The notes are the same...

As I'm looking at the RSS feed of NYTimes' music section, I can't help but think that music is just music. When Philip Glass and Blink-182 can be mentioned in the same column, it really makes one sit back and think a bit. What makes one different from the other, when you boil down their respective works into the same mold of classical or even modern theory? Recurring themes, connected styles, rhythm, harmony, melody are all component parts of each. And yet one is respected in the fine concert halls of the world (if just barely), the other is revered in arenas and clubs. If music is just music, why can't the bass guitar sing with the basso profundo? the synthesizer sing with the oboe? What makes one taboo to one and not the other? The notes are the same. The banjo, the sitar, the gamelan, the balalaika, the trumpet—they are all instruments to produce that universal language.