As you study genre theory you'll come to realise how loose a concept it is - but one that is absolutely vital for marketing and retail purposes, even in the streaming age when shelf space is not an issue. As 'consumers' (such a loathesome term, but still widely used) we do still tend to think along genre lines, which is why these are so important whether its Netflix, Spotify or (gasp!) a physical record/music store.
BBC3 and BBC4 (often replaying BBC2 content) are worth keeping an eye on through iPlayer as they often feature some great music docs. This is a good example, a thorough grounding in the evolution of the Indie genre - a genre which has both some easily identified stereotypes and such a wide range of music that it becomes a very, very loose concept. Further complicated by the Americanism of alt-pop or alternative rock, which is essentially the same. In both cases, there are acts seen as Indie who are signed to major record labels, while many on independent labels are having their work distributed by majors so even the original linkage is debatable.
Thanks to Richard for the link - I'd mentioned this specific doc series many times and he spotted it on YT.
Another example of the fragmentation of genre in music (the same is arguably happening across all media): Bambeatz has mashed the identically-titled Black Albums by Metallica and Jay-Z.
With key 60s icons still singing their songs of youth and youthful rebellion but hitting their 70s, and even punk icons like the Pistols' Johnny Rotten at 56 (and a band Paul McCartney picks out as representing today's kids, the Foo Fighters, having an average age of 43.6), John Harris puts forward the argument on the Guardian Music blog that rock is for the over-40's! He backs this up by pointing to the now quarter-century growing dominance of hip-hop and associated forms; none of the current top 40 singles are rock. He also writes of switching from NME to Mojo for his rock news, the latter now overtaking Q (itself centred on a mature, sophisticated audience) as the UK's biggest selling music mag.
What do you think? Is rock music no longer 'for the kids'?!
Read the full article here; and see links list on nostalgia in music, plus various posts (THEORY TIP: see Simon Reynolds' book...)
Thanks to GeorgeG for this: a spoof 5ive video, which manages to both clearly reflect the conventions and satirise them in a postmodern, ironic fashion. The conventions and cliches of laddish togetherness and basic dance moves are there, but added in is the wink and nod that this is all actually very silly - you could argue that it serves a female (male gaze, conventions of boy band vids) and male (satirising the conventions, arguably countering the emasculation that sanitised/feminised depictions - with tweenies in mind - brings)...
We've been exploring genre this week, and some key points should be evident:
its a deceptively simple concept
every genre is in a state of constant flux; one new act/band/vid can lead to major changes
'pop' itself is the most extreme case, constantly taking on features of new musical forms depending on what sells at any given time (examples have been disco, New Romantics, rave/techno - all asociated with specific time periods)
geography can also be a defining feature: Florida for death metal, San Fransisco's Bay Area for thrash metal, Scandanavi (espec Norway) for black metal, Seattle for grunge; some genres are named after the area the bands come from: Delta blues, Madchester, Merseybeat; many others after key record labels which become associated with particular types of music, eg Blue Note
every genre itself builds on and utilises aspects of existing genres
some genres support distinct youth (tho' perhaps also increasingly 34+?) subcultures, and can be at the centre of moral panics (read this article on the FBI declaring 'Juggalos', fans of Insane Clown Posse, a criminal gang + info on how the always balanced + enlightened Daily Mail linked My Chemical Romance to a teen's suicide), dating back to the 50s Mods + Rockers (see Quadrophenia, or the just remade Brighton Rock)
genre definitions have traditionally been controlled by retailers and mass media (the Billboard magazine, which compiles the USA's most recognised charts, is responsible for many such as Rhythm and Blues - which they had called negro music originally), but digital media is arguable democratising this...
...though perhaps this democratisation is undermining the function and usefulness of genre as ever more micro-genres receive labels from blogs, e-zines and the twitterati? Surely genres still require signifiacnt retail and mass media usage to become widely accepted?
postmodernists don't accept such stratifications as genre, although postmodern videos such as Depeche Mode's No Good deconstruct the format and genre in a thoroughly postmodern manner
READ MORE
Use the links list, lesson notes, Q1b handout (espec for theories), additional blog posts on genre, and various books/journals in F6/Lib
The following is just one of these - fantastic for the detail on the role retailers AND online databases play; THERE IS A FAIRLY OFFICIAL GENRE-NAMING BODY AFTER ALL...
Music's New Mating Ritual
As genres are fused, cryptically named hybrids emerge; the story behind 'gypsy punk'
Indie Hindi, socaton, skurban. You may feel like you need a dictionary the next time you go shopping for music.
The music world is getting thick with hybrids, or cryptically named
blends of established styles. Indie Hindi, for example, is traditional
Indian vocals tinged with edgy American-style rock. Socaton is dance
music that has elements of rap, calypso and reggae. The number of genres
is up more than 40% over the past four years, by one measure --
Gracenote, which maintains the music-classification system used by major
sites like Yahoo and iTunes, now recognizes more than 1,800 genres. It
recently added "hyphy," a jittery form of hip-hop from the San Francisco
area.
Defying standard genres has traditionally been a risky move for bands
in part because it's difficult for retailers to figure out where to
place them on the shelves. But increasingly, fans are finding music in
less conventional ways -- like perusing strangers' online playlists, or
following a trail of links on MySpace -- paving the way for bands to
define themselves in more exotic ways. Bands are also keenly aware of
the recent commercial success of blended genres like reggaeton, a
Jamaican-Latin-rap mix, and popera, radio-friendly songs done with
operatic vocals.
Even some genres that don't hit commercial high
notes are finding followings. Take "nerdcore hip-hop," rap music that
revolves around geeky subjects like videogames and J.R.R. Tolkien books.
The father of the movement, Damian Hess, performs often around the
country and says he makes a comfortable living selling his albums and
merchandise. But nerdcore hasn't registered with mainstream listeners.
Fans of the genre have fallen short in a petition drive to get MySpace
to add nerdcore to its list of 127 genres.
Mr. Hess, who goes by "MC Frontalot," is hardly discouraged. "Top of
the esoteric fringe is really the ideal place," says Mr. Hess, who
sports a short-sleeve shirt and necktie on stage. (See Mr. Hess's Web site.)
Jazz singer Jacqui Naylor decided to try something different after
getting one too many requests for "My Funny Valentine" during a tour of
Japan in 2001. Her arranger and piano player Art Khu came to her with a
translation of AC/DC's hard-rock anthem "Back in Black" as an
instrumental vamp. Into that, Ms. Naylor wove the familiar melody to "My
Funny Valentine."
The process, which Ms. Naylor calls "acoustic smashing," marked a
turning point in her career. Her first two albums of straight-ahead jazz
didn't get much notice outside jazz circles. But her most recent
albums, including "The Color Five," have gotten play on some rock
stations. Her next album: "Smashed for the Holidays," which includes a
fusion of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet
Home Alabama."
This is, of course, not the first time musicians have blended styles
to create genres (that's how rock 'n' roll came about), but the number
of sub-niches has been growing at a remarkable clip. It's being fueled
by the migration of music online and a "mashup" culture that has spawned
everything from spoof movie trailers to fan-made music videos. At dance
clubs this summer, DJs are spinning "baile funk," a dance-rock fusion
from Brazil. Recently at No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart was the
crossover hit "Party Like a Rockstar," a
rap-mashed-with-distorted-guitar number by the "hood rock" group Shop
Boyz.
Anoushka Shankar
A new album from this sitar player and DJ Karsh Kale has Indian and electronic influences, a blend called "desi dance." Jacqui Naylor
In her "acoustic smashes," Ms. Naylor sings the melody of jazz standards over well-known rock instrumentals.
Meanwhile,
Falguni Shah, a classically trained Indian vocalist who records under
the name Falu, uses the term "indie Hindi" to describe her New York
band's sound. (Her producer coined the term.)
While everyone from the bands to bloggers to fans come up with the
names for new genres, ultimately it falls to music-cataloging companies
like Gracenote and All Media Guide to decide whether to acknowledge them
for posterity.
Gracenote, in Emeryville, Calif., supplies the information that pops
up when you put a CD in the computer, like the title, artist and genre.
About 40 music analysts, including some working in Japan, Russia and
other countries, use an internal Web site to nominate genres. They make
their case by citing important bands and media mentions. A small group
of editors makes the final call. Not all the genres are new -- among
some 30 currently on the table are several subcategories of folk music,
including "prison songs" and "hokum," a blues style marked by comedic
patter.
While the editors agreed to add "hyphy," the San Francisco rap sound,
"snap music," which has inspired dance crazes in the South, was deemed a
passing fad. Meanwhile, some newer music-recommendation services like
Pandora and iLike are moving in the other direction and doing away with
genre labels altogether.
Marketers smell an opportunity in the proliferation of genres. Klee
Irwin, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur whose main business is selling
vitamins via infomercials he hosts, has launched a group of rapping
skateboarders called Board Bangers. His idea draws on the growing number
of black skaters, a culture merge referred to as "skurban." His hope is
to sell Board Bangers music and merchandise to suburban white kids. (See Board Bangers' Web site.)
Mr. Irwin says he spent $150,000 building a recording studio, and
more than $1 million on 19 music videos to promote the group's debut,
including an upcoming album release. He had to audition over a hundred
teenagers to find his crew. "Every time we found cool, aggressive street
skaters, they couldn't rap very well," he says.
A band notorious for its fraternal flare-ups (the brothers in the band were reknowned for fighting on stage), but also an obstinate attitude towards pop (they were seen as noise-smiths rather than tune-smiths) the Jesus and Mary Chain naturally didn't produce straightforward commercial videos.
Here's examples from classic J+MC tracks which exuded Indie attitude, by which I mean...
low-key, naturalistic lighting (practical as much as aesthetic: low budget!)
some strange, elliptical framing
whip pans that lead to ... nothing!
distorted footage
performance which is so wan, exuding such froideur, its the antithesis of the exciting, energising rock performance we're so used to seeing
the lipsynching in particular is reluctantly done, but shots of drumming and guitar playing also slowed down to be out of synch with the music
just like Iron Maiden on the German Top of the Pops back in the 80s (when the band swapped intruments repeatedly, making a mockery of the miming) these vids stand as an uneasy compromise: marketing and commercial returns seem like a dirty word to Indie bands and fans BUT the band's record co needs the vids to sell records and the band to raise their profile + build their fanbase
this reluctant, contrary attitude is also where the Pixies' Velouria single-shot vid arose from
neither are so surreal as to be not be recognisable as m.vids tho: we see many of the standard signifiers of performance (some focus on singer, MS/MCUs of playing instruments, reasonable pace of editing), its just that the delivery is alien to the hyped up norm
The MOBO awards are imminent, a good time to revisit arguments over the problems black British artists face breaking through to a wide UK audience. The following article rehearses these arguments in good detail; what it doesn't also mention is the history in America of black music (mobo stands for music of black origin). What would become labelled as R&B (and urban) was for a long time more bluntly categorised by Billboard (who run the recognised US charts) as 'Negro music'. Elvis initially struggled to get radio airplay in the US because many DJs upon hearing his voice assumed he was black, a little snippet of the problematic place of race in popular culture on both sides of the Atlantic.
Jessie J: leading Mobo nominations Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
The annual storm brewing over the Mobos
is more turbulent than ever this year. Launched in 1996, the Music of
Black Origin awards usually attract two types of responses to their
cumbersome name: "Isn't most pop music of black origin? Ask Elvis or the
Rolling Stones!' and, more problematically, "Why are there no awards
for music of white origin?". The nominees for this year's Mobo awards,
announced on Wednesday night, have provoked more consternation than
usual, owing to the proportion of white faces on the list.
With Jessie J leading the 2011 nominations with five – best album, best newcomer, best UK act, best video and best song – and Adele
weighing in with four, eyebrows have been raised, with the Times
describing it as a "whitewash". The suggestion is that, with her fame
and multi-platinum selling album, 21, Adele will garner a bigger media
profile for the awards ceremony, which takes place on 5 October in
Glasgow.
Janice Brown, in an article for the Voice newspaper
headlined "All white on the night?", asked whether the Mobos were
letting down black artists by giving greater emphasis to white singers
such as Jessie J and Katy B.
"Mobo is really leaning on the 'origin' part of their name, aren't
they?" she wrote, suggesting the initial remit of giving a platform to
unheard black music had been forgotten. While the Mobos are being
criticised for not providing this promotional leg-up, the bigger
question arising from the revolution in black British music in the last
few years is whether it even needs them any more.
Austin Daboh
from BBC 1Xtra, a station that has faced similarly vexed questions
about what is defined as "black" or "urban" music, has seen the
sea-change at close quarters. "There have been several false dawns for
black British music in the mainstream," he explains, citing the fleeting
but shallow interest in jungle and drum'n'bass in the late 1990s, the
glut of number one singles coming from UK garage around the turn of the
decade, and then the gold rush to sign grime MCs following Dizzee
Rascal's Mercury win in 2003 – none of which heralded the long overdue
move of black British music into the charts.
During those years, much like the industry at large, the Mobos relied on market-proven imports of American hip-hop
and R'n'B. Over the same period it was difficult for black British
music to get a look in. "When I first joined 1Xtra six years ago,"
recalls Daboh, "I was scheduling the music for a show, and I remember
being told off for placing two UK tracks back-to-back. And look at it
now." Some of the daytime 1Xtra shows now comprise 70% UK music, he
tells me – while former underground stars such as Tinchy Stryder, Tinie
Tempah, and now Wretch 32 are achieving chart success and record sales
no one could have imagined a decade ago.
For Rinse FM grime DJ and
Butterz label boss Elijah, the Mobos do nothing to support
up-and-coming black music. "It's really only for people who want to
propel themselves into the commercial arena. If you don't want to be
like JLS or Chipmunk
it's not going to help you, that's the sad thing about it." He
mentions the rapper P Money as an example of an up-and-coming black MC
who both deserves, and would benefit from, having his less watered-down
talent brought to a wider audience. While the debate over authenticity
in music is almost as old as music itself, it's difficult not to see the
chart triumphs as a bit of a pyrrhic victory for black music.
For
Daboh, it's unrealistic to expect it to act primarily as an outlet for
the most underground of street cultures. "It is a mainstream awards
show, so are you expecting the most credible dubstep bass producer to be
nominated? When you speak to the general public there's nothing but
love and affection for the Mobos. The negative perception is very much
an industry thing. We're all snobs in the industry." He also thinks that
the Mobos' founder, Kanya King, has dealt with the rapidly changing
face of British pop music remarkably well. "There's a misconception that
Kanya is this Gaddafi-type figure, sitting on a throne and not
listening to any advice, but she's very astute, and aware of the
feedback."
And yet, accountable or not, the broad-based 2011
nominations list looks remarkably like a midway point between this
February's Brits and next year's. Elijah finds the increasingly unclear
criteria understandably baffling: "I'm just not sure what the Mobos is,
basically – looking down the categories, at these totally contrasting
styles, it's so vague it's meaningless. If someone could say what black
music is, or what music of black origin is, in 2011, it would be
easier."
And this is the nub – it's not the colour of Jessie J's
face that's the problem, so much as the sounds emanating from it. The
combination of electro beats and R'n'B-tinged vocals topping UK and US
charts transcends both race and place. "Ten years ago it made more
sense, sonically," reckons Elijah: "Hip-hop sounded like hip-hop, R'n'B
sounded like R'n'B. But when you have Kelly Rowland making the kind of
music she makes with David Guetta, is that still music of black origin?
It's not a colour issue, it's just a sound issue. If you're celebrating
JLS as music of black origin … apart from them being black, why is
that?"
"Amy Winehouse being celebrated you can understand, because
her music links to Aretha Franklin – even Adele to an extent, that's
fine. Or Professor Green, fair enough: he's a rapper who just happens to
be white." And that's the bizarre quandary the Mobos are in. Black
British music is doing better than ever before, but via artists such as
Jessie J and Chipmunk. The hits that have made "black music" the
definitive pop sound of our era isn't actually black or white, but
post-racial, in the blandest way imaginable.
Now that it crosses
over so much with the charts, just what is the point of the Mobos – is
it a celebration of colour-blind, already successful pop music? Or just
the Brit awards in a baseball cap? "It's great to be providing these
artists with a platform," Kanya King told the press, "and they help to
keep our event new, fresh and relevant." But do these artists,
irrespective of skin colour, still need a platform? More than ever
before in the UK, black music is pop music is black music. And the more
the Mobos remit dovetails with the pop charts and the Brit awards, the
more they're going to have to face questions about what exactly they are
for.
Seen as the epitome of hair-metal absurdity (albeit with some decent tunes) David Coverdale (nicknamed Percy by Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, who he's widely seen as copying) and his band Whitesnake provide a neat template for the hair-metal vid: manly men (with 'girly' hair) with serious expressions, hot car, hot lady, a bit of smoke...
Ultimately we will advocate using cultural models for the rhetorical analysis of music video. To fully understand how a cultural model facilitates rhetorical criticism of music video, it is first necessary to explore the unique features of the genre. Music, particularly rock, has always had a visual element. The album cover, the "look" a band strived for in performance, concert staging, and promotional publicity have all helped create a visual imagery for rock (Goodwin, 1992). The use of video to stimulate album sales and the birth of MTV as a continuous outlet for viewing simply served to enhance the visual potential present in rock.
Viewers typically do not regard the music video as a commercial for an album or act. Aufderheide (1986) describes the connection of viewer to video."With nary a reference to cash or commodities, music videos cross the consumer's gaze as a series of mood states. They trigger nostalgia, regret, anxiety, confusion, dread, envy, admiration, pity, titillation--attitudes at one remove from the primal expression such as passion, ecstasy, and rage. The moods often express a lack, an incompletion, an instability, a searching for location. In music videos, those feelings are carried on flights of whimsy, extended journeys into the arbitrary." (p. 63)
That music videos present compelling mood states that may claim the attention of the viewer is not a matter of happenstance.
Abt (1987) states that "directors of videos strive to make their products as exciting as the music. In the struggle to establish and maintain a following, artists utilize any number of techniques in order to appear exotic, powerful, tough, sexy, cool, unique" (p. 103). Further, Abt indicates a video must compete with other videos.
"They must gain and hold the viewer's attention amidst other videos; help establish, visualize, or maintain the artist's image; sell that image and the products associated with it; and perhaps, carry one or several direct or indirect messages . . ." (p. 97).
Music videos may be further characterized by three broad typologies: performance, narrative, and conceptual (Frith, 1988).
These types describe the form and content selected by the director or artist to attract viewers and to convey a direct or indirect message.
Performance videos, the most common type (Frith1988) feature the star or group singing in concert to wildly enthusiastic fans. The goal is to convey a sense of the in-concert experience. Gow (1992) suggests "the predominance of performance as a formal system in the popular clips indicates that music video defines itself chiefly by communicating images of artists singing and playing songs" (pp. 48-49). Performance videos, especially those that display the star or group in the studio, remind the viewer that the soundtrack is still important. "Performance oriented visuals cue viewers that, indeed, the recording of the music is the most significant element" (Gow, 1992, p. 45).
A narrative video presents a sequence of events. A video may tell any kind of story in linear, cause-effect sequencing. Love stories, however, are the most common narrative mode in music video. The narrative pattern is one of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Action in the story is dominated by males who do things and females who passively react or wait for something to happen (Schwichtenberg, 1992).Conceptual videos rely on poetic form, primarily metaphor (Frith, 1988). The conceptual video can be metaphysical poetry articulated through visual and verbal elements. "These videos make significant use of the visual element, presenting to the eye as well as the ear, and in doing so, conveying truths inexpressible discursively" (Lorch, 1988, p. 143). Conceptual videos do not tell a story in linear fashion, but rather create a mood, a feeling to be evoked in the experience of viewing (Frith, 1988).
Conceptual videos contain the possibility for multiple meanings as the metaphor or metaphoric sequence is interpreted by the viewer.
"Thus the metaphorical relations between images structured according to musical and visual rhymes and rhythms play a suggestive role in soliciting multiple meanings from us, the viewers/listeners, that resonate with our experience--something we can feel and describe" (Schwichtenberg, 1992 p. 124).
A given music video may actually have elements of more than one category. Goodwin (1992), in describing Madonna's videos, suggests that the essential narrative component of a music video is found in its ability to frame the star, "star-in-text," as all Madonna's videos seem to do. A story exists solely for its ability to create, or in Madonna's case recreate, the star's persona. This blending of elements can also enable a type of music such as rap to have cross-over appeal to a wider audience.Although we may profitably interpret the message potential of music video using these three categories as a basis for content analysis, certain limitations exist if we remain on that path. "Analysts of music video narrative have been all too eager to freeze the moment and study videos shot by shot, but here the problem is that this generates not too much but too little knowledge, because the individual narrative is highly intertextual" (Goodwin, 1992 p. 90).
As a blend of video technique and imagery from film and television, music video offers us a new perceptual agenda by providing allusions to and incorporations of old iconic imagery from film, allowing us to reconstitute the pieces of the 20th century information explosion (Turner, 1986). The brevity of the music video has created a new grammar of video technique particular to this miniscule video form.
"Visual techniques commonly employed in music videos exaggerate . . . Interest and excitement is stimulated by rapid cutting, intercutting, dissolves, superimpositions, and other special effects, that taken together with different scenes and characters, make music videos visually and thematically dynamic." (Abt, 1987 pp. 97-98)
Born of an amalgam of commercialism, television, and film, for the purpose of selling rock albums, music videos frequently employ well-established verbal and visual symbols in telling a story or making a point. If no such symbols exist, music videos coin their own which, given the ubiquity of the medium, quickly find their way into the vernacular.How then to best understand the rhetorical properties that such a media form has for the audience? Schwichtenberg (1992) suggests that what critics should consider "is how music videos are woven into a complex cultural context that includes performers, industries, and diverse audiences who attribute a wide variety of meanings to the music and visuals" (p. 117).
These characteristics suggest that the most methodologically appropriate approach to understanding how music videos might function as rhetoric is to view them as cultural acts, intertextually located in the viewer's own experience. We define culture, with a little help from Bruce Gronbeck (1983), as a complex of collectively determined sets of rules, values, ideologies, and habits that constrain rhetors and their acts. This complex leads a society to generate meaning through various message forms to establish a series of societal truths. The extent to which any form of communication such as a music video plays a part in the process of truth-making is what the rhetorical critic attempts to discover through criticism.
Karyn Charles Rybacki and Donald Jay Rybacki Northern Michigan University
Posted a day late, but here's an archetypal 80s metal vid which links nicely into the moon story over the past few days (closer to Earth than for some years if you were unaware); note the filmic influences: Angel Heart, The Lost Boys and Trick or Treat
Primal Scream in 1991 … 'Screamadelica joined the dots between types of music in a way that made bleary but beautiful sense.'
Primal Scream's Screamadelica is 20 this year, and celebrates with the inevitable doorstop reissue. It ought, perhaps, to be 21 – the album's moment was aptly sprawling and drawn out, from the release of the first single in February 1990 to its winning the inaugural Mercury prize more than two years later. Loaded heralded the high-tide of indie-dance – by the time Screamadelica emerged, that moment had gone. It's testimony to the record's strength that it is remembered as a blissful peak of genre-splicing despite turning up so late to its own party. What Screamadelica did – join the dots between types of music in a way that made bleary but beautiful sense – feels like a really 90s thing. Certainly the decade was full of music that was sold and praised on the basis that there's something inherently thrilling about genres swapping spit down at the indie disco. Beck finagled an entire career from it, Moby sold the notion to advertisers everywhere, the Prodigy played rave like it was rock, and rap-metal provided an appalling hangover to the whole polystylistic party. But of course genre-mixing was nothing new. What made rock music so strong during its 60s and 70s heyday wasn't its attitude so much as its adaptability – it constantly, omnivorously renewed itself, drawing from any genre it could. Blues, folk, country, soul, jazz, even classical – rock mated with them all. Purism has always been an exception, delighted borrowing the rule. But those were all musics that predated rock, and lent it authenticity. From the 80s onwards, it was having to accommodate the styles that succeeded it – such as disco, synth-pop, hip-hop and dance music. The results were awkward enough that successes got treated as breakthroughs. These days, genre-blending is again just part of the landscape. Eleven years ago, Radiohead's two-footed lunge into intelligent dance music on Kid A had critics gasping at their boldness. Now they cross-pollinate their sound with dubstep or Afrobeat and receive a polite nod or a muffled yawn. But that isn't to say critics want purity – far from it. From the xx through Janelle Monáe to Animal Collective, almost every acclaimed act works towards forging a sound by taking cues from a mass of other styles. Hybridisation is a basic tenet of art-pop, and purists lurk at the margins, vainly pointing out that perhaps you might want to listen to R&B rather than, say, the Dirty Projectors's etiolated, angular take on it. For many of these acts, the moment they perfect their blend is also the moment they break through to a wider critical – and sometimes public – consciousness. So music coverage often feels like a strange hothouse, full of exotic blooms that may never flower so fully again. Refine a sound and it risks becoming predictable; change it and you lose what makes you special. It's in this overheated context that two of my favourite records this year shine – both of them exercises in deliberate genre-shifts by performers who've been around a while. The artists could hardly be more different: Detroit garage punks the Dirtbombs, whose Party Store is a collection of classic techno covers, and Düsseldorf composer Hauschka, whose forthcoming Salon des Amateurs finds him trying to make a minimal dance record using contemporary classical piano music. Both these records could have been dreadful: both succeed wildly, as Hauschka and the Dirtbombs each seem enlivened by the challenges they've set themselves, adapting their sounds to the rhythms and structures of techno. On Party Store, rough-cut, spartan riffing turns out to be a great fit for the 25-year-old future dreamed up by Cybotron and Derrick May, bringing out the music's harsher qualities but preserving its drive. On Salon des Amateurs, meanwhile, Hauschka trades in his usual genteel, prepared piano miniatures for something surprisingly banging. Track titles such as "NoSleep", "TaxiTaxi" and "Girls" set the tone, and sharply plucked strings combine with double bass and piano fragments to create momentum. Like the Kompakt tracks that apparently inspired it, Hauschka's album is good at establishing hooks then subtly shifting their musical setting, letting peaks emerge from repetitive structures. Like the Dirtbombs – and like Screamadelica way back when, for that matter – the record is the sound of people using genre-mixing to stretch their identity, not just create it.
Easy enough to find analysis and egs of conventions of most major genres - a google search such as "[genre] music video conventions" (try other variations too) will get relevant results, including several from A2 students elsewhere!
An example follows: detailed breakdown, with clear egs, of conventions of metal vids, including an historical perspective on their evolution and changes
Bibliography» MTV and the "Live" Metal Concert Video
These sources were viewed or referenced as part of a discussion about the depiction of "live" concert imagery in music video primarily related to the Heavy Metal genre. Heavy Metal is used loosely here to include the widest number of sources within this genre of music.
The term "live" (used in quotes) denotes a video production that attempts to capture or simulate the visual experience of a rock concert. Most of these sources are studio or sound-stage productions. Some were shot on location in an arena with an invited audience. A few appear to contain footage from actual concerts. Many of these sources mix concept footage with "live" footage in different ways.
No attempt is made her to create a definitive list. Some videos were selected because of specific content, themes, or images presented. Others were selected at random.
This page is under development
[add classification notes]
[add chronology notes]
Historical Sources
MTV News and Specials. "It Came from the 80's II: Metal Goes Pop" Dir: Abbie Kearse. Writ/Narr: Chris Connelly. MTV Networks 1996.
Produced for MTV this special program is structured around a series of interviews with metal band-members about the transition of metal into the mainstream and it's sudden abandonment by the record labels. There are many short clips of music videos demonstrating the height of ridiculousness of the genre. A couple of those interviewed express anger or resentment about the experience of being launched into the pop-metal genre and then quickly dropped. Most of those interviewed, however, are able to joke about their unlikely short ride into the pop music spotlight.
Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister on the transition of heavy metal into pop music:
There was Twisted, and we were …street urchins, bad boys, ugly, angry--but other bands were starting to smile. And the biggie with that of course was Bon Jovi—you know—the birth of happy metal. Suddenly everybody found out …that some of the bands had teeth… Instead of everybody scowling and being pissed off, they were saying hey, what are we pissed off about, we’re making millions of dollars, we’re playing happy metal now.
Perhaps these paragraphs could be the opening paragraphs for an essay about Genre for Question 1B of G325, or perhaps they could be used part way through the essay. In each case, the theorist/ quotation/ theory provides a way of introducing/ developing the argument.
1. As a concept, genre needs to be applied differently to music videos than to, say, film or television programmes. Whereas genres such as sci-fi or thriller are found across different media forms (film/ TV/ radio drama…), it is rare for a music video to use genre in this way (except, perhaps, as an intertextual device, such as REM’s use of the Western in the video for ‘Man on the Moon’). However, an alternative and more useful way of considering genre is to look at musical genres. Andrew Goodwin’s theory that there are conventions that exist within music videos according to musical genre (performances in rock videos; choreography in pop) is a useful way of understanding my video.
2. Nicholas Abercrombie identifies the use of genre for media producers when he writes “Television producers set out to exploit genre conventions”. His argument is that media producers can re-use conventions, creating formulaic and conventional products that are familiar and appeal to the audience, but that are also likely to succeed and therefore are less risky for the producer. In my production of a music video, I looked to exploit conventions of the rock music video, creating a conventional video that, whilst not entirely formulaic, is familiar to the audience and likely to succeed.
3. According to Katie Wales, 'genre is... an intertextual concept', and nowhere is this more appropriate than with music videos. Music videos often revel in intertextuality, using nods to other texts as a way of creating meaning and appeal to the audience. Wales’ statement suggests that genre exists in the relationship between texts rather than in the actual text itself, and in my music video production I used references to other texts and conventions of other music videos to establish familiarity for the audience and to help them understand the meanings and representations of my video.
4. “Genre is not simply given by the culture, rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change.” David Buckingham It is important to recognise that genres shift and change over time, and Buckingham’s statement above acknowledges this. I would argue that this is vital to understanding music videos, where in order to appeal to the audience and seem cutting-edge and new, the producers have to reinvent and revise generic conventions to create a fresh and appealing but recognisably packageable product.
5. In creating my music video I was keen to draw upon familiar generic conventions of the rock performance video, but to also try to develop some of these conventions. In this way, my video can be understood in terms of Christian Metz’s theory that genres go through stages: the Experimental/ the Classic/ the Parody/ the Deconstruction. I would argue that my video utilises enough classic conventions of the genre so as to be recognisable as belonging to the rock genre, but that it also seeks to deconstruct and take apart some of these conventions, and in doing so develops the genre.
Another example of the fragmentation of genre in music (the same is arguably happening across all media): Bambeatz has mashed the identically-titled Black Albums by Metallica and Jay-Z.![[Fusic image]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tOthdQ-kSD6QMDsGihMwQey8opUPAFVGVUYQCEQWJ6DGf6IweP80LVdCFJNRTLaDepCw1HbH2j-BCOWKKQ5eGsHNIEKfTUDKqE28jX7Nrsm3s4xfTIoCwl9T7tE1agSZHvW6zvpnIwaUeIIEVz=s0-d)
Even some genres that don't hit commercial high
notes are finding followings. Take "nerdcore hip-hop," rap music that
revolves around geeky subjects like videogames and J.R.R. Tolkien books.
The father of the movement, Damian Hess, performs often around the
country and says he makes a comfortable living selling his albums and
merchandise. But nerdcore hasn't registered with mainstream listeners.
Fans of the genre have fallen short in a petition drive to get MySpace
to add nerdcore to its list of 127 genres.![[Anoushka Shankar]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uLCOb0r78OH0w8zDnX0ZP27ANBDmy7tTkoUbSMcrraf1jxJpa-cduOoSPBT30W2tcfrLmEHw4pZ5_cOaOIfG9VgRWUDzJg3fZtL_Rb9oCdpk0ucfUT_Ekn63QiNA_1ImLkAdJyFff1_0-kCCyUFPc=s0-d)
A new album from this sitar player and DJ Karsh Kale has Indian and electronic influences, a blend called "desi dance."![[Jacqui Naylor]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u32QknlH8GYy31chCf8eO59BXFSaZqFpvGarvoi0mNjm4aglValqAU7FkiyR_m-PNm2PVZDe_Dw7AHLPYL2dzGbZ45SdxAnG25ybpPuekVAriqGX7LgqydvV0YZIcicZnovbCc7pg0vL23eLGuSwY=s0-d)
In her "acoustic smashes," Ms. Naylor sings the melody of jazz standards over well-known rock instrumentals.![[Bonde do Role]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sBVTvPUTZQx-vHZH5gu9bE_MDWyOUYPIq-TVpG_a6o1voCZRz4z5F2cR5RWkq32d7v6UPVV8y4G_0txYCUHi62CR--0_ZbJwaUveJn5HJgwbtODA5BUzYdXjlhAh8MmWItve-B4ACpohgwBuVSIKw=s0-d)
This trio mixes "baile funk" from its native Brazil
with punk riffs and electronic samples. The group starts a U.S. tour
next month.
