Diversity in music

Perhaps it just me, but doesn’t the world seem to be flooded with new music? And its not just new rock or new rap. Its new styles… new dimensions in sound.

I remember growing up as a young kid in the 80’s listening to pop radio and lumping all of that music into a sort category that I couldn’t label then, but now everyone seems to call, “the 80’s.” But as I go back and listen to some of that stuff now, I realize that there were many sub-genres mixed in there as well. I for one was a fan of what was referred to as “new wave” then and is now getting the label “retro-electro.”

Its kind of cool to look back and see some of the tunes I listened to then and some of the groups I thought were good then, still seem to me, a fan of a whole barrage of different styles, pretty hip. I also find myself listening to some community radio stations and some hipster Dj’s who happen to know quite a bit more about the genre than myself, and I realize more and more that the 80’s gets a bad rep because pop radio was exploiting some cool genres for the benefit of the green, and playing mock versions of the real deal.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a lot of that pop stuff as well, but now its on a different level. With more understanding of music and how it works or how its created, I now respect some of the more alternative artists that were around in the 80’s because of their creativity and their ability to be different than the rest, but at the same time, some of those catchy radio friendly hits still sound cool to me, even if they have some what we now call, “mainstream” elements. Its difficult for me sometimes to hear some of the bands that I enjoyed then, and still enjoy, now being made fun of because of their appearance in videos and because some of their music was heavily played on the radio or only featured in typical 80’s soundtracks. But, hey, maybe my tastes are a bit ‘alternative’.

But today, all styles of music are getting air play in some way. And there are many new styles to choose from. There’s the so-called alternative scene which came about as a genre or a label in the late 80’s and early 90’s which was in many people’s opinions, just a continuation of the less mainstream new wave and post punk generation of the late 70’s and early 80’s. There is now a resurgence of hard metal which was incarnated in the 70’s and became “heavily” listened to in the early to mid-80’s before being overshadowed by “hair-metal”. Then of course there’s this surge of electronic music and its seemingly infinite number of sub-genres that have made their way to a more mainstream audience than its 1st surge in the late 80’s and its peak in the early to mid-90’s as underground dance and electronic music.

Of course electronic music wasn’t brand new in the late 80’s either. A late 60’s and early 70’s genre using new electronic components of the time sort of launched the genre by creating new sounds and recalculating old formulas and old songs in a new way. This style was mostly lumped into a “fad” category for some, but as is noted by the large scale use of electronics in modern music, the term fad seems hardly applicable any longer.

And now there are so many avenues to choose which music you listen to. Up until the 50’s, the types of music you had to choose from was much more limited. There were generally the standards,the big band and jazz the crooners and the r&b and doo-wop. The sixties, with its experimental nature saw a shift in interests from doo-wop to rock’n roll, big band jazz to be-bop and improvisational, crooners became more lounge type singers, and the standards kind of faded as a genre. Later in the 60’s, rock became more psychedelic, the “Motown sound” emerged as a new wave of r&b, and the use of electronic equipment became prevalent in most of those genres and their sub-genres like surf rock, and experimental jazz and abstract. As the 70’s emerged, college and community radio stations got wind of these new categories and began to play them to the audiences that desired them. Here you found rock, jazz, blues, folk, accoustic, electronic, and psychadellic all getting its share of airplay, but on a mainstream level, they weren’t as heavily played. Some of it maid to the mainstream and a lot of the sounds got blended in with the modern sounds, still, however, certain genres weren’t as known to others and this alternative scene of music started to emerge underground, away from your standard airwaves.

Punk, and reggae, were overlooked for disco and easy listening rock music on mainstream radio, for an example. While pop radio diversified in some way and jumped on the growing market of alternative sounds, heavy airplay of the “classic rock,” disco, and light rock sounds, led people to become fans of a specific genre of music, in many cases.

You had your hard rockers, your jazz-heads, your hippies, and of course the disco dancers. Many people became focussed on their one genre and may have chosen to tune out many styles that were being created at that time. This wasn’t a new practice, as it was prevelant in the 60’s with examples like the “greasers” vs. the surfers, or the rockers vs the hippies and such. But now there were so many more styles to choose from that it baffles some people today as to how so much music that has become influential on today’s mixed music culture, was ignored or overlooked by both mainstream radio and music fans alike.

Wheras in the 60’s through the early 90’s your main resource for music was the radio and and your lp’s and cassettes, now you have all of those things plus electronic media to catapult so many “underground” music genres into an accessible form for those folks interested in trying them out. And that’s where I get into this ‘diversity in music’ title. Where you might have had a limited selection to choose from in the 50’s, you now have nearly every selection to choose from.

And with so many options, its no wonder that so many people are into so many different types of music today. They may have their favorites, and they may disreagard some forms, but most people don’t appear to have just one type of music they prefer any longer. And that interest from modern producers and players of music, that knowledge of so many styles, that open source for all types of music, allows newer sub-genres to form, and create an even more diverse music pool that grows deeper everyday. Hip-hop integrated with rock, jazz integrated with techno, pop integrated with metal, country integrated with dance, classical integrated with noise, and music of the world (lazily entitled world music) incorporating electronics. What a scene.

This is the first draft of this discussion and There should be more added to this as time goes on. any comments or suggestions are appreciated. If any info seems incorrect, please let me know, or if you disagree with the analysis of the genres listed, send a comment or an email. Thanks