MUSICAL GENRES IN THE AGE OF LIMINALITY WOLFGANG MARX
University College Dublin wolfgang.marx@ucd.ie
Our understanding of the genre category is influenced by the general trends and values of our time. Today “genre” means something other than what we understood it to be even 15 or 20 years ago, as the questions we ask in musical scholarship are different ones. In this talk I will explore three central issues that have impacted musical classification in recent years, namely liminality, neoliberalism, and power structures. All three are united in that they use genre as a flexible communicative strategy rather than a normative, set-in-stone category. We live in an age of liminality. Research in the humanities and social sciences regularly names among its main goals transcending boundaries, engaging with the intersectional, and exploring the liminal. In both popular and art music, new pieces are praised highly if they push boundaries or merge separate traditions. A normative classification of music according to genres does not seem to fit into this world. However, they still form the unloved yet indispensable basis of our “in-between-ness” – without them we would lose all bearings in this constantly shifting world. Most recent literature on musical classification is dedicated to its use in online presentation and marketing. Spotify in particular has created an impressive, ever-expanding “genre cloud” (see Every noise at once). Yet this exercise is no longer about categorizing music, it is about classifying the user/ customer. The neoliberal target is reached if each listener can be defined by a unique combination of generic preferences which then allows for an extremely precise targeting of new content and ads. Finally, being able to establish new genres and determine how they are used indicates a position of power. Like all other discourses, those around the classification of music can be deconstructed in order to learn what those dominating them want to achieve, and how they use language to create trends and steer developments in society. Of course, this aspect overlaps with the two previous ones. All of them are deeply influenced by the opportunities provided by our digital technology. I want to invite all delegates to visit the following two webpages in advance of the conference: Every noise at once (<https://everynoise.com/>)
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