Lisa Pasch "Discrimination based on musical genres

As a musician, it is interesting talking to non-musicians about what they think of the different genres of music. I don’t love every single genre of music, but I can listen to all kinds of music and appreciate it in some fashion. I feel like I can find musical value in almost any piece of music, even though it may take me a few listens to really enjoy it. For example, even though I am a vocalist, I still enjoy listening to instrumental genres from any musical period, including modern or pop. Obviously I have a particular liking towards vocal music, but the elements of music within the other genres are still interesting to me and I can enjoy listening to a lot of different styles. When talking with my other non-musician friends, I find that it’s harder to get them to listen to music outside of what they know they like, especially classical music or country music. I find that more people seem to have a disliking for Country music than any other. When people say “I’ll listen to anything but Country” it irritates me a little because there is so much great music in the genre that they are missing out on. I’m not going to lie, some of it is pretty terrible…but Rap has plenty of terrible music too. So does pop…but no one says, “I’ll listen to anything but Top 40” (because let’s face it, at CNU you can’t avoid hearing Ke$ha no matter how hard you try). I seriously doubt that these people who avoid certain genres based solely on their classification as Rap or Country have listened to a wide enough sample of the music to be able to make a strong enough case for not listening to it at all. When talking to my musician friends who hate country, I always ask them if they have heard of certain artists I think they may like, and if they haven’t heard of them more often than not they go and listen before making a judgment. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone, for this is only my experience. But it is pretty interesting to think about the way we judge art and beauty of music before even trying it sometimes.