It is not my place to say what a person, or people, should or should not like. There are those crazy people, in my opinion, who shun chocolate. I remember knowing a young woman, who, like myself, was of Caribbean descent, who did not like chicken. She was not even vegetarian! She just did not eat chicken. I am pretty sure she is the only non-vegetarian, black person I ever met who did not eat chicken. It was just odd. Not so much that she became ostracised. After all, people are peculiar. They have quirks and as long as they harm no other, good luck to them.
Having said that, I do remember hearing of one of the more disconcerting dislikes I have ever known a person to have. It was many moons ago, I was working in a large department store and got talking with one of my colleagues. She was married and I think we had maybe seen her husband once or twice. We were all in our twenties and, to us boys, a married woman half the age of our mothers was intriguing. So we asked her about her hubby; when they met, what does he do? What’s he into? What music does he like? I cannot remember the answer to most of the questions. What I do remember is her saying he didn’t like music. He doesn’t like music? Nope. He doesn’t like music? No. No kind of music? None.
To put it into perspective, his dislike of music had no impact on my life whatsoever, this is a conversation that happened over twenty years ago and though I cannot remember her name, my former colleague, I remember that. That he did not like music. It was just so unheard of, the dislike of music.
Obviously for the deaf and aurally challenged the absence of sound is a normality. But to be able to hear and not like any type of music is, without meaning to be judgemental but doing so all the same, weird.
With the advent of the moving image over a century ago and the initial inability to tell a story with spoken words, music was an integral part of storytelling. Even with the introduction of talking pictures, the music remained. Music is emotive, it tells us where the story is going even when we have missed some of the words. Such is its power and omnipresence in film, leaving it out can be as powerful as choosing the right type. Remember the opening scene in The Spy Who Loved Me and Bond escaping his pursuers whilst skiing through the mountains and the music cutting as he went off the slope? Epic.
Every film fan can think of music that is synonymous with a favourite film. The Darth Vader march, The Dambusters, The Godfather, the Superman theme, the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and so many more.
I remember buying the soundtrack album to Coppola’s the Cotton Club after watching it twice in the same week. I was similarly blown away by the soundtrack of the Bruce Dern starrer, Nebraska. Would Guardians Of The Galaxy have been the same film without its epic soundtrack? Not at all.
Music evokes memories. A song can take you right back to a specific moment, a particular mood, a smile, an encounter, a wonderful evening or a summer. Melody has its own story. So I ask you, as a relatively normal and open minded individual, what kind of person doesn’t like music?
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