iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Music Style

A music genre is a term that describes the process of dividing popular music into categories. Some treat the terms genre and style as the same, and state that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language."[1] Others state that genre and style are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres.[2] A music genre (or sub-genre) could be defined by the techniques, the styles, the context and the themes (content, spirit). Also, geographical origin is sometimes used to define the music genre, though a single geographical category will normally include a wide variety of sub-genres.

Categorisation

A list of genres of music (including subgengres) can be found at List of music genres. However, there are a number of criteria with which one may classify musical genres, including:
  • The Art/Popular/Traditional distinction
  • Regional and national distinctions
  • Fusional origins

Art music

Main article: Art music


Art music, also known as "serious music," primarily refers to classical music, including European classical music, Contemporary classical music, or others listed at List of classical music styles (including non-European classical music). Art music also includes some forms of Jazz, Electronic art music, and Experimental music (including Minimalist music).

Popular music

Main article: Popular music


Popular music (not to be confused with Pop music) is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media.

Traditional music

Main article: Traditional music


Traditional music is the modern name for what used to be called "Folk music", before the term "Folk music" was expanded to include a lot of non-traditional material. The defining characteristics of traditional music are:
  • Oral transmission: The music is passed down, or learned, through singing and listening and sometimes dancing
  • Cultural basis: The music derives from and is part of the traditions of a particular region or culture

Regional and national music

It is possible to categorise music geographically. For example, the term "Australian music" could include Australian rock music, Australian traditional music in the European style (eg. Waltzing Matilda), Aboriginal Australian music, Australian classical music, and Australian Jazz.

Fusional origins

This Section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since October 2007.
In the West, nearly all music except Traditional music has a fusional origin.

A fusion genre is a music genre that combines two or more genres. For example, rock and roll originally developed as a fusion of blues, gospel and country music. The main characteristics of fusion genres are variations in tempo, rhythm and sometimes the use of long musical "journeys" that can be divided into smaller parts, each with their own dynamics, style and tempo.

Artists who work in fusion genres are often difficult to categorise within non-fusion styles. Most styles of fusion music are influenced by various musical genres. While there are many reasons for this, the main reason is that most genres evolved out of other genres. When the new genre finally identifies itself as separate, there is often a large gray area in which musicians are left. These artists generally consider themselves part of both genres. A musician who plays music that is dominantly blues, influenced by rock, is often labelled a blues-rock musician. The first genre is the one from which the new one evolved. The second genre is the newer and less-dominant genre in the artist's playing. An example of a blues-rock group would be Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Vaughan, a Texas blues guitarist, surrounded by a world in which rock was dominating music, used rock and blues together.

Arguments

This Section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since October 2007.

Subjectivity

One of the problems with the grouping of music into genres is that it is a subjective process that has a lot to do with the individual's personal understanding and way of listening to music. This is especially true in sub-genres. One example is Led Zeppelin, which could be called heavy metal, hard rock, classic rock, folk, or blues, depending on one's interpretation (and not helped by the fact that they made excursions into other genres such as electric folk). Another difficulty with grouping artists into genres is that, for many, their style of music changes over time.

Some genre labels are quite vague. Many were originally contrived by marketing executives or music critics; post-rock, for example, is a term devised and defined by Simon Reynolds. Another example of this is video game music, which while defined by its media, can also represent its own style, as well as that of any other musical genre.

Resistance

Categorising music, especially into finer genres or sub genres, can be difficult for newly emerging styles or for pieces of music that incorporate features of multiple genres. Attempts to pigeonhole particular musicians in a single genre are sometimes ill-founded as they may produce music in a variety of genres over time or even within a single piece. Some people feel that the categorisation of music into genres is based more on commercial and marketing motives than musical criteria. John Zorn, for example, a musician whose work has covered a wide range of genres, wrote in Arcana: Musicians on Music that genres are tools used to "commodify and commercialise an artist's complex personal vision".

References

1. ^ Peter van der Merwe 1989, p.3
2. ^ Moore, Allen "Categorical Conventions in Music Discourse: Style and Genre" Music & Letters, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 432-442

See also

Articles and lists relating to music genres
 •  • [ e]
List of music genres :         Cultural and regional
Art Music  Blues  Electronic  Folk  Heavy metal  Hip hop  Post-industrial  Jazz  Popular music  Reggae  Rock
Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose.
..... Click the link for more information.
Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
..... Click the link for more information.
Style may refer to:
  • a pair of extra appendages located on the last segment of a male cockroach.
  • Genre, design, format, or looks
  • Fashion, applies to a prevailing mode of expression, i.e. clothing.

..... Click the link for more information.
A musical technique is a used in the composition, precomposition, or performance of music, including extended techniques.
..... Click the link for more information.
Geography - (from the Greek words Geo (γη) or Gaea (γαία), both meaning "Earth", and graphein (γράφειν) meaning "to describe" or "to write"
..... Click the link for more information.
Origin is a word meaning "beginning". In this sense, it may refer to:
  • Origin (start), the beginning, starting-point, cause, or ultimate source, from which a thing is derived

..... Click the link for more information.
This list is split into four separate pages:
Music can be divided into genres in many different ways. These classifications are often arbitrary and controversial, and closely related styles often overlap.
..... Click the link for more information.
Art music (or serious music or sometimes erudite music) is an umbrella term generally used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations.
..... Click the link for more information.
Classical music is a broad term that usually refers to music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of, Western art, ecclesiastical and concert music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to the 21st century.
..... Click the link for more information.
In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to a period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism.
..... Click the link for more information.
Classical music in its widest sense refers to music composed in a classical tradition and intended as serious art, especially as distinguished from popular or folk music. The term is generally used to "canonize" a musical tradition dating to a period which is the "golden age" of
..... Click the link for more information.
Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.

Overview

Jazz has been called "America's only original art form.
..... Click the link for more information.
Electronic art music refers to those forms of electronic music that fall within the general category of art music. The term encompasses a range of experimental music forms, both historical and contemporary, created by means of electronic instruments and differentiated from
..... Click the link for more information.
For experimental rock music, see .


Experimental music is a term introduced by composer John Cage in 1955. Cage defined "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is unforeseen" and he was specifically interested in completed works that
..... Click the link for more information.
For other uses, see Minimalism (disambiguation).
Minimalist music is an originally American genre of experimental or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonant harmony, steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis and slow
..... Click the link for more information.
Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media. It stands in contrast to art music[1]
..... Click the link for more information.
This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since October 2007.

..... Click the link for more information.
Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
..... Click the link for more information.
This article is about the cultural and social sciences term mainstream. For the Hugo-nominated fanzine, see Mainstream (fanzine). For the record label, see Mainstream Records.

..... Click the link for more information.
Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and
..... Click the link for more information.
Traditional music is the modern name for what used to be called "Folk music", before the term "Folk music" was expanded to include a lot of non-traditional material. The defining characteristics of traditional music are that it is:
  • An Oral tradition.

..... Click the link for more information.
Folk music can have a number of different meanings, including:
  • Traditional music: The original meaning of the term "folk music" was synonymous with the term "Traditional music", also often including World Music and Roots music; the term "Traditional music" was given

..... Click the link for more information.
Oral tradition or oral culture is a way for a society to transmit history, literature, law or other knowledge across generations without a writing system. An example that combined aspects of oral literature and oral history, before eventually being set down in writing, is
..... Click the link for more information.
Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significant importance.
..... Click the link for more information.
Traditional music is the modern name for what used to be called "Folk music", before the term "Folk music" was expanded to include a lot of non-traditional material. The defining characteristics of traditional music are that it is:
  • An Oral tradition.

..... Click the link for more information.
A Fusion genre is a music genre that fuses two or more other musical genres.

Examples :
  • jazz-rock fusion : jazz + rock
  • jazz funk : jazz + funk
  • acid jazz : jazz + disco-Funk
  • latin jazz : jazz + latin music

..... Click the link for more information.
Rock 'n' Roll (short for Rock and Roll), is a genre of music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to the rest of the world. It later spawned the various sub-genres of what is now called simply 'rock music'.
..... Click the link for more information.
Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that most often follows a twelve-bar structure. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants,
..... Click the link for more information.
Gospel, from the Old English god-spell "good tidings" is a calque of Greek ευαγγέλιον (
..... Click the link for more information.
Country music, the first half of Billboard's country and western music category, is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States. It has roots in traditional folk music, Celtic music, blues, gospel music, hokum, and old-time music and
..... Click the link for more information.


This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


page counter