Chillwave: Is It a Genre?
Josh Edge
Word Count: 1907
September 8, 2012
Friday:@ 3:00-4:00
Chillwave: Is it a genre? Throughout the history of music, there have been many trends in music that have influenced future generations. The way listeners respond to these trends allow them to categorize specific sounds with genres of music. One huge musical trend today, chillwave, is a genre of music that has received mixed emotions of its name by its artists and fans. In this paper, I will be presenting an intro into chillwave music as a genre and how it is different from other genres. I also will be discussing the way fans interact with the genre of chillwave music, and how these reactions differ from that of the artists view of the genre. Finally, I will be discussing how technological developments have affected the way fans view the authenticity of chillwave as compared to other genres. During the summer of 2009, a blogger named Carles, writing for the site Hipster Runoff, “clustered together a handful of up-and-coming bands with a similar approach and, by most accounts, birthed a new genre: chillwave.”[1] Chillwave is defined as “a genre of music whose artists are often characterized by their heavy use of effects processing, synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavy filtered vocals with simple melodic lines.”[2] It is also known as Dreampop, Ambient or Glo-fi. “The genre is also a prime example of shifting the idea from defining a musical movement's birth in part by a specific geographic location, as is historically done, to focusing instead on how the groups became linked and defined through various outlets on the Internet.”[3] Even though the genre isn't specified to a specific region, it has been speculated that the South and East coast are where most of the “originators” of chillwave have come from. Chillwave is a genre where most of the music sounds similar, and it is extremely difficult to distinguish artists from other groups in the genre. However, this differs from other
Word Count: 1907
September 8, 2012
Friday:@ 3:00-4:00
Chillwave: Is it a genre? Throughout the history of music, there have been many trends in music that have influenced future generations. The way listeners respond to these trends allow them to categorize specific sounds with genres of music. One huge musical trend today, chillwave, is a genre of music that has received mixed emotions of its name by its artists and fans. In this paper, I will be presenting an intro into chillwave music as a genre and how it is different from other genres. I also will be discussing the way fans interact with the genre of chillwave music, and how these reactions differ from that of the artists view of the genre. Finally, I will be discussing how technological developments have affected the way fans view the authenticity of chillwave as compared to other genres. During the summer of 2009, a blogger named Carles, writing for the site Hipster Runoff, “clustered together a handful of up-and-coming bands with a similar approach and, by most accounts, birthed a new genre: chillwave.”[1] Chillwave is defined as “a genre of music whose artists are often characterized by their heavy use of effects processing, synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavy filtered vocals with simple melodic lines.”[2] It is also known as Dreampop, Ambient or Glo-fi. “The genre is also a prime example of shifting the idea from defining a musical movement's birth in part by a specific geographic location, as is historically done, to focusing instead on how the groups became linked and defined through various outlets on the Internet.”[3] Even though the genre isn't specified to a specific region, it has been speculated that the South and East coast are where most of the “originators” of chillwave have come from. Chillwave is a genre where most of the music sounds similar, and it is extremely difficult to distinguish artists from other groups in the genre. However, this differs from other