The Musical Walls, and yes it takes a while to get there...

A subject which has interested me for a long time now, and I think that many people will consider it to be utter rubbish, and yet still I choose to push on...There are many different types of music in the modern world and, in my eyes at least, most of them utter rubbish,To name but a few of the most popular genres at the moment, we have: Pop, Rock, Blues and Rap. All of these are obviously popular but extremely different, so how is it that we can group all of these together under one term “music.” Each has its own followers and, dare I say it, in some case worshippers, Ozzy Osborne springs to mind... but anyway, where was I - I did warn of waffle when I named the blog, so if you’re bored already, quit now, I’m just warming up.

The separate genres all sell in the same shop and are grouped under the term music, so why is it that it is towards heretical to follow heavy metal and a pop band? The only answer I can come up with is peer pressure. People are ashamed to be multi cultural, which is, at the end of the day, what this comes down too. For many years people who were born in, say, India, have struggled against both sides to keep their private/family life separate from their social life, if someone is living in a white dominant area, then it can be difficult to fit in, and this is the same, granted on a less important level. It is none the less true that the same problems are evident. If an entire social group wastes away listening to 50cent talking at a microphone, then it is unlikely a member of said group of friends will discover the joy of hearing Ian Gillan screaming out Child In Time to the masses - not that I am even slightly biased, you understand. As such people rarely enjoy multiple genres of “music,” and so the walls developing between fans of different genres continue to grow and thicken.

It is part of human nature to set up a group of friends where you can feel secure, and I think this is part of the problem - to ask "can't we all just agree?" is obviously silly, we are different and that's fair enough, but I don’t see why it has to be such a crime to enjoy multiple styles; just quickly flicking over my library I find genres jump out suggesting uncommonly broad taste: Alternative, Heavy Metal, Comedy, Pop, Reggae and Blues. Over the last 50 years, human rights and equality have been steadily growing in importance, and have seen the ending, or at least a serious decrease in racism, sexism... and yet nobody seems to have noticed that a huge barrier among people of essentially the same backgrounds (e.g. Caucasian, middle class, moderately wealthy.) is caused by differing musical tastes, and that we could reduce the aggression, which sadly does exist, by lowering the walls between fanbases, and making it more normal for people to have a more eclectic taste than is acceptable in today's world.