neptune1bond

I grew up listening to my "particular genres" but now I listen to many different things and actually own multiple c.d.'s in the multiple genres that I claim to enjoy (contrary to some who also make that claim since some people want to sound open-minded but only own recordings in a very small number of different styles). I like and own classical (including renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist, post-tonal, and everything in-between), opera, jazz, rock, pop, broadway (show-tunes), r&b, metal, folk, big band, alternative, world-music, spiritual, new-age, country (only a little), easy-listening, and many of the popular tunes going back to the early 1900s (as well as some other things that I own and cycle through, but am just not thinking of at the moment). I'm one of the few people that I know that will listen to a song from Christina Aguilera, then Cole Porter, then Ella Fitgerald, then Rosemary Clooney, then the Vienna Boys Choir, then Journey, then Elton John, then Debussy, then Natalie Dessay, then Boys II Men, then Carrie Underwood, then the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack, then Puccini, then Lacuna Coil, then Kurt Bestor, then Schoenberg, then Nightwish, then Whitney Houston, then the Carpenters, then the orchestral recordings of video game music, then Carole King, then Kenny G etc. (the list goes on and on) and be dancing/boppping and/or singing/humming along to each and every tune. The main types of music (that I can think of at the moment) that I don't enjoy and wouldn't probably listen to regularly is rap and screamo. I actually do own some rap and screamo (mainly for study), I just don't listen to it with any regularity (although I do listen to it sometimes here and there).

Does this reflect in my intelligence? Possibly. Sometimes I will sound somewhat insightful and clever at one minute and then incredibly moronic the next. I tend to believe that a person will enjoy the music that they are most exposed to and not so much the ones that they are not. If there is a correlation between music choices and intelligence, I believe that it is more a reflection of the people/circumstances that they are exposed to and that would probably have a greater influence on their intelligence.

To give some stereotypical examples (I'm not trying to make claims on anyone's intelligence or insult someone's choice of music), a person may have one of his greatest mentors be his uncle who happens to be a college professor who got into classical music. The nephew's admiration for someone of intelligence and good education could lead him to higher intellectual pursuits as well as an appreciation for classical music and therefor, if he did end up being smarter, it would be the association with his uncle and pursuit of higher knowledge and not the classical music.

On the other hand, a girl might have a bunch of friends that listen to bubble-gum teenie-bopper pop music. This group of friends spends more time worried about fashion and make-up and considers being a "brain" to be dorky and a waste of time considering they could just marry someone rich and be a trophy-wife. The girl decides to idolize these girls because they are popular and always get the cutest boys by twirling their hair, being a cheerleader, and saying "like" after every other word. Obviously her idolization of the group of girls is the influencing factor and not the music.

Or a boy grows up in the hood and decides that the only way to survive is to join a gang. He begins listening to rap music because the other gang members advocate it so strongly and he associates with it and feels like it best represents his lifestyle. He eventually drops out of high school, gets some skank pregnant at 16, and then dies in a drive by shooting a little way away from his home (which really only matters so much since he, unknowingly, had contracted a deadly std from one of the many other skanks that he slept with and was going to die not to long after anyways). Obviously his lifestyle choices were the influential factor and not the music.

If there is a correlation between music and intelligence I can't help but believe that the main (but possibly not only) reason that that might be so is that people tend to fall into stereotypes whether consciously or subconsciously. I do not believe that stereotypes are an accurate way to judge human beings, but at the same time there is sometimes a reason why they came about in the first place and can have some small level of accuracy to them.

Although, there are some studies that suggest that there is an effect that music can have on thought. If I remember correctly, they took various university students and had them study while listening to varying types of music and they hooked them to a machine and monitored their brain function. They found that music that constantly changes and alters the material when it reappears (like most classical music where motives are frequently transposed, inverted, played in retrograde, augmented/diminished, and otherwise altered) has a positive effect to thought and general brain function. While the same studies showed that music that tends to be more repetitive and the musical material has less alteration in its reappearance (a good deal of popular music) actually can hinder thought and slow general brain function. So, maybe there is some type of correlation, who knows? I still tend to think that, with the exception of a physical handicap, who you associate with and your life circumstances are the main influential factors.