PONDERED: Taxonomy and manifesto; identity in digital media
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
or “is it historically significant to make shit up in order to get my music noticed”
Call this a mashup between two objects of my adoration – historical analysis of century old art and interweb pop-satire.
The talk of the day comes from a post on HRO discussing sub-genre, namely the author, Carles, branded a smattering on contemporary artists with a mock-genre tag. Now these artists don’t know each other, don’t talk, and really have nothing in all in common…
…aside from sounding really, really similar.
Within the coming months, the name catches on around the online music masses, then the big name music mavens pick up on, and finally, the anti-Google, stuffed shirt, big ass deal of print media discusses it in detail.
The online mob has been co-opted and is none to happy about it.
Taxonomy
If the manifesto is the expression of “hey world, this is who I am,” than the world responds by placing us into taxonomic categories, or in the case of music, genres and sub-genres.
Named lots of “things that are like other things,” allow the listener to identify what they like in broad strokes or tow name drop at a part to sound smart – You don’t enjoy the musique concrete styles of so-and-so? such a shame. More importantly, they allow the listener to be marketed to.
Major labels have made a living for the past 30 years by lumping the sounds of relevant and unrelated artists in massive umbrella genres.
New-wave, Alternative, and Electronica add less definition to an artist than New Weird America, and yet is far more recognizable and has pushed far many more units. It would seem that useless genres have some serious worth.
Manifesto
Before social media allowed us to succinctly present our view of the world in an About Me section, artists had to work hard to convey the intent of their art.
Manifestos set the direction for an artist/collective work – when the Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto 100 years ago, he was making it clear, “THIS is what we’re about: what we do and why we do it.” If a like minded fellow came along, he would say “me too,” and that would be the end of that.
In the modern era, apparently this notion of manifesto has been perverted. The artists who strive to make something new work actively to defy definition and to create solely to create. The artists that say, “THIS is what we’re about: how why sound and why we do it” are usually just attaching themselves to an established sub-genre – a phenomenon that can lead to a sound becoming a scene.
With artists ducking out of the race to define a sound, they lose the opportunity to control their perceived image and the direction of their identity and audience.
Who Cares
You’re reading this on the internet.
In 20 years, the web has been full of more single-minded pundits than either of the big American political parties. As the ability to find and reach an ever growing audience grows easier, the power of the online pundit to distribute a thought as fact also grows easier.
As such, it only takes a single blog post can unwillingly redefine an artist. If you have a problem with a semi-anonymous poster on the internet taking control of your art, pony up and define yourself.
Tags: alternative, electronica, elitism, manifesto, music nerds, new wave, pondered, scene, taxonomy
PASSED: How we lost the promise of Skynet
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
Terminator 2 was the rated R movie that every other 9 year old saw in ‘91. With it came two promises – that Eddie Furlong has a fruitful career ahead of him and that the machines would totally take over.
That Furlong thing never came to fruition, but by the second half of the decade, a more benign Skynet takeover seemed imminent. Detroit had brought the techno, the Brits had passed acid house and MDMA across the pacific, and the hoover sound was the biggest and baddest of them all. Papua New Guinea represented the harmonious union of world cultures and technology.
The cultural juggernaut that is was, mass media soon got on board. We had the first uber-umbrella term paid on us by the music industry – Electronica. Homogenic and Kid A showed that even Alternative bands knew what was up. MTV heard our collective voices and brought us our standard-barer of things to come. Fashion promised us round backpacks, hot chicks with neon hair, and big ass pants to hold all our futuristic doodads – beneath which we would rollerblade, appearing to the world like levitating horsemen of the new millennium.
The future looked fiber optically bright.
And then things had to go and Okenfolded in on itself. The Sneakerpimps were without any hos – and that was that. By ‘01, the beats that had once promised digital Shangri-La were now only heard in new model Mustangs cruising for chicks. The machines had lost, and the new millennium was ushered in by a bunch of baseball cap sporting, white rappers.
The memory does live on; the resistance is out there. In towns too small to name, but too large to only support Juggalos, the spirit is alive. PLUR… or not.
Tags: 90s, electronica, farce, passed
