فصلنامه پژوهش های ارتباطی
پیاپی 45-46 (بهار و تابستان 1385)

Role of Music in religion-based media is accounted for the most critical issues as far as “Religion and Media” is concerned. “Radio Maaref” as the leading religious mass media of Iranian history of modern communication, has gained a first-hand experience in this field. Its eight years of experiences and findings in the fields of communication, target audience, norms, policy making, techniques and arts are indeed worth to be scrutinized. Within an experimental and critical atmosphere, the present article is to review musical performance of “Radio Maaref” in the following six areas:1.Recreational work product on a religious radio (norms approach)2.Music in the radio-centered communication (communicative approach)3.Goals and strategies of Spiritual Radio based on media four-sided mechanisms4.Musical output of "Radio Maaref" (current position)5.Critical analysis (policymaking approach)6.Conclusive recommendations (artistic approach)

The author starts with characteristics of a musical drama from Aristotle and Wagner’s point of view and clarifies their methodologies towards Catharsis (the state of spiritual relief through music). The same process has later been searched in Passion Play as a drama originated from Iranian religious beliefs.The writer concludes that Passion Play, incorporating all the elements of musical drama, is the most efficient musical drama in the world of drama.

The birth of radio and TV in the West coincided with outburst of strong oppositions by classical musicians. The all embracing and popular characteristics of these media as well as their accountability for people’s aspirations, have turned them to simple-tasted and superficial mediums with regard to music, avoided by classical musicians. Democracy discourse has supported and justified musical policies of these media and the ever-increasing gap between serious musicians and public taste has further reinforced this dialogue. However, by pondering over the issue, the one-way linear relation of public taste and music strategies of media comes into question. Media are not subjectively involved in conveying music flavor desired by people, but they are rather creating such new flavors.

This article interprets the impression of a video clip on the soul and mind of viewers. Its main feature is association of picture and music.When a video clip is repeatedly broadcasted from TV, even if the music is played without picture (by radio, cassette tapes, in concert or any other means), the listener instinctively recalls the pictures of the same video clip. Therefore, through repeating visualized concepts, the addressee will be contented.Dreams result from biological activity and effects of environment on mind. This is the property of cinema and television that are capable of simulating dreams throughout the globe. Such capacity is used for far-reaching political intentions. The impact of television will be as much as doubled when video clip is used since features such as large number of pictures in a video clip as compared to a movie or a TV series, top quality of pictures, and similarity of images to dreams in a compressed time will increase their impression on addressee more than any other TV programs.

The characteristics of music have laid the ground for it to act a significant role in dramatic expression of a play. These characteristics have always interwoven into drama since the origin of its existence. In fact, drama could never shape up in the absence of music. At times, it played a leading role; in other cases, it was just a music score. Nevertheless, music has always been there. The author of the present essay has first examined the inter-relationship of music and drama in the West, then in the East and finally in Iran. Here, the key point is that Iranian music enjoys unique expressive power, which should be taken into account when dramatic mechanisms of music are concerned

The essay offers important factors in composing music of a movie as a media and its aesthetic aspect. It is followed by naming elements that bring cinema and music close together. Then, the components for composing film score are identified. The essay presents visions by some of musicians and theoricians on film score. The quality of job done by a music composer, and finally the aesthetic standards of a film score are also revealed in the essay.

The present article deals with confluence of postmodern music-its musical genre and condition- with digital media. The author takes note of the features of postmodern music, which like electronic media, combines multi styling and blending genres for its purpose, and stands against dependence, mass consumption and popular culture of music. The capacities of digital media and their ability to manifest individual identity as members of particular micro-cultures would challenge popular music industry.The author believes that Totalism in music, through digital media, brings about four remarkable outcomes: 1- It creates meaning and structure of music within listeners. 2- Music autonomy as a consumer commodity will be confined. 3- It makes development of micro cultures possible. 4- It revives creativity and reflection in music. The results above confirm the theory that postmodern music challenges popular music of a capitalist community in a different way.

This article is seeking to elaborate the cyber environment and to put the music-oriented activities, technologies and interactions within such environment into display. To reach out this goal, the author first throws light on the virtual reality and the techniques needed for forwarding, processing and saving data by users, then music industry via the internet is recalled and music copy right in a virtual reality is surveyed.Furthermore, role of the internet, WANs, Chat rooms, Forums, portable software such as Messengers, E-mail Gangs, mobile technologies including iPods, MP3 Players, Bluetooth and Infrared in receiving, processing and uploading digital music files are expounded.

The present essay is a research titled “Appealing Music for IRIB, which was conducted by the author in summer 2001 at the Study & Research Board of IRIB Music Center.The researcher has examined existing state of music (Folk, Pop, and Western) in Iran and tried to identify an appropriate music for Islamic Iranian radio and TV.Some of the remarkable findings by this survey are:45% of the respondents are not satisfied with the music broadcast in IRIB.50% if music lovers appreciate Iranian Folk music.37% of them prefer Iranian music produced abroad.

This essay is based on a research by IRIB Research Center in November 2006. The survey was launched for 1024 teenagers and the youths from city of Tehran. It was basically about the extent to which the individuals aged 15 to 25 have been familiar with and exposed to music as well as the modes of consuming music among this age group.For such assessment, categories such as the hours of listening to music per day, music genre and the most popular vocalist or idol were examined.The survey revealed several interesting 31% of respondents spend an average of 2 to 4 hours per day on music listening; 40% of music listeners are national pop music fans and almost 60% of the age group under question believe in differentiating authorized and unauthorized music.