As someone who enjoys classical music's greatest hits but who has tried and failed on multiple occasions to find an opera without "rock" in front of it that he likes, I felt some validation in revisiting the GSS module in which respondents were queried on the genres of music they like and finding that opera isn't widely enjoyed by any major subset of the population.
Building on Inductivist's famous post where he examined estimated average IQ and musical tastes, the following table shows the percentages of people who said they either "very much like" or "like" (on a five point scale, the others being "mixed feelings", "dislike", and "dislike very much") by self-identified social class. The table is ordered by a classiness index*:
The data are from 1993, and over the intervening two decades the death of radio and rise of file sharing has fractured the contemporary music scene (and also fractured the utility of a term like genre to describe music) to the extent that it is probably difficult for casual listeners to identify who the new pioneers of sound are across various genres they don't actively keep themselves familiar with, but the categories are still generally recognizable today, even if many of the musicians who represent them are not.
Of the categories the wrong kinds of white people listen to--metal, bluegrass, country--the latter two are actually pretty popular across class lines, though they display an easily observable prole tilt.
Everyone likes oldies just as I expect I'll like hearing pop 40 stuff from the nineties and oughts when I'm in my later years even though I don't make an effort to hear them today. Nostalgia is potent and pleasurable.
If you want to be taken for a patrician rather than a pleb, make sure to have a ready answer for the question of who is the greatest composer of all time (if you're a lightweight like I am, just answer Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart and you should be fine).
Metal and rap aren't enjoyed by most people, which may go some way in explaining why those are the kinds of music you hear blaring from cars at a stoplight or from your neighbor's basement, as being into either of these marks someone as having 'unique' musical tastes and allows him to express his differentiation from the mainstream. Nor is opera, as aforementioned, widely listened to, leading to a sort of high brow, more tasteful figurative blaring among aficionados.
GSS variables used: CLASS, CLASSICL, MUSICALS, BIGBAND, JAZZ, OPERA, FOLK, REGGAE, CONROCK, LATIN, NEWAGE, BLUES, OLDIES, RAP, MOODEASY, HVYMETAL, BLUGRASS, GOSPEL, COUNTRY
* Computed by taking the percentage of upper class respondents who very much like/like (like) a genre and multiplying it by two, adding the percentage of middle class respondents who like it, subtracting the percentage of working class respondents who like it, and subtracting the percentage of lower class respondents who like it after multiplying that percentage by two.
Building on Inductivist's famous post where he examined estimated average IQ and musical tastes, the following table shows the percentages of people who said they either "very much like" or "like" (on a five point scale, the others being "mixed feelings", "dislike", and "dislike very much") by self-identified social class. The table is ordered by a classiness index*:
| Class | Lower | Working | Middle | Upper |
| Classical | 28.2 | 44.3 | 54.0 | 71.7 |
| Show tunes/musicals | 37.5 | 47.1 | 58.3 | 66.7 |
| Big band | 48.5 | 54.1 | 64.2 | 70.0 |
| Jazz | 43.8 | 48.8 | 53.1 | 59.8 |
| Opera | 15.7 | 17.9 | 23.5 | 30.0 |
| Folk | 40.2 | 42.6 | 45.7 | 52.1 |
| Reggae | 33.3 | 31.8 | 35.9 | 39.8 |
| Contemporary rock | 50.6 | 57.4 | 57.0 | 58.3 |
| Latin | 29.2 | 25.6 | 31.8 | 28.9 |
| New age | 16.1 | 16.5 | 19.1 | 17.1 |
| Blues | 56.0 | 55.1 | 57.3 | 54.4 |
| Oldies | 66.0 | 74.0 | 70.1 | 67.4 |
| Rap | 21.3 | 11.8 | 14.3 | 17.2 |
| Easy listening | 58.2 | 62.3 | 60.0 | 51.1 |
| Heavy metal | 19.5 | 13.2 | 10.8 | 6.7 |
| Bluegrass | 61.4 | 50.9 | 46.4 | 43.6 |
| Gospel | 66.4 | 64.1 | 53.0 | 41.3 |
| Country | 72.6 | 69.0 | 55.9 | 47.8 |
The data are from 1993, and over the intervening two decades the death of radio and rise of file sharing has fractured the contemporary music scene (and also fractured the utility of a term like genre to describe music) to the extent that it is probably difficult for casual listeners to identify who the new pioneers of sound are across various genres they don't actively keep themselves familiar with, but the categories are still generally recognizable today, even if many of the musicians who represent them are not.
Of the categories the wrong kinds of white people listen to--metal, bluegrass, country--the latter two are actually pretty popular across class lines, though they display an easily observable prole tilt.
Everyone likes oldies just as I expect I'll like hearing pop 40 stuff from the nineties and oughts when I'm in my later years even though I don't make an effort to hear them today. Nostalgia is potent and pleasurable.
If you want to be taken for a patrician rather than a pleb, make sure to have a ready answer for the question of who is the greatest composer of all time (if you're a lightweight like I am, just answer Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart and you should be fine).
Metal and rap aren't enjoyed by most people, which may go some way in explaining why those are the kinds of music you hear blaring from cars at a stoplight or from your neighbor's basement, as being into either of these marks someone as having 'unique' musical tastes and allows him to express his differentiation from the mainstream. Nor is opera, as aforementioned, widely listened to, leading to a sort of high brow, more tasteful figurative blaring among aficionados.
GSS variables used: CLASS, CLASSICL, MUSICALS, BIGBAND, JAZZ, OPERA, FOLK, REGGAE, CONROCK, LATIN, NEWAGE, BLUES, OLDIES, RAP, MOODEASY, HVYMETAL, BLUGRASS, GOSPEL, COUNTRY
* Computed by taking the percentage of upper class respondents who very much like/like (like) a genre and multiplying it by two, adding the percentage of middle class respondents who like it, subtracting the percentage of working class respondents who like it, and subtracting the percentage of lower class respondents who like it after multiplying that percentage by two.
0 comments:
Post a Comment