Should I tag Dropkick Murphys as “irish”?
After all, they play Irish music (albeit in a punk style), so it seems like an accurate tag. But they’re not from Ireland. They’re from Boston.
Perhaps R.E.M. is just playing Canadian style music, and therefore it’s okay that they’re from Georgia? That seems wrong, but only because “canadian” isn’t really the name of a genre.
So is there a workable, consistent standard to go by here? Maybe tagging bands by the name of their country. So the Clancy Brothers get both “Ireland” and “irish,” while Dropkick gets “irish” (and maybe “Boston”), and I can get righteously pissed if someone tags R.E.M. with “Canada.”
Or is it just the nature of the game to deal with other people’s flawed tagging?
So this is an issue I was looking at just yesterday . Having grown up hearing and playing "Irish" music as meaning "Irish fiddle tunes," it bugs me to see things like U2 and Van Morrison on the Irish tag page. Even though they may be Irish in some sense, and I do like their music, it's not what I'm looking for when I'm looking for Irish music. But in that sense, if someone's playing Drowsy Maggie or whatever, I'll tag them as "Irish" even if they're from Boston and even if it's a punk style. (Note that I haven't heard the Dropkick Murphys yet.) So my concept of "Irish" is competing with the concept of the people who use it purely as location or origin of the band, vs. the music.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I think the place I'm supposed to be looking for my fiddle tunes is at the "Celtic" tag. But that still has way too much Enya and Loreena McKennitt, and way too little Altan and Lunasa. Oh well.
And is there a Canadian style of music? To me, again from a fiddle tunes background, it would mean Quebecois fiddle tunes. But there aren't going to be many of those in Last.fm, I think. Maybe there's something else it means, though.
Anyway, yes, I think it is kind of all about translating the tags that are out there in the wild into useful things for yourself. A nice challenge. :-)
Yeh, there's so many inconsistencies in music writing, figuring out what people mean is all part of the fun! Although I wouldn't really call REM "Canadian" at all stylistically. What is Canadian music? But everyone knows what "Irish" music means, so it's cool to call the Dropkicks that. Most people will get that it's a genre description, rather than a geographical thing.
ReplyDelete