The impact of music education on the preference of musical genres in the Republic of Macedonia

The term “music” is constantly influenced by techni cal and technological dynamics which take on new dimensions in terms of spatial, temporal, and styli stic nature. This enables the expansion of global music culture to be imposed as an imperative in the formation of musical taste and value systems. In this paper, we would like to present music education versus the preference of musical genres among the young population in the Republic of Macedonia in or der to get a picture of the correlation between these two categories. For this purpose, we surveyed 187 students of the final grade in primary educati on at the age of 13–14 years. We conducted the survey in three primary schools taught in Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish languages in the capital of t he Republic of Macedonia, Skopje. The results from the survey show that the highest percentages of stu dents listen to pop–rock (43%) and the newly create d folk music (31%), while the remaining percent (26%) is related to the preference of electronic, art, and folk traditional music. If we take into considerati on the age of the respondents, the time and developmental interval in which they are located, t hey are characterized by the quest to establish a p lace of an individual in the music culture. Because they are directly exposed to a variety of musical influences from the environment and the media, all of that influences the formation of their personali ty and paves the way of musical taste as an important component of the completely developed personality. In such conditions, the relevant musical bodies are especially called to establish a balance in the relationship between music education and the curren t music culture, through finding new contents and educational methods in the school music activities. Keywords: Music education, Music genres, Preference, Students , R. Macedonia