Music & "Stereo"types

I remember the opening scene from the movie "Office Space", where the character named "Michael Bolton" (white guy) is stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, and is jamming with the blaring "rap" music playing on his system. But as he sees a black man walking towards his car, he suddenly becomes aware of the music he is playing, so he reduces the volume, raises the windows of the car and stops his animated hand movements.

The warm weather in Los Angeles has given me the liberty of driving around with my windows lowered most of the time. Normally I dont give a damn about what others think of my music choice, but when I am driving fender-fender with other cars in slow moving or stopped traffic, I become rather conscious of the music streaming out of my system.

Last weekend I went to Ozzfest, featuring bands like Rob Zombie, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and many others, dubbed by some as "satanic". I had also indicated in my previous post that the composition of the audience was purely white. Some even go as far as calling this genre of music as "white trash metal" or "angry white man's music". I have observed a lot of my friends forcing themselves to like hard rock, cause they consider being drunk and head banging while mouthing expletives is cool, and I am probably no different.

Similarly I have observed people develop "stereo"types for other kinds of music. Most of the hip hop singers are predominantly black, though you have rappers like eminem. If you listen to country music, often times than not, people assume that you are from one of the southern states like Tennesse, Alabama or Texas (some even dub it as red neck music) or you are old. Most of the audience for a boy-band concert is composed of teenage girls and I have even heard guys listening to such kind of music being referred as sissies.

No genre of music is better than the other and being a fan of one kind of music, shouldn't necessarily cause people to form develop preconceived notions about that induvidual - but I think, unfortunately thats not true. As Pantera is screaming his lungs out, I cant hear myself think and hence I shall stop.