Best appreciate that music is music even if you hate it; I hate tripe & trotters but I would never say they weren't food or yet deny anyone the right to enjoy them as such. All music is a manifestation of creative human genius on an individual & collective level; it emerges out of absolute necessity. I don't think it's essential to like all music - I actually find Bob Dylan physically painful to listen to (but I love the unfaltering eclecticism of his radio show) and would personally ponder if much of the slick young trendy things that inhabit sessions these days are actually playing music, but that's just my personal bugbear, as undeserving of a thread as olddude's uncalled for bitching that started off this little lot.

Like art, not everything is music, but everything can be music if that's the way one chooses to define it. So open your ears, and maybe your hearts and minds will follow.

In the Ocean of World Music, genre folk is just a stagnant little puddle slowly drying up for the want of some rain; the drought is on, but the rest of us are out there, swimming in the cool blue depths. Come on in! The water's lovely!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRnvMwD6jM