I can only speak to my experiences. I teach in an upper middle class suburb, and kids there like al sorts of music and do not appear to me to attach it to a lifestyle.
I remember when I was a kid, defending rock music to my uncle who hated it and loved big band jazz. One of his arguments to me was that rock music was linked to a culture of drugs. I remember him asking, “what does it say about this music you like that the performers have to behave in a certain way in order to play it?” This feels to me similar to what I’m hearing here. I wasn’t supposed to like rock because it was associated with a certain lifestyle.
In terms of the idea that certain art is lesser, that also strikes me similar to me as my uncle arguing that jazz was superior to rock.
I gave up judging art as lesser or greater awhile ago. Art is so subjective. I love what I love very passionately and I definitely do not enjoy all music I hear, but that’s not my business. I remember being at a music store waiting while my kid had a guitar lesson and watching a Taylor Swift concert on the TV there. Definitely not what I’m into, but watching the fans at the concert and they way they were so invested in it, who am I to tell them to listen to something else?
I don’t want to get all didactic and sound condescending here (tone is so hard to convey on the internet), and I want to share this fascinating resource I found last year called Pessimists Archive. These folks find articles from 40-100 years ago where people are speaking out against various cultural and technological developments because they sincerely believed those developments were ruining society. I’ve read articles about how reading novels was bad for you, riding bicycles would give you “bicycle face,” pinball machines encouraged delinquency and the like. I don’t believe the lesson is that objection to change is ridiculous, but there is a context that we have often been down the road of reacting to change in certain ways.
Anyway, that was a long post and thanks for getting to the end of it if you did. I’m not looking to spark debate about art. Enjoy the day everyone!