Some hints from my approach to the problem

To sum up some of the issues discussed so far, and in order to investigate the diachronic processes by which genres are created, changed and deleted, we need to consider the definition of a musical genre as 'a set of music events regulated by conventions accepted by a community'. This is a compact form of a definition that has circulated for thirty years [1], which benefits from the refinements I suggested above, namely that, first, 'convention' must be intended within the framework of David K. Lewis's study, second, prototypical effects and family resemblances can be intended as socially acknowledged by convention, so they do not need to be referred to specifically, third, norms or rules can also be omitted in the definition, because although laws and regulations act as regulatory principles and may help in defining genres, they perform such a function within or among genres only if they are made relevant by convention (for example, a juridical norm can exist on paper, while being ignored by a community), and, fourth, 'community', in the strictest sense, is the 'population' where a convention is established. Usually, the community accepting genre conventions is the union or stratification of many diverse communities. Can such a short definition be of any use for the study of music(s)? Can it shed some light on the work of scholars? We will now see.

What does it mean for a music historian to study the birth of a genre? It means, first, to examine any kind of document (manuscripts, scores, newspapers and magazines, letters, marketing material, recordings if available, etc.), with the help – when possible – of direct witnesses, for the earliest traces of the genre's name; second, to investigate, similarly, the genre's community, and evaluate recurring behaviours, norms, codes and prototypes (within the framework of other existing genres, so evaluating oppositional functions); and, third, to confront the chronologies of naming and other conventions, and to formulate hypotheses on a possible pre-history of the genre. Of course, this is what historians usually do.

But there is a strong tradition in musicology that favours notated music above all other sources (not just because scores are more easily found [2]), and, in the end, what scholars often come up with is an evolutionary description of styles, rather than a history of genres. There is much to learn from the methods of the École des Annales, as suggested by Rick Altman in his study of silent film sound:

Just as the French 'new' historians of the Annales school found the texture of history in the daily fabric of common lives, rather than in the exceptional existence of the ruling class, so I find the most important lessons in the most common uses of sound located in the most banal practices. Who plays the piano? Where is it located? Is it used just for the film or for other parts of the program as well? And what kind of music is selected? (Altman 2004, 6)

The 'daily fabric of common lives' is made with conventions, and, as Altman suggests when discussing methodology, it is essential that historians look at past practices as they were, without being influenced by their subsequent evolution (ibid., 17).

Musical historical investigation, I would add, requires a continuously shifting perspective, an uninterrupted comparison among conventionally accepted practices before and after a genre is born.

Investigating the present, which is what music sociologists, music anthropologists, cultural scholars do, demands a similar approach. In order to be more than snapshots of passing instants, demographic studies and ethnographies must give historical sense to their specific context and circumstances, in particular to their time and place. And this means, at least, to provide links, hooks to the past and the future, and to other places and cultures. There is a kind of study of the present (whatever this is: I know that 'present' isn't an easily definable concept!) that I would like to see: a real-time monitoring of new genre names and new conventions. For many contemporary genres, this might be performed on the Internet: a chronological listing of the number of web pages containing a certain genre's name (obtained from a search engine) is a very rough approximation to what I intend as a web-based research method, but software engineers could develop ways to trace new genre names before they become commonplace.

New conventions are a tougher matter, of course, but a large enough team could successfully create the proper mesh to collect 'early warnings' for practices that seem to emerge as new. To some extent this is what already happens sometimes in scholars' blogs and mailing lists, like those set up by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). However, a far quicker method needs to be found: when a scholar writes to a mailing list asking for more information on some new music practices, a new genre has existed long enough to make the request outdated.

Perceiving genres as sets of music events regulated by conventions accepted by a community is not an obstacle to understanding diachronic processes, like those that can be metaphorically described as the birth, change or death of a genre. Rather, such a definition can help by describing more accurately than others (or better than no definition, anyway) diachronic processes, and, thereby, may suggest methods for music historians, sociologists, anthropologists and other scholars, be they interested in music(s) of the past, or in current music practices. Here 'community' and 'convention' are the key concepts: an interdisciplinary approach to their understanding is fundamental for the study of genre.