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)

 "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a window pane" -- George Orwell, Why I Write

Hmmm, do we agree with this? Not the first bit but the "one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality" bit. Really not sure about that George. Certainly, if enforced, this edict would eliminate 90 percent of Great Rock Writing from consideration as even "readable". 

As for "good prose is like a window pane"....

I actually am generally into the idea of lucidity and directness as virtues and find it easy to switch between newspaper-style writing and bloggoid infolded type stuff -- and also kinda enjoy the challenge of seeing if you can get ideas across without them seeming capital "i" Ideas -- but for some writers Style=Voice=the Message = something they don't want to sacrifice. It's that old idea that a writing about rock'n'roll should be rock'n'roll.

If you think about it "style" = anything in a piece of prose that is an impediment to instant understanding, clear transmission of data. a totally style-less piece would be utterly lucid but lack all flavour and personality  (utter lucidity = US Today type writing). Conversely, the more stylish / styled a piece of writing, the harder it is to read at speed and the smaller its readership will be.

It's a trade-off