Musick

My roommates have distinct musical preferences (mostly they listen to the Strokes and old school Hip Hop) and, according to them, my musical taste is deficient. This is because I have a particularly strong affinity for punk music and, more specifically, punk-influenced music. Despite the allure Punk has for me, I attempt to maintain a unique musical spectrum, and thus my collection of music includes a large subsection of the Angry Girl Music genre (Tori Amos, Sarah Mclachlan, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Letters to Cleo…). I say Angry Girl Music and you might think I mean music that Angry Girls make, but I really mean music that I envision Angry Girls listening to. This could be completely off and no Angry Girls actually listen to this music, but that’s my mental picture of who the principal audience is. I like to think that I’m a big fan of Emo, but apparently my concept of Emo is really Pop-Punk. Now- the differences between real Emo and what I listen to elude me to this day. Apparently Sunny Day Real Estate IS emo, but the Get Up Kids are NOT Emo. Recently I had the shocking realization that what I thought was screamo is really….I’m not sure what. And apparently Saetia IS Screamo but Thrice, Emery and Underoath aren’t even though they say they are. So….what is what? How is a well-intentioned guy like me supposed to know the difference between Emo, Screamo and Pop-punk?
All of the confusion that I experience as a cause of multi-genre cross pollination is quite unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because a big part of Who You Are is what kind of music you listen to. If I start talking about how much I like Emo- someone will inevitably ask ‘what’s Emo?’ And I have no answer. But there must be a name for the genre of music I listen to. And Pop-punk just doesn’t do it for me.
So I think to myself… is my music Who I Am? Why do I listen to the music I listen to? There must be some reason other than social pressure and conditions. Like, if I was a black man, would I listen predominantly to rap or would I still have an affinity to punk-esque music?