Nowadays it’s becoming extremely difficult to categorize music into simple genres. Once upon a time we had pop, rock, hiphop, jazz and many other musical genres to chose from. In synthesis we had clear and distinct genres of music. Nowadays, as explained by Mark Warner on his Spotify podcast ‘Streamline’, we have a multitude of different genres and a variety of different artists that aim to give us something different from the usual.
All you need to do is go on Spotify and see , effectively , how many genre categories exist in the digital world. We have an extremely wide variety of genres ranging from: emo rap, hip-pop , metal-rap and the list goes on and on. We can also look at a variety of artists and the way they mix styles , proposing different projects with different sonorities and adding an element of ‘genre-less’ music. Some of these artists include Travis Scott, Post Malone and we can even go back to the 1980s when Steve Tyler hooked up with Run DMC for a hip-hop/rock version of ‘Walk This Way’.
This brings me to my argument: is the fusion of different genres positive or negative when it comes to music?
Lets look at the bright side, music is something intangible , its never-ending. Music can be categorized from a simple beaten drum to a fully equipped orchestra. I believe that the ‘dissolving’ of these genre walls can open up a lot of opportunities for new artists or artists with a particular and innovative sound. The word I am looking for here is: opportunity. The different varieties and possibilities offered by the digital music world means that more people will have the opportunity to create music outside of the standard musical genres that we have had for the last 50 years. In most circumstances, a lot of people believe that musical genres are a straight corridor. There is no space for different interpretations of the genre and there are no other ways of proposing an existing music experience in another way. Consequently , this leads to believe that the ramifications of different types of music is wrong. I, as a fan of music overall, cannot fully agree with this statement as it would mean that many artists that I listen to would not exist. I believe that this is a simple factor of musical evolution. A combination of digital , easy music production programs now allows you to do what you want , when you want and create a unique and innovative sound that you can easily propose to the world.
At the same time I do believe that there is a blind side to the argument. I am fully on board with the mixing of genres and new sounds. One thing that I really want to stress though, is we should be careful that our pre existing musical genres should not lose musical identity. Let me explain: if you produce an emo rap song, it would be correct to label the song as emo rap, not rap. We have to pay attention as to how we label our music. This is not me being narrow minded or musically ‘racist’. I do believe that the base form of the music should be preserved and that the ramifications clearly defined as sub genres.
What do you think?
Sebastiano (Kali501) Alessandroni