For most people, there’s always that one genre of music that they refuse to listen to.

For instance, my brother used to hate country, he really didn’t like how country music was arranged. On the other hand, a friend of mine once said “There’s good music and there’s bad music. And then there’s emo.” Yeah, he’s got a lot of hostility toward the emo genre, and doesn’t consider it music at all.

“Yeah, yeah, we know, emo’s a music thing, not a fashion movement…” 

Well to me, it’s one thing to not like a certain genre, it’s another to say that it isn’t worthy to be called music. And it’s yet another thing to judge people because of the music they listen to.

Well, I used to be like that. I would walk past a group of emo people and judge them. I used to be judged too, because I listened to music from other countries, because i listened to rap music in a heavily rock-influenced town. I was already pretty versatile with my taste in music — I liked metal, alternative, r&b, rap, jazz, electronica, house, name it. But emo, to me, was different. To me the theme of the genre itself was enough reason not to consider it music.

But soon I came to realize something. Many of the songs I liked in certain genres, I liked because of the technical aspects in the song. I won’t explain that, but think about oldschool rock bands and you’ll get it. However, for some, it was just that I found a way to connect to the music, that I liked them so much. R&B rarely ever had any killer instrument lines, so you basically had the melody, arrangement, words and the beat. And yet, they could be considered works of genius.

And that made me think, who was I to judge these people, when they were making use of the language of music just as it should be used? Just as I would do, only for other genres?

After all, if you look up the definition of music, these genres do fall under it, no matter how much they don’t appeal to us. It’s a language after all, and in this case I believe, the end justifies the means. You can say that you don’t like a certain genre and give all your valid reasons, but to deny it that basic fact, is injustice. Just my two cents.

Technorati tags: bias, music, genre

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 7:11 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.