In part one I looked at theories. I mentioned some of the problems and considered a few possible diagrammatic approaches. In part two I want to talk about how music has been classified for practical purposes.
The history of classification into musical genres goes back – in the Western tradition – at least as far as the ancient Greeks, who had separate Muses for Lyric Poetry (Cithara), Choral Poetry (Polyhymnia) and just plain Music (Euterpe).
By the 19th century the habit of labelling musical genres had taken firm hold, and already the system was looking quite complicated and rather messy. Some labels were based on dance movements (gavottes, reels etc). Some were based on mood and tone (‘light opera’ or ‘pastoral’). Some were based on instrumentation (‘orchestral’, ‘brass band’, ‘string quartet’). Some were based on the structure of the composition (‘Symphony’, ‘Fugue’, ‘Suite’ etc). And lots of composers were happy to distinguish between their works simply by labelling them with their ordinal number (first, second, third…) and the keys in which they were scored.
The advent of commercial recording in the 1920s gave new urgency to the need for a straightforward and easily-understandable system of classification. The public was being offered a range of objects – 78 rpm records, all of them identical in size, shape, colour and cardboard sleeve – distinguished only by two things: the record company name and the brief description of the music that was printed on the label.
As companies both amalgamated and sub-divided, the ‘label’ (i.e. the biggest name on the record, usually a logo set within a graphic design of some kind) came to be a useful hint (but usually not much more than a hint) of what the record might sound like. ‘Tamla’, ‘Stax’, ‘Alligator’, ‘Speciality’ or ‘Prestige’ give us a pretty good clue – especially if we also take into consideration the date of publication. Music released on ‘Pye’, ‘Columbia’, ‘Marble Arch’ or ‘Decca’ could be just about anything.
The title of the music and the name(s) of the performer(s) would usually give us a better idea, although the classic descriptive line printed beneath (typically, on 78s, “vocal with instrumental accompaniment”) was no help at all and would in due course be dropped.
The music industry, as it developed, introduced new players to the game. Musicians and audiences had always struggled to classify the sounds they wanted, respectively, to generate and to hear. Now there were talent scouts (later to be called ‘A&R men’), producers, company bosses, distributors, retailers, advertisers and reviewers to be accommodated, and they all had their own ideas about categorisation.
Soon, other interested parties were pitching into the debate: radio station owners, disc-jockeys, clubs, promoters and (to bring the story up to date) the designers of bar-code systems.
None of these people were objective or scientific in their analyses; most of them were driven by a desire to make as much money as possible. Two commercial pressures in particular were in conflict:
First, the drive in music marketing to create a perception of novelty in musical styles (and thus the invention of new so-called genres), whereas true novelty is much rarer and very often uncommercial when it does occur;
Second, the drive to amalgamate and homogenise existing genres, so that any individual artist can be presented to the largest-possible audience. As I write a television commercial is advertising a compilation entitled ‘Ultimate R&B’ which features among its performers Kylie Minogue.
HOW MUSIC IS CLASSIFIED ON THE INTERNET
Let’s look at some case studies, taking in the major online music retailers E-bay, Amazon, CdandLP and Gemm, together with the most widely-used online reference source, Wikipedia. We might also consider i-Tunes and Spotify, but five is enough to be going on with.
EBAY
This is how Ebay organises recorded music (against each category I’ve given the number of items on sale on the day I checked)
Avant-Garde (1,540)
Blues (8,646)
Children’s (2,076)
Christmas/ Seasonal (662)
Classical (30,075)
Comedy (3,029)
Country (17,313)
Dance (191,200)
Easy Listening (19,183)
Folk (12,956)
Indie/ Britpop (38,105)
Jazz (24,047)
Karaoke (31)
Metal (17,900)
New Age (184)
Not Specified (64,772)
Pop & Beat: 1960s (56,245)
Pop (177,066)
R&B/ Soul (62,336)
Rap/ Hip Hop (12,608)
Reggae/ Ska (36,597)
Religious (820)
Rock (199,170)
Soundtracks (12,318)
Spoken Word (888)
World Music (3,826)
Ebay uses 26 genres and offers a ‘first choice’ of six sub-genres within each – a total of 156 possibilities. What they have put together is a very vague and inefficient – indeed chaotic – system of classification, but then they have a financial incentive to make it so. If the record you’re selling seems to belong in more than one genre or – within a genre – in more than one sub-genre, then you can list it in several (in exchange for a higher listing fee). This may account for the fact that, in some genres, the total of records listed in each of the sub-genres is greater than the total number of records listed for the genre as a whole.
In other genres the top six sub-genres put together account for only a tiny proportion of the whole. This may be because, within that genre, most sellers find it unnecessary to specify a sub-genre at all.
Some of the sub-genres on offer seem perverse (New Age > Punk for example). It turns out that the records listed under that heading are not ‘New Age’ music at all, but are simply punk records which happen to use the words ‘New Age’ in their titles.
In many of the genres the first sub-genre offered simply repeats the label of the genre itself. This is the case with Country, Folk, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock and Soundtracks.
Ebay offers an additional list of sub-genres for those who can’t place their record within the top six in any given genre. There are 106 ‘additional’ sub-genres to choose from, and these labels can be stuck onto any item, whatever its supposed primary genre, so that if you want to tell the world that your record is “Easy Listening > Speed/Thrash Metal”, Ebay is quite happy to let you do so. Most of the sub-genres are already included somewhere among the list of ‘top six’ options. Many of them appear to have been selected by only a tiny number of sellers, but they include some important categories that are not otherwise represented, such as ‘Bluegrass’ or ‘Chillout/Ambient’.
E-BAY SUB-GENRES ON OFFER
1970s (41,014)
1980s (87,538)
1990s (16,145)
2000s (19,721)
Acid/ Fusion (9)
Acoustic (10)
African (176)
Alternative (858)
American (257)
Ballet/ Dance (2)
Beat: 1960s (415)
Big Band/ Swing (285)
Big Beat (9)
Bluegrass (5)
Bop (115)
Brass Bands/ Military Bands (8)
Breakbeat (16)
Cabaret (37)
Chamber (2)
Chillout/ Ambient (8)
Choral (4)
Christian (72)
Classic (3,614)
Classic: Other (3)
Classic: Symphonic (4)
Compilation (389)
Contemporary (45)
Country (582)
Dancehall (26)
Death/ Black Metal (4)
Disco (990)
Doo Wop/ 50s Rock ‘n’ Roll (416)
Drum ‘n’ Bass/ Jungle (16)
Dub (111)
Early Music/ Baroque (1)
East Coast (4)
Electric (494)
Electronica (160)
Elvis (812)
English (204)
Film (173)
Folk (264)
Freestyle (16)
Funk (242)
Gangsta (5)
Garage (38)
Glam (347)
Gospel (25)
Gothic (25)
Grunge (130)
Hard (680)
Hard House (4)
Hardcore/ Rave/ Old Skool (223)
Heavy Metal (86)
Hip Hop (71)
Honky-Tonk (1)
House (1,202)
Indian (87)
Instrumental (233)
Irish (119)
Keyboard (1)
Latin (95)
Lounge/ Downtempo (6)
Mainstream (288)
Motown (633)
Musicals (39)
New Wave (876)
Northern Soul (138)
Not Specified (502)
Nu-Metal (1)
Old School (26)
Opera/ Vocal (14)
Orchestral (169)
Organ Music (2)
Pop (99,896)
Pop: 1960s (8,309)
Popular (18)
Pre-1970 (2,370)
Progressive (258)
Progressive House (8)
Psychedelic/ 60s Garage (156)
Punk (605)
R&B (215)
R&B/Soul (907)
Rock (6,043)
Rockabilly (40)
Roots Reggae (187)
Russian (31)
Sing-Along (7)
Ska (132)
Soft (571)
Songs (644)
Soul (1,471)
Soundtracks (144)
Speed/ Thrash Metal (2)
Stories (102)
Techno/ Electro (11)
Techno/ Industrial (98)
Television Shows (34)
The Beatles (897)
Thrash/ Speed (5)
Traditional/ Dixieland (3)
Trance & Hard House (13)
TV (134)
Vocal (468)
West Coast (14)
AMAZON
Amazon uses 18 genres and a total of 156 sub-genres. Within these, the most cursory glance at the any of the results pages shows that many records have been wrongly catalogued, but this need not invalidate the system itself, which has many virtues.
The categories are very American.
| GENRE | SUB-GENRES | ITEMS LISTED |
| Alternative & Indie | Alternative & Indie Rock | 47,679 |
| Alternative Metal | 8,038 | |
| Britpop | 2,325 | |
| Dark Wave | 1,693 | |
| Emo | 2,911 | |
| Garage Rock | 4,732 | |
| Goth Rock | 2,483 | |
| Grunge | 2,085 | |
| Industrial | 5,210 | |
| Lo-Fi | 2,257 | |
| New Wave | 3,155 | |
| Post Rock | 2,808 | |
| Punk | 27,171 | |
| Blues | Chicago Blues | 3,981 |
| Delta Blues | 1,020 | |
| Female Singers | 1,848 | |
| Jump Blues | 3,041 | |
| Louisiana Blues | 1,202 | |
| Memphis Blues | 947 | |
| Modern Blues | 11,097 | |
| Texas Blues | 2,333 | |
| Children’s Music | Ages 0-2 | N/A |
| Ages 3-4 | N/A | |
| Ages 5-8 | N/A | |
| Ages 9-11 | N/A | |
| Ages 12+ | N/A | |
| Children’s Classical Music | 737 | |
| Children’s Popular Music | 29,547 | |
| Classical | Ballet & Dance | 4,457 |
| Chamber Music | 59,875 | |
| Occasions | 956 | |
| Orchestral | 63,637 | |
| Solo Instrumental | 62,507 | |
| Soundtracks | 6,002 | |
| Opera & Vocal | 83,140 | |
| Country | Alt Country & Americana | 5,619 |
| Bluegrass | 6,456 | |
| Contemporary & New Country | 12,768 | |
| Honky Tonk | 5,103 | |
| Nashville Sound | 4,699 | |
| Outlaw | 1,721 | |
| Tex Mex | 1,827 | |
| Traditional Country | 20,330 | |
| Western Swing | 1,517 | |
| Dance & Electronic | Ambient | 6,533 |
| Drum & Bass | 404 | |
| Electronica | 5,995 | |
| House | 6,941 | |
| Techno | 5,891 | |
| Trance | 2,394 | |
| Trip Hop | 3,029 | |
| Easy Listening | Doo Wop | 3,341 |
| Exotica & Lounge | 1,594 | |
| Instrumental | 31,156 | |
| Smooth Jazz | 4,529 | |
| Folk & Songwriter | American Folk | 5,124 |
| Celtic Folk | 11,941 | |
| English Folk | 2,551 | |
| Modern Folk | 6,899 | |
| Singer-Songwriter | 18,570 | |
| Traditional Folk | 6,346 | |
| Hard Rock & Metal | Death & Black Metal | 8,326 |
| Doom Metal | 1,574 | |
| Gothic Metal | 1,456 | |
| Hard Rock | 24,663 | |
| Hardcore | 9,081 | |
| Heavy Metal | 50,591 | |
| Industrial | 5,210 | |
| Power & True Metal | 1,611 | |
| Progressive Metal | 3,430 | |
| Speed & Thrash Metal | 5,634 | |
| Stoner Rock | 780 | |
| Jazz | Bebop | 5,454 |
| Big Band & Swing | 29,946 | |
| Classical & Traditional | 18,602 | |
| Cool | 8,979 | |
| Dancefloor Jazz | 2,872 | |
| Free Jazz & Avant garde | 11,754 | |
| Fusion & Jazz Funk | 5,508 | |
| Latin Jazz | 6,540 | |
| Modern Post-Bebop | 33,444 | |
| Smooth Jazz | 4,529 | |
| Soul Jazz & Boogaloo | 6,208 | |
| Vocal Jazz | 16,631 | |
| Pop | Dance Pop | 22,788 |
| Disco | 7,865 | |
| Electro & Synth | 650 | |
| Folk Pop | 1,981 | |
| New Wave | 3,155 | |
| Pop R&B | 33,451 | |
| Pop Reggae | 2,909 | |
| Pop Rock | 59,873 | |
| Traditional & Vocal | 32,665 | |
| R&B & Soul | Classic R&B | 4,883 |
| Doo Wop | 3,341 | |
| Funk | 8,799 | |
| Modern R&B | 7,814 | |
| Motown | 2,830 | |
| Soul | 44,154 | |
| Alternative Rap | 3,173 | |
| East Coast | 6,828 | |
| Hardcore & Gangsta Rap | 17,944 | |
| Old School | 1,548 | |
| Southern | 4,914 | |
| West Coast | 5,422 | |
| Reggae | Dancehall & Ragga | 7,392 |
| Dub | 3,503 | |
| Roots Reggae | 6,149 | |
| Ska | 4,877 | |
| Rock | Blues Rock | 12,413 |
| Britpop | 2,325 | |
| Classic British Rock | 12,640 | |
| Country Rock | 3,656 | |
| Folk Rock | 10,412 | |
| Glam | 2,267 | |
| Psychedelic Rock | 13,011 | |
| Rock ‘n’ Roll | 6,124 | |
| Rockabilly | 8,051 | |
| Soundtracks & Musicals | Film Music | 32,369 |
| Musicals | 11,132 | |
| TV Soundtracks | 1,853 | |
| Video Games Music | 106 | |
| World Music | African | 9,202 |
| Eastern European | 2,049 | |
| French | 2,111 | |
| Greek | 693 | |
| Italian | 2,189 | |
| Latin American | 93,759 | |
| Middle & East Asian | 7,623 | |
| Middle Eastern | 7,930 | |
| Scandinavian | 348 | |
| Spanish & Portuguese | 2,817 | |
| Miscellaneous | Ballroom Dance | 1,216 |
| Brass Band | 582 | |
| Comedy & Spoken Word | 23,557 | |
| Gospel & Spiritual | 22,735 | |
| Holiday & Religious | 47,097 | |
| Military Music & National Anthems | 1,638 | |
| New Age | 19,108 | |
| Sound Effects & Nature | 1,612 | |
| Special Interest | 8,484 | |
| Compilations | Alternative & Indie | 9,332 |
| Blues | 7,334 | |
| Children’s Music | 10,646 | |
| Country | 11,919 | |
| Dance & Electronic | 34,085 | |
| Easy Listening | 14,398 | |
| Folk & Songwriter | 24,171 | |
| Hard Rock & Metal | 8,963 | |
| Jazz | 20,309 | |
| Pop | 204,801 | |
| R&B & Soul | 18,012 | |
| Rap & Hip-Hop | 10,016 | |
| Reggae | 10,437 | |
| Rock | 40,818 | |
| Soundtracks & Musicals | 19,077 |
CDANDLP
www.cdandlp.com is a French record-selling website which offers over 15 million items for sale, categorised according to the most peculiar system of musical taxonomy I’ve yet encountered.
CDandLP use only ten major categories:
Rock
Pop UK & US
French & Euro Pop
Classical
Soundtracks/Sound Library
New grooves/electro
World Music and Grooves
Soul Funk/RnB 60s
Hip-Hop
Jazz
But their ‘second level’ takes in 88 possibilities, and many of these are further subdivided, so that there are also 74 third-level categories.
| Rock | Rock General | |
| Country / Folk / Southern Rock | ||
| Gothic | ||
| Metal | Metal General | |
| Black / Death | ||
| Dark Metal | ||
| Grind Core | ||
| Hard Core | ||
| Hard / Heavy | ||
| Hard Rock | ||
| Hard Rock French | ||
| Heavy / Speed | ||
| Neo Metal | ||
| Neo Metal / Indus | ||
| Stoner Rock | ||
| Thrash / Death | ||
| Metal Fusion | ||
| Pop-Rock 60s / 70s | ||
| Psyche | ||
| Punk / Oi | ||
| Rock 80s / New Wave | ||
| Rock 90s / Grunge | ||
| Current Rock | ||
| Rock n Roll | ||
| Progressive | ||
| Elvis Presley | ||
| The Beatles | ||
| The Rolling Stones | ||
| Industriel | ||
| Psychobilly | ||
| Garage | ||
| Pop UK & US | Pop general | |
| Crooner / Doo Wop | ||
| Pop 80s | ||
| Pop 90s | ||
| Current Pop | ||
| Pop 60s / Jerk | ||
| French & Euro Pop | France | Ambiance |
| Songs | ||
| Gainsbourg | ||
| Johnny Hallyday | ||
| Musette / Orchestration | ||
| Mylène Farmer | ||
| Rap / Ragga / RnB | ||
| French Rock | ||
| 60s | ||
| French Pop | ||
| Others French | ||
| Germany | ||
| Spain | ||
| Italia | ||
| Other Countries | ||
| Greece | ||
| European Grooves | ||
| Classical | General | |
| Old Music | ||
| Contemporary | ||
| Ancient Music | ||
| Opera | ||
| Instrumental | ||
| Vocal | ||
| Soundtracks / Sound Library | Musical Comedy / Theatre | |
| Cartoons / Children / Christmas | ||
| 70s Movies / Blaxploitation | ||
| Movies | ||
| European Movies | ||
| TV Shows | ||
| Others | ||
| Sound Library | ||
| Bollywood | ||
| Easy Listening / Erotic / Exotica | ||
| Experimental / Avant-Garde / Electronics | ||
| Documentary / History | ||
| Dance / Club | ||
| New grooves / electro | Expérimentale / Electro | |
| Hard Core | ||
| House / Garage / Deep | ||
| Jungle / DnB | ||
| Techno | ||
| Trance / Acid / Goa | ||
| Lounge / Trip-Hop / Ambient | ||
| Others | ||
| Beats | ||
| Broken Beat / New Jazz | ||
| World Music and Grooves | Celtic / New Age | |
| Christian | ||
| Flamenco / Tsigane | ||
| Afro | Afro Funk / Afro Beat / Afro Jazz Fusion | |
| African Traditional | ||
| Latin | Latin Soul Funk / Boogaloo / Latin Jazz Fusion | |
| Salsa / Pachanga / Mambo / … | ||
| Others South American Traditional | ||
| Brazil | Brazilian Soul Funk / Sweet / Mellow / Balanco / Disco / Boogie | |
| Bossa Nova / Brazilian jazz / Mpb | ||
| Samba / Batucada | ||
| Brazilian Blues / Pop / Rock / Punk | ||
| Brazilian Regional / Brazil Others | ||
| Jamaican | Oldies Reggae / Rocksteady | |
| Reggae / Roots | ||
| Dancehall / Ragga | ||
| Dub | ||
| Ska / Rocksteady | ||
| Others World Grooves & Traditionnal (sic) | Oriental / Middle East | |
| Asian | ||
| Indian | ||
| Australia / Indonesia | ||
| Others Countries | ||
| West Indies | Zook / merengue / Antilles | |
| Soul Funk / RnB 60s | Early Soul / RnB (50s / 60s) | RnB / Early Soul / Doo Wop |
| Northern & Southern Soul | ||
| Soul 70s / Sweet / Mellow / Crossover | ||
| Funk 70s / Soul Funk Bands / Early Funk / Rare Groove | ||
| Blue-eyed soul funk / Psychedelic funk | ||
| Soul Funk / Disco (70s / 80s) | Disco / Boogie Funk | |
| P-Funk / Gogo Funk | ||
| Funk 80s / Electro Funk | ||
| Soul 80s | ||
| Italo Disco | ||
| Groove Revival (90s / 00s) | Nu Soul / Modern Soul | |
| Acid jazz | ||
| Groove Revival | ||
| Others Soul funk / RnB | ||
| Hip-Hop | US Rap | Old School Rap |
| West coast Rap | ||
| East coast Rap | ||
| Others US Rap | ||
| French Rap | ||
| International Rap | ||
| Breaks / TurnTablism | ||
| MixTapes / DJ Mix | ||
| RnB | ||
| Hip Hop Movies | ||
| Jazz | Big Band / Ragtime | |
| Jazz Classic | Hard-Bop | |
| Be-Bop | ||
| Cool Jazz | ||
| Modern Jazz | ||
| Jazz-funk / Jazz-rock | Jazz-funk / Soul Jazz | |
| Jazz-rock | ||
| Jazz fusion | ||
| Vocal jazz / Spiritual jazz | Vocal jazz | |
| Spiritual jazz | ||
| Free Jazz / Avant-garde | Free Jazz | |
| Avant-garde | ||
| Blues / Gospel | ||
| Others Jazz |
There are some very cloth-eared combinations here – for example, ‘Big band/ragtime’ as a single grouping, or ‘Northern and Southern Soul’, as though the two styles were similar! The weirdest linkage is “Easy Listening/Erotic/Exotica” – which is admittedly alliterative and very French in its sociological implications, but makes no musical sense.
There are also some distinctions without difference. ‘Jazz-Rock’ is separated from ‘Jazz-Fusion’, although they are pretty much the same thing.
CDandLP tease out fourteen different kinds of ‘Metal’, but they don’t have space to separate Blues from Gospel and are happy to lump them together in a single category. Even worse, they have no genre label for Country Music, which is bunged in with Folk and Southern Rock as a sub-division of Rock.
They go to great lengths to itemise the varieties of Brazilian music, assembling seventeen styles into five sub-categories, but there’s nowhere to put any singer-songwriters (or any comedians) .
GEMM
GEMM is another site which hosts inventory for online record-sellers. The initials stand for ‘Global E-Commerce Mega Marketplace. GEMM keeps it comparatively simple. The site sorts records into just 22 “top categories”:
Alternative
Ambient
Big band
Blues
Children
Classical
Country
Dance
Folk
Hip hop
Indie
Inspirational
Jazz
New wave
Pop
R&B
Rap
Rock
Soundtrack
Surf
Techno
World
It then offers a second browsing page called ‘hot categories’ which lists:
Classical
Country
Dance
DJ
House
Jazz
Karaoke
Pop
Rock
Soul
Surf
Techno
World
…and a third browsing page called ‘all categories’ which, when I clicked on it, came up blank.
WIKIPEDIA
The whole of Wikipedia is organised according to a hierarchical ‘tree of knowledge’, and so ‘recorded music’ resides in the category ‘Music’ which is a sub-category of ‘Performing Arts’, which is a sub-category of ‘The Arts’.
There are six categories within ‘Recorded Music’ :
Albums
Fictional characters from recorded music
Record charts
Opera recordings
Music podcasts
Singles
So far so bizarre. Let’s look at ‘Albums > Albums by genre’. Wikipedia recognises the following 58 genres:
Apocalyptic folk
Axé
Ballroom and social dance
Bhangra
Blackened death metal
Bluegrass
Blues
Brutal death metal
Cabaret
Celtic
Children’s music
Christian music
Classical
Comedy
Country
Dance music
Dansband
Death rock
Death/doom
Deathcore
Deathgrind
Desi
Disco
Electronic
Experimental music
Filk
Folk
Freestyle
Gamelan
Goregrind
Gospel
Heavy metal
Hindustani classical music
Hip hop
Homo hop
Intelligent dance music
Jazz
Kwaito
Latin music
Mathcore
Messianic music
Novelty
Nueva canción
Polka
Pop
Progressive bluegrass
Reggae
Reggaeton
Rhythm and blues
Rock
Shibuya-kei
Sludgecore
Soca
Spoken word
Swing
Technical death metal
Venezuelan music
World music
But having broken down the whole of music into categories as large as ‘rock’ and as small as ‘sludgecore’, ‘goregrind’ and ‘homo hop’, Wikipedia hasn’t yet reached the twigs on its tree of knowledge. There’s another level still to come.
It would be tedious to review all the sub-categories of each of the Wikipedia genres, but we need to look at some of the bigger ones. Just to hammer home the point that no twig on the tree is too feeble to be noted, here are the 52 sub-genres of ‘Rock’:
Acid rock
Alternative rock
Art rock
Blues-rock
Celtic rock
Christian rock
Comedy rock
Country rock
Dance-punk
Dance-rock
Darkwave
Emo
Experimental rock
Folk rock
Garage rock
Glam rock
Gothic rock
Grindcore
Hard rock
Hardcore punk
Heavy metal
Industrial
Instrumental rock
Jam band
Neo-progressive rock
Neo-psychedelia
New Wave
Oi!
Pop punk
Pop rock
Post-grunge
Post-punk
Post-rock
Power pop
Progressive rock
Protopunk
Psychedelic rock
Psychobilly
Punk rock
Queercore
Rap rock
Riot grrrl
Rock en Español
Rockabilly
Singer-songwriter
Ska revival
Soft rock
Southern rock
Stoner rock
Surf
Symphonic rock
Third wave ska
Many of even these categories are further sub-divided, so that for example the ‘Heavy Metal’ section breaks down into 27 sub-categories (including ‘melodic death metal’ and ‘folk metal’).
If we turn to other genres we find that the tree has quite a lot of missing branches. Under ‘Blues Albums by Genre’ there are only two choices: ‘Blues-Rock Albums’ and ‘Chicago Blues Albums’ – and beyond here we’re into the names of artists. On the other hand, the broad category ‘Jazz’ yields 29 sub-genres:
Acid jazz
Afro-Cuban jazz
Avant-garde jazz
Bebop
Big band
Bossa nova
Brazilian jazz
Contemporary jazz
Cool jazz
Crossover jazz
Dixieland
Experimental big band
Free improvisation
Free jazz
Hard bop
Jazz fusion
Jazz rap
Jazz vocal
Jazz-funk
Jazz-pop
Latin jazz
Mainstream jazz
Modal jazz
Orchestral jazz
Post bop
Smooth jazz
Soul-jazz
Swing
Third Stream
On the face of it, this is a comprehensive list, but look closer; there’s no ‘Trad’ or ‘Traditional’, so presumably we have to put 1950s and ‘60s revivalists like Kenny Ball and Monty Sunshine in ‘Dixieland’ alongside the New Orleans greats of the 1920s. Let’s look inside. Open up ‘Dixieland albums’ and here we find no reference to any original Dixieland record… by anybody. Not one. There’s an empty space where Dixieland Jazz should be. And then there’s a sub-category ‘Dixieland Revival Albums’ in which are listed eight records, a weird collection embracing “Kenny Davern and his Quartet in Concert at the Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque 2004”. No Monty, no Kenny, no Acker Bilk, no Ken Colyer, no Chris Barber…. In other words, the twigs may be listed and numbered, but where are the bloody leaves? To vary the metaphor, what Wikipedia offers us is a vast warehouse lined with shelves, all meticulously labelled, many of which are almost (or entirely) bare.
Clearly for all practical purposes (except perhaps those of Wikipedia) this system of musical taxonomy is madness.
I find it interesting that some genre-labels have shifted their meaning to the point where they can be used to describe radically different styles – examples ‘rhythm and blues’, ‘ballad’, ‘swing’. One descriptive term much-used in record marketing – ‘anthem’ – does not appear in any of the lists I’ve discussed in this chapter. It’s all over the covers of thousands of cds (it generates 3,300 hits on Amazon), but it appears to ring no bells with the taxonomists. As far as I can see it is a term without any meaning.
In my next blog about musical taxonomy I’ll look at the current attempts to automate the classification of music using computer-programmes based on wave-form analysis.
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