Larry N.
Well-known member
In general I more or less agree with your thoughts, but it is often a lot easier to discuss something other than specific musical works on a "by genre" basis. Often a particular piece of music can be in several genres, just dependent on the artist and band, plus the specific style. My memory is rotten for many things, but there are songs which are country when played/sung by a typically country band/artist, yet they are equally successful if done as bluegrass (a variety of country, of course), jazz or blues. Then that same song may be played as "easy listening" or even by Boston Pops style orchestras. Thus instruments, tempo and other factors affect it's classification for a particular performance.
So yes, good music is good music, and there are some that come out in the rock field or blues field or whatever that, when played in a different style become "good music" even to me.
Still, discussions need some sort of identification to identify something you can talk about, and the "genre" seems to be a way to generalize performance styles, as opposed to the musical piece itself.
So in my mind the reason "why some people are so polarized as to exactly what is and what isn't country music" is to discuss styles of preference (traditional, honky tonk, modern, etc). For example distorted instruments grate on me, as do very ragged voices, both of which seem to occur in performances in the rock style, just as one example. Similar objection to some "blues" material (some is pretty good).
