Music subgenres

Factual Questions
21

Jomo - Hey, just reporting what I saw. Anyway, as far as I can tell, new age actually comprises several distinct styles, one of which overlaps with a certain type of Celtic music. Enya is unmistakably new age, but I think Loreena McKennitt (and Celt artists in general, actually) is too “traditional” to qualify. Pure Celtic music is just that, Celtic. Nonetheless, I think it’s asking a bit much to expect a place like Borders to make these kind of distinctions. Heck, they’re the ones who had the Pure Moods album…on which one of the songs was a rock song by a British one-hit wonder band. Sheesh.

I don’t see what’s so “mystical” or “weird” about McKennitt. She’s a terrific singer.

Tribal…hmm…that would be like Zanzibar. Probably Tribe Groove too, even though they put it under “world groove” (and the less said about that, the better). I’m thinking tribal-style drums (bongos and such), acoustic “chanting” music, like, say, hula. A real earthy, unplugged, chanty feel. Something like that.

flodnak - The difference is that “pop” music is, by necessity, something you can play on the raido; hence it can’t be too long, too powerful, or too controversial. Rock (from everything I’ve ever heard) has freer rein, hence it can…well, rock. Of course, the overall sound has something to do with it as well. There’s no way in hell I’m calling Jon Bon Jovi a “pop” star even though he’s managed to get radio time.

22

Maybe I can help, I’m listening to it right now. Think of a person who is socially a Goth. You need a broad category for all the Gothy types of music they like that aren’t traditional Goth bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Sex Gang Children or Sisters of Mercy, and that would be Darkwave music. I think it might have originally meant “Gothic New Wave” but to me, it just means Stuff I’ll Probably Like. Projekt Records has a mail order service called “Projekt: Darkwave,” maybe that has something to do with it. The Goth FAQ doesn’t elaborate on the term.

Bands on Projekt, Cleopatra, Hyperium, World Serpent, Cold Meat Industry, Bedazzled, 4AD, and a lot of Italian labels could be considered Darkwave, but if you ask the bands themselves, they’ll probably have a more specific term for their music/noise, like Apocalyptic Folk (Sol Invictus, Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud), Dreampop (Love Spirals Downwards, Orange), Operatic Goth (Ataraxia, Black Rose), Medieval Folk (The Soil Bleeds Black, Cernunno’s Woods), Tribal Ambient (O Yuki Conjugate, Temps Perdu?) …you name it. For the uninitiated, I’m not just picking the weird names! Just the most typically representative of their sound.

The key is to realize that more often than not, a genre of music will be as much about a social group as it is a particular sound. And they can be real specific. There’s a lot of grey area, and genres bleed into each other. Especially with Darkwave, tee hee hee. Sorry, bad Goth joke.

For more information on specific Dance/Techno genres, I’d suggest reading Generation Ecstasy by Simon Reynolds. It’s pretty scholarly though, kind of dry. But pretty good with the definitions. On that note, Rave isn’t really PC Disco. The social aspects are quite different.

Also, Enya isn’t New Age at all, it’s just that major retail music stores are hopelessly uninformed. New Age again is rooted in a specific social movement, who I think were a bunch of cheeseballs, and who Enya as a (I gather) devout Catholic would surely find pretty silly. Loreena McKennitt is also not New Age. Her first few albums comprised pretty ornate (but pretty pretty!) arrangements of traditional Celtic folk songs, she has since branched out to all kinds of cultural styles a la Dead Can Dance.

Finally, I’ll add that Punk is about far more than just a sound. It’s heavily, inescapably political. Even if its form takes militant happiness, like Twee Pop or C86.

-fh

23

Thanks ever so much, (((((((hazel-rah)))))))

That was a very informative and helpful answer. So many bands and styles I never heard of, but that sound fascinating! Wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to check out half of them!

FTR, one of my favorite musical feels right now is “alternative world,” the term coined by Vas (Azam Ali and Greg Ellis) to describe what they do. Beautiful, beautiful stuff.

24

[flodnak - The difference is that “pop” music is, by necessity, something you can play on the raido; hence it can’t be too long, too powerful, or too controversial. Rock (from everything I’ve ever heard) has freer rein, hence it can…well, rock. Of course, the overall sound has something to do with it as well. There’s no way in hell I’m calling Jon Bon Jovi a “pop” star even though he’s managed to get radio time.
**
[/QUOTE]

I’m going to have to disagree. Jon Bon Jovi is most definitely a pop star.

Isn’t there something to be said for the influences a lot of “rock” bands draw from? Does anyone remember how many “rock” bands showed up on the Carpenters tribute album? Kurt Cobain was a pop fan and it came out in his music. Weezer draws on huge pop influences and that’s why all their stuff is so catchy despite being heavier than your average teen idol.

I will agree on the length and (at least halfway) controversy bits in your comment, but there are plenty of powerful pop songs. Anyway…that’s what I think.

25

Fusion = a blending of two or more traditional styles of music (rock + jazz). Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew” from the late 60’s kicked it off. Many bands followed (Weather Report, Tony Williams Lifetime, Mahavishnu Orchestra, etc), but the fad died a slow, quiet death in the mid-1970’s.

Cult = bands (regardless of style) that are hugely popular to a small number of loyal fans. They can be up and coming or of the ‘been around forever and ain’t never gonna make it big’ variety. Some (arguable) cult bands are NRBQ, Grateful Dead, and Fugazi.

Christian Rap = A weird idea if you ask me, but it pretty much is what the name implies. No bitches and ho’s, but lots of Jesus. Most well known is DC Talk.

Tribal = not African music as the name may imply. Tribal is a sub-genre of Electronic/Techno music that’s heavy on percussions.

Electronica = This galls music fans and techno fans. This is a contrived word thought up by the music press to label traditional DJ type-music. The term was coined for umbrella usage when the record labels were thinking that electronic music was gonna be the next grunge ($$$).

Alternative Rock = differs from rock the same way pop does. Only marginally. It was around before grunge, and was a fairly acurate description of some bands (Husker Du, Replacements, early REM), an alternative to the mainstream. Grunge popularized the term, which then meant it was mainstreamed. Now alternitive rock usually means pop/rock band who play commercial music but are (laughably) harder than what you hear on top 40 stations. They are in fact two sides of the same coin (see Blink 182, Len, Green Day).

Noise = really weird atonal noise experements. Whole albums of screeching and clanging. No melody or percievable unifying thread. Lots of avant garde ‘noise’ artists are german and japanese. Go Figure.

Acid Jazz = something akin to blacksploitation music (like the songs Theme from Shaft and Freddy’s Dead). Except there are often no vocals. Really good stuff if you like funky, groove-type stuff. US3 had a top 40 hit about 5-6 years ago called Cantaloop, they are listed under acid jazz fairly often. Pretty poppy example. If you like Issac Hayes or the like, check out this stuff.

Big Beat = pop friendly ‘electronica’. Really catchy stuff. The biggest name in electronica is arguably Fatboy Slim, a practitioner of Big Beat.

Trance = one of my personal favorites. A sub-genre in ‘electronica’. Same groove over and over for a while, then changes for a while, etc. Very hypnotic. Some of the coolest (and most popular) DJ’s in the world practice this type. See John Digweed and/or Sasha.

A quick note to Kyomara. Led Zeppelin aren’t typically thought of as pop because they never aimed for singles chart success and presented their products as “Album Oriented Rock (AOR)”. If you wanted the music you had to buy the records. No singles. (LZ did release one single, Whole Lotta Love and it went to #4 on the pop charts but that was a one off thing). The concept of AOR is still used by radio today, usually classic rock stations are known by that acronym in the biz. But does it really even apply anymore?

Hope this helps. PJ

26

Good discussions. I’ll keep it going:

hazel - From what I’ve heard, New Age music covers a lot of ground, and you don’t have to agree with its tenets to appreciate (or produce) its music. To be quite honest, I’m not sure what category Enya belongs in if not that…it’s not traditional Celtic, it’s definitly not pop (IIRC she’s had exactly one song that could be even remotely considered a “hit single”), and if it’s “world” music than so is Ricky Martin. You have the drawn-out “angelic” vocal parts (sorry, have no idea what they’re called), the general tone of the music, the pacing…I’d say it’s close enough.

The only political punk I know of, unfortunately, is Pennywise…Society, Try to Conform, Wake Up, and the like. Pretty easy to pick out.

And I’m pretty sure the social aspects of Rave are different (it’s a different era, after all). What I’d like to know is how the music and general purpose of these raves are different. “No, it’s not a disco! It’s this cool night spot where we dance to loud, pulsating music with somewhat repetitive parts to make it last longer all night, and there’s a DJ in charge of the music, and you probably haven’t heard about it because it’s an ‘underground’ club that just recently opened…oh, and there may or may not be drugs.” Yeah, real different…

PepperJett - Funny, I could swear that electronica differed from techno that it has less percussion and more electronic elements (you know, “robot” sounds…I wish I could describe this better). I think this was actually one of the “new wave” styles. Like I said, it’s been a while.

Kyomara - Really. I just heard Living on a Prayer one day (on Nickelodeon, of all channels), it blew me away, and I decided that this was way too intense to be 80’s pop. To each his own, I guess.

27

There IS powerful pop music! Living on a Prayer rocked, because it was a great, powerful pop song.

What about the Cure? They produced tons of great pop songs. My favorite by far is Boys Don’t Cry…it’s a pretty song with a really simple pop hook and it’s played just a little messy, which for me makes it more meaningful. Plus using a macho cultural more as the title and refrain while wearing make-up and singing like a sissy was pure genius.

28

DKW said:
"And I’m pretty sure the social aspects of Rave are different (it’s a different era, after all). What I’d like to know is how the music and general purpose of these raves are different. “No, it’s not a disco! It’s this cool night spot where we dance to loud, pulsating music with somewhat repetitive parts to make it last longer all night, and there’s a DJ in charge of the music, and you probably haven’t heard about it because it’s an ‘underground’ club that just recently opened…oh, and there may or may not be drugs.” Yeah, real different… "

I agree.

“PepperJett - Funny, I could swear that electronica differed from techno that it has less percussion and more electronic elements (you know, “robot” sounds…I wish I could describe this better). I think this was actually one of the “new wave” styles. Like I said, it’s been a while.”

Techno was the original catch-all phrase to describe this type dj-spun/mixed/sampled/non-hip-hop style. It did originate in Detroit as was earlier mentioned. Since those pioneering days ‘techno’ has boomed (as you no doubt know). What to call this genre? It has 4,000 sub-genres. Music execs and rock mag writers coined the term ‘electronica’ as the new catch-all phrase replacing the antiquated ‘techno’ umbrella. My point was that many people still use these two terms interchangably although often those in the know now only call that original Detroit style techno. It’s all a mess. Great thread, I hope it keeps going.

What is “coquettish” music. Presumably some type of electronica.

29

First off, I’d like to say that I agree fully with whoever said “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” The bestiary of techno subgenres is confusing as all hell, and a short written discription of the style doesn’t tell you a whole lot, IMO.

Anyway, my contribution: Rave is a style that was around for several years in the late '80s to early '90s. It was primarily British, although some americans got some pretty good stuff in before the end. It’s pretty fast dance music typically with a strong, pounding beat. It’s similar to House. IMO, The Prodigy’s first album, Experience, is an excellent example (and one that you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding in a record store nowadays, either). I’d also include some of Moby’s early stuff (esp. Next is the E), Lords of Acid’s first album Lust…anything else is probably too obscure to be recognizable.

30

Re drum n bass in 4/4 time - A band called Lamb recently relased an album called “fear of fours”. Jazzy drum and bass, with “real” drums and double bass. Album is so called because not a single track is 4/4. Damn good stuff, if that’s your thing.

31

Okay…what I’d like now is a clarification on “Euro Beat”. All the Euro Beat songs I’ve heard sound a lot like disco (even more so than Rave, which is more Techno-ish); fast paced with a lot of music and percussion.

S’now I’m thinking…well, I have been thinking, I’m just a little more sure now…that Euro Beat is the actual successor to disco, except almost always fast paced and more energetic (man, I use those words a lot, don’t I?).

Also, every time House pops up, I think “piano”. At least one acoustic element, at any rate. Am I at least somewhat right?

And thanks, everyone, for setting me straight on “electronica”. Seriously, I was thinking along the lines of the chorus part in Blue (“I’m Blue, a ba dee a ba dai, a ba dee a ba dai…”), except for the whole song. You know what I’m talking about.