Music Banter - Genre distinction as a falsehood.

I know that its a big thing to music lovers of all stripes to be able to say they appreciate or don't appreciate a particular musical genre. I've myself a history of doing such, having been an ardent metalhead in my teenage years and early adulthood.

But as I went through life and listened to more music, became enamoured with other genres, and ultimately became a more rounded music lover and musician, I ended up thanks in no small part to the development of my critical thinking as part of my degree, coming around to the following conclusion -

There is no real need to try and even define genre, let alone identify with it or espouse the virtues of it.

And the reason for that is this. Genre isn't a definition. It aims to be one. It isn't a boundary, it aims to be one. There are artists that are accepted as falling with the remit of one genre over another. There are even artists that aim specifically to be part of a given genre.

But thats only a central core to a nebulous and vaguely defined musical landscape that doesn't ultimately serve more than a purpose of convenience for fans and music retailers.

For every band that is unequivocally a part of a given genre, there are hundreds more that straddle the lines of multiple genres. In genres with longer histories, its hardly unusual to find examples of artists who to this day will reside in, say, the "Heavy Metal" section of a retailer, but whose music bears no resemblance to modern acts considered part of the same scene. Further than that, we have those artists whose music is considered to have coined the terms, yet is no longer even considered to be part of the genre, the genre's definition having been stretched and modified to such an extent that the artists music being considered in that scope seems simply alien.

The example above is one of the primary causes for concern, for me as a music fan. Many of you will know that the act I'm referring to is Jimi Hendrix, who enjoys status as being the first act on the planet to be referred to as "Heavy Metal". Except he wasn't.

In searching to confirm the source of that particular quote, I discovered something fairly remarkable. There is no defined source. The only reference to the review which apparently coined the term, comes from Hendrix's promotional man, "Chas" Chandler, mentioning some nondesdcript review secondhand in an interview in 1995. Hendrix's contribution to the origins of heavy metal is entirely suspect. The first DEFINITE use of the term is actually the lyric to the Steppenwolf song "Born To Be Wild".

On top of that, the Steppenwolf song was released in 1968, and Chandler gave the reply referring to Hendrix, in an interview regarding his time with Hendrix a year later, in 1969.

But modern metal sounds nothing like either of those acts. Modern metal has mutated and now, heavy metal refers both to the old and the new, as a broad term, and to the old specifically, in certain contexts, to certain fans.

And why?

Because genre isn't a term that ever defined itself. Genre is a collection of terms which save fans the laborious task of explaining in detail, the specific appeal of acts to each other, and enables quick and simple recommendation and sharing of music between fans. Rather than describing in detail the sound of an act in order to make a recommendation, fans can now simply point to the genre term which has sprung up around a loose collection of shared musical characteristics.

As a fan recommending to another fan, one doesn't recommend rythms biased to the offbeat with simplistic rythms and prominent basslines. One simply recommends Reggae. Its a functional term.

But with every artist that exemplifies a term, there is another that seeks, specifically, to blend two genres and styles, to bring in influences from the outside, and create something new with those.

The end result is often fine music but it leads the fan to a quandary, how do we describe this music?

The end result is almost always one of two specific approaches.

1 - Widen the definition of the genre to include the new band, if the audiences are very similar. Eventually this leads to widening of genre boundaries and a loss of focus as people seek different things from new and old bands. The term loses its usefulness as a way of advising others on music they may enjoy.

2 - Invent a new genre within which to place the resultant sound, and use that term to recommend to new listeners.

The problem with this is that the moment either of these things happens, we find ourselves looking at an ever growing list of different, but ever more similar genres, most of which have significant audience overlap and overlap of musical characteristics. Owing to the fuzzy nature of genre as as descriptor, this results in endless arguments about what is defined as what type of music, and the entire concept of genre for huge swathes of acts becomes entirely useless, as the number of genre terms vastly eclipses the number of different audiences the music might appeal to.

In the past, where musical sharing was limited to the bedroom, the concert, the magazine, genre terms were vitally important. They provided the means by which to imagine music without being able to immediately hear it, and make a more informed purchase.

But today, with little exception, hearing an audition of an artist is a matter of clicks and keypresses. The NEED for genre as a term by which to describe music is significantly less.

So I ask, what, if anything, is the benefit in continuing to use genre terms as anything more significant than a broad descriptor?

The need for specific and accurate information provided by genre descriptors is long past. A broad term is all that is needed to point people in the direction of the right archive of song samples or digital downloads. Anything more specific can now be handled more effectively by discussion than by genre.

I think genre has its uses. But ultimately, its showing a slow decline as a useful way of defining music in the wake of excellent recommendation sources such as forums and the way forward is to take note of its nebulousness, its ability to be broad and nonspecific while retaining a general function. When someoen tries to nail down a genre to a specific sound or style, the only possible result is that someone who doesn't fit the mould will necessitate either a moving of the goalposts or the creation of a new genre. Its a dead end.

We can't replace it entirely, but if we're aware of how and why and WHEN it doesn't work, we can avoid trying to force square pegs into round holes, and we can start, as people, moving towards discussion which doesn't get derailed into needless categorisation and definition of useless boundaries.