Is it possible to create a completely new genre of music?

Question

This question might appear really weird, but still I ended up asking me this. Every genre of music as we know today comes from some previous genre (as an evolution, a combination of two different genres etc...). Let's take a few examples : House comes from disco, electro comes from funk and so on... Now, it feels like everything that is created and imagined is really bounded to known genres. So my question is composed of two parts. First of all, I would like to know some genres that appeared and took their inspiration from nothing already known at this moment. And secondly, will it still be music as we know it today if we don't find some basic things related to one genre or another? For example a rhythm done with drums, or a song without any melody or harmony etc... It may be unclear right now but I don't have much time to ask this question, so don't hesitate to ask for precisions.

Answer 1

I'd recommend Peter Bürger's Theory of The Avant-Garde to think through your questions with. What you're asking about is hermeneutics - the discussion of the interpretation of music. In simple terms hermeneutics can be described by the idea that we know a piece of text is a poem because we've seen a poem before. There can be music that is in conflict with our interpretive framework, in dialogue with an excluded music, a commentary on an existing principle, synthesis of other forms, experimentation with new mediums the list goes on. I am not aware of a form of music that has nothing to do with what came before it however, because that would require the person writing it and the person listening to it to have absolutely no exposure to the music of their time - music's meaning and classification is not up to the composer! You could think you created a totally new genre, but if a group of listeners decide that they hear a link, a disagreement, a commentary with something in existence already, they have as much agency to classify the music as you do. The closest I can think of is early electronic music which was very much driven by the technological advancement of the time, and yet even that was in dialogue with the expectations of what music should be - and therefore not severed from the previews forms.