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2.5
Music Genres as Cultural Infrastructures
2.5.1
Definition of a Music Genre
My my, hey hey Rock and roll is here to stay
Neil Young got it right. It's not just rock ‘n’ roll that's here to stay. It's also hip-hop and jazz and country.
A music genre, apart from being a category of music with shared characteristics, such as country, hip-hop, or jazz, is a cultural infrastructure—something so many people know about and support that it becomes a more or less permanent artistic (or technological) fixture in the mainstream of society.
You cannot easily dislodge an infrastructure, even if you and a lot of others would prefer something else in its place. Technological infrastructures especially have monopoly characteristics. The internal combustion engine and the Microsoft Windows operating system are technological infrastructures. A lot of people don't particularly like either of them. But, as is characteristic of infrastructures, they stick around because so many people use them, and alternatives have unappealing drawbacks (inconvenience, lack of support, expense, etc.).