Why Don't You Like Rock Music?

This year marks my tenth anniversary of my very first gig. (The Living End at the Big Top Luna Park, in case you're wondering). From the dozens of international acts to local bands my mates are in to everything in between, I've always noticed one glaringly obvious thing in common. 

I am pretty much always the only brown person there.

It's become a sort of game. "Hey, spot the brown person," I'll say to whoever I'm with. The game ends rapidly when we spot maybe two other Indian/South Asian people in the distance, but by and large, we're always in the vast minority. It's something that has always bothered me — why is it that I never see my fellow Indians at so many of the shows I go to? My tastes are varied: though most of my favourite genres slip in under the all-encompassing rock genre (punk, pop punk, alt rock, post-hardcore), even the odd colossal pop show like Taylor Swift or One Direction fails to add that many more people to the map. It's weird to feel so alone in a room literally packed shoulder to shoulder with people, a place I feel so gratified. What shows are my fellow brown people going to? Am I missing out on a really amazing genre? Why don't you like rock music? 

"It's weird to feel so alone in a room literally packed shoulder to shoulder with people, a place I feel so gratified."

It's not like I grew up on a diet of Rancid, The Ramones or any other quintessential punk act in my formative years. My dad fed me a platter of cheesy dad-tunes like ABBA, The Beatles, Boney M, Cream and Michael Jackson. In the '90s I made like my sleepover sisters and sponged up all the boy and girl bands the golden era of pop had to offer and later, when I needed to mimic exactly what my elder brother was into, I was all about the early 2000s nu-metal, hard rock and rock that was sweeping the world — think System Of A Down, Disturbed, Korn, Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, Alien Ant Farm and Slipknot. I can only assume my brown brethren had similar experiences discovering music, given mine was a fairly organic discovery not driven by a set of particularly music-inclined parents, but it seems that by the time I hit 15 and hooked in the rock IV that would dripfeed me until now, everyone else found something else. 

It's important to note that the racial disparity is evident even when I look at working in the music industry. I still find a little thrill of familiarity when I see an email come in from a name I would've recognised had I grown up in India, instead of left it when I was six months old, but it's few and far between. The pressure to become an engineer or doctor is regularly joked about by Asian and South Asian comics, but if the long-held act of instilling academic values in South Asian kids is still drilled into a kid's education (i.e. That a job in medicine, engineering or science will be far more fruitful than one in arts), maybe it extends to a kid's musical education too. But if that's the case, what is the musical genre equivalent to medicine or engineering? Is it classical, jazz? Something more "cultured"? Why don't you like rock music?

In saying that, at the few EDM shows or festivals I've been to, I have seen some of my sisters and brothers there — but it stumps me as to why. That's not to say you're not allowed to like EDM — of course you are — but I'm just wondering why the genre has garnered its popularity over others. Electronic, nu-wave, synth-pop and the like never made it to India and/or its surrounding countries in the '70s and '80s, so it can't have been handed down from their parents unless their parents were all first-generation (they migrated out of their birth country at a young age) or second-generation migrants (they were born to parents who migrated out of their birth country at a young age). Perhaps other Indians like to party more than I do and uncover new EDM acts and producers during their nights out. Interestingly, at the other end of the spectrum, metal bands are also approved by brown people. I know India has a strangely loyal fanbase of "the devil's music" with bands like Slayer, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Metallica and more often slating in an Indian stint on their world tours, it's just strange that we're happy to endorse either end of the spectrum but not the rock, punk and alternative in the middle. 

I'm not berating you for not liking rock or punk music. You might think it's total shit — and that's cool too — but scientifically, there's gotta be a reason there aren't more of us at these shows. Here are my questions. I have many, with no real answers. Maybe I don't need any, but it doesn't stop me feeling like the token ethnic person in a sea of white every time I'm at a punk gig. Maybe we need a secret call, a "cooee!" of sorts, to signal our presence in the pit. Maybe we should just give each other a nod of recognition on the odd occasion we pass at the merch tent. Either way, I'll be there with bells on.

...Seriously though, why don't you like rock music?