A while ago someone on this list said he didn't "get" shoegaze, and my immediate (unpublished) reaction was "what's to 'get?' You just listen to it; it's fun, unless the band sucks." There's obviously some sort of class aspect to how this is determined: otherwise the classic phillistine opinion of our time wouldn't be "I like everything, except country and rap."
As it happens, I don't currently get hip-hop or the big orchestral sort of classical, but I'd like to. For all the classical music snobs on the list, how might one go about acquiring an ear for it? As an added bonus, this might allow me to reread Mann's Faustus and actually understand what was going on.