I don’t think people understand just how varied music is. Most people listen primarily to one or a few genres of music, and may have some appreciation of the depth of these, but I doubt it’s possible for a single person to really keep up with ALL modern music. While that is simply the way of things, I think people should be more aware of just how wide and deep the world of music is.
A number of years ago, my mother mentioned to a co-worker that she listened to Classical music. He responsed along these lines: “Oh, a friend of mine really likes Yanni!”. Oh, how I wish I had been there. In case you didn’t know, Yanni’s a New Age artist. He’s performed with an orchestra, but so have The Eagles. That doesn’t qualify Yanni, or The Eagles, for a place in the Classical rack at the record shop.
I think Classical is more widely misunderstood than any popular music genre – people who don’t listen to Classical seem to think that it IS a genre. There’s no more truth to that than the notion that “Pop/Rock” is a genre. Just as Justin Timberlake, Dido, and Pantera get lumped together for the sake of the music store’s efficiency, so do Handel, Orff, and Brahms. The music in the Classical section represents the “greatest hits” of roughly 500 years, and the length of songs, instruments used, and stylistic differences are just as great there as in the popular music of the past 60 years.
Particularly abrasive to me, personally, is the notion that all electronic music is “Techno.” Trance, Chillout, Synthpop, Drums’n'Bass, Industrial, it’s all “Techno” to some people. Well, not to me. Not to all the other fans of electronic music. And, especially, not to Ishkur, who maintains a website dedicated to educating the masses on the fine point of this discussion. Be warned, it’s easy to waste a LOT of time there.
I’m confident that if you take the time to look into the worlds of Jazz, Country, Hip-Hop, or any other type of music, you’ll find that there are many subgenres, that bands are constantly coming and going, and that new sounds are constantly evolving. You don’t have to like them, but please recognize that they’re there.
