Why We Don't Have a Say in What Music We Prefer

Alex Gross
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
September 15 2019
Why We Don’t Have a Say in What Music We Prefer
From the start of mankind there have been ways people are able to create music. Many things can be thought of as music, and just like certain very “crazy” forms of art and theatre, there is abstract music. This can include simple, unpleasant, or nonexistent music, such as the 4 minute song that is just continuous silence. The one constant in music, is that people will always choose what they like and don’t like. Some younger people listen to classical music from centuries ago, or music from the 20th century decades, while some adults people, listen to music that is just coming out now. People always think that they choose what type of music they like, or it is some influence from what they hear their parents listen too, but it might be much more intricate than that. An easier way to look at this would be through the point of something like eye color. Your mother could have blue eyes, and your father could have brown eyes, and you might get fully blue eyes. It isn’t some weird mixture of colors between blue and brown, there is just one thing. The same thing might be possible with something like musical preference. The people who were doing research on this study went to a remote area of Bolivia, with basically no Western influence, and played them music that we find pleasant, and some that we find unpleasant, and found that they virtually the same about it. They tested people in a nearby city that had a lot of Western Influence, and that type of music that is known as unpleasant, was still seen as unpleasant. This shows a possibility that you don’t just grow on the type of music you have in your country that you hear regularly, and that it might be more genetics. They also did tests with rhythm that show that some rhythms of top hits were commonly enjoyed, however there were some beats found in very popular songs in the U.S. that the people in the village found repulsive. Referring back the genetic eye color situation, this makes it possible that people wouldn’t just all blend together and form some one type of music that will constantly be enjoyed. This makes it possible for the things people like to vary within a culture, and that one persons musical preferences could be passed down and an entire race’s music could be based on, because everyone inherited the traits of liking that type. This could add on an entire new branch of the studies of neurology and psychology, because this goes much farther than music. Humans have never thought that memories get genetically passed on, and that is why we keep stories by documenting stuff that people tell us; however, if people are literally having the same preferences to music based on stuff their ancestors listened too, they are retaining information that was never told to them. This opens up many new possibilities, and we could even discover that all of our ancestor’s memories are stored inside our brains and we need to find a way to harness the power of our brain and access them. Although this idea ranges VERY far past music preference, and it is just a theory, this one study could change everything about history, and life as we know it.

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