Some Thoughts on Music

I like music.  That's probably a good way of putting it.  I'm no fanatic.  I have a good working knowledge of a broad range of music genres, but I definitely don't get in-depth in any of them.  I have a few favorites I come back to again and again, and once in a great while I find a new artist that I really enjoy, but when the conversation turns to music with a  true fan, I listen more than I talk.

I had a recent experience while substitute teaching.  During a class in which students were expected to work quietly all hour, I played some music.  I was on Pandora, and elected to play a playlist a friend of mine had put together.  It was alternative, and some pretty soft stuff.  Definitely what I would categorize as college alternative.  Heavy on The Shins, Django Django, Fjord Rowboat.  Yeah.  I never heard of them either.  But I was giving it a shot.  I'm open to listening to new music.

A student in the class raised his hand.  I asked him what he wanted.  He said, "Can we listen to some normal music?"  This was in a small town.  The same small town where I grew up, and also the person who put the playlist together.  I asked him what normal music was, and was surprised to hear all the artists that I expected.  Pop music.  Pop music today covers a pretty broad spectrum, but he named artists that I had heard of.  I had heard of all of them.  And that made me sad.

When I was growing up, we had limited exposure to music.  We had a few radio stations that played just a few songs.  We had MTV (they played music videos then).  Sometimes, someone would discover somebody we hadn't seen on MTV or heard on the radio, but not often.  We all listened to the same music because that's what we had, basically.  Buying a cassette tape or an album was a major investment, and taking a chance on someone we had never heard was not likely to happen.

Today, things can be different.  Sure, the radio stations all play the same bands over and over, but we have access to the internet.  We don't have to listen to Adele four times in one hour, to fun., to Maroon 5, to Lady Gaga, to Justin Bieber, and then back to Adele again unless we want to.  We have access to Pandora, to Grooveshark, to Rhapsody, and to a hundred other stations and free music venues.  Such a broad range of music. Music from the past and the present.  All for free.  Finding a new artist is so simple, and if someone else suggests a new artist, the whole album is usually available to stream.  If it really suits the listener's taste, it can be downloaded to an MP3 player.

So when the student wanted to listen to "normal" pop music, I was saddened.  He was still listening to what the music executives and radio programmers wanted him to listen to.  Such opportunity to broaden his musical taste, and it was wasted on him.  I can't say I wouldn't have been the same at that age.  Appreciation of new things, different things, is not necessarily encouraged in a small town.  A person has to carefully choose how to express individuality in a small town or risk ostracism.  But that shouldn't impact musical taste.  Not with the opportunities available.  Listen to everything with an open mind.  Give it a shot.