What Does Music Mean to us Today?
Listening to music is a popular leisure activity that many people take great joy in. It is fun, relaxing, and a fantastic way to bond with others. Humans have been enjoying and listening to music for centuries.
Earlier in human history listening and appreciating certain types of music meant that you had wealth and status. Middle and lower-class people would be unlikely to attend plays and other such high-end performances. As such there existed a division in the types of music one listened to that was used to distinguish between class. It’s sort of like jargon. Differing fields of study use different words to describe the same thing. For example, the word stomatitis means inflammation of the mouth. A medical student would know what stomatitis meant, however, the average person would not. In that way, it would be easier to tell a medical student from a non-medical student.
We can see remnants of music being used to differentiate between groups today. That is not to say that if anyone likes or listens to a song that they are or are not a certain way. It’s just that many people would still make assumptions about a person based solely on the type of music they listen to, for example, someone may assume that a person who enjoys classical music is sophisticated, but there are many reasons a person likes music.
Music and what it means today has differed greatly in many respects. Like many aspects of human life in modern times (particularly in America) we are freer to express ourselves and the things we both like and dislike without too much fear of aversive repercussions. Music carried with it some of the scary consequences that other ideas (that differed from the norm) brought. Despite his music still persists.