The rise and fall of musical genres
 

Just a theory I have, but it seems much like empires, (Roman, Ottoman, British) musical genres seem to rise peak and then enter into a decline. There are very few genres I can think of where this is not the case, at least in Anglo speaking world.

I guess with technology and the changing of generations cultures are always in flux.

Jazz: Swing rises in the 20's and commercially peaks in the 40's before it declines. Jazz as a whole is still dominant throughout the 50's with pop acts and the rise of bebop and cool jazz, but inevitably begins a slow decent as it is eclipsed by rock sometime in the 60's. By the end of the 70's jazz becomes an underground niche genre. It's dominance is over.

Rock: There are so many different genres of rock, but on a whole it begins its ascent sometime in the 50's with the likes of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and hits peak interest in the 70's in what we now phrase as classic rock, and despite its continued dominance through the 80's it safe to say its been on the decline with it's last big commercial success coming from the early 90's, as its market dominance is challenged by other genres and changing technology.

Heavy Metal: Starts in the early seventies and begins its ascent around the late 70's with the NWOBM & bands like AC/DC, to become one of the most dominant genres of the 80's, peaking somewhere around the early to mid 80's before entering in a decline after 91 with the dominance of other youth culture genres taking its place. Despite this, it still remains popular throughout the 90's with ascent of alternative and Nu metal, and the 00's with metalcore, but it never regains the commercial dominance of peak metal in the 80's.

Rap: Starts in the early 80's and begins its ascent in the late 80's to become one of the most dominant genres of the 90's. Unlike heavy metal though, it remains strong throughout the 00's & beyond with superstars like Eminem, Kanye West & Kendrick Lamar, and the dominance of R&B in the pop charts, but nevertheless its popularity has been waning in recent years, leaving many critics to proclaim that rap is dead. Although it is now a hugely popular global phenomenon, it's safe to say it's not as popular as it once was, and that we have hit peak rap, either in the 90's or sometime in the early 00's.

Punk Begins it's ascent in the late 70's and becomes a popular underground genre throughout the 80's, before becoming a commercialized powerhouse in the early 90's with the onset of grunge and bands like Green Day and the Offspring. It retains its popularity somewhat throughout 00's with the ascent of screamo and the popularity of hardcore bands like Hatebreed and Converge ,before trickling down to a small underground musical niche.

Anyhow that my theory, I don't want to hog all the genres so feel free to add your own or to pick my theory apart, cheers wtb.

Country music is probably the best example of this. Peaked in the 50's and 60's with Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Faron Young. Then continued on pretty strong on through the 80's and 90's with a few great artists like Lyle Lovett, K.D. Lang, Carlene Carter, and The Judds. Then in the early 2000's Johnny Cash died and it completely turned to crap. It's probably the worst genre in music right now.

Great idea for a thread, William! :thumb:

A lot of this is of course down to commercial popularity, ie what the radio plays, and how much money the genre brings in, in terms of concerts, promotions, merchandising even (not too many people would wear an "I love jazz" t-shirt) but another factor is this sort of desire for the younger generation to always despise their parents' music. Many kids would put down say jazz or big band in the 50/60s because it was "old people's music", although in all likelihood they never even listened to it properly. Same thing with punk vs prog and pop vs rock. There's an almost unconscious need to put down music seen as older, to be seen as "hip" or "with it" or "cool" or whatever the prevalent phrase is at the time, by latching on to the latest trends and being with the in-crowd.

So older music generally gets short shrift from the younger generation, and sadly, mostly these are the ones who buy the records that make up the charts, and therefore determine what is deemed popular and what we will hear on the basic radio.

Then of course you get revivals, when some music is seen as "retro" and is now cool. That 20/30s style was popular again for a while, mostly due to "Boardwalk Empire" and particularly in Britain, on the back of their (failed) Eurovision entry. Sometimes it comes back around, such as with prog in the 80s, to sort of fade out again, and sometimes it metamorphoses into something almost completely different, like "New" Country. Then you have genres crossing over, so that the best (or worst) of both worlds is achieved.

One thing is certain though: as you say, in another however many years, the current trend which is seen as cool will be villified by the kids as they groove to their new favourite genre, whatever it may be. The world turns, and music changes, but one thing remains the same: our belief that the music our parents listened to was crap, and our, in general, refusal to give it a fair trial and just dismiss it out of hand.

So are we just talking about how a genre does commercially or as a whole? Because if it's the latter, I'd say that jazz world is still quite massive and thriving despite not being chart toppers.

Does anyone know what the current situation with EDM is?
In the 90s techno was huge, when I was in my late teens/early twenties it was all about Jungle/DnB and House. Last trend I consciously witnessed was dubstep.
Is there a leading genre nowadays? Or is it pretty much fractured by now?

Dang, those kids be dissing jazz? They probably just never heard Kind of Blue.

The prominence of particular genres is very much tied to the prominence of particular subcultures, and the rise and fall of subcultures is very much tied to historical events. Listening to the most significant and successful albums of an era often feels like a bit of a history lesson, whether the music is directly addressing the events of the times or the mood simply reflects the general paradigm of the era, it acts as a sort of window into the overall mentality of that time.

I think approaching old music with this in mind really enriches the experience. Don't compare it to modern music or some standard you have built up listening to other genres, listen to it for what it is and what it's trying to say. Listen to the tone of the instruments and the production quality and realize that those sounds were the limits of what was possible at the time. Imagine what it must have it must have been like in the 60's to hear distorted amplifiers for the first time, how powerful and visceral it must have been to hear even a single note ring out with that edge to it. Or how mind boggling and sinister the first Black Sabbath album must have been, seeming to come out of nowhere with this atmosphere never touched before in popular music. Chuck Berry was revolutionary for youth music, Jerry Lee Lewis was a ****ing demon, Duke Ellington was a wizard.

I've thought about this a lot too and it seems that with electronic music, since being mostly instrumental it doesn't really lend itself as significantly to particular subcultures, the popularity of subgenres over time seems to be dependent moreso on the actual sounds and production techniques used. Reese bass is extremely popular right now, so the dominant subgenres in electronic music are the genres that utilize it the most; Glitch Hop, Neurofunk, Electro-House, Dubstep etc. High hat trills and big synth stabs are also really popular right now so Trap is huge.

Hip-Hop started in 79', it was being majorly pioneered in all aspects through 79' to around 86' then from 87' to a little after 94' is what is considered the Golden Era im which the Highest quality music came out of, from 94' to 00' it was good but becoming gradually more and more commercialized and is also the time when Master P and his record label got highly successful and Southern Hip-Hop started to dominate the scene, from 00' to around 07' Hip-Hop de-evolved into Rap and became extremely commercial and RnB thugs and nightclub rappers became the forefront and Emcees hardly existed on a successful front, from 06' to now rap has become an almost entirely different type of music sounding nothing like anything previous with the likes of the artists on the scene. Hip-Hop is still around but only in the cracks of the music scene and is mostly underground, so it's death started in the early 2000's and is gradually happening and everything becomes more commercialized, although the fan base for Oldschool Hip-Hop is growing so maybe in coming years there will be a resurgence in Hip-Hop oriented style of rap music.

Thanks, I would also tend to agree with your analyze of each generation needing to shed away the music of their parents. Sadly this means that all musical genres eventually fall out of vogue & descend back into an underground niche.

EDM is a tricky one because it's so technology driven its peak may have not been reached. For now you could do two things.

You could look at individual genres within EDM, for instance trip hop & progressive house started sometime in the late 80's and began its ascent in the early 90's to become one of the most dominant genres of the decade most notably in the UK & Europe. It peaks sometime in the mid late 90's (Trainspotting, Mezzanine) and then begins its descent in 00's as its eclipsed by the indie rock revival, The Strokes, White Stripes ect.

Or you could gamble and state that "heaven forbid" the current crop of EDM artists like Armin Van Buuren & Sweedish House Mafia is peak EDM.

Thanks Mico, I'm aware of the history and would completely agree that 87 to 94 is the golden age of rap, but it is it's commercialization with artists like Biggy and Jay Z that leads it to become a radio goliath dominating the pop charts through R&B by the early 2000's.

As per example, most true punk fans would probably murder someone for claiming that Green Day & the Offspring are better than Black Flag & the Dead Kennedys, but nevertheless this was peak punk. Green Day has probably sold more records than all the 80's American hardcore bands combined.

I may be in era though, I haven't checked the overall record sales of NWA and the Wu Tang Clan, but it could very well be the case they could be regarded in the same light as Floyd or Zeppelin.