jurnul 4

Genre is simultaneously the most important and least important thing when it comes to the text at hand. Genre is useless. Genre is important. Artists love genres. Artists hate genres. But how can something have such inverse sides to it?

That's because genre can help an artist just as much as it can hurt. Genres can lead to new fans discovering an artist. Genre can lead to fans that an artist doesn't want discovering that same artist. Some artists make music specifically to cater to a certain genre. Some artists make music to avoid sounding like different genres.

Is an artist a true artist if they cater to the genre just because the audiences wants it? An artist may know that "rock" is a more marketable genre than "punk" and changes their sound in the process because they know they may be able to reach a larger audience that way. The artist uses genres to distribute the art, as the art may be sold and circulated to the public.

Would the world be a better place without genre or would it be a worse thing? Some people think it'd be better because things wouldn't be forcefully boxed in. Artists wouldn't feel pressured to make art they don't want to make. Music would just be music. Art would just be art. But on the other side, things would be more inconvenient. How would we classify things and find new things similar to the ones we already enjoy? How is the audience going to relate back to the artist if they don't even know in which way they are connected?

In other words, genre is simultaneously a very important and irrelevant thing. There's not much to do. If you like genre, you'll embrace it. If you don't like genre, you can disassociate from it. The weird thing is, the lack of genre and its presence will always be around and unable to fixate to your exact preference. You use genre as a form of reading a text because it's a way to better understand the context in an easier situation. You can't just know everything about everything, so genre allows that easier grasp on things. It's the ease that can lead to issues later on, but that's just how it is.

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