![]() ![]() ![]() (Did Marvin Gaye transcend R&B? Did Beyoncé?) Sometimes musicians are praised for mixing genres, although I'm not convinced that mixture is necessarily better than purity, or a more reliable route to transcendence. And even streaming services find it useful to rely on these categories if you want to explore Spotify, the first option you are offered is to browse by "Genres & Moods." The idea of transcending genre suggests an inverse correlation between excellence and belonging, as if the greatest musicians were somehow less important to their musical communities, rather than more. ![]() In the old days of record stores, every record in the store had to be filed somewhere. But in popular music, genres are all but inescapable. And moviegoers talk about "genre films," a term applied to films that fulfill the basic obligations of a certain genre, like horror movies or heist movies-and, it is often implied, do no more than that. In publishing, "genre fiction" is the down-market counterpart of literary fiction. What's so great about that? In visual art, "genre painting" refers to works that depict normal people doing normal things. I am always a bit puzzled when a musician is praised for transcending genre. ![]()
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