FOR THE RECORD COLUMN: Let rock be rock
By TED MCLENDON
For the record…I was doing a bit of browsing through an online music store. No shopping, just browsing. Recently, my bank account lost a hard-fought war of attrition against the college bookstore. Let me not go into gory details.
I do wish, though, to speak a word of praise for these online music stores. This shopping option offers amazing convenience and a stunning selection of even the most obscure records to date. This is a nice option to have, particularly in an area such as the Illinois Valley, which is, to put it nicely, not exactly at the cutting edge of consumerism.
One advantage that many online music stores offer is the ability to search the store's selection not only by artist name but by song title, record label, genre, and some even have the ability to search for albums or songs according to lyrics -- quite helpful, especially when searching for a song you've heard once and can barely remember the main verse of, let alone the song title or the artist's name.
Anyway, as my bankrupt browsing ensued, I came upon the option for searching the store's library according to genre or "music type" as they called it. Clicking on the icon brought forth a list of substantial length and alphabetic order, bearing everything from Acoustic to Zydeco.
It was a veritable cornucopia of terms, displaying such music types as trance-ambient, acid jazz, black metal, shoe gazing, world beat, emo, alternative, and the list went on and on.
Upon looking at this list, my first thought was something along the lines of "wow, one must really have to be immersed in the music world to even begin to know what particular music would fall under these terms."
I mean, what is "black metal?" Is it a kind of hard rock reserved to musicians of a particular race? And "emo," is this an acronym? My main question, however, was "why do I not understand these terms?"
I sought foundational definition and decided that words (and terms) we use are merely symbols. They are symbols that serve to communicate thoughts and expressions of cultural significance. My confusion, then, lies not so much in that I lag behind in cultural awareness, or that these terms are particularly ambiguous, but rather in the simple fact that art transcends definition.
Try as we may to comb our linguistic archives for terms that adequately define a work of art, there is never an undisputed link between the definition and the work of art itself. For instance, what does the term "jazz" really mean to you? Does it define how you perceive the music? In terms of painting, what does "neo-classical" really mean on a personal level? Indeed, these terms serve to offer altered perceptions.
Ultimately, I do not make claim that we should disenfranchise these terms from our modern vocabulary, for they give us some common ground for reference in the ambiguous world of aesthetics.
What I do suggest however is that we not get carried away with abstract terminology; let rock be rock and rap be rap. Simplify, if not for cultural solidarity, then at least for consumer awareness.
I also recommend shopping online, for the record anyway.
Comments? Contact me at thmclendon@yahoo.com