When genre names morph

[michael]

Electro - used to mean breakdance music, Newcleus etc. and as picked up by Drexciya etc. Now it means Vitalic and house music with distorted sawtooth synth lines to some people, and Hot Chip & Junior Boys to others. What happened to synth pop? What short-hand to use? Electro funk?

Minimal - somewhere along the way minimal techno dropped the word techno, but somehow came to mean contemporary techno in general. Not sure how to describe, um, minimal music that's not techno. Guess it's "ambient", but then that seems to have become a rock-rooted term?

Post-rock - as Reynolds had it, acts experimenting with electronics and pushing rock formats. Stereolab, Disco Inferno, Seefeel are ones I remember him naming. Oh yeah, 'Kid A'. Anyway, now post-rock seems to mean (largely) instrumental rock, all brooding and melodramatic and crescendi galore. And tuned percussion. You have to have a xylophone in there somewhere. So how to describe artists who are ... well, experimenting with electronics and pushing rock formats?

< Usual "genres are rubbish" caveats can be inserted here. > I think it's agreed a bit of short-hand is useful at times, but that it is just short-hand. Just a pet peeve when genre definitions shift to the point and there's suddenly a gap left behind...

 

[zhao]

western pop music genre classification is fucked but the level of confusion in Africa music, for instance... always the sense of lost all alone in a giant rain-forest full of strange sounds trying to decipher the meaning of the few road signs you do find along the way...

the awesome music in Nairobi, what is it? is it called Kapuka? Genge? or Boomba? or is it some kind of Soukous inflected Hiplife with heavy Kizomba influences? or is it more closely related to Bongo Flava? and what is the difference between Bongo and Bongo FLAVA? is it all descendent of older styles like Muziki Wa Dansi, Taarab, and Filmi, or did it also come from Benga Beat?

what about Kwasa Kwasa from the Congo? when it hybridizes with Gumba-Gumba and other Southern flavors it becomes Kwasa-Kwaito.

and that's just a few. of the modern styles. if one was to go deeper into the roots... Chimurenga, Makossa, Zoblazo... you'll never sleep again.

 

[Pestario]

some others come to mind...

'garage', to state the obvious, has lost all meaning

'breaks' used to be the sample heavy bboy stuff but now refers to probably the most pedestrian dance music genre out there.

 

[henry s]

of course, garage initially referred to rock, Nuggets-era bands like the Sonics and such...

glam morphed (at least stateside) into another term for hair-metal...

seems like house has splintered into so many sub-genres that the term on it's own is meaningless...

 

[tom pr]

western pop music genre classification is fucked but the level of confusion in Africa music, for instance...

you wait til the two meet properly. I've been waiting for a form of music to be called Nu-Ju for years, and it will happen in my lifetime!

 

[Gavin]

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.

 

[jonny mugwump]

i invented a genre the other day- Dickensian Techno- it's called Bleak House. Any takers out there?

 

[jonny mugwump]

sorry, that was a really dumb ass derailing of an interesting thread,

many apologies...

 

[zhao]

AH HA! found it!

THIS, ladies and gents, is what y'all need.

if that doesn't sort you out once and for all i honestly don't know what will

you wait til the two meet properly. I've been waiting for a form of music to be called Nu-Ju for years, and it will happen in my lifetime!

Nu-Ju is brilliant. some voodoo electro boogaloo to da head!

a few up for the running:

Boomba-Step
Acid-Zouk
Kompa-Disco
Trip-Genge

 

[Mr. Tea]

Surely "R'n'B" has to the ultimate genre-name mutation? It's gone from American-pop-music-made-by-black-people to basically upbeat, danceable blues to the vapid, nothing-y soundtrack-to-having-your-hair-cut that it means today.

 

[ether]

i think gavin may have done some research into genrefication

ok gavin we get the message lol

 

[ether]

i invented a genre the other day- Dickensian Techno- it's called Bleak House. Any takers out there?

lol

another casualty....

 

[Slothrop]

Fantastic post, even if it was a little heavy on the rewinds.

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.

One thing that highlights this is arguments along the lines of 'why do dance fans have to call it a different genre every time someone changes the preset on their synth?' To the insiders, the new 'subgenre' isn't defined by a set of musical signifiers that make the music clearly and distinctly different from previous subgenres, it's defined by the fact that a completely different set of people are making it, playing it, listening to it, it's being played at different clubs in different parts of the city with a different attitude and a different vibe.

Whereas to an outsider - even someone who listens to quite a lot of the music but doesn't engage with the scene - it can completely mystifying why two similar sounding records are classed as being in different subgenres and people will actually get quite militant if you apply the wrong term to it.

I guess Northern Soul is another interesting example.

 

[mistersloane]

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?)..

Yeah, I mean kwaito was originally just slowed down house imported from overseas to Africa. I got a roots of kwaito CD that's like Technotronic and stuff! And it spread to what I'd call it - the urban rapping type stuff - to very coffee table kwaito (also called mid-tempo) - to the more Durban DJ Cleo kinda techno-dance, you're totally right about context. Plus there's also the fact that if an artist comes out of a tightly defined scene - kwaito and grime say - then everything they do is grime or whatever, even if album tracks are cod-reggae (Tinchy stand up).

And Zhao don't, it's a minefield out there!

 

[Gavin]

Sorry about the excessive reposts, this has been wonky for me all day.

 

[michael]

Haha, it was a good post anyway...

I guess "post-rock" bucks the trend you laid out, insofar as it was coined by a journalist to attempt to make sense of something that really was pretty disparate, but the genre content has shifted dramatically in the hands of the listeners.

R&B is a great example of what I was thinking of initially - I've seen people like Ray Charles referred to as vocal jazz in recent times. Curious.

 

[Gavin]

Acid zouk sounds wunnerful by the way...

 

[zhao]

Zhao don't, it's a minefield out there!

in fact i would love nothing better than to head straight into the heart of darkness and make a trip to some key places in Africa just for the music. I'm thinking Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Mali, Congo, and end in Cape Town and fly back from there. maybe this year even.

 

[Pestario]

what he said

I fully agree. I've been an outsider to the grime and dubstep scenes for most of its life and couldn't fully comprehend the difference between the two (esp. when they still overalapped sonically) and the importance of the East and South London divide. To me it was all just London post-2step stuff. In fact I thought the distinction was a bit petty. But of course now I understand...

 

[zhao]

grime and dubstep ... the difference between the two

ones got angry youths shouting in it the other doesn't

innit