A couple of weeks ago a commenter (I get a few of those occasionally) berated me for, among several others things, the quote from Smokey Robinson at the top of the page. “Classic smart-alecky, superior touch,” he wrote. “I bet you smirk every time you look at it.” To a certain degree, this was true. Most of the quotes I’ve put at the top of the page have been intended to be ironic, or merely funny, and at first this was no exception. Now, though, it is an exception, which is why I’ve kept it up there for so long. Because now I believe it’s true, and I don’t think Smokey misspoke at all (the last thing anyone could accuse Smokey Robinson of is not knowing how to use words); he said exactly what he wanted to say.
Obviously, music cannot technically be defined as a genre; most people would call it an art, though in a way I find even that term misleading, since people tend to think of art today as consumable objects, the more “artistic” they are the heftier the price tag. Music is more than that. The best I can come up with is “mode of human expression” which sounds academic and jargony, but will have to do for now. There’s no reason why “mode” can’t be replaced with “genre”, at least for everyday purposes, even if it isn’t technically correct.
Whatever the case, I would much rather have music be a genre itself, with no subdivisions, than have to deal with the current crop of genre breakdowns that clog up so much thought and writing about music. Sometimes the genre names are good for a laugh, like my favorite, technical death metal, and sometimes they’re properly descriptive, like drum and bass or grime, but often, especially when the genre name is based not on the sound of the music but on where the genre first became known (house, garage, balearic, goa) they’re confusing to anyone too far outside of a particular scene.
Confusion, I admit, is sometimes the point, and often genre names are derived with the intention of limiting access or shutting out those who aren’t part of a particular scene, but often they result in the reverse—instead of shutting people out, they shut the music in, limiting its possibilities and making it difficult for it to change and grow. The bonds are always broken in the end, but too often not until stagnation has almost killed the scene and either driven the best people away or trapped them in a rut they can never break out of.
Part of the problem is that almost all music writers use the word genre incorrectly, anyway. Where Robinson uses it to describe too much, many music writers use it too describe too little. Genre should only be used to describe large musical divisions: classical, pop, country, hip-hop, heavy metal, electronica (or techno, or simply electronic dance music, depending on your taste or age), etc. Everything that comes under those headings should be referred to as a style, not a genre. I don’t expect music writers to be well-versed in taxonomy, but the occasional application of logic wouldn’t hurt.
As much as Robinson is right about music being music and all these genre breakdowns being essentially meaningless, he’s also wrong, because genre divisions are real, and important. What they define, though, is not a difference in style so much as a difference in intent or purpose. Heavy metal isn’t trying to do what hip-hop does, which isn’t trying to do what classical does, which isn’t trying to do what country does, etc. Each has a totally different purpose from the other, which is why it’s so difficult to break down genre barriers as opposed to stylistic barriers.
Yet, once again, Robinson is right, because when he says music, he actually means the music he knows best, pop. Pop music is the one exception to all of this: the genre without barriers, the genre that possibly isn’t a genre at all, but the great mongrel form that takes them all in and turns them into something both greater and less than the original. Being something of a dilettante, it’s that nebulous, ill-defined quality about pop music that appeals to me—the opportunity to go genre hopping without ever leaving the comfort of your living room, so to speak. If there is such a thing as music as nothing more than music, something that defines what music can be in all it’s aspects, pop is it. Smokey Robinson has known that for most of his life, and he couldn’t have expressed it better.
