Environment is definitely involved, especially in the formative years when the way you percieve music is developing in your brain. As a "westerner", just think how hard it is to get your ears used to the different musical scales used in something like traditional Indian music! However, kids that grow up around it take to it very easily.

My formative years were the mid to late 1970's when the radio was playing an incredible variety of popular music styles. Therefore, I developed a taste for just about anything and everything in the pop, rock, jazz, and blues worlds. I would discover an appreciation for classical music a little later on in college. Although my personal favorite styles emerged over time, I love hearing new music (current or past) all the time and actually feel like my quality of life would be significantly worse without it.

In contrast, most average people I meet in life today have very narrow listening tastes and many take the position that there has been no good new music produced since they graduated from school. I never know what to say to this and I will never be able to relate to it, but I guess these are the type of people who are perfectly content listening to the same 100 classic rock songs over and over on any given corporate, pre-programmed radio station. When most people look at my iPod and see that I have upwards of 10,000 songs on it, the usual response I get is, "Wow, I don't think I even know 10,000 songs!" To this, I lightly shrug my shoulders and move on. At that point, what can you say?

When asked about his love for The Beatles in an interview, Ozzy Osbourne replied something like this, "The Beatles' music is like air to me. I could not live without it any easier than I could live without Oxygen!"

That is pretty much how I feel about music in general. All things considered beyond the basic necessities of life, it would be the hardest thing for me to live without. Good music speaks to the human condition better and more directly than any other form of expression I know. It is both primal and intellectual, so it satisfies both hemispheres of the brain. It also dissolves language barriers quicker than anything else I know. I might not be able to communicate verbally with someone in Brazil who speaks only Portugese, but I bet I can put on some music that will have us on the same page in no time!

And best of all, there is no "wrong answer" when it comes to music. What is good to the individual is whatever speaks to them. Of course, there are different levels of skill, talent, and complexity, but it is not uncommon for someone to be just as moved (if not more so) by The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" than by Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7 in A major".

"The best place to start an adventure is with a quiet, perfect life...and someone who realizes that it can't possibly be enough." - Kevin J. Anderson