An interesting question about music is why do we like music we actually like? For example, do we decide to get interested by a genre because a friend is? It seems to be a fair idea if we like this friend enough, but is it that simple? Are we very influenced by our parents, peers, our environment? It is difficult to say because siblings sharing half of their genetics and raised the same way may have very different tastes.
What determines music tastes is very hard to pinpoint, one thing seems to be sure, music tastes reflect personalities, and tell a lot about ourselves. People take them very seriously and are often ready to defend them to death. Just try to tell a die-hard fan of any band that the band in question is bad, and you may get in big trouble. Music fans are like religious fanatics, you often can’t touch what they like and respect. But what makes this strong connection with this specific band? Probably, everything we do is a product of what we are, our genes and our environment, and it is impossible to escape this. However, I sometimes instantaneously like some exotic music I have never heard before, and African music is very popular among white people, even though it is usually not what they have listened to during their childhood.
In particular, there is one genre that divides generations, one genre that is difficult to like if you are above, let’s say 50-55,… it’s rap. There are a lot of exceptions of course, Iman seems to be one of them! I have tried to appreciate rap and I have to say I can’t, it depends on the rap, but I can’t say I do appreciate the genre, it’s getting on my nerves very fast whereas young people find it ‘amazing’, a word I got from one of my students. Why is that? I read somewhere that, after a certain age, it is more difficult to open to a new genre because the brain circuitry has already been set up and has become less flexible.
There was a study published about a year ago that found out that strong right-handedness was associated with decreased liking of less popular musical genres such as bluegrass or reggae, and increased preference for more popular genres (indexed by recording industry sales figures). In other words people who are right handed are less open to new musical experiences than left handed people. Also, people who are mixed-handed were found to have the broadest musical interests, due to the fact that ‘the right hemisphere of the brain plays a key role in updating thoughts and beliefs and in allowing us to see things in new ways, while the left hemisphere tends to stick with the tried and true.’ I don’t know, I am right hander, and I can’t stand most of the popular music sold today, but beside rap, I like a lot of genres so what does it mean?? I wonder whether Iman is mixed-handed???
A lot of things influence the music we like and love, our upbringing and cultural background, your friends, and other researchers have found that 14 seem to be a critical and magical age for the development of musical tastes. However, my tastes today are much more diverse than at 14, as it is certainly the case for a lot of people. In fact, I had almost no real musical tastes at 14, and I listen to a lot of things now I couldn’t imagine listening to at 14, a proof that my brain has evolved in this area despite its decreasing flexibility as I have aged. So what do we know? Not much!
Science is still in the process to understand why we prefer certain kinds of music to others, it’s the result of a multi-factorial and complex phenomenon. If our musical tastes reflect our background, our past, our personality, another interesting idea would be to investigate what we do with music we listen to as researchers are finding out that music is a means of regulating our emotions in everyday life. So do we have a tendency to listen to music that reflect our moods and emotions or do we use music to alter these emotions? We probably do both and this is another complex question!