Here's an idea.
The mashup is putting an end to music genres as we know them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So you probably never expect to hear
a Lil' Jon singing alongside Stephanie from Lazy Town,
or Justin Bieber with Lamb of God.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
But these are exactly the kind of musical shenanigans
made possible by the mashup.
Largely built upon the concept of juxtaposition,
the mashup takes bits of two, three,
many different songs of different styles
and mashes them up.
One of the reasons we find the mashup so entertaining
is that it transgresses the boundaries of what we normally
think of as musically appropriate.
Ladylike locals with a heavy metal baseline.
A Chopin prelude with some Radiohead snare drum.
And Usher combined with a cat.
We have this cultural expectation built on genre
that certain types of music can't go together
because they're too stylistically different.
And it's when those genre-based expectations
are messed with that we're like, omg mashup, you so crazy.
But when you really give it a good brain think,
you realize the genre is sort of a house of cards to begin with.
Boop.
Sure, classifying something as jazz
is more useful than classifying something as music,
but not that much more useful.
Jazz can mean Duke Ellington just as much
as it can mean Derek Bailey.
And saying you listen to pop music
is like saying you drink liquids or wear fabrics.
Ergo the number of sub-classifications
within these genres just continues
to grow, and grow, and grow.
Is it dub step, or bro step, or sci trance, or trancey steppy,
steppy dub trance core?
I have no idea.
And it's not just this way with music either.
No, no, no.
Are performance art and contemporary dance
that different?
And where is the line between sci-fi writing
and magical realism?
We're at this point of such extreme cultural cross
pollination we're essentially permuting
combinations of every genre in each art form.
Which makes the act of pigeonholing these works
into genres increasingly difficult and increasingly
unhelpful.
Which leads us to ask, hey genre, what are you good at?
Well, turns out genre is great at selling.
Genre designations influence what people listen to,
what they read, what movies they go
see, what they do and do not spend their money on, a ton.
But maybe even more so than selling,
genre is great at defining communities.
Anyone who has been to middle school
knows that there is a huge culture of self identification
aided by music genre.
Punk, hip hop, and metal say much more about people
than they do about music.
Cultural sociologist Jennifer Lena
explains that musical genres describe
a system of orientations, expectations, and conventions
that bind together industry, performers, critics,
and fans in making what they identify
as a distinctive sort of music.
Which might provide a little insight
into why even though so many fans feel comforted by it,
so many musicians find genre designations
arbitrary and limiting.
Legendary country musician Waylon Jennings said,
I've always felt that blues, rock and roll,
and country are just about a beat apart.
The mashup acknowledges that this is totally the case.
It is post-classification, pan genre.
And who knows, the mashup might even
announced the arrival of a media epoch
where you can transgress not only genre designations
but also the cultural ones.
Let's say you're a die hard Biggie fan
but you have a soft spot in your heart for, oh, I don't know,
Miley Cyrus.
Mashups totally know that feel, bro.
Mashups are the practical expression
of the ideal that metal heads, gangsters, electro nerds,
pop tarts, we're all just like one big musical family,
dude, bro.
And sure, we'll probably always have distinct labels
for musical styles, but it stands to reason
that if you can do this--
[MASHUP OF QUEEN'S "WE WILL ROCK YOU" AND OUTKAST'S "HEY YA"]
--the distinction's probably don't mean a whole helluva lot.
What do you guys think?
Does genre matter anymore?
Let us know in the comments.
And also we got you this.
We would love it if opened it.
Clicking open it.
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Galleries versus the internet.
Who won?
Let's see what you guys had to say.
182crazyK says that it doesn't really
matter where you experience art, but just
that you've had an experience.
Dakotagonz makes the very valid point
that physical media will always be around.
While that might mostly be true, VHS tapes are definitely gone.
Art curator dubldeka talks about the relationship
between the internet gallery and the real gallery
and says that people will go to the real thing
to view the lumpy stuff.
We agree, RabidEasterBunny, it is very hard
to find virtual needles in virtual haystacks.
A lot of people pointed out that in addition
to niche internet art galleries, there's
also DeviantArt, which is huge and open to everybody,
and pretty awesome.
Halcyonacoustic and joshuacorkhum
point out that internet galleries and meet space
aren't actually mutually exclusive.
No lie.
That is actually my bathrobe.
Remaster95 points out that in addition
to being a place where you can see art,
the internet is also a place where you can collaborate
with other artists.
That is not how it works, Razymon.
Ah, son of a.
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