Your musical taste tells you more about your social class.
Love the opera? Hip-hop hungry? It turns out your musical likes and dislikes might say more about you than you think.
Gerry VeenstraThe breadth of taste is not linked to class, but class filters by specific likes and dislikes.
Empire vs poor
The study included nearly 1,600 telephone interviews with adults in Vancouver and Toronto, who were asked about their likes and dislikes of 21 music genres. Veenstra itself is partial to easy listening, musical theatre and pop. Poorer, less educated people tended to love country, disco, easy listening, golden oldies, heavy metal and rap. Meanwhile, their richer and more educated counterparts preferred genres such as classical, blues, jazz, opera, choir, pop, reggae, rock, world and musical theatre.
Musical Taste
The research touches on a hotly debated topic in cultural sociology: whether a person's class is associated with specific cultural preferences, or whether “elites” are defined by a broad palette of preferences that sets them apart. The study determines that wealth and upbringing do not affect a person's musical tastes. However, class and other factors such as age, gender, immigrant status and ethnicity give our musical tastes interesting and complex forms. What people don't want to listen to also plays an important role in creating class boundaries.
Jazz is niet zo mijn genre. Maar soms ook weer wel. (Dave Brubeck - Take five is mijn favoriet.)