The Genealogy and History of Popular Music Genres from Origin till Present (1870-2016)
(Click on any "musicmap" to head to this very interactive website)
What is musicmap?
Musicmap attempts to provide the ultimate genealogy of popular music genres, including their relations and history. It is the result of more than seven years of research with over 200 listed sources and cross examination of many other visual genealogies. Its aim is to focus on the delicate balance between comprehensibility, accuracy and accessibility. In other words: the ideal genealogy is not only complete and correct, but also easy to understand despite its complexity. This is a utopian balance that can never be achieved but only approached. By choosing the right amount of genres, determining forms of hierarchy and analogy and ordering everything in a logical but authentic manner, a satisfactory balance can be obtained. Said balance is always the main subject of discussion in music genre genealogies and the capital reason why an absolute visual reference has been absent thus far (and probably always will be). Musicmap is a platform in search for the perfect balance of popular music genres to provide a powerful tool for educational means or a complementary framework in the field of music metadata and automatic taxonomy.
The main conceptual methods of musicmap to achieve a satisfactory equilibrium consist of grouping closely related genres together (“sibling genres”), color coding much larger genre groups (“super-genres”), and introducing a deeper layer of lesser influential subgenres. Hereby the total amount of the intermediate or main genres could be reduced to 234. This is deliberately far from the possible total amount of genres (approximately 600 or more, some sources claim over 1000) to enable easy orientation and good overview.
Special attention was given to inter-categorical relationships, with a different style for primary links (parent genres), secondary links (other influences) and anti-links (backlashes) to make the chart more accurate. Horizontal timelines provide clear information about which year each genre emerged, although for most genres this is disputable, which is why the timelines are faded in the background and surplus information is added in separate genre descriptions. These descriptions provide the subtleties that cannot be made visually clear in order to completely understand the sociological, semantic and technical context of their respective genres. Out of respect for the power of music and to increase readability, all genre names are capitalized.
Musicmap combines the advantages of large mega genealogies (>500 genres) with those of synoptic overviews (<50 genres) by working with different levels of detail on its visual genealogy, referred to as the “Carta”. The upper level displays only the super-genres. The lower level forms the principal subject of the aforementioned balance, where the main genres are listed.
Purpose - What is it for?
Musicmap is a first-phase experiment to achieve near perfect overview of all popular music genres. This process is never-ending, always incomplete, and requires further input from the international community. The current version (1.0) provides a starting platform that should already cover a great deal of the following main goals:
To inform anyone, regardless of age and education, about the basic knowledge of music genres.
Musicmap believes that knowledge about music genres is a universal right and should be part of basic education, alongside other forms of art. Because this subject is often not found in school curricula (due to its complexity and a certain disdain for alternative/underground/”low-level” culture), the need for its coverage is high. In contrast to (online) encyclopedia the genre descriptions are less technical/objective and slightly more contextual/subjective, without taking a biased stance. The aim is to evoke interest and to understand the difference between genres, not to describe them independently in an encyclopedic manner. Combined with a large focus on visual design, musicmap hopes to reach more people this way than written literature otherwise could, without losing the essence and accuracy of the content.
To inspire people to explore the world of music, and discover music outside of their comfort zone.
Thanks to a tremendous amount of links and a deliberate compact placement of music genres, people are motivated to track down other genres within areas they would normally not look. With only a minimal degree of separation, all music genres can eventually be linked to each other. Each genre features a playlist of at least nine example songs from nine different artists, facilitating music exploration. Over the course of time these lists can either be extended or even replaced by community-generated playlists.
To improve existing music genre databases and to provide a complementary and necessary framework for automatic music taxonomy.
Numerous international companies and academic researchers are currently looking for ways to analyze music databases and implement metadata in order to bring structure to these enormous archives. With the ever growing capacity of electronic music delivery (EMD) systems such as iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, Shazam, Tical, Beatport, Google Play, etc., the need increases for an algorithm-based architecture where automatic taxonomy becomes unavoidable and often preferred based on genre. Researchers try to develop adequate algorithms that analyze any given audio signal, break it down into its various components, and process a singular outcome: a tag in the form of genre. However, these components need to be checked against a legitimate backbone structure: a complementary framework of music genres like musicmap. Many well-known music websites, players, apps, catalogues, and databases already use a predetermined categorization of music genres. Unfortunately, these categorizations are often imbalanced and inaccurate, with very large genres and obscure subgenres nested on the same level, or even mentioning of two genres that are actually the same. The primary contributor of this imbalance is the translation of an organic, dynamic and sociocultural reality (genres) into a structured, static and mathematical artificiality (hierarchical categories). Musicmap believes that a top-down, hierarchical structure is not impossible and likes to improve on these structures, provided that certain cautions are met to prevent pigeonholing (see more on the Theory page and at #5).
To initiate a dialogue or start a platform (WIKI) in order to achieve a near-perfect and up-to-date overview
This overview can then be used in connection with databases (playlists) in the form of mobile apps, car apps, hi-fi media stations, and other multimedia to find and explore music. Implementation of this should be used with extreme caution as genre categorization of artists and albums is a gross oversimplification of the truth, and a diminishing of artistic expression. Musicmap is meant for exploring and discovering hard-to-find music by providing basic cornerstones (genres) as orientation points in an otherwise vast and incomprehensible musical universe. One must look at the collection of all popular music as a vast ocean in which drowning is easily possible without the rescue of a safety net: a music genre that provides a way of orientation. Where am I in the world of music and where do I want to go?
To motivate the use of genres while discouraging pigeonholing
Despite popular belief, music genres are not categories. The sum of all popular music is far larger than the sum of all popular music genres. It is also of little importance to know of each and every song or album to which genre it belongs. Integral classification (whether automatic-algorithmically as mentioned before or manually-peer reviewed) however, is not impossible provided that dynamic tagging (meaning one song can belong to different genres at the same time) is carefully implemented. Nevertheless, the concept of music genres itself serves as a vital instrument of communication: a language. What records do I seek or what music is played at that location? Obviously, it is of great importance that everyone speaks the same language. Otherwise genres are only prejudicial instead of beneficial. The general debate about genres is often polarized, with lovers (creating countless subgenres) or haters (who believe that genres are completely meaningless). Musicmap tries to promote a nuanced middle ground based on common sense and historical / social reality.
To reduce discrimination and prejudice based on genre
Disdain for certain music genres is often based on ignorance. There are so many links in the world of popular music that even the most outlying genres have become kin and precarious to separate. Though the internal differences might be great, each and every genre teaches us something about music history and popular sociology that is worth knowing. Even the borders between popular music and other music worlds (e.g. folk, world) are often targeted for criticism and difficult to uphold, meaning that the internal connections are more abundant and stronger than one might believe.