Genres: Friend or Foe?

Moombahton, Crabcore, Mathrock, Powerviolence, Electo-folk, Gorecore, Bluegrass, Spacerock, Lowercase, Bitpop, Death Rap. The list of Music Genres is seemingly endless and once you have taken the time to read this article, a new one may well have been invented. But, what I hope to show, is the pitfalls and also the necessity of genres.

What ever happened to the good old days, when you could listen to a piece of music and easily place it on a shelf in your mind, under a name because of the instruments used or the style it was played? Obviously this is a fictionalised view of nostalgia because once experimentation happens, then of course there becomes the need for a new banner to separate one from the other. But once this has happened hundreds if not thousands of times, there is only so many shelves the mind can take before you’re going to have to start looking in the attic to see if there’s any spare room for all that ‘stuff’.

Now don’t for a second think that I know the difference between all the genres listed at the top of this page. Obviously some are quite easy to work out. I expect Electro-folk, is folk music with electronic instruments (although this sort of takes away the point of including ‘folk’ somewhat)? But Crabcore?? What does that even mean? It conjures images of an underwater quartet frantically playing miniature instruments as fast as there little claws will let them!

Is it ignorance, snobbery or just ease of ‘pigeon-holing’ that causes misconstrued ideas of what a certain band/artist falls under? I’ve never seen pretentiousness like it when someone says “Oh, I really like [insert genre here]” only to be countered with an icy stare and the sentence “like who?” this causes the brain to frantically rummage around, searching through the shelves, perhaps running up to the attic, grabbing the answers needed and presenting them on ones tongue. However once they have been spoken aloud, there is the look of utter disgust on your adversaries’ face as they recoil and scoff at your inferior knowledge, as they sneer “They’re not [insert genre here], that’s [insert other genre here]”. Suddenly everything you thought you liked, is actually not what you liked at all. 

But in this dense jungle of umbrella-headings, sub-genres, amalgamations and the like, it is quite easy to become confused.

Take Dubstep for example. A person who has never heard anything before called dubstep, stumbles (unfortunately) upon a Skrillex YouTube video. The comments below are full of people calling it dubstep as well as the usual dump of ‘eargasms’ etc. (however that rant is best saved for another day). This person then either likes/dislikes what they heard and tells their friend they listened to Skrillex and they like/dislike Dubstep. However the friend is a Dubstep purist and gives the reaction I have detailed earlier, proclaiming that what they have in fact listened to is not Dubstep at all! Is it that persons fault that they didn’t know that it wasn’t actually called that?

Genres can be a wonderful thing, they help you find or stay away from what you like. However it is a frankly ridiculous minefield out there, so be careful when putting up your next set of shelves.