The popularity of the soundtrack to the motion picture "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" brought an extraordinary amount of attention to bluegrass, but it also drew its share of criticism from some aficionados who felt the album's inclusion of more modern tracks misrepresented the genre. This soundtrack, these purists argued, wasn't bluegrass, but "roots music," a new and, indeed, more overarching category concocted by journalists and marketers. Why is it that popular music genres like these and others are so passionately contested? And how is it that these genres emerge, coalesce, change, and die out? "In Genre in Popular Music", Fabian Holt provides new understanding as to why we debate music categories, and why those terms are unstable and always shifting. To tackle the full complexity of genres in popular music, Holt embarks on a wide-ranging and ambitious collection of case studies. Here he examines not only the different reactions to "O Brother", but also the impact of rock and roll's explosion in the 1950s and 1960s on country music and jazz, and how the jazz and indie music scenes have intermingled to expand the borders of their respective genres.
Throughout, Holt finds that genres are an integral part of musical culture - fundamental both to musical practice and experience and to the social organization of musical life.
- ISBN10 0226350371
- ISBN13 9780226350370
- Publish Date 1 October 2007
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 15 June 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English