American musical minimalism in its interaction with mass genres

As long ago as its formative stage in the early 1960s, American musical minimalism revealed a close connection with the aesthetics and practices of popular genres rooted in their shared origins in the countercultural movement of the radical left youth. In subsequent decades, this tendency towards integration between the two cultural layers continued. The aim of this article is to examine the mechanisms of interaction between minimalism and popular music (primarily rock culture) throughout its formation and development over more than sixty years. The main research method is comparative analysis of the studied material, including multidimensional sociocultural, historical, and stylistic analogies and parallels. Cross-cultural influences are identified at several levels: musical language (a return to expressive simplicity—diatonicism, clear metrical pulsation, and multiple repetition of material); compositional methods (repetitive techniques, sampling, delay); concert practice (performances not only in concert halls and museums, but also in nightclubs and bars); self-presentation of musicians acting as composers, performers, and, in recent decades, producers (including the creation of original ensembles combining acoustic and electronic instruments); audience and critical reception, marked by a gradual blurring of boundaries between art music and popular music; marketing strategies, such as the establishment of independent record labels and the promotion of aesthetically and stylistically similar bands and albums; and genre classification (indie classical, post-genre, post-style), reflecting the liminal character of contemporary minimalist compositional practice. The article considers three generations of musicians: 1) the founders of minimalism La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass (1960s–1970s), 2) the Bang on a Can collective—Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe (1990s–2000s), and 3) musicians of the millennial generation—Missy Mazzoli, Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, and Nico Muhly (2010s–early 2020s). Generational continuity is shaped by their shared New York cultural background, their reliance on minimalist techniques and repetitive processes, and, above all, the diffusion of various stylistic elements drawn from both the classical tradition and popular genres Keywords: American musical minimalism, repetitive technique, mass genres, rock music, indie classic

Craft · Minimalism (technical communication) · Musical · Popular music · Repetition (rhetorical device) · Tonality · Violin musical styles · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Theater, Performance, and Music History