I don't get how anyone can dismiss an entire genre of music. To me, that just suggests that the person is aesthetically limited and possibly closed minded and shallow as well. It's not what people listen to that makes me dismissive, it's what they shut out.

The only genre I've been unable to find anything to like in is death metal and the related cookie monster gargling draino stuff.

But if you honestly dismiss all of jazz, rap, or country - the three most commonly "dismissed" genres - you haven't listened to enough, or you're just...shallow.

I'm sorry. I've tried to make allowances for this kind of thing, but there's just too much range of quality in any genre to dismiss it entirely. If you have never liked a piece of jazz, you're missing part of your soul. Most people have a genre preference, and that's normal, but to shut out whole genres of music is just...ignorant.

Sorry, I don't want to insult anyone, but the tendency of people to do this just disturbs me. I have to wonder if people hear music the way I hear it. I have to wonder why a lot of people even bother to listen to music.

The best of any genre is worth hearing. Even in the whole death metal area, I at least am open to the possibility that I haven't heard enough of it yet to dismiss all of it.

Mostly I gravitate to rock music. But I have been stunned - floored, by certain jazz albums (mostly in the post-bop period in the 50s and 60s), dragged out into the desert and rolled around a desert plain in a tumbleweed by a few country songs (Steve Earle? Johnny Cash?), and bobbed my head to good hip hop (If Eric B and Rakim's "Follow the Leader" doesn't do it for you, I don't even know what to say).

Open your ears, heart, and mind...wider. Question all of your aesthetic assumptions and predispositions...daily.