2 radio DJs. Barney Simon & Chris Pryor. South Africans of a certain generation and alternative music tastes would know.
As I often say, “I grew up with country, so I can’t hate it”. Which isn’t necessarily true for everyone, but if it wasn’t for that, and my dad/aunts/uncles playing guitar every weekend, mostly country stuff, I doubt I’d listen to country at all. Correction: I doubt I’d tolerate it. I still don’t seek it out, but I don’t hate it, and have been known to like some songs on an individual basis.
I love Elton John due to a neighbor having a piano, and I spent many afternoons lying underneath it while she played along with Elton John records.
I had kick-ass music teachers in middle school, who brought everything from John Williams to Queen into the classroom. Really cannot overestimate how amazing being shown the wide variety of quality music is. I hate when I hear schools are dropping arts and music classes; it’s such a shame. You can learn FACTS anywhere; sometimes you have to be shown how to appreciate things, and that’s not something you can learn from a book.
WLS in Chicago was my primary radio station growing up, and also my first glimpse of what political comedy was. (Don’t think I’ll ever hear anything but ‘Fauklands!’ when the song ‘Freeze Frame!’ comes on, or relate the song ‘Jane’ to anything but the then-mayor Ms. Byrne. =p
As a result of…something…my playlists are erratic as hell, and it’s a well known fact that if anyone comments ‘Hey, I like that song!’ that they will probably hate the next song coming up. My taste is just very, very broad, and I still give the most credit to the awesome music teachers at Haines Jr. High in St. Charles, Il. <3
Both.
Not much for “nurture” as for “opportunity” though.
Your brain is receptive to the sound stimuli of music, and the types you happen to listen to while growing up, from early 9 year old age, up to 25 y.o. or older, will stay with you as favorites because they can recreate the brain activity and the pleasurable results they did back when you heard them when you were younger.
Some people cannot do this. Their brain does not associate music with emotional gratification.
The ones that can, will associate any musical stimulus to a preferable emotional state, whatever that music is, at any society or any time period.
Beavis and Butt-head had a small part in forming my musical tastes. Their love of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg led me to like these artists. Eminem came along a little after the end of Beavis and Butt-head (with Dr. Dre being his producer), so I became an Eminem fan as well.
One of my fondest memories while growing up in the '50s was my mother singing along with the AM radio in the kitchen. She listened to the “standards” (Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, plus Broadway and the Big Bands), and to this day I love that music.
My father listened to Classical and Broadway, and I’m heavily into that. Classical was reinforced by my playing violin in my middle- and high-school orchestras.
And then I went to college in the 60s, and became addicted to the music of that decade.
Plus, I will always be indebted to a certain lady novelist (;)) whom I knew for about 18 months in the mid-60s. In addition to many other things, she introduced me to the Romantic period of classical music . . . Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Brahms, etc., plus operetta music.
Then, as I became part of the gay scene in NYC, it was impossible not to be into opera.
I have never stopped loving any type of music; in fact my appreciation continues to grow as I get older. I’m still discovering new music within these general types. And singing in a Gay Men’s Chorus continues to broaden my interests as well.
I heard snatches of jazz-like playing in the pop music of my teens (Dire Straits “Your Latest Trick”, Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind”, etc.) and decided I wanted to cultivate that as an interest. So I took jazz history in college and listened to as much as I could at the library. What I listened to then is still pretty much my “go-to” type of music: modern jazz small groups, 1945-1967 and contemporary musicians in the same style. Likewise, I started messing around with harmonica in high school and had to learn the blues as a matter of necessity. Still something I like, though I’ve fallen away from it.
I’m always on the lookout for new stuff, though. A few years ago, Siucra and Gaelic Storm got me into Celtic music, and just lately I’ve been listening to some neo-bluegrass, mostly because I’ve been invited to play some locally.
I got my taste in music all over the place: listening to top 40 radio in the 70s and early 80s (where I picked up a particular love for the Alan Parsons Project, but I like most music from these periods); listening to my mom’s disco records which she played incessantly (hated it then, kind of like it now), being turned on to groups like Pink Floyd and Queen by my stoner friend in the 70s and to Rush by my high-school-job coworker in the 80s…being blown away by a concert/show by some friends who have an industrial/EBM band in the mid 2000s; listening to the old-style country my parents liked while traveling the US in our motorhome in 1976; Simon and Garfunkel, Jimmy Buffett, and Billy Joel from my college boyfriend/current spouse; melodic heavy metal from I’m not sure where.
I’m willing to give most musical styles a try–so far the only ones I’ve found that I really can’t stand are new-style country, opera, most (but not all) rap, and…I’m not even sure what you call it, but the style of metal where they just scream atonally and try to fight each other for how loudly and cacophonously they play their guitars (death metal? speed metal?). Oh, and I don’t like most Christian rock that I’ve heard, but even there I’ve found exceptions (I love Steve Taylor–another one influenced by the spouse).
I blame Stanley Kubrick.
My dad liked country western. It was all that played in the car. My mom liked classical and opera. That got played a lot at home. My friends liked pop, soft rock, and disco. That got played when we hung out.
So I learned to listen and like all kinds of music. I love bluegrass, I love ragtime, I love Tuvan throat-singing. You name it, I’ll listen to it. It should be pre-1990 though.
My mother was/is a folkie. It must’ve been about 1965 (when I was around 10 years old) that I got tired of my Gene Autry collection and started appropriating her cool new records for my little red record player.
Nature, nuture, and memories.
Mom loved gospel and doo-wop. Dad loved R&B. In the early 70s when I got my first radio, I was a pop/folk rocker. Hard Rock and Metal were noise until my mid twenties. Same with Jazz. Disco was an extension of Motown, so I liked it. Punk was a newer version of metal (read shrill noise) until my thirties. New Wave rewrote the landscape, but I learned to love it (it was that or park my sorry ass on a seat in the club, instead of tearing it up on the dance floor).
Old School Rap is a yes; Gangster Rap is a NO.
Got tired of the mundane lyrics in the mid 90s and switched to country. Got tired of words entirely and switched to Gregorian chants and Classical.
I love almost all genres of music except for Lady Gaga, speed/death metal, trance, and anything else made by the-one-or-two-hit-wonders-soon-to-be-sitting-in-the-99c-for-the-whole-album-bin-on-itunes artists of this decade.