IDM Mailing Archive

--On 27 September 2005 08:19 -0600 mantrakid <mantrakid@neferiu.com> wrote:

quoted 6 lines The result transcends genre, it establishes musical individualism, and it

> The result transcends genre, it establishes musical individualism, and it > has existed in all forms from bach to the beatles to nirvana and beyond. > (self)Genre classification is for lazy musicians who lack the self esteem > and courage to express themselves in their purest form. They assume that > the only way to connect with the masses is to include themselves with the > masses.

I'm not sure there have been many musicians willingly 'self-classifying' themselves as 'IDM'. It's a tag that was devised as a kind of critical 'shorthand' to enable classification, and it stuck, regrettably, though very few practitioners adopt it in anything other than a 'knowing' kind of way, as if it had quotation marks around it, so to speak. Anyway, leaving judgments as to the term's appropriacy (and aesthetic considerations) aside, 'genre' operates simply as a form of classification, and though classification is often characterised (as here) as somehow detrimental, leading to neglect of individual elements that distinguish one from another, it's actually a very basic human tendency. At the most basic level, we do it in order to make sense of the complexity of sensory input we have to deal with daily; it says that item X is similar in several significant respects to Y and Z, though different enough to be X. Where it becomes problematic is when the aspect of difference is diminished or obscured (which is where an element of wilful deployment comes in). For example, its social psychological by-products are things like 'stereotyping', which can be used for evil and wicked purposes, of course, but there is nothing about the act of genre-fication *per se* that is to be abhorred.

quoted 3 lines Genre exists to restrain thinking to normality and mass

> Genre exists to restrain thinking to normality and mass > association. I personally would much rather be referred to as 'mantrakid' > than a techno hiphop artist.

Hmmm. I don't think genre 'exists' to do this. Genre is used to signal to recipients of a message what category something might be said to fit into, so as to enable a rough and ready processing of the message (that is not to say it is considered the whole story). It may be *deployed* by some for the purposes mentioned above admittedly, but I don't think there's anything pre-wired into genre that disposes it to 'restrain' individuality (i.e. it's a container, but not a prison); things can be situated at a different level/order at one and the same time depending on what system or sub-system they enter into, being part of a smaller or larger group of similar things. To make an analogy, I'm aware that a pink grapefruit is, at one and the same time, a type of *fruit*, a type of *citrus fruit* at that, and what's more a type of *grapefruit*. Acknowledging its status as 'fruit' doesn't diminish its essential pink-grapefruitiness, nor does rejoicing in the particular individual sweet tartness of a particular specimen require it to be placed apart from the universe of other fruits and fruitiness in general. Being referred to as 'a techno hiphop artist' doesn't of itself deny the individuality of 'mantrakid' any more than calling a pink grapefruit a fruit restrains its status as a grapefruit, and a pink one at that, and, what's more, an especially sweet one ... urgh... my head hurts now... my mum told me not to mess with ontology... Now off to listen to some Elevator Shitcore Ether-Gospel alan ---------------------- Alan Lockett (Senior Language Co-ordinator - EFL) Language Centre, University of Bristol, 30-32 Tyndall's Park Road, Bristol, BS8 1PY, UK tel: +44 (0)117 3310914 e-mail: Alan.R.Lockett@bristol.ac.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org