Is this a campaign of hate?

Your music sucks. That’s not rock. You listen to that crap? They’re totally ripping off other bands. I mean they’re clearly trying to be Coldplay. That stuff is so generic, even my tone-deaf kid brother can play it." Has anyone ever told you that? Say hello to something we like to call music elitism.

Sometimes, it’s a holier-than-thou outlook on the things everyone else listens to. "Oh my God, you like Simple Plan? What a lame, faggy band! Their lyrics are pointless, and their musical composition, or lack thereof, just sucks! Man, you ought to be listening to beautiful, smarter stuff like Muse or Hopesfall. I’ll lend you my CD so you can hear what I mean." This is the kind of elitist that is in pursuit of the higher art or aesthetic, which is rarely a bad thing in theory. Often, they can come off as insulting, but elitism is founded on the idea that there is something better out there, something higher to aspire for. It is this idea that they uphold, and it is for this that they mercilessly scoff at your undying love for pre-packaged boybands. They know (or they think they know) that there is something more deserving of airplay.

Sometimes, it’s an obsessive overprotection of the music one loves. "Dude, everyone’s listening to Death Cab na. It’s that OC teen drama stuff kasi, eh. Do these people even understand what the music is about? Do they know what the songs mean? This is terrible!" In this case, it is the heart, soul, and substance of the music that this particular kind of music elitist wishes to protect. The whole boyband phenome—non can be blamed on prepubescent girls’ need for good-looking boys, and maybe, (just maybe) the music might have actually meant something to them. But is this also why we listen to Wolfgang or Garbage, or is there something more to them than their exceptional physical appearances?

Sometimes, it’s the shallower need for name-dropping power. "Have you heard that new ‘A Fall Farewell‘ album? You haven’t? You haven’t even heard of them? Jeez, what rock have you been hiding under? They’re the greatest thing to happen to the scene since Conor-freaking-Oberst! Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him, either!" Everyone has hopped onto the bandwagon, and with the sudden influx of new music from all over the world and from every random kanto of Metro Manila and beyond, it is no longer a contest of superiority among genres. Now, it’s about what one knows, and what everyone else doesn’t. This is faux, scenester elitism. This is the cheap need to be able to hold something over another, and be better than someone else. This is the scramble for "credibility" as a so-called music geek.

Some of the abovementioned have some semblance of justification, but in the spirit of human generalization, they’re all lumped under the same category. They are music elitists. You could be one if you a) love your music. b) really love your music, c) wish more people would listen to your music, but d) like it for the right reasons, and e) recognize the artistry that goes into it, or f) don’t want anyone to listen to your music because you think they don’t have the right to or don’t have the substance to understand it.

It’s pretty senseless sometimes.

At some point, the world will have to come to terms with the fact that nobody was born with any kind of taste – good or bad, by anyone’s standards. Perhaps this is the way that things should still be. Music, after all, shouldn’t be about who’s with what label, what song is being played on what station, or which bunch of supposed pretenders is listening to what. It isn’t about whether or not so-and-so sold out, or whether or not this band or the other is just trying to be the next Radiohead, and besides, "Radiohead is a bunch of pretentious jerks, anyway." It shouldn’t be about the little technicalities or the insignificant details. It should be about you.

The music you love should be what moves you, what drives you to feel. Music should mean something, whether on a grand scale, or on a deeply personal level. Music is meant to communicate.

When people start keeping the music they enjoy to themselves, they completely defeat the purpose for which it was made. The selfish kind of music elitist prevents other people from discovering and appreciating whatever beauty or magic there is in whatever he is listening to. He kills the progress.

Although many bitter victims of elitism would like to say that it is unnecessary, truth be told, it does have its good points. I say this because a music elitist saved my life. Two thousand years ago, when I was young and misguided, and IRC was still popular, I had a series of great "conversations" with the most obsessive music geek I have ever met. These would all begin with a list of songs for me to download, mostly by artists that I had only heard of in passing (or hadn’t heard of at all) and wouldn’t have taken the time to seriously consider listening to. Had I not been influenced by his taste, I would never have discovered the ethereal enchantment of the Cocteau Twins. I wouldn’t have fallen as deeply in love with the calm, subdued fury of the Deftones. I wouldn’t be as willing to listen to new things, to unheard of things. I would have missed out on an entire spectrum of emotion. I wouldn’t be the same person.

Believe it or not, the music we listen to influences the way we feel, the way we think, even the way we are. (When taken seriously, that is.) Sometimes, music elitists make us look beyond what we already know. They cut a few more facets into our personalities. They can be mildly (or insanely) offensive when they tell you that Truly Madly Deeply is not the ultimate love song of our time, but thanks to them, we can find beauty and meaning in other songs, in music that we might never have heard or heard of if they hadn’t forced us to give it a chance. And then we hear Maps, or Breña, and we know what else love can be.

Music elitism is as subjective as the rest of the world we live in. It has proven to be a catalyst of change in the scene: in the music that is made, and in turn, the music that we listen to. Music elitism forces us to progress. If nobody thought that what exists could be improved, if nobody else out there sought something more, for something better, a lot of what we love wouldn’t be here. Bands would be playing the same kind of music; development would be nonexistent. Because of music elitism, artists are challenged to set the bar higher, to become better. Because of music elitism, we are driven to listen to new things and to broaden our musical horizons. In this case, music elitism is good – no, music elitism is great.

But if another kind of music elitism prevailed, much of the music that we love now, we might never have loved. If others keep music to themselves, the music that we could love, we might never even discover. In this case, music elitism might just be the end of the world.

The hundreds of thousands of bands and artists out there have done their part for music: they have made it. It’s our turn to decide what to do with it, once we have listened to it and enjoyed it, once we have let it move us. Do we pass the music on and hope that it will have as much meaning for someone else, or do we keep the music to ourselves and keep someone else from hearing a song that might change his or her life? The responsibility is in our hands.

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This piece was originally written for the Ateneo Musicians Pool. Any comments, complaints, and violent reactions can be sent to bewaretheashtraygirl@yahoo.com. I’d love to know what you think about today’s music scene.