They are all alike

A friend and fellow musician through many years turned famous composer called. We were going to meet for beers that evening but since he was travelling to meetings in another country early the next day we agreed to postpone. I was already planning to go to a concert at the new date he suggested, but even if he signalled some scepticism he volunteered to accompany me to the event before beers. His scepticism was founded on his view that all artist in the genre of the planned concert sounded alike. Even if my loss of impulse control often makes me agree strongly with the last speaker, this time I managed not to comment or condone. For a long time, I have had the conviction that the reason for so many of my old music friends to develop strong, often fiendish, views of other music than their own stems from the simple fact that we are getting old and stiff-brained. However, this particular friend is not of the growing-old type. I know him as an admirably open-minded person that can apply his music interest to almost all kinds of music. Of course, there are limits also for him. Lately, I have developed the hypothesis that our tendency to write off other artists and musics simply has to do with an instinctive urge to survive. For every year we live the world expands. New trends evolve while the old ones simply refuse to die. In order for us to be able to do more than staying oriented it is necessary to discard of something. Pick a sizable chunk, preferably something there is a lot of, and that many people seem to show interest for, and simply write it all of together with all the style's performers. Of course, if asked directly, I guess all my music friends, many of who are highly educated and employed in teaching music or art students at the highest level, would agree to the principle that a genre that is bad from start to the end does not exist. There are good and bad contemporary art music as there is country, jazz and noise. Putting this principle into work whenever some music hits your ears is however very tiring. A much simpler solution is to say that country, disco or whichever music simple is bad music.