KEY CHANGES
While making the music comes naturally for Mafuna, like McKaige, he has a hard time breaking it down into digestible categories. “It's always a struggle when I'm releasing music and I have to communicate to the DSP [digital service provider] or to the publisher,” he says. The term “alternative” can work, but it’s limiting. “When it comes to things like Spotify, I think the umbrella is electronic, but it's not necessarily like EDM. I also still use acoustic instruments a lot, but it's hard to describe it.” For artists as singular as McKaige and Mafuna, it’s easy to want to just dispense with the whole genre label entirely, since the idea of a perfect fit feels like a thing of the past. From a neurological standpoint, however, it’s not that easy. To Categorize Is Human “Humans have been categorizing these things for hundreds of years,” says cognitive psychologist Erica Knowles, associate professor in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Department. She adds that “brains love categories” and are essentially pattern-rec- ognition devices. “That's really all these genres and subgenres are, right? It's trying to give a name to a category that is maybe a little subjective, but has some underlying similarities. Dave Marvuglio, an instructor in the Bass Department, likes to think of these countless sub- genres as “dialects.” Marvuglio’s long list of cred- its include performances with jazz great Bill Pierce as well as the shock-metal band Ice Nine Kills. He leads directed study ensembles particularly in the metal, punk, and indie rock styles, so questions of genre evolution arise all the time in his classes. For instance, he points out that metal (already shorthand for “heavy metal”) is technically a form of rock ’n’ roll. However, “within the metal community, there are so many subgenres: doom metal, Viking metal, dwarven, metal caveman, battle doom, black metal, transcendental black metal, grindcore.” As Knowles suggests, this need to label is likely inescapable. “We can talk about being genre-free, but I don't really know if we're ever going to get free of the need or desire to categorize things,” she says. Context Matters In a cultural sense, there is a real risk in abandoning genres, given the long history of appropriation and erasure of popular music’s roots within the African diaspora. Jazz and blues, foundational to nearly all popular American music over the last century, are distinctly Black American musical expressions that emerged out of a context of displacement and slavery. As Chloe Swindler, assistant professor in
the Africana Studies Department, points out, to ignore these origins as a musician carries ethical and artistic pitfalls. “If you haven't learned about why the blues were created and the circumstances that led to it, and you just go up there to sing a 12-bar blues, you're not gonna understand why this blue note should be here,” she says. Swindler sees Berklee’s Global Afrodiasporic Musics course, which is required for all students, as one clear way to help musicians engage with these contexts. The first step, she says, is “immersing yourself in that culture, understanding more about how this music came to be so you can perform it more authentically—and be able to share the actual story behind it with people.” From a songwriting perspective, Camp con- curs, saying that imitating a genre you don’t live and breathe is “like being able to imitate the syl- labic sounds of French. But if I drop you in Paris, nobody will understand you.” At the same time, when students try bringing in new genre elements to their songs, Camp uses it as a doorway. “What that shows me is that students are somewhat inter- ested in that genre. So then I can use that as a jumping-off point and be like, okay, let's look at where this came from.” Being genre fluid does not mean being genre ignorant. To switch musical dialects believably and with impact, you need to be mindful of the cultural and historical context of the sounds you’re making. This kind of consideration came up for Mafuna when he was working on his 2024 single “don’t tell anybody or else it won’t come true,” which features his friend and fellow student Riddhi Vikamshi singing in a Hindustani style. “When I was making that, I was very much aware of the fact that I was dealing with another culture's music,” Mafuna says. “I knew that I had to have her lead the feature in her own way and tell me if something was not appropriate or if it felt diminishing at all to her culture's music.” Genre is culture, in other words. We can’t be post-genre any more than we can be post-culture.
Developing Your Sound in a Genre-Fluid World
So, how does one go about developing an authen- tic sound in a world with 6,000 genres? “When you're in the creative process, don't worry about genre,” Camp says. “When you're in the marketing and branding process, that's when it becomes more important to think about.” Michele Darling, chair of the Electronic Pro- duction and Design (EPD) Department, adds that experimentation is key. “In EPD, we encourage you to sound a little wild and don't think about genre
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