Eli5: At what point does a music genre go so far that it breaks off into a newly named genre? Example – country music changes drastically every few decades. Who/when is it decided to make it a new genre?
In: 12
Anybody can call their music anything they want. Some stick, some don’t. I don’t think there is a magic wand to say “this is a new form of music” outside of some really experimental stuff. Hell even the same music can change names over time as styles evolve (or don’t evolve!) that lead to differentiate one style from another. Writers, reviewers and such can also decide to apply a label, or not, and this also may or may not stick. The question becomes, why does the general public actually recognize something as different than before? And thats not a definitive answer with the long history of music. Historians now look back and say “this is baroque music” and “this is romantic music” in hindsight, but these music styles not only existed for 100+ years each but also had quite variation inside of them.
Since reddit has a young demo, I’m guessing many of you have heard of disco music. It was all the rage and everywhere in the 60s and early 70s. And then it “died”. Disco “died”. But it never did, it just went underground a bit, changed a little and re-emerged a bit in 80s but moreso in the early 90s. Today we call it EDM.
Although the musical innovations are made by the artists, a lot of music genres began as marketing categories. As you note, examples of music in the same category can be drastically different—R&B has also included a lot of different styles over the years. Sometimes the music and its marketing category aren’t a good match, and categories change over time (read about the history of the Billboard R&B chart, which has been renamed many times, and merged and demerged with hip hop. In contrast, the Billboard country chart has been called that for decades, even though Jimmie Rodgers and (for example) Florida Georgia Line don’t have much in common musically
Latest Answers