What is "indie"?

[meserach.livejournal.com]

I'm sure this question has been debated endlessly here before, not to mention all over the rest of the internet, but I'm feeling poll-happy today.

[Poll #1433917]

Comments

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Interesting!

So it seems like the "indie" descriptor is also heavily tied in with notions of authenticity and sincerity and the rockist/popist dichotomy.

I probably ought to have had poll optons for "It means music that isn't 'mainstream' " and "I tmeans music that is 'authentic' ", although of course these just shift the argument to definitions of other words.

A dissent

[koganbot]

So it seems like the "indie" descriptor is also heavily tied in with notions of authenticity and sincerity and the rockist/popist dichotomy.

My quick response to this is "No, actually, it isn't," unless you think that e.g. there's something inherently insincere about drinks. I'd say that in the example given - list of bands on flyer vs list of drinks promotion - the question is which is more likely to hold the best promise for the coming evening's adventure. The notion of "authenticity" - i.e., inauthenticity - only comes in play when the evening fails to deliver. If you're jaded on either the world of bands or the world of drinks or both, you'll think that whatever you're jaded on is a fraud for holding out a false promise to the suckers who go for it. And if they don't feel that way themselves, well, maybe they settle for too little, or maybe they're just real young.

For me the whole rockist/antirockist terminology is a fraud itself ("rockist" being a fantasy invention of the antirockist), since it papers over the basic assumptions that the people involved share (which is almost all the basic assumptions) and doesn't even attempt to explore what's at issue in various people's choice of adventures.

If you want to read a couple of my many spiels on the subject, go here and here.