Abstract:

Music and style-centered youth cultures are now familiar aspects of everyday life in a range of globally difused social settings. Initialy restricted to the developed industrial regions of the world (North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan) where the musical and stylistic innovations of the 1950s and 1960s had their greatest cultural impact on youth, music and style have gradually become important cultural resources for young people throughout the world. In countries across South America and in parts of Africa and Asia, young people collectively embrace forms of popular music and their attendant stylistic images. Similarly, during the 1970s and 1980s, music and styled youth cultures became a powerful form of collective expression. The globally established relationship between youth culture and popular music being a major focus of interest in sociology, cultural studies and media studies. The objective of this study is to review the studies focused on cultural groups defined as youth cultures named such as Counter Culture and Subculture, to strive for understanding associative cultural practices formed between these groups in historical process and to discuss the theorical approaches to youth cultures. Based on Bennet’s studies on “popular music and youth cultures”, embodiment of youth culture concept and its provision in the studies was explained. Following that, functions of counter culture and subculture in understanding youth cultures and their functional gaps which consequently made them out of use was discussed. The study also intended to explain cultural formations which provide theorical arguments in youth cultures studies such as, Beat Generation, Hippies, Rock’n Roll, Rock and Punk.

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