Music genres have gone from helping categorize music to confusing the life out of most people, including myself. Sub genres seem to be bigger than ever these days and I find it’s sometimes hard to keep up. What I find most interesting about genres is that they are meant to help you understand what something will sound like before you listen, but with so much variety in music these days it really isn’t that straight forward anymore.
Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely think this is a good thing, but it makes me question the necessity and accuracy of the role that genres play in music today. Indie isn’t the only genre that’s become hard to define and has A LOT of variety within the genre, every genre has aspects of that now. I don’t think any genre is really that straight forward anymore.
I just think this is worth thinking about a little when listening to new music or when creating. It seems there are no limits anymore so artists are free to do as they please, even within a specific genre, and I think that’s a great thing.
I see a lot of similarities between this and the way music changed in the twentieth century. Not to get all nerdy-music on anyone, but there was that whole ‘freedom of the dissonance’ movement that was meant to change people’s concept on music and challenge what was the norm, and I think that idea never really went away and is making a huge comeback these days. No one let’s genre hold them back and bands sometimes even experiment with multiple genres at once, whether it be in a song, album or through their career.
So I guess I’m just posing a few questions for thought, what is the role that genres should play (if any)? Are they really that necessary, and if so why? Should we have so many sub genres? And does it matter to define music when it stops fitting into these genres? Do you think people should be more conscious of the genre they are in?
Definitely let me know if you have any thoughts, or if you think this really doesn’t matter.
– DJ Psyched