The Genealogy of Music

The home of a long and wide ranging investigation into the establishment of a rigorous categorization of the development of music.

[musicgenetics]

Editor Profile- Doc Stodden

Name:  Doc Stodden

Website:  The New Haberdasher

Credentials:  I love talking and thinking about music, but otherwise, I am an academic by profession.

Blurb about me:  Without writing too much about myself, my co-editor and I recently became interested in the project of classifying and describing the evolution of music that we listen to in the US.  We take an essentially structural approach to the project:  no music is new, and it is not the music itself, but the music which influences that music, and then the music that that music influences which is far more interesting.  As I told Mike, I like punk because I liked some loud rock and roll before that, and I like loud rock and roll because I enjoyed stuff like Queen when I was a kid, and so forth.  If my earliest tastes had been in a different direction, I would probably like different kinds of music.  So there is nothing inherently good in the music itself.  We prefer music because our music tastes have evolved over the course of our lives to lead us into those preferences today.  In short, Jimmy Page and Brian May have more to do with my appreciation for Nirvana than Kurt Cobain ever did.  And the fact that I liked Kurt Cobain's music in the early 1990's explains a lot more about why I liked the White Stripes than any sort of affinity for Jack or Meg White.  That conceptualization of music will be my guiding light in my efforts on this site.

Personal music likes:  I don't like country music after about 1983, and I don't like Christian Music at all.  Otherwise, I am ok with about anything, though I do prefer amplified guitar rock and roll and alt-hiphop over all, while tending to not like or want to listen to club music.  I am not a music snob, and don't tolerate those people well.

[musicgenetics]

Welcome to Our Project

This site is dedicated to the development of a rigorous system for the classification of music and the illustration of the influences that music both receives from previous forms, as well as the influence it has on future forms.  We specifically the sort of music we (could possibly) listen to in the United States.  Without attempting to be parochial or culturally insensitive, doing this project well will only be possible if we limit the scope of our investigation, which will be ongoing, to something that we know something about.  I do not know a thing about popular music in Nepal, for example:  I have no idea what influences it, I don't know the difference between Nepalese flutes or drums, or any of this.  I do happen to know a little bit about Agnostic Front, however, and feel somewhat confident about speaking about them.

The editors of this project are Mike Salchert and myself.  We will work on amassing lots of information and lots of opinions from our friends and from those who choose to make themselves our friends in the question.

Our goals, perhaps, our manifesto, though it may seem ambitious, are as follows:

1)  To establish a rigorous classification system for music, in terms of its genre, that we listen to, enjoy or are simply aware of.

2) To identify the influences of those genres, as well as genres which were subsequently influenced.

3)  To give good examples of each of the genres that we identify and to explain why we think so.

4) To make our methods and decision making processes transparent so that others can pick up the work and carry it out on their own, either to replicate our thought processes for themselves, or to dispute the decisions we have made and improve the genealogy.

5)  To encourage feedback from people whose opinion we trust on the subject, so that we can improve the genealogy.

In the process, we reserve the right to disagree with any opinion expressed about our work.  This is our work.  It is done primarily for our own edification.  It is not done so that some music snob can come onto the site and spout off about how much more informed or smarter he is than everyone else.  We are engaging in this project in public for the SOLE reason that we believe it is a valuable, (time will tell) contribution to human thought.  But we are primarily talking about music we know and music we like, and music we have heard of.  And when I say "we," I mean the editors of this site, not the community that forms itself around this site.  So if we omit something that the readers believe is important, be respectful and point it out without making a complete moron of yourself, because speaking for myself, I have zero problem with censorship of people I deem to be idiots on my own tumblr site.

That said, I hope you enjoy what follows.  Hopefully, it is as enjoyable to blog about music as it is to listen to it.