Hasn't music appreciation been removed from Grammer, Middle and (except for Band) High School? The communists know, you have to get to kids when they are young else they are lost. This goes for music as well.
In Catholic school second grade, we gathered, without notice, in the assembly hall. For a good two hours listened to about twenty classical musicians play. Overwhelming and inspiring. In high school, we'd listen to the same (classical) music day-after-day. Our wise music teacher borrowed this technique from top 40 radio until we started to "appreciate" what we were hearing.
Great post, brought back memories from my first school where we sat in the assembly hall and listened to various recordings.
2 memories still remain.
Those programmes often featured the voice of children's presenter Johnny Morris who famous for doing his animal impressions of animal voices talking.
Secondly, at some point they changed the speakers and I didn't like the changeover. It really bothered even at 5/6 years old.
Does this mean I was born an audiophile?
This is an interesting question, but one I've never considered before. Although I have family all over the world I can't say there's a single audiophile amongst any of them.
Not one.
Even my sister with her Sony / NAD/ JBL system would necer consider herself as an audiophile.
My nephew thinks his Bose headphones sound really good, but I don't think that would qualify him either.
Of course just what actually is an audiophile is open to debate, but I think most of us here would say that to qualify as one you have to place considerable (everyone else might say undue) emphasis upon sound quality.
Unfortunately, by that definition, this also includes those people who seem to love equipment more than actually listening to music. Heck, I used to be one of those myself.
The same might also apply to inveterate tweakers. Yes, I was one of those too, but these days to quote Andrew Robinson, I'd consider myself a recovering audiophile when it comes to equipment fetish and tweakery.
Given that sheer weight of numbers against us, perhaps we should be asking ourselves, what's wrong with us?
Or perhaps it's them, not us?