I have been reading a lot of the writing of Roger Scruton recently, the conservative British philosopher who passed away earlier this year. A brilliant and erudite man, it is impossible not to be impressed by the breadth and quality of his thinking, even if one does not always agree with all his analysis or subsequent conclusions.

Scruton would probably have been mildly aghast at my previous post, showcasing as it does an entirely popular taste in music. He is of the opinion that much has gone wrong with popular culture (readers of this blog will know that I can only agree) but in my defence I would argue that this list represents only a slice of my life. And anyway, this is before things went really wrong.

So, I was gratefully reminded of just how much wider was my musical taste after speaking with my mother the other day. She pointed out the diversity of music that was often played on the ONE stereo player that we had. There was the multiple-LP Readers Digest Classical set, diverse albums by Vaughn Williams, John Ireland, Debussy, Mozart, Verdi and others, Dixieland Jazz, Cole Porter, The Andrews Sisters, Swing Bands, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, then, lots of Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Perry Como. This was ably abetted by a large gobs of Latin jazz, spear-headed by Antonio Carlos Jobin.

When I consider also that I had some very obscure albums in my collection at that time (eg: Musicke of Sundry Times, Anthony Rooley's Consort of Musicke, Madrigals by John Dowland), then I feel that I have at least made some effort to approach a higher plain.

In the end it doesn't matter because the line between high and low culture is often blurred. Popular culture can be genuinely good when it wants to be, when it has authentic roots in a community or shared experience.