TO WHAT AN EXTEND IS MUSICAL TASTE GOVERNED BY THE SOCIETY - Essay Example

It is also evident that the ability to enjoy and respond to music is natural in man (Storr, 1992) and can be traced to his evolutionary history (Jolly, 1985). Clayton et al. (2003) argue that music and culture supplement each other and as such control the taste of music. For instance, the kind of music popular in the western culture may fail to live up to the standards of the less developed cultures and vice versa (Clayton et al. 2003). Consequently, it is the aim of this essay to examine the extent to which musical taste is governed by the society.

Numerous studies in the history of music indicate that music has entered almost all levels of education world wide (Clayton et al. 2003). For instance, Campbell (1988) argues that music has been offered to children in their elementary levels of education following a structured syllabus. Similarly, Campbell (1988) has indicated that teaching of music in higher academic levels has gained much attention especially with the intention of improving the quality of music teachers produced. He strongly advocates for the production of specialised music teachers to competently teach the art in line with the norms of the society.

In this connection, it is therefore conceivable to argue that most governments are structuring the curriculum in such a way to control musical taste. Music plays a myriad of crucial functions in human’s life as stated by Hargreaves and North (1997), in which nearly all of them have social bearing. For instance, it is recognised that music has a significant impact in certain areas like health promotion, advertising as well as education (Leppert and McClay, 1992). Most musical themes tend to carry messages leaning heavily on these areas found to promote performance in them.

Clayton et al. (2003) on the other hand claim that in Canada, music has been made highly patriotic with its taste being largely influenced by ethnic