It sounds pretty simple, but it would seem that this is a question Americans find more difficult to answer today than they did 20 years ago. But this is not a bad thing. The reason it’s become a more complicated question is because people are getting more open-minded about music genres.
This is a fact that has been established by a new study from the University of Notre Dame, stating that American are today less likely to hate particular types of music than they were a generation ago:
(Getty Images/IPGGutenbergUKLtd)
“Across the board we saw a decline in the proportion of people who dislike any one genre, with some exceptions,” said study co-author Omar Lizardo in an interview with host Annie Bergen. Via WQXR
The study surveyed 2,250 Americans based on 15 different genres of music. The genres included classical, jazz, country, blue grass, folk, religious, rap and heavy metal among others.
In an interview with Annie Bergen, Omar Lizardo, a co-author of the study, said that the study was carried out to draw out the aesthetic considerations that influence whether musical genres appeal to different groups of people, particularly based on their age and educational levels.
The researchers also wanted to identify the associations that exist between musical tastes and social divisions.
The participants marked off each genre based on how they felt about each genre. They had 5 options for expressing their feelings about each type of music based on a scale: really like, mixed feelings, dislike, really dislike.
The findings were then compared to a similar study that was carried out in 1993, revealing how people’s attitudes and feelings towards music genres had changed over the years.
20 years ago, rap music and heavy metal were the most disliked music genres overall, but this has changed dramatically.
Among the other findings of the research, young people are significantly more likely to say they like rap music and heavy metal than 20 years ago. “That is one of the most dramatic changes that we observed,” said Lizardo. “In 1993, heavy metal was the top-disliked genre across all Americans, followed by hip-hop,” but dislike levels have dropped almost in half among some demographics, especially among young people. Via WQXR
The study had some surprising and some not-so-surprising findings about classical music. The not-so-surprising finding was that older Americans are more likely to accept classical music compared to younger people.
Yet the study of dislikes also finds that classical music faces growing hurdles to reaching the demographic that orchestras and concert presenters covet most: college-educated young people.
The results show that classical music is increasingly disliked by “high-status” young people: 15 percent dislike it today compared with 8 percent in 1993. But at the same time, their same-status older counterparts say they’re more likely to accept it.
“Highly-educated young people associate classical music essentially with the high-status music of their parents and grandparents,” said Lizardo, an associate professor of sociology at Notre Dame. “That leads them to say that they dislike it.” Via WQXR
The more surprising finding was that Americans with no college education today are more likely to enjoy classical music than the same group 20 years ago.
The study also finds that Americans with no college education have become more likely to enjoy classical music: 15 percent of people with only a high school diploma said they disliked it in 2012, compared with 27 percent in 1993. “It’s become less of a class-based music overall,” said Lizardo. “Some people are referring to it as the new easy-listening music.” Via WQXR
According to Lizardo, the study emphasizes the fact that music genres have symbolic associations that influence whether they are considered appealing or not.
The researchers found that more people overall say they dislike country, folk and “religious” styles. Lizardo cites other research suggesting that these genres have become increasingly divisive over the past 20 years, particularly as some country artists aligned themselves with the Iraq War and conservative politics. Via WQXR
Classical music faces few such associations. But professionals in the field must recognize that it carries symbolic baggage that goes beyond aesthetic appeal, argues Lizardo.
“In order to bring young people into classical music I think there has to be more of a sense of moving beyond the standard repertoire,” he said. That might mean “mixing classical music with other musical influences that are more in tune with younger demographics. The pure, old canon of Bach and Beethoven has acquired a very strong typing with older audiences that might be hard to erase.” Via WQXR
Classical music isn’t a secret society unless we allow it to be
It doesn’t matter if you weren’t brought up with it or don’t know how to pronounce the composers’ names – I wasn’t, I can’t, and it still lets me in.
Appreciation of classical music, opera and fine art – for me, these were the old tropes that marked out someone’s class as surely as their accent. People who knew their Mahler from their Mendelssohn, their Handel from their Haydn, who knew when to clap in the concert hall and when to stay silent, were signalling: POSH. Via The Guardian
At a classical music concert, something actually new, and also its challenges
When I say that a performer plays music as if it sounds new, I generally mean it as a compliment. The Atos Trio, which played at the Library of Congress on Friday night, was unusual in that it made everything sound new in the sense of being different and even odd. When the trio approached Beethoven’s “Archduke Trio,” which concluded the concert, it was with the sense of an alien picking up some seemingly innocuous object, such as a flower, and examining it from every angle with the goal of trying to find out what it could possibly be for. Via Washington Post
The unrest is silence: why ‘classical’ music traditions are under threat
From Thai gong music to Iraqi oud to American jazz, there are more classical traditions than we might imagine – and as a result of political turmoil, many of them need help to survive
Until revolution erupted in Aleppo in 2011, Syria’s second city had been home to a musical tradition venerated for eight centuries throughout North Africa and the Levant. This music is not much heard there now – most of the players and singers have fled – any more than the world’s most sophisticated artistry on the oud (the Middle Eastern lute) is much to be heard in its natural habitat, Baghdad. Via The Guardian
It doesn’t matter if you weren’t brought up with it or don’t know how to pronounce the composers’ names – I wasn’t, I can’t, and it still lets me in.
When I say that a performer plays music as if it sounds new, I generally mean it as a compliment. The Atos Trio, which played at the Library of Congress on Friday night, was unusual in that it made everything sound new in the sense of being different and even odd. When the trio approached Beethoven’s “Archduke Trio,” which concluded the concert, it was with the sense of an alien picking up some seemingly innocuous object, such as a flower, and examining it from every angle with the goal of trying to find out what it could possibly be for. Via Washington Post
From Thai gong music to Iraqi oud to American jazz, there are more classical traditions than we might imagine – and as a result of political turmoil, many of them need help to survive
