On 7/2/03 7:10 AM, "Efrén del Valle" <efrendv@yahoo.es> wrote:
Zorn precisely uses lots of labels to describe the music that has been an influence on him or even his own's. I don't know in which ways music could be described in print without the use of labels to give points of reference to readers, for instance, that can help them have an overview on the subject-album. It's obvious that certain adjectives are really stupid but, forgive me, if you mention "minimalism" something lights up inside my head.
This issue gets rehearsed ad nauseum on these lists. It's become a pretty boring topic actually. There's the adage about labels "limiting" people's receptions with the adjoining caveat that one must produce music that eschews labels and that if one incorporates a label, it comes at the expense of the "music itself." Making labels is simply a long tradition going back to Aristotle at least in order to make associations between different things. It allows a kind of short cut for discussions and it allows people to make associations that might not otherwise be made--whales being mammals, for example. The problem is not so much with categorization but with how categories can ossify in people's minds so that they can overdetermine any new invention, especially ones that don't fit very neatly into categories. As I may have mentioned here before, my advisor in grad school is quite obsessive/compulsive (if one needs these psychoanalytic tropes) about his heavy metal collection. He has put probably close to 2000 metal CDs into case logic cases and stores them on a bookshelf. Then he has map written in pencil where he notes the location of the CDs in the case logic containers by virtue of certain metal "categories"--death metal, grindcore, etc. Some of the categories he's made up himself. What's the point? Basically, so he can find his own stuff. You categorize so that you can locate things easily, especially when there's a vast amount of stuff to go through. You also categorize so as to avoid things that don't interest you in order to save time. You categorize every time you put a subject line on an email.