Music can be heard everywhere and every day and can be associated with every activity, emotion

a person has. Each person has his/her own taste of music, it may be influenced by culture, age,
gender, ethnicity and others. According to Veenstra (2015), a social class defines the specific likes
and dislikes of people in terms of music preferences. He conducted on a study wherein 1,600
people were interviewed about their likes and dislikes on different genres of music and the results
were interesting. Among the upper class (wealthier and better-educated), they enjoyed listening to
classical, blues, opera, jazz, musical theater while the lower class (less fortunate and educated)
enjoyed country, disco, golden oldies, heavy metal and rap songs. With such results, it was debated
that social classes is accompanied with specific musical taste wherein the elites have high
standards which sets them apart from the others. In the past, Adrono (1991) stated that the upper
class enjoyed the “serious” music as it was considered as a form of art which has to be separated
from the masses to preserve it from being a meaningless form of entertainment and used it to
oppress the lower classes. During the past, classical music was associated with the rich, people
who are smart, eloquent, well-dressed and enjoys the finest things life can offer. On the other hand,
the era of classical music began during the Age of Enlightenment in line with the rise of the middle
class, who were once considered peasants was able to control over their lives, became skilled
workers making it possible for them to afford leisurely activities and the one’s responsible with
the flourishment of the arts. Due to this sudden change in economic backgrounds, the focus of art
started to drift away from the idea that the it only suited the higher class. In line with this, the
music styles were greatly influenced by the middle class and the importance of the role of the
composer which was not limited to pleasing the noble and elites but could also be appreciated by
the middle class. They started composing sings which were easier to play, captivated a larger range
of music and having a tune which was recognizable by the middle class. There are different
elements or characteristics each music genre present to its listeners, classical music has gradual to
sudden change in the mood through the tempo and rhythm making it easier to change emotion
along the duration of the song. Most of the songs during this time were centered on emotion, mood,
scenarios of the daily life which connected to the lives of the middle class. Classical music is not
only associated with social class but also with intelligence. People who enjoy classical are
intellectually superior with concertos and symphonies. In 1993, UC Irvine published a journal in
Nature which showed that 39 students improved scores in a spatial-reasoning IQ test after listening
to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. The effect of music in cognitive learning suggested
that music can enhance a child’s learning. According to Miendlarzweska (2013), children who
undergo musical training are better at verbal memory, second language pronunciation accuracy,
and reading ability; the academic performance and IQ of a child could be predicted. The auditory
cognitive system must depend on working memory mechanisms that allow a stimulus to be
maintained on-line to be able to relate one element in a sequence to another that occurs later. The
process of music recognition requires access and selection of potential predictions in a perceptual
memory system. Therefore, listening to music requires perceptual abilities, pitch discrimination,
selective attention to perceive the temporal and harmonic structure of music to be engaged in the
distributed network of brain structures. Oftentimes, rock music is associated with the devil because
most metal and rock music have a fast tempo and harsh sound quality with a minor scale which
saound sad and desperate. Being angry is associated with being satanic and is considered to be bad
and ungodly, it does not sound loving and/or forgiving. In addition. The lyrics of metal music
brings hatred and a sort of connection to a supernatural being (Satan). Many metal artists have
songs titles about death, the devil and many more which suggests horrifying meanings which one
could not imagine; performances of these artists also do acts such as hanging, ingestion of human
wastes or anything that is extreme for audiences to handle. Some reports indicated that metal artists
are caught up with drug use and violent behavior on and off stage.

Humanities is the study of how people would process and document the human experience. It
includes, philosophy, literature, religion, music, art, history and language. With modernization,
science has become more powerful which provides facts, answers, knowledge and truth but as
humans, we need doubt, skepticism and uncertainty. It is more centered on questions rather than
answers, it would help people decide whether something is wrong or right, it also aims to answer
the meaning of life, happiness, suffering, and most importantly, it teaches humans how to be
human (civilized) and to be humane. According to Dolling (2015), education is about learning and
developing intellectual capacities to produce professionals and human beings, to establish moral
credibility and encourage the improvement of the human condition. It is different from other course
taught today because it drifts students away from reality and is an opportunity for them to discover
something about themselves that they never knew. There is an instance wherein a student used his
used a mathematical proof as an example which he found inspirational and another meaning to it.
Humanities let’s a person look at the other side of things and discover things out of the ordinary,
which enhances his creative thinking.
In my opinion, humanities has influenced my lifestyle in such a way that tend to appreciate things
that surround me. By going to ballet shows, museum exhibits, re-watching classical movies and
listening to classical music has served as an eye-opener and a form of relaxation to the busy and
stressful requirements of being a college student. With humanities, it has helped me to discover
my talents which I have never thought I could do; writing poems, drawing, singing and even to
appreciate my block mates has helped me as a person to be humane and not just to be human. As
a biology major, we are faced we different and difficult subjects; all of which are time-consuming
and often gives as stressful days and sleepless nights coupled with a lot of coffee and eating. We
often look for alternatives to relieve our stress doing what we love the most. I think that watching
movies or even listening to music is a easy escape to the reality and a quick break from all the
stress that surrounds us always. The activity that I enjoyed the best was when we had to create a
Christmas tree using recycled materials such as bottles, candy wrappers, newspapers and many
more. The good times we had when we were making the tree was irreplaceable as it became a
memory that we could look back into. The laughter and stories shared among the group was
priceless. Seeing the finish product made us all smile because it was beautiful and worthy to be
given to a family. Alongside creating a tree, we are to give the tree to a beneficiary with a basket
of goodies to be able to give them an early Christmas. Even with our busy schedules, we made
time to go into the home of your benefactor and personally give him the tree we made with our
hearts and laughter. It was fulfilling to be able to share happiness with other people even if you do
not know them personally. Being able to see them happy and smile with the simple gifts we gave
them makes me happy as well. Humanities has taught me empathy, to be able to give back to
others, to shed light and laughter into their lives amidst all the struggles everyone is experiencing
right now. It has also taught me to be humane in the sense that, we are lucky enough to be studying
in one prestigious school were a lot of students dreamed to study, we are more fortunate compared
to others and with that, we should learn to feel for the less fortunate and share our own blessings
with them. There is no room for being selfish when one has everything that they want in life. We
learn on how to treat others as equal regardless of race, social status, culture or even religion, with
these we can improve the current human condition which is violence, hatred and apathy for others
who are in need.
 Music and Cognition: The Mozart Effect
Revisited
BY JESSE HAMLIN ,
January 18, 2012

In 1993, researchers at UC Irvine published a study in the journal Nature showing that
36 undergrads temporarily improved their spatial-reasoning IQ scores after listening to
part of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. The story got blown up and
oversimplified in the mainstream media, which trumpeted the so-called Mozart effect,
the notion that listening to classical music makes you smarter.

The idea was picked up by politicians and popularized by people like Don Campbell,
who wrote the best-selling books The Mozart Effect and The Mozart Effect for
Children. He actually trademarked “The Mozart Effect” name, and built a small empire
peddling CDs and books that variously claim to heal the body and stimulate your baby’s
brain. The Irvine researchers, Dr. Francis Rauscher and the late Dr. Gordon Shaw,
distanced themselves from all the hype, which they said distorted their findings.

“Generalizing these results to children is one of the first things that went wrong,”
Rauscher told NPR in 2010. “Somehow or another the myth started exploding that
children that listen to classical music from a young age will do better on the SAT, they’ll
score better on intelligence tests in general, and so forth.”

Yet for all the debate about the effect of music listening and training on general
cognitive ability, a growing body of research strongly suggests that studying
music can enhance a child’s learning skills, including reading. A significant new
Canadian study shows that preschoolers who participated in a computerized musical
training program improved their verbal intelligence scores after only 20 days.

“Music and language have common biological mechanisms. Musical training

strengthens them,” says Dr. Nina Kraus, a noted neurobiologist who runs Northwestern
University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, via e-mail.

”Hear” Training

Kraus’ research has shown that musicians, who memorize sounds and patterns, can
process music and language better than people who don’t have musical training. Over
time, she says, musical experience fundamentally changes how the nervous system
responds to sound. Among other things, musicians are better at hearing speech in noise,
an important skill for kids trying to learn in a bustling classroom.

“Music and language have common biological

mechanisms. Musical training strengthens them.” – Dr.

Nina Kraus

Kraus argues that music should be taught in schools in part because it could engage
attention and memory skills, strengthening kids’ “phonological processing” and
enhancing their reading skills. As she puts it, reading and music both involve mapping
sounds to meaning.

“In addition to contributing to great amusement and well-being, practicing music does,
in fact, appear to make you smarter — at least smarter when it comes to how you hear,”
Kraus and her Northwestern colleague, Dana Strait, wrote in a recent study, published
in Music Perception, titled “Playing Music for a Smarter Ear: Cognitive, Perceptual and
Neurobiological Evidence.”

Kraus, whose lab is in the midst of a four-year study on music education and adolescent
brain development, was impressed by a study published in October by researchers at
York University in Toronto. It showed a rise in verbal IQ scores among young kids who
took an interactive music-training program.

Exploring the Link Between Music and Language

The study’s title echoes its conclusion: “Short-Term Music Training Enhances Verbal
Intelligence and Executive Function.”

Directed by Dr. Sylvain Moreno, now the lead scientist at the Center for Brain Fitness at
the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, the study focused on
48 kids between the ages of 4 and 6. Half of them participated in an interactive,
computerized music-training program; the other half took part in a similar program
about visual art. Both software programs were designed by Moreno, using the same
cartoon characters, graphics, and tone.
The music kids learned about rhythm, pitch, melody, singing, and basic theory. The art
kids learned about line, color, shape, dimension, and perspective. None of the kids had
studied music or art before, and none of their parents were professional musicians or
artists. The kids participated in the training for two hours a day over a 20-day period.

“The more the music training induced changes in the

brain, the more the children improved their intelligence

scores.” – Dr. Sylvain Moreno

Before and after completing the programs, each child took the oral Vocabulary and
Block Design subtests of the standardized Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of the
Intelligence test (the vocabulary to measure verbal ability, the block design to gauge
spatial ability). The children were also given a “go/no-go” task — pushing a button when
a white shape flashed on a computer screen, or refraining from pushing it when a purple
one appeared — while electrodes were attached to their heads to record their brain
activity.

There was no appreciable difference in IQ scores between the music kids and art kids
before the training. But afterward, more than 90 percent of the music kids improved
their verbal scores — some by 14 points — while the art kids showed no significant
improvement in verbal ability, and only slight improvement in their spatial skills.

Similarly, the music kids showed greater accuracy on the “go/no-go” task after the
training. And their brain waves had notably larger peak amplitudes, showing an increase
in brain activity. The task, which engages the fronto-parietal networks of the brain that
deal with attention, measures what the brain people call executive function.

Skills That Transfer

“Through this musical training, we were able to stimulate a special brain area, and
through this stimulation, we were able to raise the verbal intelligence of these kids,” says
the French-born Moreno, on the horn from his Toronto lab. “It’s astonishing that we can
do that after 20 days!”
He calls the study, published in Psychological Science, a scientific breakthrough. It’s the
first to show a causal relationship between musical training and improved intelligence
scores and attention, he says, and it demonstrates that the transfer of one cognitive skill
to another can occur in early childhood.

“We had brain plasticity in children after 20 days,” he says. “The brain behavior changed
after the musical training. And what we found that was crucial was that the change in
intelligence was correlated with the change in the brain: The more the music training
induced changes in the brain, the more the children improved their intelligence scores.”

Moreno thinks these findings have important implications for people involved in
education and the study of brain plasticity.

The results tell him that “music training is incredibly powerful, and there is a special
link between music and these core skills of the brain. ... This curriculum, through the
power of music, is like a switch button for the cognitive development of children. You
turn the switch on to learn.”

Nina Kraus, whose research Moreno and his colleagues cite in their report, gives high
marks to the Canadians’ work. “It’s a very important study,” she says. “The effects in
verbal IQ scores is a significant discovery.”

The causal effect of Lady Gaga on teen literacy awaits further study.

Reference: https://www.sfcv.org/article/music-and-cognition-the-mozart-effect-
revisited
How musical training affects cognitive development: rhythm,
reward and other modulating variables
Ewa A. Miendlarzewska1,2,* and Wiebke J. Trost2,*

Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract
Go to:

Introduction
Psychological and neuroscientific research demonstrates that musical training in children is
associated with heightening of sound sensitivity as well as enhancement in verbal abilities and
general reasoning skills. Studies in the domain of auditory cognitive neuroscience have begun
revealing the functional and structural brain plasticity underlying these effects. However, the
extent to which the intensity and duration of instrumental training or other factors such as family
background, extracurricular activities, attention, motivation, or instructional methods contribute
to the benefits for brain development is still not clear. Music training correlates with plastic
changes in auditory, motor, and sensorimotor integration areas. However, the current state of the
literature does not lend itself to the conclusion that the observed changes are caused by music
training alone (Merrett et al., 2013).

In this article we briefly review the recent literature on how musical training changes brain
structure and function in adult musicians and during development. We next report evidence for
near and far transfer effects in various cognitive functions that are unprecedented in comparison
to other long-term practice activities in childhood. Finally, we point out the important and
overlooked role of other factors that could contribute to the observed cognitive enhancement as
well as structural and functional brain differences between musicians and non-musicians. We
propose the mechanism of rhythmic entrainment and social synchrony as factors contributing to
the plasticity-promoting role of musical training that is unique to music education. The proposed
mechanism of rhythmic synchronization by which musical training yields a unique advantage of
transferrable skills may provide a promising avenue of research explaining the beneficial effects
on a developing brain. In addition, we pinpoint the potentially important role of genetic
predispositions and motivation that is rarely controlled for in the existing literature.

The review focuses on studies investigating healthy children's and adults' response to formal
musical education (primarily instrumental training) in terms of neuroplasticity observed with
neuroimaging techniques, as well as in behavioral effects on cognitive performance in various
domains. Although we mention and acknowledge the enormous value of music therapy with the
aim of restoring lost function in diseased or disabled individuals, this topic is outside the main
focus of this review. Reviewing the progress in musical training research embraced in this article
leads us to the promising supposition that the induced changes in brain development and
plasticity are not only relevant in music-specific domains but also enhance other cognitive skills.

Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3957486/
Devil Music: A History of the Occult in
Rock & Roll
From The Beatles and the Stones to Led Zep, Alice Cooper
and Black Sabbath, how the dark arts cast a spell on
popular music

On June 1, 1967, the most famous musicians in the world released a new long-
playing record whose jacket depicted a gallery of unconventional personalities and
one individual whose unconventionality was infamous. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band was a widely anticipated album that confirmed the band’s
status as the defining tastemakers of their time. It was the soundtrack to the blissful
“Summer of Love,” it firmly established the primacy of psychedelic rock music, and
it was hailed as a musical breakthrough that offered a mass audience a representation
of the marijuana and LSD sensation in sound. Today Sgt. Pepper is remembered as
the classic album of the classic rock era, notable for its pioneering recording
techniques and enduring Beatle songs (“With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy
in the Sky With Diamonds,” “A Day in the Life”), although the group’s earlier and
later music has aged more successfully. Even the album’s cover is considered a
landmark in the field of record packaging from the years when music was actually
presented on physical discs in physical sleeves and millions of fans studied the jacket
photo and the puzzling assembly of figures it depicted.

Photographed by Michael Cooper, the Sgt. Pepper cover shot had taken place on
March 30, 1967. The Beatles, innovating with every step, decided on a layout that
broke with their habit of simply posing the quartet alone in a single portrait. Designer
Peter Blake, a rising star in London’s Pop Art world, later recalled conferring with
the Beatles and art gallery owner Robert Fraser on a different approach to the design:
“I think that that was the thing I would claim actually changed the direction of it:
making a life-sized collage incorporating real people, photographs, and artwork. I
kind of directed it and asked the Beatles and Robert (and maybe other people, but I
think it was mainly the six of us) to make a list of characters they would like to see
in a kind of magical ideal film, and what came out of this exercise was six different
sets of people.”
The result was a group shot of almost seventy people, with the four costumed Beatles
as the only live bodies in the picture. Among the selections picked by the Beatles,
Blake and Fraser were admired contemporaries Bob Dylan and writer Terry
Southern; movie stars Fred Astaire, Laurel and Hardy, Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando
and Marilyn Monroe; and a number of artistic and literary outlaws Edgar Allan Poe,
William S. Burroughs, Aubrey Beardsley, Dylan Thomas, and Oscar Wilde. And in
the top left corner of the collection, between the Indian yogi Sri Yukteswar Giri and
the nineteen-thirties sex symbol Mae West, glared the shaven-headed visage of a man
once known as “the Wickedest Man in the World.” His name was Aleister Crowley.

ence in their headphones, on their t-shirts, and at their concert halls. There was no
doubting Black Sabbath.

Occult-oriented acts and music, of course, were not the only trend in the rock ’n’
roll of the sixties and seventies. There were folk and fusion, punk and reggae, the
easy listening of Linda Ronstadt and the sexy soul of Donna Summer. But the Rolling
Stones’ peak period was roughly between 1968 and 1973, the years of Their Satanic
Majesties Request, “Sympathy For the Devil,” and “Dancing With Mr. D.” Led
Zeppelin have sold nearly 300 million records since 1969, and “Stairway to Heaven,”
forward or backward, is considered their masterpiece. From 1972 to 1975 Alice
Cooper was an inescapable media presence; ditto Kiss from 1975 to 1979. Blue
Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” was a Top Ten U.S. hit in 1976.
AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was the long-lived quintet’s first million-selling album.
Over 20 million copies of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band have been
purchased around the planet since 1967, representing 20 million thumbnail
advertisements for Aleister Crowley received the world over. Black Sabbath were
finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. The group has sold 75
million albums worldwide. Their 2013 album 13 led off with the single “God Is
Dead.”
For the vast Baby Boom demographic aged from their early teens to their late
twenties, the Occult had been brought to them in their lingua franca of rock music.
Much of its conveyance — by performers themselves young and questing erratically
for personal or philosophical answers — had been expedient or accidental. But its
reception —by people to whom rock spoke deep truths their elders had long
withheld — transformed the spiritual outlook of a generation. And when that
generation turned at last down their radios and put their records back in their sleeves,
they found that the Occult was not only available to them through pop songs, and that
their elders too were undergoing a spiritual transformation of their own.
Reference: https://medium.com/cuepoint/devil-music-a-history-of-the-occult-in-
rock-roll-3e671a821ba5
To Help Students Succeed
Professionally and Personally, Teach
the Art of Being Human
By Lisa M. Dolling MARCH 09, 2015

A mong the many false dichotomies fostered by the continuing debates

surrounding higher education, one that I find especially disconcerting is that which
pits the professional against the personal. While it is expressed in a variety of ways, it
boils down to this: Either you believe the purpose of going to college is to be able to
secure a (preferably high-paying) job, or you think there is something more
intrinsically valuable to be gained from the years spent earning a degree. My question
is: When did these become mutually exclusive?
Yet believing that they are is one of the unfortunate conclusions many people draw
from the endless bickering about the value of a college education, a debate that many
believe was ignited by Ronald Reagan’s disparaging of "intellectual curiosity," and
intensified with Scott Walker’s recent proposal that the University of Wisconsin
revise its mission statement to replace references to the "search for truth" or desire to
"improve the human condition" with clear (read "practical") goals of meeting "the
state’s work-force needs." Politics aside, I doubt that either of these officials wanted
to assert that professionals need not be thoughtful or reflective. However, that is
precisely what this sort of sloppy rhetoric implies and what continues to drive the
public’s misconceptions about higher education and the "value" it holds for our
society.

Education is first and foremost about learning; about developing the intellectual
capacities needed to succeed as professionals and human beings. This was the belief
that inspired W.E.B. Du Bois to declare in a 1949 essay, "Of all the civil rights for
which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is
undoubtedly the most fundamental," for which "we should fight to the last ditch."

Few people would disagree. After all, how can we expect our society to flourish
without a citizenry that values learning as among the highest of virtues or expect our
nation to excel without providing for everyone the resources necessary to cultivate
intellectual curiosities in new and innovative ways? Most important, how will we ever
establish our moral credibility if we do not encourage these pursuits with an eye to
improving the human condition? The problem is that many people are able to
maintain these beliefs while at the same time dismissing as "intellectual luxuries" such
ideals as the "search for meaning" or "concern for the common good."

Of course, given the exorbitant cost of higher education, it is understandable that

professional success would become the priority. Mounting student debt and the
financial strain of paying for college are perils that deserve serious attention. As the
mother of a high-school senior, I shudder at the prospect of having to pay more over
the next four years than we originally paid for our house. And I too want to make sure
my daughter learns everything necessary to have a successful career. But as an
educator, I also know that this will involve much more than just training her for a
profession. As I often remind my students, in the end it is not only a matter of what
you do, it’s how and why you do it; and the knowledge that this requires above all is
knowledge of oneself.

Ironically, students are the ones who seem to understand this more readily than many
of the "experts" weighing in on the debates. Students tend to recognize self-reflection
and quest for meaning as instrumental to their future success and not just "frills" to be
consigned to the dustbin of impracticality, as many would have it. Therefore, I would
entreat everyone with a vested interest in higher education to take a moment to ask
students directly what they find most valuable about the educational process. I am
confident that as a result, the tide of the debates would soon start to turn.

I teach philosophy at a university known for engineering and science, where students
are driven and focused, with just one goal in mind: getting that high-paying job. That
is, until they set foot in their humanities classes; there something magical happens.
Suddenly they are no longer engineering students, but just students, with a willingness
to learn as much about themselves as about the material.
A favorite example involves a math major who enrolled in my aesthetics course a few
years ago hoping to get his humanities requirements out of the way. One of the works
we read is Plato’s Ion, whose main character is a rhapsode devoted to the works of
Homer. Ion describes how ecstatic he becomes at the mere mention of Homer’s name,
and how while reciting the poet’s works he is literally taken out of his senses.

After discussing the dialogue, I ask students to identify a work of art that does to them
what Homer’s poetry does to Ion. In all the years I have been teaching aesthetics, I
have never had a student unable to do this assignment—until that math major. He told
me he didn’t like poetry, had no interest in painting, and never listened to music, and
therefore wanted to be excused from the assignment. I explained that it wasn’t about
the object per se, but rather the transformative experience. His response was that he
never really got that excited about anything in life and therefore was at a loss.

I advised this student to take some time to think about it and get back to me. Much to
my delight, a few days later he emailed me with an idea. He asked me if he could use
a mathematical proof as an example of something he found to be inspirational.

I shall never forget the experience of sitting in the classroom with the other students
as this young man explained the majesty of Euler’s Theorem, swept away by his
passion and enthusiasm. At one point it was as if he had forgotten where he was. Most
remarkable was when he told us he had never explained the proof to anyone before;
up until then he had merely used it.

After class the student thanked me for the opportunity to discover something about
himself that he never knew; namely, that he was capable of becoming so absorbed in
his work that he could appreciate it in entirely new ways. I’m pretty confident that is a
realization that will benefit him professionally no less than personally.

Just the other day, a different student asked me why I included a selection from
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on the syllabus for my aesthetics course, a course
intended to examine philosophies of art. I explained that in many respects, Aristotle’s
work is intended as a treatise on the "art of being human," a craft we need to hone no
less than any other. The student’s response was, "Wow, how interesting. That’s an art
we seem to have lost sight of these days." I had to hold myself back from replying,
"Gee. I wonder why."Reference: http://chronicle.com/article/To-Help-Students-
Succeed/228281/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
What musical taste tells us about
social class
Media Release | June 3, 2015

Love the opera? Hungry for hip hop? It turns out that your musical likes and dislikes may say more
about you than you think, according to UBC research.

Even in 2015, social class continues to inform our cultural attitudes and the way we listen to music,
according to the study, which was recently published in the Canadian Review of Sociology.

“Breadth of taste is not linked to class. But class filters into specific likes and dislikes,” said Gerry
Veenstra, study author and professor at UBC’s Department of Sociology.

The study involved nearly 1,600 telephone interviews with adults in Vancouver and Toronto, who
were asked about their likes and dislikes of 21 musical genres. Veenstra himself is partial to easy
listening, musical theatre and pop.

Poorer, less-educated people tended to like country, disco, easy listening, golden oldies, heavy
metal and rap. Meanwhile, their wealthier and better-educated counterparts preferred genres such
as classical, blues, jazz, opera, choral, pop, reggae, rock, world and musical theatre.

The research touches on a hotly debated topic in cultural sociology: whether one’s class is
accompanied by specific cultural tastes, or whether “elites” are defined by a broad palette of
preferences that sets them apart.

The study determines that wealth and education do not influence a person’s breadth of musical
taste. However, class and other factors – such as age, gender, immigrant status and ethnicity –
shape our musical tastes in interesting and complex ways.

What people don’t want to listen to also plays a key role in creating class boundaries. “What upper
class people like is disliked by the lower class, and vice versa,” said Veenstra.

For example, the least-educated people in the study were over eight times more likely to dislike
classical music compared to the best-educated respondents. Meanwhile, lowbrow genres such as
country, easy listening and golden oldies were disliked by higher-class listeners.

BACKGROUND

The study, “Class Position and Musical Tastes: A Sing-Off between the Cultural Omnivorism and
Bourdieusian Homology Frameworks” is published in the Canadian Review of Sociology.

The research involved telephone interviews with 732 adults in Toronto and 863 adults in Vancouver.

Reference: https://news.ubc.ca/2015/06/03/what-musical-taste-tells-us-about-social-class/
Thank the Middle Class for the art of
the Classical Era
Posted on March 5, 2015 by Trina

Where Would The Classical Era Be Without The Middle Class?

The Classical era paved the way for the rise of the economic and social power of the Middle
class, and their influence on society and the art within it. During the Classical era there was
a huge power shift of who was controlling, and ultimately, paying for and supporting the
arts. It no longer was dominated by the power of the aristocrats and the royalty of the time,
but instead started to become influenced by the wants and needs of the middle class.

As the idea of Enlightenment began to spread so did the thought of individualism and self-
governing, which was taken on strongly by the middle class of the era. The once
considered, peasants of the era began to take control of their lives, becoming skilled
workers. This not only aided to the Classical era’s economic standing but it also gave the
middle class more economic power, and therefore more influence on society and the arts.
Due to their new-found increase in income the middle class was able to partake in more
leisurely activities that the before could not afford, and began to enjoy the music, art, and
theatre of the time period. This provoked the change and focus of art to start to move away
from pleasing the higher social class individuals to the middle class, reforming the content
and style of much of the Classical art styles.

The Middle Classes Influence on the Music of the Classical Era

5th Symphony by Ludwig Van Beethoven

One of the greatest influences on art the rise of the middle class had during the classical
era, was their impact on the change of music styles, and the “role of the composer”. With
the change in social power of the middle class also came the change of the role of the
musical composer, which then changed they style of music being created. In the Baroque
era composers were looked at as servants of the elite, and were required to only create
music that the aristocrats wanted to hear. Although this gave a strong amount of power and
accreditation to the title of a musical composer it limited the range of creativity from them,
due to their music being so heavily influenced by the rich and powerful.

This completely changed during the Classical era. Music became no longer was limited to
only the influence of the socially and economically elite, but started to become appreciated
by the middle class. As the musical audience grew so did the range of music, and composers
began to create pieces that captivated a larger and broader subject matter. Not only did
composers begin catering to the middle classes need to listen to music but they also started
to create pieces that were easier to play. The mood of the composed musical pieces
changed either gradually or suddenly, with a much more flexible (less complex) rhythm,
that made it easily accessible and recognizable to the middle class patrons

Reference: https://trinaajleee.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/thank-the-middle-class-for-
the-art-of-the-classical-era/
Why is metal considered satanic?
1. Musically, metal sounds angry
If you have any theoretical music knowledge, you might have realized that melodically, metal
songs are extremely different from say, Meghan Trainor's songs. I believe that one fundamental
difference is in the scale usage. Scale is just like what the name suggests: it is the bones of every
kind of music. It is the collection of notes that will be played in a specific composition. Pop and
R&B songs tend to use major scale (which sounds happy). While metal tends to use minor
scale (which sounds sad). However, the fast tempo and harsh sound quality of metal bands
combined with the use of minor scale alter the sound of minor scale from sounding sad into
sounding angry. For example, when you say "stop it" in a slow manner, you might sound sad or
desperate. On the other hand, when you say "stop it" in a loud and aggressive manner, you
sound angry. Now you might ask how sounding angry relates to being satanic. My assumption is
that Western religion (Judaism and Christianity) tends to focus on love and forgiveness. Anger
is considered bad and ungodly. So, this is probably why metal is considered satanic, simply
because it does not sound loving or forgiving.

Referring to the 1st and 2nd song in this playlist, please try to reduce both songs to just melodic
arrangement. Try to ignore the sound of the distorted electric guitar, the drums, the beats, etc.
Just imagine the songs (specifically, the melody) being played on a grand piano. You would
hopefully be able to hear that Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" sounds quite happy and
cheerful while Dimmu Borgir's "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" sounds angry and scary.

2. Lyrically, metal is critical and yes, satanic

It is agreeable enough to say that both Lamb of God and NWA are both critical of the society.
Take a look at these two songs. Both songs are expressing 'negative' emotions, for lack of a better
term. However, while NWA keeps their criticism at a tangible level, that is criticizing police and
their behaviors, Lamb of God tends to bring the hatred into another level. In this masterpiece (I
consider it a masterpiece, how about you?), Lamb of God seems to desire a connection with a
dark supernatural beings, as we can see from the lyrics ("take me under your black wings", etc).
Of course, not all metal songs have this type of lyrics, but metal is probably the first and
foremost genre that talks about connecting with Satan explicitly.
4. Visually, metal musicians may not look like humans
Not because they are not humans, but because they purposely put make-ups which make them
look like dead body (yes, it is called corpse paint). I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Reference: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-metal-considered-satanic