A MULTITUDE OF GENRES.

Monsieur Seba, they say, would you like a copy of our magazine?

Of course, I partook in their offer. Free things are a blessing a money-light world of contradictions and problems du financiers. I love free things, especially free papers and magazines, which are in fact better than most of the publications you have to pay for normally! One I discovered recently, is Kruger Magazine.

(URL here)

Contained within it's happily unglossy pages is a multitude of entertaining articles and features. Now Kruger is not Vice Magazine, so I'm not even going to suggest that Kruger is better than Vice, because is Vice is evil and must be stopped. And until some literary hero comes along and avenges the moral consciences of those five people in Wales with serious reality issues, I will continue to fly the Vice flag to the world for all with eyes to see. Kruger is in the same vein as the aforementioned glossy filth purveyor, but has a different agenda entirely. As well as being smaller, it is more music and gig based in it's coverage and contains less swearing than it's uncouth cousins.

In particular, an article captured my attention with it's beautiful lasso. That article was the feature on music genres in an A to Z format. That is, all the letters of the alphabet that we are truly blessed with in our ability to type and read these words. Now, besides the obvious Rock and Pop genres, there are some pretty interesting looking genres and sub-genres out there that you may or may have not heard of. I don't usually like definition of things that much, but there were a few of my favorite genres included, and I thought I'd mention them to you, just to be kind and guru like.

The very first genre on their hit list is Anti Folk,which even from it's definition, is still quite hazy. To my mind, Ani diFranco at various points of her long career has been the epitome of this genre, although I'm sure many will disagree. (The definition has it that Anti Folk is defiantly insincere and mocks the pretensions of music and itself. Vague, and yet some how clearer for the stating of it.) Another genre that I see mentioned for the first time in a more mainstream(ish) publication is Queercore, a genre that apparently contains many styles of music and seeks to question the values of the so-called "oppressive agenda" of the LBGT community. I can see their meaning, but that doesn't explain why Windows Media Player proclaims Bitch and Animal to be Queercore for no other reason than the fact they are gay!

Besides a few other genres, the list is pretty normal in terms of popular music, with the tail end of the alphabet providing the starkest glimpses into underground and just plain bizarre styles of music . How about the very confusing Unclassifiable? As the magazine quite rightly states, there is nothing that can be unclassifiable when there are so many different types of genres and sub-genres in existence! Although, I wish someone had told the people who perform Wizard Rock, (it's a link mesieurs et madames!), that enough is enough and that the Christian Church really does frown upon that sort of thing, even if they don't care at all.

Although, a bit of Viking Metal can never go amiss in these days of constant sunshine, ahem, and the very existence of it and all associated genres really does give you faith in the pessimistic world view. The dark growls are just a very throaty bonus!

If you feel like diving into the world of weird music genres, head to the music genre list page on Wikipedia for lots of musical head scratching!

Pick up Kruger if you can, and remember that nothing is truly unclassifiable, except our existence.

Mnsr Seba.