What is music, what is not?
 

There have been many bands that have pushed the boundaries of what we consider to be music, and many people have also put music into a box of what it can and cannot be. So my question to you fellow music lovers is where is the line drawn? When do we say music has to stop evolving? And just what defines something that is indeed pushing the boundaries. Is music all forms of audio, or does it go farther, or in fact are these types of audio-stimuli but into boxes that may not be broken?

If a noise makes you feel something, it is music. If it makes you want to dance, then it's Rock and Roll!

The latter is one of the worst discriptions I've heard for the genre rock and roll, to be honest.

So samba is rock n roll?

Music is organized sound. Note that randomness might be a form of organisation and silence might be a form of sound. Of course there must be an intention to make music. If I deliberately belch three times in equal intervals then it's not automatically music. Except if I do that with a musical intention. Then it is music. Not necessarily good and interesting music though.

Generally I noticed, that people mostly resort to the "that's not music" argument to denounce music they simply don't like. I think that's a strange way of thinking. You don't have to categorize things to not like them.

That pretty much how I define music as well.

And I agree with you about people trying to invalidate music they don't like by saying it's not music. It's kind of a weird phenomenon, similar to the "that's not art" accusation. Strangely you never really hear people describe movies they don't like as not being movies or books they don't like as not being books.

Never thought about that books and movies thing. Interesting observation.
Perhaps the reason is, that "book" is tied to the physical (or lately also digital) object and movies to the act of filming, while music and art can't be that easily tied to anything.

Yeah, sorry, don't know what I was going for there. Out of curiosity, which was the absolute worst description you've heard?

That's a good point and I suppose people do try to dismiss books they don't like as not being literature.

Completely agree.