Music genres

MUSIC GENRES  ∙  Folk  ∙  Rock  ∙  Soul RnB  ∙  Rap  ∙  Pop song  ∙  World music  ∙

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JOURNEY THROUGH 2'000 SONGS FROM 6 MUSIC GENRES  (.. see also  WORLD OF POP MUSIC)

We love pop music

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

‘No man is an island’ is a metaphor that arose in 1624 from the pen of the English poet and cleric John Donne in his book ‘Meditation 17’, in a poem which observes that “..every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…“. Such an observation can be seen as an early expression of Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) "theory of evolution", which seems to apply to all activity on Earth.

NO ART GENRE IS AN ISLAND

Just as any new technology builds on previous ones, so any art genre draws on earlier artistic expressions. In painting, members of the Renaissance, Romanticism and Realism art schools such as El Greco, Francisco Goya, William Turner and Gustave Courbet laid the stones for subsequent genres such as Impressionism (~1850s-1900s) and Expressionism (~1890s-1940s).

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Art genre

NO MUSIC GENRE IS AN ISLAND

The same goes for music genres. The 1960s' British Beat owes to the 50s' US rock. Reggae took shape in the 60s as a subgenre of Rocksteady, which itself had developped as the Jamaican expression of  American RnB. The Congolese rumba of the second half of the 20th Century was inspired by Cuban rumba, which itself was built on the heritage of Congolese sounds exported by 18th century slavery.  The fact that musical genres are interconnected and entangled is a fatality, as fusions know no limit and no genre is an island. Thus, the future cannot be written as to the persistent or temporary shine of music genres. And as for ‘.. the agonizing reality of life that all beauty decays in time..’ (ref. David Bowie 1993 interview), it simply reflects the fact that 'beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder' and that all eye is doomed to tire over time.

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Music genre

FOR WHICH SONG THE BELL TOLLS

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" is another metaphor from John Donne's 1624 book "Meditation 17".

In music, the fate of a song stems from connection, inherent viral reproductive power, potential for metamorphosis, and chance. The three versions of the song 'O Sarracino' (orig. 1957) by the Napolitan artists Renato Carosone (1957), Franco Ricciardi (2009) and Gigi D’Alessio (2015) are uplifting illustrations thereof. Jimi Hendrix's acclaimed cover of Bob Dylan's 'All along the watchtower' (1967) and Soft Cell’s little known but remarkable synth-pop cover of the song ‘Hey Joe’ are also eloquent in this regard.

All along the watchtower (1968, cover by Jimi Hendrix, USA)

Hey Joe (1983 cover by Soft Cell, UK)

We love pop music