BeatGen Series: BeatGenealogy

At the turn of the 20th century, the technological revolution in music was shifting in favor of the populous. With the advent of sound recording technology, music was no longer restricted to the concert halls, but being given directly to the people, by the people and for the people, allowing them to dictate new music trends, which would birth popular music. Of course it wasn’t long before an industry sprung up around recorded music. Shortly after that it was decided, having the public deem music popular wasn’t enough.  Instead the industry itself should play a role in that determination, and thus pop music was born.

The goal of pop music as a genre was to reach the broadest possible audience.  As such it built it self on a formula of – short and sweet, targeting young audiences.  Over the years it has assimilated almost every influence imaginable, from whatever music actually becomes popular, simplifying it and then selling it back to the public under the pop brand.  It works both ways as well. In any genre the key to crossover success is to adhere to pop forms. In this regard, pop music is the classical of our time, the litmus test by which most music is judged.

Like the classical music of the last century, however, pop music today finds itself at odds and indeed threatened by the pressures advances in technology are putting on it. By technology here of course it can be interpreted as the rise of the MP3 and download culture¹, but in many regards it goes even deeper than that. The very essence of what is music, is today being challenged by technology. Music no longer strictly conforms to the forms of the past, and despite pop music’s efforts to embrace those changes too, they are so foreign it hasn’t come as naturally as other appropriations.  One of the reasons for this is that the very language of music, that universal language, is changing.

The etymology of the pop musical language still traces back to its classical predecessor. In form, pop is still based on the twelve tones of the western scale, melodies created from those, harmonies built upon them and rhythmic patterns within accepted time signatures. There haven’t been many formidable challenges to these foundations.  Even the rise of atonality, or bluesy jazz riffs were contextualized into the paradigm. Yet, in recent times it would seem there has been a front building, ripe for the challenge.

I had a discussion with a friend who characterized this new wave as those who make music based on sounds, rather than the fundamental of western music, notes. Where that friend saw this in a negative light, Matthew Davidson puts it in a context I prefer²:

“We have access to tools that generations of human beings have dreamed about. No longer are we limited by notes on a page – we’ve unlocked all aspects of sound…. The excitement of the ability to control all aspects of audio very precisely, moment to moment and the idea that anything is possible. We’re witnessing, and participating in, the birth of a new art form.”

While the uber umbrella genre electronic music has been working toward this for decades now, it is becoming even more clear, at the end of this first decade in the 21st century, that this new musical front has the potential to perform a complete coup on the concept of music. Within this context BeatGen has a very interesting position, appreciation of which requires some understanding of genealogy.

For all intents and purposes BeatGen is the (ill)legitimate child of two genre’s – electronic music and hip-hop. Where it gets complicated is that hip-hop itself can be understood as a child of electronic music, making BeatGen both child and sibling to hip-hop. Confused? That’s okay, things tend to get complicated when talking about genres, especially electronic music, as it is such a broad stroke (she gets around), with so many children, the family tree begins to look like the one in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

You May Want To Read:

• BeatGen Series: Introduction
• BeatGen Series: First Principles
• A Wizard’s Tale: The Daedelus Interview