It’s easy to see that today’s music is more diverse than it has ever been, whether it be genres or the topics within these songs, but what if I told you that you, the fans, are what is holding back the evolution and experimentation of music? You may not be doing it intentionally, but the main source of this roadblock is caused by what you’ve been conditioned to believe by the media and society. You’re subconsciously stereotyping artists based on their age, appearance, and ethnicity because that’s exactly what the music industry wants you to do so that they can stick to the same common music formats and essentially keep printing money by feeding you the same song over and over again with slight changes. My goal is to make you think twice before completely disregarding an artist based on assumptions about them learned from stereotypes.
When you think of country music what do you think of? The odds are your first thought was of a working-class white man singing songs about tractors, heartbreak, and beer on his acoustic guitar. But what if I told you that the genre of country music was actually invented by black people? There were over 450 known African-American country musicians during the 1920s, which is believed to be the decade country music was first recognized. It doesn’t stop there, African-Americans were associated with country music for at least 250 years before that when southern slaves invented instruments such as the banjo and the fiddle. And yet these artists are long forgotten by the history books because early racist America decided they didn’t want the face of this new all-American music genre to be the people they so clearly thought were below them. And after years and years of this the image stuck and now the vision of country music you see today is nothing but white folk talking about working from 9 to 5. To add insult to injury for these Black Country legends, not a single black musician has ever been allowed into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Only 3 black people ever have been allowed to play at the most prestigious country music venue, The Grand Ole Opry, and not even they were accepted into the hall of fame. The blatant racism in country music is so strong that African-Americans are discouraged from singing country music and even told to just stick to hip-hop. Musicians such as Jimmie Allen, the first black man to get a number one song on the Billboard country music hot 100, are often believed to be a rapper by people who learn he is a musician. He gives no indication that he is a rapper so why do people think this? It’s because he doesn’t fit in with their preconceived notions of what country music is, but the color of his skin is more than enough for them to lump him in with hip-hop and rap music stereotypes.
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Sometimes race isn’t the issue with what listeners believe about music. Studies have shown that your taste in music is cemented around the ages of 13 to 14. And since music holds such a large significance to people, as they grow older they connect less and less with newer music and often choose to latch onto “the good old days” they start to believe that all newer music is trash. Most people don’t enjoy sudden changes or being told what to do, so trying to recommend music to people like this will not always go the way you would want it to. They will not take the hot new artists seriously because they don’t stick to the formats of the songs from their youth, especially experimental musicians. And without realizing it, older people tend to have an age superiority complex and refuse to listen and take the advice of those younger than them, so they stereotype all newer artists as brain-dead puppets here for a cash grab and all their adoring fans are dumb kids with a terrible taste all because they refuse to give them the time of day due to the lack of years under their belt. Refusals to accept change even as simple as this are what’s holding back the progression of the music industry because record labels are less likely to sign unique and experimental artists because they don’t want to take a chance on something not guaranteed to bring in money, so they just stick with the same basic format all the listeners have come to love and decline to evolve from. The inability to branch out in musical styles is what’s holding back less popular genres from reaching the mainstream and even the invention of new genres you might love but will never know because you refused to contribute to new up-and-coming artists.
Sometimes music is put down for its subject matter and the artists are put down for the things about themselves that they cannot change. For example, country rapper Lil Nas X had his number 1 spot on the country hot 100 removed because a billboard declared him to be “not country enough” despite the song having all the elements of a stereotypical country song, but he was later saved by a rerelease with a verse added by country music legend Billy Ray Cyrus which earned him his number one spot back. But that isn’t the issue here, it’s what happened after Lil Nas X had broken the record for the longest consecutive weeks in a row at the number 1 spot on the charts, he came out as gay. He faced severe backlash for this because homosexuality “has no place in hip hop and rap”. Comedian Kevin Hart even went as far as to attack the 20-year-old musician for his choice by yelling at him about why he thought it was necessary to do that when it “doesn’t matter”. But anyone familiar with the hip-hop scene knows that homophobia is still strong in the genre even until this day, so it’s clear why Lil Nas X wanted to come out and show people that LGBT and hip-hop can mix and that you don’t have to pick a side. Despite our societal advancements, there will always be people like Kevin Hart who choose to live in their outdated mindsets and attempt to scare others into submission with aggressive behavior all so they don’t have to change the way they see things. Gay people may not be fully accepted into the hip hop and rap community yet but what Lil Nas X did, putting his career at risk all for the sake of a message, is definitely a large and important step towards the right direction for a more accepting tomorrow.
In conclusion, music will not be able to evolve to its maximum potential until we, the listeners, come to fully embrace the diversity in music and refrain from stereotyping and exclusionary behaviors within our domain. Change never happened in a night, but it can start with one person. So why not make that one person you? Do something as simple as listening to a genre that you’ve never heard before, giving an artist you never cared for the time of day, and stopping yourself or others from putting down others for their taste in music, and eventually, we will achieve true unity.
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