When asked what sort of music they prefer, most people will respond by saying, “Oh, I like a bit of everything.” On a Sunday afternoon, they’ll take time to listen to one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas. And when they’re on the train, they’ll listen to Radiohead, despite the fact that they’re also happy to sing along to Britney Spears at a party. People enjoy listening to all kinds of music and the idea that a certain type of music is better than another, or that there’s such a thing as a cultural hierarchy, seems to be outdated.
“In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, you could distinguish yourself through your tastes,” says Marcel van den Haak, cultural sociologist at Radboud University. And during the first half of the twentieth century, this trend reached its peak in the Netherlands. To put it bluntly: the upper class listened to classical music while the masses went to the fair. “As the saying goes: He who is born for a dime, will never be worth a quarter.”
Blending high and low
After the Second World War, this trend gradually changed. People had more money and more leisure time, which made museums and music more accessible. At the same time, the new genres that were emerging increasingly blended ‘low culture’ and ‘high culture’. Thanks to the younger generation, pop music took off in a big way. Films, which were once intended as a simple form of entertainment at the fair, were taken more and more seriously; the media wrote about them and they were analysed at universities.
Was this then reason enough to consign the idea of a cultural hierarchy, as described by the famous sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, to the bin? Not at all, concluded Van den Haak in a paper based on interviews about musical preferences, which were conducted while he was still employed at the University of Amsterdam.
Vivaldi or 50 Cent?
“There is still a distinction, at least people still feel that, when it comes to music, certain genres rank higher in the hierarchy.” Van den Haak presented his interviewees with a list of bands and musicians ranging from ABBA, André Hazes and Aretha Franklin to 50 Cent, Antonio Vivaldi and The Beatles. The respondents were not only asked to fill in which type of music they liked the most, but also which type of music they believed had the highest status.
And guess what? “Those genres that were traditionally linked to good taste were still rated higher, whether the interviewee liked them or not. Classical music scored higher than genres like rock, hip-hop or dance. At the same time, it was apparent that there were differences within genres; for example, Radiohead’s alternative style of music was ranked higher than hits by artists like Britney Spears.”
Guilty pleasure
It was the younger people (respondents below the age of 40) who shook up the hierarchy by ranking modern music genres above genres that have traditionally always been rated the highest. “For example, one respondent ranked Radiohead above Bach because their music was complex and innovative.” Incidentally, this doesn’t necessarily mean that younger listeners only prefer modern music. “You’ll also see them harking back to older genres, pop music from the 60s and 70s, for example. As a sociologist, I immediately wondered whether this is to any extent a way to derive status from your taste in music.”
This same principle applies to people who talk about their guilty pleasures. “Drawing attention to their indulgence emphasizes the fact that they normally listen to music that’s perceived as being good. During lectures, students often cite ABBA as a guilty pleasure, but this is one band that’s currently making a substantial comeback. Listening to them can hardly be referred to as an indulgence. What’s more, when it comes to ABBA you could argue that, by standards such as craftsmanship, it’s just good music.”
Marcel van den Haak’s article by can be found here.
Photo: Nicolas Lœuillet via Flickr.