I say IDM is a mailing list and a genre.
It's fine if some of you want to stipulate that
IDM is a list and not a genre, but the fact is
most people consider IDM a genre (at least
implicitly). I think treating IDM as a genre
makes good sense even though we can't slap a
precise definition on it.
When we talk about IDM music we all know what
kind of music is being referred to, even
though the music is incredibly diverse and
doesn't seem to occupy a tidy commercial
category like "house." Even if linguistic
purists insist that IDM is merely a list,
it's clear that the people on this list
prefer to talk about a certain kind of music.
And lots of people get a little annoyed when
decidedly non-IDM musicians come up (say,
Michael Jackson). If IDM is merely a list,
then nothing is off-topic. Michael Jackson,
Beethoven, and Britney Spears should all be
welcome topics.
The fact is the IDM list is *about* something,
and that something is a certain variety of
music--a music we sloppily refer to as IDM.
Otherwise it's just a big coincidence that
we talk so much about Warp/Rephlex/Schematic/
etc. You might argue that IDM is the list
and we just talk about a bunch of different
kinds of cutting-edge contemporary electronic
music. I would reply that IDM, as a genre,
*is* all this cutting-edge electronic music
which doesn't really fit snuggly into
traditional dance genres. Whether you choose
to call it IDM or call it something else is
a matter of linguistic conventionalism; the
fact is we're both still talking about a
category of music. Why not give that
category a convenient little name?
Now the linguistic purist might argue that
IDM should not be a genre because IDM is so
diverse and it has no universal properties--
putative IDM recordings have nothing in
common. That may be true, but that doesn't
mean IDM is useless or invalid as a genre.
The fact is lots of recognized genres, e.g.
"art" or "game," don't have any common,
essential qualities (or if you can think of
one for art I'd love to hear it). But the
category is still understood by everyone,
and it makes talking about these subjects
much easier. (The idea that a category
only makes sense if its members share a
common quality is Plato's "essentialism"--
but most modern thinkers have thrown that
idea out in favor of Wittgenstein's
"family resemblances." According to W,
members of a category need not have any
single common quality; it is sufficient
for them to have "overlapping similarities.")
In IDM music there are enough overlapping
similarities that IDM makes sense as a
family of music even though IDM music may
have nothing in common. And everyone treats
it like a genre on this list anyway, so why
fix it if it isn't broken?
Putting things into a category for the sake
of talking about it doesn't stifle
creativity or group things that shouldn't
be grouped or oversimplify the world: We
all know perfectly well how imperfect
language is and how otherworldly and
ineffable this music gets. But words
aren't the coffins of ideas--just because
we're forced to make generalizations in
language doesn't imply we don't appreciate
the diversity or ingenuity of IDM. It's
just we like to talk about it too, and
to talk about anything you have to impose
categories on it. You have to call it
something. And there's nothing wrong with
that, as long as people realize that
the music stands alone as an art form and
words can hardly touch its sublime real
nature.
Kevin
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org