#People who are all ''I defy categorization'' are a very annoying category of person

[eilooxara]

I'm tired of people who pretend categorization is inherently bad

Like sure, bad categorization is bad

But regular old categorization is actually good!

(I know this sounds like it's about gender and sexuality but it's actually about music)

Someone said "genre is fake" and they could not be more wrong

(maybe they were riffing on "gender is fake" but that's ALSO wrong, actually for the same reasons, but THIS POST IS ABOUT MUSIC)

Like yes. There exist genres that are fake. "Pop" is one. That's not a judgment about the relative quality of pop music, that's a statement about the existence of pop as a kind of music at all.

It just means popular, what's popular changes over time, many unrelated styles can be popular at the same time, there's no inherent musical similarity among the set of music that has been called pop

So why is pop music a thing? Well it's an industry category. Broadcasters and record labels care about what's pop music because it fits into their business model a certain way.

So, pop is not a real genre. Alternative rock isn't a genre for the same reason: it's a product category created to be sold to the people who don't like pop music (whatever that may be). These are inventions by corporations for selling products.

(Now, the "genre is fake" person was talking about the distinction between "country" and "Americana", which is a corner of music I know absolutely nothing about. Maybe one or both of those genres are fake. Maybe these categorizations don't tell you anything useful about the sound of the music in question. I suspect the former is absolutely fake, because I keep being surprised at what gets called "country" because none of it has anything in common with the other stuff I've heard called that.)

But most music genres are in fact real! They are based on specific characteristics shared in common among the whole set of music in that genre and, critically, each new piece of music is not created in vacuo but in response to the music that already exists, with characteristics in common with some subset of all extant music

So when new music is made it's going to belong to a genre! If I play power chords on an electric guitar with a lot of distortion and growl it's going to be metal. If I play a bodhrán and sing in 3/4 time with four measure phrases with stress on beats 1 and 3, it's an Irish jig.

"But Xara, what about when someone makes completely new music that's not like anything anyone's ever heard before?" ok well first of all that doesn't happen as much as you're implying, second if it did happen it would be dogshit, and third if it's good enough that anyone cares about it then that's just a new genre, which happens all the time anyway. Many musicians defy categorization; they combine influences and novel sounds in a way that hasn't been done before, amd if anyone cares, a new genre is born.

Like, say, death metal. What happened is that a band called Death played metal in a way that was novel and those who drew inspiration from that formed a new genre called death metal and that proliferated away from the source material as each new death metal band was riffing on the work of all previous death metal rather than just Death

SO, categories are created because they convey information! If I tell someone who knows what death metal is that a band is death metal, they're going to know it involves fast tempo, heavily distorted rhythm guitar played with a palm muting technique, a particular style of growled vocals, and frequent key changes. If it does something ELSE, like say it's also got a bodhrán and 3/4 timing in 4-measure phrases with stress on beats 1 and 3, then I can tell someone it's a death metal Irish jig.

(this is why genre labels get long)

People like to make fun of genre names that start with "post". But that label carries information (with one exception) just like any good category label does. What it means is that musicians who are very familiar with, say, rock, are creating something (post-rock) that is heavily influenced by rock but defies some central element of the genre (verse and chorus structure for example) to an extent that it can't really be called rock anymore. (or punk or hardcore or whatever we're being post of [except metal. Post-metal is actually metal inspired by post-rock, so it IS still metal. If you want a genre that's actually the post of metal, it doesn't get called that but it's whatever Anathema played since A Natural Disaster])

It's like

There's the whole "is a hot dog a sandwich" thing

And the thing is that if I tell someone who knows what a sandwich is that they're getting a sandwich, they'll know it's going to be a food that they can pick up with their hands and take a bite from, probably without getting their hands sticky, and that this is the normal and expected way to eat the food

The category contains information!!

Like sure sandwichness is fake I guess if you think that the existence of boundary cases makes a category fake, but sandwichness is a USEFUL construct that helps people convey information

If I am expecting a sandwich I'd be more satisfied with a burrito than a plate of spaghetti, and I'd be more satisfied with a plate of spaghetti than a concrete brick

Genre is not fake! Categorization is not bad! Nothing is "just a word" (except when it is, like pop music)!

As with all my rants, anyone who tries to pick a fight with me on this is getting blocked, not responded to.