BY PAUL BALLAM-CROSS, RUNNER-UP IN THE 2016 CUTCOMMON YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR COMPETITION
This blog entry awarded Paul Ballam-Cross a runner-up place in our inaugural young writers’ competition. Writers were asked to respond to the following question: Genre orders our bookshops, CD libraries, and digital playlists. What use does genre have in the contemporary musical setting?
Humans love sorting things. We apply genres to books, movies, artworks, and, naturally, music. This useful inclination leads to a handy compartmentalisation; as a teenager, I grew up loving grunge (the angrier, the better), which in turn lead to a discovery of dozens of other bands. Without the genre labels that one can apply to music, I’d never have discovered the delights of long-haired, flannel-wearing guitar-slingers. However, this neat labelling of types of music can have the unintended consequence of finding yourself stuck within the confines of a genre. I, for one, find Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, which predicts music you’ll like based on what you’ve listened to previously, distressingly predictable. Nine times out of 10, what pops up is music that I’ve heard before, not something new and unexpected.
A similar issue arises when discussing contemporary classical music. Split and splintered into as many subgenres as the mind can create, the term ‘genre’ in contemporary classical is difficult to use. A composer can label themselves as a modern, 21st Century composer, and write accessible, tonal music. Alternatively, with exactly the same label, a composer can write music influenced by the most hard-line of composers, and laden the score with dozens of instructions and stuttering rhythms. Subgenres can help to mitigate this problem somewhat, but the same issue arises, just at a more granular level.
Therefore, genre’s usefulness depends entirely on what the creator of the music calls it. This can sometimes lead to remarkably unhelpful designations – the band Primus has the dubious honour of being the only band to possess its own ID3 tag, from the early days of MP3s. The genre? Apparently simply ‘Primus’. If a composer refers to their music as ‘minimalist’, then the listener has a fairly good idea of what to expect (interlocking hypnotic motifs, combined with a strong tonal structure). The term ‘genre’ simply allows the listener to know what to expect.
Although this might be seen as a negative for the audience, in reality it is a positive. While the audience can roughly predict what will be heard at a concert billed as a ‘post-tonal sound exploration’, it is up to the composer (and performer) to push past simple genre labels. Why not combine minimalism and plainchant? Why not combine sound explorations and classical forms? Genres can be a positive thing in that they allow us to structure stylistic choices, but it is the composer who must push beyond genre barriers to create new and fresh types of music.
This feature is part of CutCommon Young Writers’ Month. About the author:
Queensland composer Paul Ballam-Cross is a runner-up in the inaugural CutCommon Young Writer of the Year Competition. He has a Bachelor of Music in Performance from Griffith University, a Master of Information Studies from the University of Canberra, and is studying a Master of Philosophy in Musicology at the University of Queensland. He regularly reviews for Limelight Magazine, is a presenter at 4MBS Classic FM, and is a tutor and lecturer at various institutions.
