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Art Forms: No Progress Is Good Progress
An established music genre does not go "out of date," any more than an established visual art form such as painting goes out of date. Musicians use various technologies to create music, and those technologies go out of date. New instruments and electronic gear render old gear obsolete. But music genres, being art forms and not technologies, do not progress. In art, no progress is good progress.
- Punk rock, for example, emerged in the 1970s. Today new punk bands are forming all the time. Their members write new punk songs and record them on equipment that’s different than the gear that existed in the 1970s. Moreover, when hip-hop and electronic dance music came along, they did not replace punk.
- Same with bluegrass. New bluegrass bands are constantly forming, performing and recording both classic and new tunes in the bluegrass tradition. When bluegrass was “invented” in the 1930s and 40s, it did not replace traditional country music. Neither did “new country,” a couple of generations later.
All of this applies to every major genre and sub-genre: heavy metal, hip-hop, jazz, blues, reggae, folk, electronic.
Songwriters and performers create new genres and sub-genres of music all the time. Some stick around and become cultural infrastructures, some don’t, but not for lack of "progress."