Genre rockist beef (again)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Crikey, dance music beef is sprawling over the blogosphere following Todd Burns's dissection of Justice & Simian Mobile Disco fans over at Village Voice (thanks to Fluxblog for the link). Here's Idolator's view on the subject. All these articles I've linked to bring up reasonable points. HOWEVER there still seems to be this awful mindset that you are only allowed to like certain types of dance music (or rock music), and if so you can't like the 'opposite' type. And then there's the 'oh but it's all POP anyway so ya boo sucks' business. This irritates me in a way I can't really put my finger on, so I drew a Venn diagram to help me work it out:



The diagram above covers the genres I'm interested in ('everything else' I just don't know enough about to appreciate properly).

The yellow 'rock' part covers stuff like prog, indie and metal.
The green part would probably include Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson and My Chemical Romance.
The pink 'dance' part covers stuff like techno, electronica, drum-n-bass, all stuff you'd buy off Juno.
The purple bit would be Booty Luv, Kylie and Roisin Murphy.
The blue (un-named as I couldn't fit the text in on my crappy version of Paint) parts would be mum-pop ballads on one side, and hip-hop/RnB on the other, I guess. These could obv have extra crossover circles of their own, but I'm sticking to 'rock' and 'dance' here to keep things simple.

And of course, 'X' stands for 'Xenomania'. Clearly this is the awesomest section.

The articles I link to above seem intent on putting Justice and Simian Mobile Disco in the green or pink sections for better or worse, when I think they're obviously part of X. It's a difficult category to do well in, and a lot of the time it doesn't produce great results. But it can be WONDERFUL as we poptimists know. The ideal song in X would be one where you don't even notice the guitars or the bleeps, but they're still there (the song I have in mind right now is 'Something Kinda Oooh').

I sympathise with Burns in his dislike of dancing to Justice/Simian, because I prefer *to dance* to pounding 4x4 beats that build up and drop out and that you don't need to know the words to enjoy - getting your head down and grinding away for hours rather than having to 'sit the next one out'. But I would also therefore dismiss a whole bunch of stuff in the pink section (I can't really dance to breaks, for example). That doesn't mean it shouldn't be there! Or that other people aren't allowed to find it good!

But the real advantage of having X present in your genre-list is that rockism should be meaningless here. There are influences from every direction, and people who complain about their precious rock/dance being 'infected' by other stuff will be waylaid in the purple and green sections. Although after reading Burns' essay I get the impression he's doing his best to remove X altogether and make everywhere a battlefield. Sadface.

Comments

Re: My chains are finally free

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

in the UK i think the distinction is clearer because of the increased popularity of Dance and it's stronger identity here. i think a lot of what's underpinning this debacle is the fact that the most popular Dance Music in the US remains European imports. has there been much fuss made about Kanye's high placing compared to Lil Wayne? Why does Kanye retain a sense of credibility among (mostly) white critics while Justice & SMD cause more conflict? Presumably most critics, most places but certainly in the US, still get rap more than dance because it's homegrown.

to be honest if Burns had moaned that if you'd only heard Kanye and Lil Wayne last year you should be ashamed i wouldn't have been as bothered and he'd be right. but nobody is talking about them as 'rap music for people who don't like hip-hop' are they? well, maybe some are!

Re: My chains are finally free

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Actually this is kind of my defense of Todd over on Fluxblog -- that (1) there's no "thesis" to this comment, it's merely a semi-inchoate expression of (possibly justi(ce)fied) rage and (2) I can imagine the basic template of his argument holding true in many situations. Meaning, I understand where he's coming from, even if I can't figure out where he's going (and neither can he; luckily, the piece was funny!).

Template suggested as "bad": "I'm so sick of people loving this FAKE _____, I prefer to listen to the REAL ______." When people invoke "rockism" in this argument, they're referring to an argument that goes: "I'm so sick of this FAKE POP, I prefer to listen to the REAL ROCK."

What's funny about this is that it's almost exactly what I was arguing re: Kelly Clarkson last year. I was sick of people expecting to hear some Clive-Davis-controlled pop hits when she was offering REAL RAWK. Of course my arguments were more subtle than Todd's here, but the initial blast of contempt (which nearly moved k-runk to tears o' pathos) was kind of similar!

Re: My chains are finally free

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Kanye is TOTALLY rap for people who don't like hip-hop, not quite to the extent that MIA is but definitely. Lil' Wayne has potential to be indieists' token rapper but he doesn't court that vote in the same way Kanye does. But I think Kanye's eyes are more on Madonna/Eminem superstar territory which makes it a lot more palatable because that territory transcends genre.

Re: My chains are finally free

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

that may well be the case re Kanye but the same people who think he made the best rap album of last year would've said the same about the Blueprint and they probably love The Chronic, 36 Chambers etc.

the X for people who don't like Y shorthand is annoying because it doesn't always do the range of X's fans justice (no pun intended) and is more complicated than that - maybe just in that you'd need to add an 'anymore' or at least an 'at the moment' after the Y.