Spring Break
JHU music fans refuse to explore other genres
Issue date: 2/21/08
I spent the summer of my freshman year of college working as a delivery boy in a pizza shop in small-town Easton, Md. When business was slow, we had nothing better to do than sit around in the back of the store, talking meaningless nothings to pass the time. That was when I met Donovan, a 6-foot-5-inch giant with tattoos scrawled across his arms and gauge earrings the size of pepperonis.
On a particularly slow evening, I asked him what type of music he listened to. He responded, "Death metal. Nothing else." I was blown away. With all the different types of great music available today, I couldn't imagine someone restricting himself to one particular style for his entire life.
In the '60s, listeners didn't have a choice. You would turn on the radio, and it would be mostly rock and roll. Rock music united the youth of America, but that was soon to change. The '70s brought an array of different genres and styles: glam rock, prog rock, disco, funk, soul, reggae. The '80s saw the dawn of punk, metal, hip-hop, grunge and early alternative. Today, there are almost too many classifications to count. The expansion and diversity that has grown in modern music, however, is a mixed blessing. Many listeners, like my death metal co-worker, tend to side with one particular style of music, proclaim loyalty and ignore the rest, pledging a musical allegiance. Punk rockers rip their jeans and spike their hair. Goth rockers paint their nails and don their spiked bracelets. The different directions that music has followed has created a wide spread of closed-mindedness, a segregation of listeners.
This is disturbing to me mostly because I don't understand it. I grew up listening to my parents' music, namely "classic rock," but as music has developed I've embraced it rather than sticking to my roots. To understand these divisions in the music world, I spoke with some die-hard fans of different genres on the Hopkins campus.
"Music I like would be alternative rock," sophomore James Gettinger said. "That's kind of a broad category. And, music I would dislike is … almost everything else." When asked about different genres, he responded, "I think that most people really … I don't want to say don't know a lot about music but I just don't trust a lot of people's taste in music, especially people who like a lot of the genres I dislike."
On a particularly slow evening, I asked him what type of music he listened to. He responded, "Death metal. Nothing else." I was blown away. With all the different types of great music available today, I couldn't imagine someone restricting himself to one particular style for his entire life.
In the '60s, listeners didn't have a choice. You would turn on the radio, and it would be mostly rock and roll. Rock music united the youth of America, but that was soon to change. The '70s brought an array of different genres and styles: glam rock, prog rock, disco, funk, soul, reggae. The '80s saw the dawn of punk, metal, hip-hop, grunge and early alternative. Today, there are almost too many classifications to count. The expansion and diversity that has grown in modern music, however, is a mixed blessing. Many listeners, like my death metal co-worker, tend to side with one particular style of music, proclaim loyalty and ignore the rest, pledging a musical allegiance. Punk rockers rip their jeans and spike their hair. Goth rockers paint their nails and don their spiked bracelets. The different directions that music has followed has created a wide spread of closed-mindedness, a segregation of listeners.
This is disturbing to me mostly because I don't understand it. I grew up listening to my parents' music, namely "classic rock," but as music has developed I've embraced it rather than sticking to my roots. To understand these divisions in the music world, I spoke with some die-hard fans of different genres on the Hopkins campus.
"Music I like would be alternative rock," sophomore James Gettinger said. "That's kind of a broad category. And, music I would dislike is … almost everything else." When asked about different genres, he responded, "I think that most people really … I don't want to say don't know a lot about music but I just don't trust a lot of people's taste in music, especially people who like a lot of the genres I dislike."
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