Listening is an ability that gets developed by doing it. You have to both listen to the same thing often enough to get beneath the surface and to constantly listen to new things. And by new things, I mean things you’ve never heard before, things you don’t like on first hearing, even things you hate. The constant consumption of the same old, same old kills off the ability. If you want to see where the exclusive snobs are, it’s in the people who will brush off the work of great pioneers like Coleman, or Betty Carter or Arnold Schoenberg or Milton Babbitt as they go back to not listen to the same, sappy three minute tune for the thousandth time. To deride music as carefully and daringly produced as theirs because it failed to entertain on the first hearing, to think that such a superficial brush off was worth the breath wasted to express it, now that’s snobbery.

-Echidne of the Snakes

RTWT
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