#everynoise | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

freespiderjazz · 25 days

Text

What's The Deal With Genre? Vol. 1

The Problems With Genre

Oftentimes when I'm really listless and happen to be on my laptop I go to one of my favorite sites:

This site is (or was :\) a website updated by a Spotify employee (Glen McDonald) that mapped a dizzying array of genres from across the spectrum of music and all over the world, mapped loosely by mood, and tempo, and a few other factors. If you're interested in a more in depth discussion on the raison d'etre and a bit of the mechanics of this now static site, they posted a great essay here:

https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html#otherthings

It's a tool, or more accurately a map, that you can lose yourself in for hours. Arabic Hip Hop? Zydeco? Nu Gabber? Gujarati Pop? Almost any genre you can think of (and many hundreds beyond the scope of my imagination at the time) are sprawled out in the gradient flowchart. Each links to a set of playlists, an Intro, Sound Of, and a Pulse (Most current releases). I've used everynoise to keep expanding my horizons and push myself out of my comfort zone, and for that I am eternally grateful. More recently however, and with it's passing into more of a relic than a breathing organism, I've turned to it with a more critical eye: hoping it can help me organize doubts and questions I have about music genres themselves.

The Everynoise Map: Organization For The Western Ear?

In the about page for the site, McDonald describes the maps organization in paradoxically visceral and vague terms. "The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier."

As a set of parameters these seem natural enough, and the chart follows it roughly. There is a broad vertical scroll from the totally synthetic/electronic/programmed all the way to (what dominates the bottom of the chart) the various folk music of the world. This element I think is one of the map's strengths. This is a parameter that isn't necessarily biased to a particular place's perception of music: it's a very clear variable of form of composition/recording. The left-right axis is far more subjective, and I find seems to be applied inconsistently through the course of the map.

Here the chart seems to map a certain kind of density, but I would maybe describe this more as 'Heavy-ness'. Having forms of post-metal and fusion black metal (which do tend to be more atmospheric, certainly dense) with hardcore (which I would definitely say is more punchy and spiky) seems to muddy the waters a bit. In their emotional energy and rhythmic content, I think it might even be fair to say some of these forms of hardcore probably have more in common with some of the hip hop genres all the way on the other side of the map than some of these loose, almost orchestral forms of black metal. This observation led to me noting another trend.

Wherever you scroll on this chart, pretty much invariably the center of field will be pop or rock music (occasionally jazz or RnB) but all in all largely *American* forms of popular music. Before I go too deep into this exploration, I want to say that I don't think this is a failure of this map. This is a tool for music exploration geared towards an English speaking audience that uses Spotify. Having a familiar strip of popular genres to then branch from is a solid method to encourage exploration in concentric circles out from sounds that are new, but ultimately familiar for the user. Most importantly, I think this observation about the data, that it centered global variations on American popular music made me ask two questions of myself and my perception of genre. 1. How much has American cultural hegemony shaped my understanding of musical genre? 2. How much has my engagement (both as an artist and a listener) with music as a commodity shaped my understanding of musical genre? Genre as Marketing

Spotify is a blitz capital firm that, ultimately, pays musicians fraction of a penny to host their music on a server that users pay a non-fractional amount of currency to access. The era of on demand access that music streaming has ushered in has also generated a new kind of demand in the musical marketplace. Music consumers want rabbit holes, they want algorithms that learn their habits and then suggest (in the aforementioned concentric circles) new sounds, principally in the form of playlists.

Long story short, Spotify needs your engagement: and it's hard to curate engagement without labels and boxes to pack songs into. I think this is the most confounding element of genre since the advent of recorded music. With this in mind, I think the distribution of the Everynoise data makes more sense. Perhaps unintentionally, the X axis of the graph also lines up with a certain palatability/pop factor. On this map, which is really a reflection of the models of Spotify, YouTube, and other music streaming platforms, the landing strip of western-familiar genres also becomes a layer that one has to sort through to get to music that is rooted away from this jazz/rock/pop core.

A massive factor in the way genre has been shaped is the commodification of Black American art forms (Jazz, Blues, Soul, Rock, RnB etc.) and it's global proliferation through the highly developed and monopolized record industry that developed in the United States between the 1940s-1960s. This created certain expectations for the consumer and for the artist that shaped the world's music. Aspiring musicians around the world were encouraged to emulate these American exports--traditional instruments being replaced with Spanish guitars and drum sets.

Nevertheless the world is richer for these artists additions to the canon of these genres--I would never wish them away. Some of my favorite music is the reinterpretation of these western music styles by artists from across the world. But as a historical process, I must be aware that there is a certain degree of homogeneity that may have been radically different in a global situation. Especially for artists trying to ply their craft full time, market pressures have a big effect. Technological changes in musical equipment (amplification especially) also cause seismic shifts in ensembles. Amplified guitars and basses demand the other instruments in the ensemble can keep up with them in volume, hence the carryover of the saxophone from the big band orchestras into early rock and roll (as one example). Especially with limited resources and capacity, many ensembles had to choose between electrifying or maintaining folk instruments--as amplifying/capturing the sound of an ensemble of acoustic instruments is a more capital-intensive venture than a 3 or 5 piece rock band. I believe a combination of the effect of cultural hegemony and the practical problems presented in marketing/arranging/recording different music funneled the 'overton window' of mainstream genres in the 20th century.

My Own Experience with Genre Pulling back to the personal, I think my initial grumblings of an issue with genre was from how you have to self-describe as an artist. Especially for a project like mine, it's hard to give people a quippy answer to what *kind* of music I make. In conversation, my usual approach is to say something like "I make all kinds of stuff!" or list a menagerie of tags, which may cause more confusion than clarification. Beyond listeners, elements in the industry are probably the most stringent about having some kind of genre, some way to sort your music onto the files of their label's catalogue or the proper stage in their festival lineup. Creatively though I find myself really dissatisfied with the process, or what labels I can cook up. I've posted under "psychedelic rock", "indie", and even "experimental"--but there doesn't seem to be a happy middle ground. Psychedelic rock identifies an element of my influence but gives the audience an inadequate impression of how the rest of the influences affect my style. Indie and Experimental broaden the umbrella but verge on meaningless concepts. What am I to expect when Flying Lotus, Can, Phillip Glass, and JPEGMAFIA are all considered experimental?

Perhaps what we find in genres like experimental and indie is the kernel of dissent against genre in general. They are less categories than they are boxes for music that are fundamentally incompatible with categorization. Is the answer the total dissolution of genre? Genre as Taxonomy To my previous question, I think my own answer is no. I believe genre must change and take new forms but I also acknowledge that it is more than a heuristic for audiences or a tool for marketing music as a commodity. Genre also serves to identify relationships between styles of music and scenes, the evolution of particular sounds. They are reflections of the history of music and reflective of the communities that named them. Whatever system replaces our current understanding of genre must take into account this important role of genre. When a genre has the suffix of jazz, I know it's in communication with a collective music tradition of shared songwriting and improvisation. When a genre has the suffix of -core I know it is evoking a specific aesthetic and is relating to a tight knit scene (evoking the common ancestor of -core genres, hardcore). This is vital information that deserves to be codified and collected along with the music we make. However, I feel like there is a better system that can reflect these connections, shared tapestries and histories, and set expectations around music more holistically. (Thanks for reading this massive ramble! I wanted to set the stage of my struggles with genre and explore some of my wider questions. The next post in this series will outline my ideas about an alternative system to categorize and organize music--but it will need more time to organize and visualize before I can share it here. Stay weird <3)

#media #music #genre theory #experimental music #cultural hegemony #everynoise

0 notes