Genres

Here's a project that's got nothing to do with music but has some fun with another sphere of creative activity adored by many music fans (viz. Hawkwind): the vibrant literary world of science fiction and fantasy.

As readers of this blog may have noticed, I have many ideas about how music and other creative endeavors are created and socialized. I've crystalized my thoughts on the subject over years of conversation with one of my closest friends, Sceneroller co-founder Jason Brownell, with whom I've been playing music and sparring intellectually since 1974.

Here's a dramatic object lesson in the narrative power of genre: The Guardian reports on a new strain of Islamic punk based on an independent 2010 film titled

Around the world in 80-plus genres: I've been having a lot of fun poking around ArtistServer.com's Yahoo! Maps-powered global display of bands.

No longer listed on my resume: Shortly after college, I spent half a year busking with two other musicians on the streets of Hamburg, Germany.

Has the Internet doomed the incubation of new local music scenes? That's the thesis of a problematic Guardian article posted in June.

Here's yet another whimsical geographic view of music, this time with an impressive technological pedigree. Dr.

Many thanks to dubstep DJ and first-order music maven Paul "P Man" Howland for pointing out this Pitchfork article by Martin Clark (a k a "Blackdown").

Here's another visually fabulous effort to organize musical entities: The Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names from the clever people at Pop Chart Lab.