The deal with genres/classification

What's the deal with it all? I know that it's useful to find a way to separate different things. Miles Davis is jazz, Queen are rock, Kraftwerk are electronica... But what about Davis' funky fusion, Queen's pop ballads or Kraftwerk's earlier avant garde jazz? And what about those artists who defy genres, like Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart?
If sorting through genres, should we seperate an artist up into lumps, or keep them at what they're more recognised for? So Steve Hillage would sit firmly as Psychedelic rock, even though he's a key figure in spacerock and electronica. See what I mean?

In recent years, since music stores have been in serious decline due to lazy Itunes users, so much music has been lumped together. Afrobeat, Jazz, Classical, french songwriter, New Age etc are often all lumped into the catagory of 'World Music'. The catch all term of 'Rock & Pop' covers everything from Duran Duran to Robert Wyatt, Frank Zappa to The Spice Girls. Yet 'Metal' and 'Urban' music get their own sections, despite there being very little difference between them and many of the 'Rock & Pop' scene. Where does funk end and hip hop begin? How is Jay Z more 'urban' than Sly And The Family Stone?

Essentially such ways of catagorising are just useless, while some such as Zheul and Canterbury Scene are quite their own isolated scenes, what about Gong? the spacerock band which has featured members from both genres and merged them into it's own entity? And of course, Hawkwind, who have featured and inspired most genres around. Can we really classify in this way anymore?

 My top CD shelf is all Frank Zappa, but then afterwards it goes astray, with shelves featuring a variety of genres, except metal, but even that includes many non-metal content. Where does metal end and prog begins?



So currently, I have them in rough groups. Zheul, Spacerock, Japanese Psyche and Krautrock all being close to each other (with their associated bands, so P.M's Gong is with Gong as opposed to with the fusion stuff). This isn't an ideal situation, but makes the most sense to me so far, and it's quite easy to know where everything is, which is useful when you own several hundred albums. Though I still think there could be a better way, it's just, finding it...


Another suggestion is organising stuff A-Z, but that means that Acid Mothers Gong, Daevid Allen, Mother Gong and Pierre Morelan's Gong would be seperate from Gong. Space Ritual would be kept seperate from Hawkwind despite being virtually the same band. It seems simpler yet also more confusing.



Essentially, everything is linked. Most rock comes from blues origins, Jazz comes from combining European brass bands with blues. Electronica comes from both the psychedelic and avant garde scenes, but it's further than that, electronica also owes itself to jazz, spacerock, orchestrial... everything owes itself to everything that comes before it, and any atempts to try and create strict genres is ultimately detrimental to music, and creates a narrow minded audience. Many people ONLY listen to punk, many people ONLY listen to metal, many people ONLY listen to hip hop etc etc. For example, Guys like Wynton Marsalis are creating a strict sense of jazz, referring only to a specific time and type of jazz, and ignoring anything that falls outside of those narrow parameters, so the inspiring work of Miles Davis' fusion, or Sun Ra's extra terrestrial experimentation, are not, in their eyes, jazz. Just think about it, and then see how dumb genres are.

Not a review, but I just wanted to rant for a bit. :)