I've been listening to music for as long as I can remember. Explore my site, and you'll see that my lullabies consisted of the musical stylings of Kyuss and Black Sabbath. While I will always hold a special place in my heart for those heavy metal heroes, as I grew older my musical taste developed into something more unique to my personal preferences. But as my musical collection grew into something that resembled more alternative rock than heavy metal, my family (namely my brother and father) felt no qualms about "dissing" my newly-developed musical taste. "Stop listening to whiny girl music!" they'd say as I blasted Say Anything and Motion City Soundtrack throughout the house. God forbid I play Incubus or my father would be screaming, "Turn off Incupuss!" Ahhh, family...
Were they right? Was I actually listening to "bad" music?
Flash Forward
In one of my classes at Rowan, we spend a lot of time with my new buddy Roland Barthes. In his preface to his book Mythologies, he states, "Nature and History [are] repeatedly confused in the description of our reality" (1). He argues that the things which we typically perceive as the natural order of things are in fact social constructions. As I read his words (most of the time with highlighter and dictionary at hand) I began to draw connections between what he was saying and what I was living. Maybe I wasn't listening to "bad" music. Maybe our perceptions on whether music was good or bad had nothing to do with the quality of the music itself. Maybe it was all socially constructed.
As I studied this idea more closely, I found this to be exactly true (take that, family!). Our ideas about which musical genres are good or bad are not connected to the quality or complexity of the music itself. Rather, our musical preferences are related to our personality, geography, gender, and income which lead to a social construction of what is perceived as good or bad music.
Were they right? Was I actually listening to "bad" music?
Flash Forward
In one of my classes at Rowan, we spend a lot of time with my new buddy Roland Barthes. In his preface to his book Mythologies, he states, "Nature and History [are] repeatedly confused in the description of our reality" (1). He argues that the things which we typically perceive as the natural order of things are in fact social constructions. As I read his words (most of the time with highlighter and dictionary at hand) I began to draw connections between what he was saying and what I was living. Maybe I wasn't listening to "bad" music. Maybe our perceptions on whether music was good or bad had nothing to do with the quality of the music itself. Maybe it was all socially constructed.
As I studied this idea more closely, I found this to be exactly true (take that, family!). Our ideas about which musical genres are good or bad are not connected to the quality or complexity of the music itself. Rather, our musical preferences are related to our personality, geography, gender, and income which lead to a social construction of what is perceived as good or bad music.