the problems and you are the overcomer. The combination of both is what I call perseverance. “…Ain't about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb…” That phrase is from the The Climb. This explains how you have to go step by step in life to get through the problem or problems. What moves me about them is the voice of the artist singing it. It is so demanding and convincing to start something new. In other words, if something is bringing you down, you should never quit. Never quit trying to quit is basically the whole purpose of this song.

I believe this song is a very important part of my culture. Without perseverance, I wouldn’t have made it to this day with all the battles coming at me. I persevere every day to get what I want in life. Challenges come and go, but it won’t go if you don’t persevere through it. Like the mountain, in the music video of The Climb, the mountain is still going to be there, if you don’t climb over it. Overcoming your challenges is the word to describe this culture, perseverance. This song has a lot of meanings and it speaks for itself a lot. But the main focus of this song is not letting yourself down when something encounters you. That would just make you a failure. Perseverance brings you up and guides you to do something better to get over the problem. It doesn’t matter how fast or how slow you overcome it, but as long it is overcome, you are leading your battles to where you want it to be.