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Music and Categories (III):
Interstitial Speculative Fiction on Record Stores
By Warren Senders
Which brings me to the next phase of this essay. I would like to examine a few possible "default taxonomies." Because I'm a musician, I'll focus on the default structures I observe in music...but the same processes apply anywhere else we human beings shape our universe by establishing boundaries. Because I am in the business of imagining, I'll frame my interrogations by imagining alternatives and exploring their implications. Because I've already established a hypothetical record store in your mind, that's where I'll begin.
Imagine a record store in which the products were indexed by...
...the historical time period of the music.
The earliest music would be at the back of the store, the most recent at the front. Contemporary composers of experimental electronic squawks and bleeps would be cheek to cheek with the latest dance beats; modern pop music from Uzbekistan (try googling on the name Yulduz Usmanova) would be hanging out with the latest jazz records...and Hindustani dhrupad music would be far in the back, next to the motets of Johannes Ockeghem and just a little ahead of the ancient Gagaku orchestral tradition of Japan. A 7–inch "ep" record of neolithic instruments rescued from a swamp in Finland would presumably be at the furthest extremity of the room. To find music, you'd have to know when it was from.
But what about music that doesn't partake of a single definitive time period? Revivalist performances of New Orleans Jazz? Pieces by contemporary composers for mediaeval instruments? Switched–on Bach? Would the soundtrack for a film set in Victorian England be found along with the music of that period? If so, what about the soundtrack for a film set in the distant future? Or the score for Jurassic Park?
Oy. "Temporal interstitiality" seems to present quite a few problems.
...the music's country of origin.
The store would be laid out somehow as a map of the world. Music from here would be there, music from there would be here, and music from that country would be next to music from this country.
African pop music would be next to tribal drumming, American teen pop would be next to jazz and country–western, and Schubert next to Kraftwerk. To find music, you'd have to know where it was from.
But what about music that's from many different places? Is an Australian aboriginal country–western band meant to go with the didgeridoo records...or with the Hank Williams? What about the great big–band led by the Japanese woman Toshiko Akiyoshi and her American husband Lew Tabackin? What about Willy Schwartz's CD Live for the Moment, whose basic tracks were recorded in India...with overdubs done in Chicago? Or the Tuvan trio Huun–Huur–Tu's experimental collaboration with the Bulgarian State Women's Chorus?
Oy again.
...the music's function.
Dance music would be in one part of the building, music "for listening" would be somewhere else, and there would
be specific places where a buyer could find, for example, music for religious observance, music of social commentary, music accompanying
dramas and films, and whatever other functions we can conceive.
Reggae, rock'n'roll, and polka, all found under "dance." Abstract free–jazz, Ravi Shankar's sitar, and Schubert's lieder, all found in "music for listening." Bob Dylan, Victor Jara, and Malian griots, under "social commentary." Vedic hymns, the chordal chanting of Tibetan Buddhist monks, Gregorian chants, and all the world's religious music, all found together in an improbable acoustic ecumenicism.
But what about Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, meant for performance in church, and including his great hymn "Come Sunday" along with fiery tenor saxophone solos by Paul Gonsalves? What about the late Fela Kuti, who decried the robber barons of "I.T.T. — International Thief Thief!" while his band laid down the most irresistible dance groove in all Africa? What about music that was originally meant to accompany the dance, but which time has transformed into a classical artifact meant for reverent listening — like, perhaps, much of Mozart? Who decides whether John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is music for listening or religious observance (remember, there's a church in San Francisco in which this record is an essential sacrament!)? And what about people who like to listen to dance music, or vice versa?
And Oy a third time.
...a completely idiosyncratic set of criteria.
In the film High Fidelity, John Cusack's character keeps his records filed, not by genre or alphabetically, but "autobiographically." Each major event in Rob's life is associated with particular pieces of music, particular artists and particular styles. To look through his shelves of lps is to climb inside his own personal history.
Rob runs a record store, but it's a fair bet that his store isn't laid out the way his personal library is.
You see the problem, don't you? No matter what set of classifications we use, there will always be some things that either fit in more than one place, and some things that don't fit anywhere.
The fascinating thing about a label like "interstitial" is that the phenomena it describes flicker in and out. What is "interstitial" in one system of classification is, er, "stitial" in another. Reggae was an interstitial form for American audiences in the 1970s, but you can be sure that it was mainstream for most Jamaicans!
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