Beyond Genre

Today's music scene, perpetuates segregation in music. However, such marketing belies the more permeable boundaries between genres or that elements of "black" music still exist in rock or that "white" elements exist in hip hop. One example of black musical elements in a "rock" song is Radiohead's "Bloom" the first track from The King of Limbs (TKOL) released in 2011. Any Radiohead fan can assert that part of the band's popular and critical appeal is their ability to layer sound, creating textured musical experiences. This architectural sound is taken a step further in "Bloom" which has a West African inspired rhythmic arrangement. Not only does this destabilize boundaries maintained by the marketing machine of the music industry, but it also raises some interesting cross cultural possibilities as to how the song might function. For example, given the multiple functions of West African music as political/social/spiritual productions, what insights might one gain by analyzing "Bloom" as a spiritual/psychic experience, especially from an African world view? This paper will examine the structure of "Bloom" using J.H. Kwabena Nketia's explanation of West African composition theory and explore the spiritual experience of "Bloom" using Wole Soyinka's theory of the "fourth stage" and the Bantu philosophy of vital force to illustrate the artificialness of the categories into which we place music and cultures

Aesthetics · Art · Black music · Bloom · Literature · Movement (music · Popular music · White (mutation · Chemistry · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Geology · Oceanography

• Myth, literature and the African world

  Wole Soyinka•Myth, literature and the African…•1978

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