in response to someone hailing jungle-in-1995 as the genre's mature peak, and using the phrase "adulthood - a zenith of identity" - i.e. when the genre is most like itself, least like other genres, has sloughed off its formative influences...
I agree with this idea, but it raises a question or two
We tend to regard genres as organic or biological entities - as a person (growing through the ages of man: infancy, childhood, adolescence etc etc) or as an ecosystem (evolving, mutating, expanding, assimilating, withering)
Does this make sense - seeing social constructions and assemblages as living, quasi-natural systems? It seems irresistible to think of them in those terms but I wonder if there's any reality to it.
But going with that conception of a sound or subculture as a living, growing thing - that leads to the melancholy thought: when a genre achieves adulthood (formative phase completed, influences shaken off) it enters its prime, but that can only ever be a brief moment before the next step, the onset of decline and senescence.
With genres, that doesn't take the form of the musical equivalent of arthritis or Alzheimer's, but genres as they age out do mimic one characteristic of the aging mind, which is inflexibility and an inability to generate fresh perceptions or thoughts.
The character hardens and becomes a confinement.
It happens to genres and individual artists alike - they become predictable. You know what they are going to say before they open their mouths. They repeat the same anecdotes. They have their little catchphrases.
It's that thin line between achieved style and self-parodic mannerism.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here's a playlist I made recently based on the Dissensus thread - it's enormous but still far from exhaustive of the year's mature brilliances. Frontloaded with the thread-starter's selections (sadly he never completed his own enormous run-down) and then into my own faves not as yet listed by him, and then some of the forum member's own choices... What a year!
(1994 is still my favorite jungle year, though - 1993/1994: something about sounds emerging, on the cusp. Jungle's early adulthood, maybe, as opposed to mature prime)
I like the idea of genres having phases in their lives, like people. Another thing that happens as they grow up is they have mid-life crises. Sometimes they struggle desperately to prove they are hip and not past it, like all the proggers cutting their hair in the late 70s and rolling their jacket sleeves up in the early 80s. Sometimes it means trying to recapture the energy and excitement of their youth. And sometimes it means thinking they need to settle down and become respectable, like the junglists who started working with live bands and orchestras.
ReplyDeleteAlthough maybe those are not so much phases in the life of a genre, and more the phases in the lives of its leading exponents.
The trying to work with real instruments and prove they are really musicians probably also relates to the possibility that this might be a proper career, with albums and a wider listenership. Whereas before they were living from one 12 inch single to other, living in the rush of going to raves, deejaying on pirates, working in the record store in many cases.
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