section_path: Sociological aspects
section_name: Sociological aspects
paragraph_text: Sociological aspects
  
  Ethnographic studies demonstrate that music is a participatory, community-based activity. Music is experienced by individuals in a range of social settings from being alone, to attending a large concert, forming a music community, which cannot be understood as a function of individual will or accident; it includes both commercial and non-commercial participants with a shared set of common values. Musical performances take different forms in different cultures and socioeconomic milieus.
  
  In Europe and North America, there was a divide between what types of music were viewed as " high culture " and " low culture." "High culture" included Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern-era symphonies, concertos, and solo works, and are typically heard in formal concerts in concert halls and churches, with the audience sitting quietly. Other types of music—including jazz, blues, soul, and country —are often performed in bars, nightclubs, and theatres, where the audience may drink, dance and cheer. Until the 20th century, the division between "high" and "low" musical forms was accepted as a valid distinction that separated out "art music", from popular music heard in bars and dance halls. Musicologists, such as David Brackett, note a "redrawing of high-low cultural-aesthetic boundaries" in the 20th century. And, "when industry and public discourses link categories of music with categories of people, they tend to conflate stereotypes with actual listening communities." Stereotypes can be based on socioeconomic standing, or social class, of the performers or audience of the different types of music.
  
  When composers introduce styles of music that break with convention, there can be strong resistance from academics and others. Late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores, serialism, bebop, hip hop, punk rock, and electronica were controversial and criticised, when they were first introduced. Such themes are examined in the sociology of music, sometimes called sociomusicology, which is pursued in departments of sociology, media studies, or music, and is closely related to ethnomusicology.