By Ben Zilber

The Tappan Zee Bridge has always terrified me. At certain angles it appears to head straight into the water, the reflection of the sun obscuring the arching road. I first crossed it when I was 10 years old, half-asleep on a long road trip with my parents, and I remember a sudden rush of terror and adrenaline as we edged closer and closer to the water’s surface—not enough to wake me up, but enough to freeze still my contorted and trembling face. I was suddenly sure we were all going to die, and the preparatory scream was stuck in my throat. I remember slowly concluding that all these cars were driving to their doom and seemed to be doing so with ebullience and verve, like lemmings or zombies. So when I drove over the bridge once again over Oberlin’s fall break with the sounds of the funeral march from Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung in the background, the music attained a new meaning and relevance. The terror of the moment was suddenly transformed into a glorious dark triumph. The lemmings were heroes of the highest order, the annoying car beeps in fact horn calls of fearlessness. Imagine my surprise, then, when the music slowly subsided and what did I hear but the Beastie Boys singing a song featuring the awe-inspiring lines “You’re all mixed up, like pasta primavera/ Yo, why’d you throw that chair at Geraldo Rivera?” My nerves were jittered for an instant, but my mind quickly shifted so that I got used to the rap and the music slowly began to wrap itself around the moment, evoking another semi-trippy fantasy in my mind.

It is incredible to observe for even a moment the way the boundaries of our listening shape and influence the music we hear. In the case of the Tappan Zee, the opera music changed 1) because it was heard driving over a terrifying bridge and 2) because it was followed by grown white men rapping. Yet, in this manner, I was able to see the way in which an atmosphere shapes music and the way in which very different kinds of music can reflect on that atmosphere. One of the most meaningful results of the current crop of iPods, iTunes and other music players that allow users to shuffle randomly through music is that the limits, rules, obligations and etiquette of music listening are shoved off to the side. Listening to music, without regard to genre, length or even movements, is a way of ridding yourself of built-in preconceptions about what you’re hearing. People may say it’s crazy to compare Wagner and Led Zeppelin, but when you hear the angry bellows of Norse gods followed by the heavy riffs of Jimmy Page, you begin to understand how the two might actually share something in common.

In some ways, iPods have resurrected the ideal of radio that the great American composer Aaron Copland envisioned, where people can listen to music without any guide to what it was, who wrote it, who played it, and merely hear and digest the music without bias. And if you’ve never heard of Copland, his music was used in the “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner” commercials, yet another example of how unusual musical associations can expand an audience! Oberlin has an abundant share of purists, either musicians or enthusiasts, devoted in some way to the primacy of their music, whether it be early music, indie rock, classic rock, death rock, new classical music that makes you want to kill someone, new classical music that doesn’t make you want to kill someone, jazz, folk, Wilco, techno and probably quite a few more. But while passion and music are seemingly essential to each other, is this kind of messianic spirit ever helpful? Most normal people don’t seem to care about the labels until someone tells them they should. Up until middle school, I was convinced that country and classical were pure evil and that only dorks would dare touch the stuff, all the while secretly coveting the Mozart CD I had gotten as part of my first grade play.

I brought my iPod with me on my trip up north but made sure to pack it with music I’d never listened to, compiled from my cousins and friends. I was determined to surprise myself and not to skip even the most annoying and tedious song. My goal was variety, of genre, length and style. I wanted every possibility to be waiting for me. The greatest joys of the trip were produced by these “inconsistencies,” when the melancholy lushness of Brahms switched to the energetic banjo yodeling of Bill Monroe, or the smooth soulful voice of Dinah Washington eased into the wacked-out experimental rock of Deerhoof. When you listen to this much different music, you develop a new kind of openness and ease within your ears. Some people need quiet or a crowd to listen to music, but this way the music floats to you without any kind of preparation or warning; suddenly, it does not require any sort of work to enjoy the music, but instead the music beckons you inwards and even the stupidest songs or the most awkward lines become something worth noticing.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Philharmonic got a lot of flak for programming a piece of music from the video game Final Fantasy, yet the concert was a rave, and the 12-year-olds drawn to it probably gained a whole new respect for the Orchestra, as well as staying around for the other pieces. This is the kind of expansion of etiquette that signifies more than just a gimmick and forges an audience with a new willingness to listen and explore different kinds of music – in this case, whatever else the LA Philharmonic played that night. iPods are a welcome sign, but only if people are committed to opening up their own playlists like the LA Phil so that we can get rid of some of the isolating purity that always gets in the way of communication.

Sometimes it is important to resist that natural tendency towards snobbery, because passion and snobbery are only steps apart. Throughout my trip, I was shocked to discover my own inability to recognize pieces and was drawn in by my mistakes. I thought that a piece by the eclectic and vibrant Latin-American composer Villa-Lobos was actually some sort of whacked-out Latin piece by Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood. I found myself humming along to Cat Power, which I had previously said I never would, seeing as my sister had recommended it.

The point is, openness will never develop as long as we stay within our comfort zone, and the nature of a lot of music is to pull and tug at that comfort zone. Whether it is the Beach Boys or Webern that gives you the creeps, sometimes there is an advantage to persisting through that distress and at least trying to develop a true openness to musical diversity. As the classical and jazz worlds wonder where their audiences are going, a question that probably applies to all music, it’s good to be reminded that the path to some sort of wider passion and enjoyment is not stubborn repetition but instead an expansive and inquisitive outlook on music, fueled perhaps by iPods and iTunes. Think about this: how can any musician or music-lover afford to be stubborn and close-minded when it comes to, of all things, music? How can radio be what you listen to in order to hear music you already know? iPods and iTunes represent more than just gadgets; they represent a whole new way of listening. Who knows, maybe “party shuffle” is our best, last chance to save the world!