When genre names morph

V

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Gavin said:
I've done a lil research on genrefication... from what I can tell, genres frequently begin in a particular social/subcultural context. So house music was originally just music played at the Warehouse: disco, new wave, Kraftwerk, etc. I have a South African friend who gave me a bunch of "kwaito" -- turned out a lot of it was just cheesy Ministry of Sound house, but it was kwaito to him because it gets played in the same places to the same crowds (mr sloane confirm?). Or how "funk" in Rio can mean James Brown or indigenous booty bass -- because they're all played at the funk parties. The actual SOUNDS of the records matter less than the context of listening in which they are enmeshed, and the genre term tends to be colloquial and informal.

What happens is that typically an "outsider" of some kind (journalist/traveller/slummer) gets turned on to this subculture and exports it based on a set of SOUNDS, which concretizes/reifies the genre into a more formal pattern, and sets the stage for micogenrefication. This exporting brings a new kind of market pressure on the genre: instead of satisfying insiders with a comprehensive socio-cultural experience, producers are tied to a particular sound (infinitely more exportable than a complex social mileu).

The example from my own work is Detroit "ghettotech": initially it was just simple techno-bass tracks Detroit producers made to incorporate into mixes of the popular styles: electro, first wave techno, and Miami bass pitched up to 45 RPM. There wasn't a name for the style: DJs called it ghetto bass, techno bass, bass, fast shit, etc; audiences called it "mix music." It took an outsider, Disco D, a white kid from the suburbs, picking up on the style, isolating it as a set of sounds (fast tempo, electro palette, Miami bass syncopation, dirty chants), branding it ghettotech (which offended many of the original DJs), and exporting it abroad where it became isolated as a rather narrow genre and associated DJing style. Producers then start to serve these dispersed audiences who wanted a particular branded SOUND, not a more amorphous CONTEXT. If you listen to the old DJ Assault & Mr. De stuff, it's much weirder than what the genre became known for -- "Ass n Titties."

I'm still trying to work out the particulars in my mind, but the difference between CONTEXT (with less division between producers/consumers) and SOUND (with a much stronger dichotomy) seems key.
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Hmm, thanks for that info on Ghettotek, very interesting. I must try and track down some early Assault et al.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
yeah good stuff Gavin. i've thought along the same lines but just much less organzied / articulate.

i can certainly see how the "branding of a sound" into a commodifiable genre has limiting effects on creative output. things are always more fun in the "context" stage... except everyone being always broke.
 
P

Pestario

tell your friends
He doesn't look scared to me, his eyes say he knows something I don't. I should be scared.

The pic should be used for psych assessments.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
or maybe that brief moment of wide eyed disbelief before someone flips their lid, like "NO YOU DIDN'T!!"
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
and as such they are about as relevant to the topic as... well, the expression on the cartoon chicken's face... ok carry on

or is martin on about some kind of shuffle-garage that existed between May and September of 1997 which only him and his mates know about
 
M

martin

----
zhao said:
or is martin on about some kind of shuffle-garage that existed between May and September of 1997 which only him and his mates know about
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Well, it's not my fault you're ignorant of it, maybe you were into Pearl Jam around '96; for everyone else, it was a hi-NRG / handbag house crossover which killed a few months in the summer of Britpop.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
martin said:
Well, it's not my fault you're ignorant of it, maybe you were into Pearl Jam around '96; for everyone else, it was a hi-NRG / handbag house crossover which killed a few months in the summer of Britpop.
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hey! no need to get testy with the Pearl Jam accusations! all you needed to say was "handbag" and i would've known what you're on about!

duffle... heh
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Funky has done something similar to what 'minimal' did with techno.

The electro thing annoyed me. I know you're supposed to just go with such things, but it revealed that anyone calling that stuff 'electro' wasn't really aware of electro. Sorry that genre's taken, get your own.
 
M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Yeah, have to admit the electro one does piss me off. I know it's not like you can turn back the clock or whatever, but it does seem weird when someone just takes an existing name and uses it to describe something else... I guess it's like the trajectory of "minimal", since it came from "electro house", right?

Walked into a record shop yesterday and saw a sale compilation called something generic like Electro: The 80s Essentials or something... artists I remember being on there were Yazoo (that's Yazz in the states?), Erasure, Depeche Mode, Flock of Seagulls, Human League and Gary Numan. *sigh* This is why I asked what happened to synth pop as a genre name.

Also, electroclash is another curious twist on Gavin's rundown on how things usually go - in that instance a DJ / promoter / club owner coined the term presumably to promote the scene he was working in. It's a brand, rather than a journo trying to make sense of something from the outside. Always thought it really does sound like a brand name, too. The "clash" thing is pretty different from the usual approach of bunging together a few music-related terms that are already have some currency.
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
michael said:
artists I remember being on there were Yazoo (that's Yazz in the states?)
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Wasn't sure about this - looked it up on discogs. Looks like it was Yaz in the states. Yazz was someone else. I think that helps make sense of that line in Losing My Edge.
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
And Yaz (oo) actually were electro, Situation was a huge b-boy club record, to the point of having a Francois Kervorkian mix in the US and being released as an A-side there (B-side to Only You in different mix here). Similarly Hard Times by Human League, probably some Depeche Mode too.
 
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