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“Genre Implosion” was the working title given to a body of work I undertook in 2005 into the system, phenomenon or construction known today as Musical Genre. Whether seen as an academically or anarchically-derived system for classifying pieces and styles of music; a media/commercial construction for stimulating sales of live, recorded and imagined music; a modern or postmodern phenomenon of cultural expression and control... “musical genre” is both term and concept irrefutably rich in intuitive use, but limited in ability to engage the breadth of musical expression of 21st century musical art, industry and imagination (to say nothing of what came before, or whatever lies ahead).
The central thrust is a critically-oriented, postmodern study of Musical Genre that seeks not so much to question its origins or development, nor to villify it for its shortcomings, but rather to engage its current incarnation (system, construction or phenomenon), and to study its behaviour within the context of postmodern thought and in particular the artistic, scientific and philosophic insights of (respectively) Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan, and Jean Baudrillard. It is crucially a Music Critical study, rather than a Philosophical or Musicological work, and this distinction is important enough to merit an additional page of explanation (particularly for those who, inevitably, will try to read it as something else, but really for anyone who is interested).
The project consists of:
- A Thesis Project for the M.A. (Music Criticism) of McMaster University’s School of the Arts;
Dr. William Renwick is the supervisor of the project; Dr. James Deaville was Director of Graduate Studies at the project’s inception, and Dr. Renwick was acting Director of Graduate Studies at its conclusion. The Thesis, whose final title was “Imploding Musical Genre: Locating a Modern Phenomenon in Postmodern Thought” was completed in March 2006, successfully defended on April 12th and submitted for binding on April 19th. The complete document may be viewed in PDF format here, or you can browse the contents:
Preliminaries, Table of Contents, Foreword, Introduction
Chapter 1: Musical Genre at the Start of the 21st Century
Chapter 2: Genre as Artwork - Theodor Adorno and Anglican Chant
Chapter 3: Genre as Medium - Marshall McLuhan and Country Music in Radio Space
Chapter 4: Genre as Simulacrum - Jean Baudrillard and Contemporary Christian Music in mainline worship
Chapter 5: Genre Implosion: A Radio Experiment on CFMU 93.3FM
... and conclusions: “Pragmatism and Postmodernity”
Appendix (Genre Implosion Playlists & Listener Survey) and Bibliography
- A Radio Show “Genre Implosion: Radio Free-Genre” CFMU 93.3FM, McMaster University Community Radio addressing Musical Genre by ignoring it in favour of musical sound, and
- This Website, genreimplosion.ca, which makes available reference material on the elements and subjects detailed above, and solicits reader/listener/surfer feedback on their own experience of and views on musical genre for incorporation into the Project’s findings.
Genre Implosion is a critical examination of musical genre from a Postmodern perspective. While a scholar’s ethics will necessarily limit the scope of the project, a critic’s agenda will seek nothing less, and as crucially, nothing more, than to understand musical genre’s place within our world, mining the concepts of three of the 20th century’s most variously celebrated and villified minds, and engaging an aspect of the media-driiven and commodified world about which they have taught us so much.
You may commence firing...
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