So I guess I can rest easy knowing that I did not develop poor musical taste. And while I would like to, I can't blame my family for disliking the music I listen to. It's not the music that's good or bad, it's what we as people bring to the table when we listen to it. Whether it's our personality, geographical location, gender, or income (or even something else), our perceptions of music as good or bad have more to do with these factors than it does with the quality of the music. Just as Barthes observed, our ideas about what we perceive as the natural order of things (in this case, musical preference) are in fact social constructions that develop over the course of history. But as long as these things are generally thought to be natural, we cannot escape the stereotyping, generalizations, or mocking that comes from an unawareness of the true sources of differences in musical taste.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland, and Annette Lavers. "Preface." Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. . Print.
Kong, Lily. "Music and moral geographies: Constructions of “nation” and identity in Singapore." GeoJournal: 110. JSTOR. Web.
Lee, J.. "Musical Preference, Identification, And Familiarity: A Multicultural Comparison Of Secondary Students From Singapore And The United Kingdom." Journal of Research in Music Education 56: 20. JSTOR. Web.
North, Adrian C.. "Individual Differences in Musical Taste." The American Journal of Psychology 123: 200, 205. JSTOR. Web.
Kong, Lily. "Music and moral geographies: Constructions of “nation” and identity in Singapore." GeoJournal: 110. JSTOR. Web.
Lee, J.. "Musical Preference, Identification, And Familiarity: A Multicultural Comparison Of Secondary Students From Singapore And The United Kingdom." Journal of Research in Music Education 56: 20. JSTOR. Web.
North, Adrian C.. "Individual Differences in Musical Taste." The American Journal of Psychology 123: 200, 205. JSTOR. Web.