An Alternative Indie

An Alternative Indie

Why does Meindert Talma’s Werkman resist consensus

categorization?

Name: Steven Vincent Vrouwenvelder

Student number: 6049400

Thesis Master Musicology

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Julia J.E. Kursell

Second Reader: Dr. Oliver Seibt

Date: 6 June 2016

Vrouwenvelder 2

Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3

1. Werkman ......................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Categorization ................................................................................................................................. 5

3. An Alternative Indie ......................................................................................................................... 6

Categorization ......................................................................................................................................... 9

1. Music like the sea .......................................................................................................................... 10

2. Genre and Style ............................................................................................................................. 13

3. Genre Ideology .............................................................................................................................. 15

Indie ....................................................................................................................................................... 18

1. Independent labels and distribution ............................................................................................. 20

2. Guitars, guitars, ‘jangly’ guitars ..................................................................................................... 24

3. Elitism ............................................................................................................................................ 29

4. Canon ............................................................................................................................................. 32

5. Indie as a Genre ............................................................................................................................. 33

Werkman ............................................................................................................................................... 37

1. Indie or not? .................................................................................................................................. 39

2. Werkman’s Saxorgan ..................................................................................................................... 40

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 45

Appendix ................................................................................................................................................ 48

Works Cited ........................................................................................................................................... 50

Vrouwenvelder 3

Introduction

1. Werkman

Meindert Talma released a record in 2015 entitled Werkman. What can I, as a fan of

Talma’s previous music, expect? The CD’s front cover (See Appendix: figure 1) shows a pile of

papers with large blue captions on it reading “Werkman.” This album is clearly one of the

projects launched to honor the memorial year of visual artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

(1882-1945). Beneath the blue captions are the names of the performers, printed in white.

The first of these is the Dutch musician Meindert Talma. Talma’s musical output is often

combined with non-musical products and events, such as a collection of poems, a novel,

museum exhibitions and a world championship football. Werkman seems like another multi-

disciplinary project. The back cover reveals that Excelsior Recordings, an Amsterdam-based

record label, released the album. Excelsior, a so-called independent record company, is also

Talma’s home record label.

So far, there are no surprises. The collaborative artists, on the other hand, are new.

Talma used to record music with the bands The Negroes and De Rode Kaarten (The Red

Cards). In comparison to the humorous or at least ironic names of these bands, The Melisma

Saxophone Quartet, which is the other name on the front cover, indicates a different and

perhaps more serious path. This seems to be in accordance with the historical theme of the

record: Werkman was killed in World War 2.

The name of the ensemble suggests that this quartet normally plays so-called

classical music. It mentions the organisation (quartet), the means (saxophone) and an

obscure word drawn from music theory (melisma). This evokes a connection with a culture

that is inaccessible to those without specialized musical knowledge. A quick look at their

website confirms this; it mentions another recording featuring works of Grieg, Bach, Ligeti,

and Lago. These are all composers who are considered to be canonical in European classical

music. Remarkably, the quartet does not mention Werkman on their website,1 as if they do

not want to be associated with it.

1 Accessed on March 22, 2016.

Vrouwenvelder 4

The booklet’s layout confirms that the CD commemorates the life of the titular visual

artist as his picture is printed next to a “Concise biography of H.N. Werkman.”2 Except for

the last few pages, the booklet only features the lyrics of the songs. The final pages reveal

that Talma arranged this project; his email address and website are mentioned, and he

thanks several people for giving him the idea to collaborate with the saxophone quartet. The

text also informs me that the album was commissioned by Stichting H.N. Werkman, the

corporation that initiated the memorial year, together with Geert Lameris, who oversaw all

of the projects. At the back of the booklet, there is a photograph of the five musicians with

Talma sitting in the centre, holding a saxophone. This picture suggests that Talma controls

the music, even though he does not play this (or indeed any) instrument on the recording.

According to the credits in the back of the booklet, he is only the composer of the music.

After inspecting the visual materials included with the album, I wonder how the music

sounds.

The first song on the album, “Leens,” commences with a sole sustained sound on the

alto sax, but is quickly joined by the soprano sax, which plays a fifth on top of the sustained

tone of the former, creating a solid sound. The tone of the saxophones is rich and clean,

unaccompanied by air noise, growling or vibrato. Hence, the sounds of the two saxophones

blend. They play an ostinato; repeating the same limited set of tones again and again. This

ostinato functions as an accompaniment for Talma’s voice, which is calm, evoking recitation

rather than singing. With the arrival of the chorus, a third saxophone blends in; towards the

end of the song the last (and lowest) baritone sax joins the others. The resulting sound is

perceived as a unity, because the saxophones do not make individual sounds. Together with

the slow tempo, this creates a serene and static sound.

I experience this song as an oddity. The earnestness of the text and the calmness of

the music contrast with Talma’s previous work. The strangeness is intensified because Talma

sings from a first person perspective, adopting the role of Werkman, while deviating from his

usual way of singing. The singer’s Northern accent, which is immediately apparent to Dutch

ears, confuses the listener: it sounds like Werkman is singing himself. Both Werkman and

Talma were born and raised in the same region and could therefore have the same accent.

The slow ostinato and the unity of the saxophones establish the atmosphere for the first

2 All translations in this thesis are mine.

Vrouwenvelder 5

episode in Werkman’s life. The tranquil opening of the album seems apt; as a listener, I

imagine that I can hear Werkman describing his oldest and most distant memories. I now

understand that the concise biography, which is printed in the booklet, is not only an

introduction to Werkman as a historical figure, but also introduces the content of this

recording. Is this what I, or any other listener, expected when putting the record on?

2. Categorization

Music journalists certainly did not know what to expect. As a fan, I like to investigate

whether my own impressions match the opinions of music journalists, or whether

professional critics shed a different light on the music which could enrich a subsequent

listening. Talma’s website compiles all of the articles that mention him, including album

reviews. These sources are many and varied, both in medium and in aesthetic judgement, so

they offer views from varying perspectives. The reviews are mostly published by regional

newspapers or by popular music media.3 Regional papers discuss the album, because both

Werkman and Talma hail from the border region of the two northern provinces of the

Netherlands and both moved to Groningen, which is the largest city in the area. Music

media, on the other hand, review the album because Talma’s work often falls within the

limited genres and styles they cover.

Two websites, 3voor12 and Muziekweb, observe that the album deviates from

Talma’s other music, which they call “indierock” (Jeuring; Koning). Both sources fail to find a

description for the music on this record, finding it sufficient to mention The Melisma

Saxophone Quartet, which Muziekweb identifies as “a modern chamber orchestra.” Though

they agree on what the music is not, they do not agree on what it is. This seems to reflect

the overall impression of this and other reviews.

There is no consensus among music journalists on how to describe the album. Roel

Sikkema describes it as “classical” but also as “softpop,” while Joey Huisman, writing for

music journal Oor, calls it “roots.” Both the music journal Lust for Life and Frisian culture

website Skanomodu, describe Talma as a “singer/songwriter” (Kaspers; Oostrom), while

other journalists call the music “pop” (Kramer; Schaik). Several of these sources further

3 With this I mean secondary sources that are easily accessible by large audiences.

Vrouwenvelder 6

describe the album also as a “song cycle.” Newspaper Friesch Dagblad only uses this last

term to describe the music (Hut). I infer from these varying responses, that it is hard to write

about the album’s music. On the other hand, all of these sources write with greater precision

about the artist Werkman. The municipality of Groningen and many of its cultural

institutions declared 2015 “Werkman year” to commemorate the Groninger printing press

artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, who was shot dead by the Nazis in 1945. Reviewers thus

seized the opportunity to write about Werkman, but forgot to write about Werkman.

Nevertheless, these reviewers seek to categorize the album, perhaps simply because they

are expected to guide the purchases of music consumers. Why then, does this album resist

consensus categorization?

3. An Alternative Indie

Werkman’s reviews exemplify the difficulty in describing and categorizing music. This

is a problem I encounter every day. When I introduce a friend to a band, without the ability

to listen to the actual music, I have to describe it from memory. The shortest and easiest

way to do so, is to categorize it. This often results in an endless discussion about which

category a piece of music belongs to, because “short” and “easy” also means simplified and

biased. Such discussions can be tiresome because they often do not involve actual music,

reducing it to a limited set of stereotypical characteristics. This thesis is an exploration of

how to work through this problem. In the first chapter, I examine two concepts that are used

for musical categorization: style and genre. In the two remaining chapters, I gradually zoom

in on the object of this thesis: Werkman.

The concepts of style and genre are both used to categorize music. Categorization

implies a certain shared identity among its members. “Genre,” which is etymologically

related to “genus” and “generic,” invokes a relation with biology, recalling the classification

of species and the taxonomical categorization of diverse types. Shared identity is hierarchical

in structure and based on the proximity and resemblance of specimens (for instance, lions

and tigers both belong to the genus Panthera). Style, on the other hand, is etymologically-

rooted in stilus (Latin for pen), calling forth an association with the material, the medium

and the technique of writing (pen rather than book). The shared identity of style groupings

seems based on similar ways of expression.

Vrouwenvelder 7

Although their etymological associations imply a certain implementation in music,

there seems to be no consistent use of these concepts among journalists and scholars within

the different sub-disciplines of musicology. Therefore, genre and style are confused and

often used interchangeably. Both concepts, when imposed on music by journalists and

scholars, construct a framework of expectations for the listener. Werkman appears to resist

the expectations of music journalists, who nevertheless seek to impose categorization on the

music, in order to direct the expectations of their readers. Therefore, in the first chapter, I

will discuss the two concepts and relate them to the reviews of Werkman, in order to better

understand the mechanisms of musical categorization.

Most reviewers mention that Werkman deviates from the music which Talma is

known for making. To understand what it is different from, one has to understand the

context. Since journalists state that this new CD differs from Talma’s “usual” indie music, in

the second chapter, I will investigate “indie” as a musical category. To research whether

Werkman is indie or not, I will first identify what indie is. Every scholar who tries to define

the word indie clarifies that it is an abbreviation of the word “independent.” Just as

alternative (to …) is independent (of …) an alterity; it claims an identity in opposition to

something else. “Indie” is conceptually defined against a big business model; the policies of

independent record labels are formulated in opposition to those of so-called “major labels,”

which, in the indie narrative, are understood to release mainstream popular music. I adopt

the definition of “popular music”4 given by Philip Tagg, because his article is frequently cited,

thereby representing a widely supported understanding of the concept. I also use this

definition to research the discourse surrounding indie music and how this discourse

(re)produces the definition. To understand what indie means, I examine Excelsior

Recordings, the record company which released Werkman. For added perspective, I will also

look at the related concept of “alternative” music. Building on the insights from the first

chapter, I will investigate several texts which attempt to define indie or alternative as a

category of music.

4 “popular music cannot be analysed using only the traditional tools of musicology because popular music, unlike conservative notions of euroclassical music, is (1) conceived for mass distribution to large and often socioculturally heterogeneous groups of listeners, (2) stored and distributed in non-written form, (3) only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity and (4) in capitalist society, subject to the laws of ‘free’ enterprise, according to which it should ideally sell as much as possible of as little as possible to as many as possible.” (Tagg 5)

Vrouwenvelder 8

This thesis is thus mainly a contextual analysis; however, since I believe that a context

cannot exist without a text, each influencing the other, I will return in the final chapter, to a

close reading of Werkman. Only after understanding what it means to categorize and how

Werkman’s context is constructed, can I research whether the music deviates from the indie

category or not. In this chapter, I will argue that Werkman fits within the discourse on indie

music, despite reviews which claim otherwise. I will conclude this thesis with an analysis of

the album which illuminates the particularities of the music, explaining why reviewers have

failed to find a consistent category for Werkman.

Vrouwenvelder 9

Categorization

It’s true that Werkman has something idiomatic. His work is easily

recognizable. Apparently, people can recognize my sound and know where to

place my work too. I am not concerned about my own sound.5 (Talma qtd. in

Knaack 34)

In 2015, The Groninger Museum staged an exhibition of several works by visual artist

Hendrik Werkman, as a central part of the Werkman commemorative year. In their journal,

the Groninger Museum Magazine, they devoted some articles to other Werkman projects,

including Meindert Talma’s album. The epigraph of this chapter is a quote from the

interview in the journal. Talma stated that he is similar to Werkman, because people can

easily recognize his music and know where to place it. This is a paradoxical statement, since

it suggests that Talma stands out, yet conforms to a set of rules. The latter is belied by music

critics, who have had difficulty in describing this album. As I discussed in the introduction,

reviews of Werkman categorize it as “classical,” “roots,” and “pop,” among other

descriptions. From this observation, I infer that music does not intrinsically belong to a

specific category; instead, journalists impose their own interpretations. In this chapter, I

discuss why music journalists and laypeople categorize music and examine how those

categories are constructed.

Popular media do not provide a satisfying system for categorizing music. While

encyclopaedic websites often include sections on style and genre, there is little consistency

among them. For example, Discogs.com “divides music first by genre. We use the word

genre for a hierarchal grouping… These genres are then further broken down by style. Style

is basically the same as a sub-genre” (Database Guidelines 9. Genres / Styles). Allmusic.com

uses a similar definition, identifying genre as a broad category and style as a sub-category

(Frequently Asked Questions: What are Genres?). About.com has no section explaining these

terms, and they are used interchangeably all over the website. Even an authoritative source

5 Translated from Dutch: “… het is zo dat Werkman iets eigens heeft. Zijn werk is makkelijk te herkennen. Het schijnt zo te zijn dat mensen mijn werk ook snel kunnen herkennen of kunnen plaatsen. Zelf denk ik niet na over dat eigen geluid."

Vrouwenvelder 10

like the Oxford English Dictionary offers no clarity: its definition of “genre” mentions “style,”

thereby making the words synonyms. For its part, Wikipedia has an entry on “Musical

Genre” to which searches for “Musical Style” are redirected. Nevertheless, Wikipedia’s

article is the most illuminating of those found on encyclopaedic websites, precisely because

it underscores the widespread confusion between the two concepts. What all of these

websites do seem to share is the idea that music belongs to one or several genres. In other

words, genre or style are intrinsic qualities of a piece of music.

Both style and genre are used to refer to a category in music. Both terms are also

used to identify a group of music, while distinguishing it from other groups. Attempts to

categorize music, however, are often confusing; the terms are taken for granted and their

usage is frequently mixed up. On the other hand, scholars from various disciplines have

written theoretical works on the categorization of artworks, including music. For this

chapter, I look at these academic sources, focusing in particular on texts dealing with music.

1. Music like the sea

After reading the reviews of Werkman, one may wonder what compels people to

categorize music. All of the reviews identify a category, though rarely agree on which one

describes Werkman’s music. Aside from this, the reviews are mainly concerned with non-

musical aspects: the lyrical content of the songs, the life of H.N. Werkman, and his memorial

year. In this section, I examine why people categorize in order to better understand how

categorization functions and how it relates to actual music. The first explanation is

economic. Sociologist and music journalist Simon Frith investigates how popular music is

valued and how meaning arises. Frith assigns an important role to record companies,

because musical genre is given by the “Artist and Repertoire” departments of record

companies. They classify music both by listening to the way it sounds and by identifying its

target audience, with the ultimate goal to sell the record (Frith 89). These categories are

communicated to record stores so that CDs can be appropriately labelled and displayed in

the right place.

Such labelling by record companies, generates expectations about the music; which

are driven by market demands. On the other hand, musical categories are often flexible, as

they react to the market. I can attest to this from my own experience. When I worked at a

Vrouwenvelder 11

record store from 2009 through 2011, the music of Lady Gaga became popular, as measured

by sales figures and media attention. Her music was initially filed in the “dance” category

and thus sold in that department. When she became a subject of media hype, her CDs were

relabelled as “pop.” This decision was made in response to a sudden increase in customers

who expected to find her music in the pop section of the store, instead of dance where it

had long been displayed. This example shows that genre attribution and categorization are

subject to the arbitrariness, flexibility, and sensitivity of market forces. In this light, one can

better understand the reviewers’ claims that Werkman is not indie (Jeuring; Koning). Such

comments serve to warn consumers (in this case: indie listeners) while advising record stores

to relabel Talma’s music for another type of listener/buyer.

A new way of accessing music has come into existence with the rise of the internet.

While record stores can still label their products manually, musical providers on the internet

must deal with a larger quantity of products, requiring new techniques to direct consumer

behaviour. Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is one such technique. It directs a computer to

group music together to make browsing collections easier. Music technologists Cory McKay

and Ichiro Fujinaga argue that MIR is most useful when it goes beyond mere genre

classification based on similar sounds, because music is also important for mood

enhancement and identity formation (McKay and Fujinaga 103). They attribute these

insights to findings drawn from psychological studies (e.g., Hargreaves and North 1999).

With the shift from physical sales to digital services, it has become clear that an economic

analysis is insufficient to explain why people categorize; these digital techniques function

better, because they tap deeper into psychology. Nevertheless, McKay and Fujinaga’s

arguments are still oriented towards consumption.

Hasan Tekman and Nuran Hortaçsu, by contrast, approach music listeners as people,

rather than prospective customers, offering a psychological interpretation from a cognitive

perspective. They state that in general “categorisation or conceptual knowledge is an

important aspect of human cognition. Dividing the world around us into categories of items

that we can treat in similar ways facilitates our lives by providing cognitive economy and

directing future learning” (Tekman and Hortaçsu 28). They claim that categorization is a

natural capability, which humans use to orient themselves in the world.

The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari explore this relation

between reality and its categorisation (or “striation”) from a philosophical point of view,

Vrouwenvelder 12

using the example of the sea to illustrate their point (Deleuze and Guattari 556-561). The sea

is in the first place an open-ended (or “smooth”) space, but, as a result of the European urge

for expansion, the sea was translated into a striated space. Coordinates made it possible to

navigate over sea. Sailing changed from roaming over a large surface of water to traveling

between coordinates. The invention of coordinates springs from the same psychological

urge of humans, Tekman and Hortaçsu investigated, to order the world around them.

In their book Mille Plateaux (1980), Deleuze and Guattari investigate the relation

between the striated and the smooth with the concepts of the tree for the former and the

rhizome for the latter. The tree is a representation of the categorized world. Tekman and

Hortaçsu state that categorizing is hierarchical and is arranged by lists of characteristics (29).

Hierarchy is determined by each category’s relation to and proximity with the others. This

results in a tree-like representation (both visual and imaginary) of reality with different

branches. These branches may split off into little twigs or find themselves grouped together,

but eventually all lead back to the same root. For my purposes, the root represents music in

general, while the groupings of branches can be understood as genres or styles, with the

twigs representing individual artists and composers.

In contrast, Deleuze and Guattari also propose a rhizomatic representation of the

world. A rhizome has no beginning or ending, only lines which intersect with other lines. This

perspective is perhaps chaotic, but it encourages one to revaluate the world without

striation. Nevertheless, Deleuze and Guattari stress that these two perspectives are not

necessarily oppositional (20). The rhizome and the tree are two examples of how categories

are imposed on reality, while also stemming from a human instinct that aids in

understanding that reality. In the end, this also leads back to the economic explanation I

discussed above. The music industry and journalists impose categorization on music in order

to make it more easily accessible for listeners and consumers. This also means that, from a

psychological perspective, a human “outsources” her or his urge to categorize the world.

One could also argue that categorization in music reviews is a natural “reflex” of journalist as

they seek to give the music a proper place in their striated worldview. Whether the

motivation is economic, psychological or philosophical, categorization is an imposition,

guiding expectations, while constructing a framework to fit future experiences within.

Vrouwenvelder 13

2. Genre and Style

In the psychological inquiries I discussed in the previous section, style and genre

function as different levels of musical categorization. For example, Hargreaves and North

(193) use the word “genre” for the broadest category (pop, classical, and jazz) while “style”

indicates a category within a genre. This implies that the two words have a similar meaning

while being hierarchically related to each other. The psychologists adopt a popular

understanding of the concepts as it matches the description by Discogs.com and

Allmusic.com. This pragmatic application of concepts suffices to explain why people

categorize, but it does not provide a better understanding of what those concepts mean.

Fortunately, scholars from across disciplines have investigated the differences between

these two concepts.

Musicologist Allan Moore takes stock of the many theories on genre and style6 and

distils the use of these concepts in music and musicology. He claims that the meanings of

these concepts changes from one discipline to another, despite interdisciplinary influence.

Moore argues that most disciplines favour one term over the other: what is indicated by

“style” in one discipline can indicate “genre” in another (Moore 432-433). This

interchangeability is especially problematic in the interdisciplinary study of popular music.

Although Moore is a musicologist mainly interested in popular music, his discourse analysis

investigates the function of genre and style in musicology in general. Moore concludes by

distinguishing the varying ways in which style and genre differ. These distinctions amount to

the difference between reception and production, nature and culture, and finally, style and

genre have a different hierarchical structure. In this section, I analyze reviews of Werkman in

relation to Moore’s discourse analysis, to show some problems with his observations.

The first division which Moore observed reflects the etymological relations of the

words (stilus and genus): “style refers to the manner of articulation of musical gestures …

genre refers to the identity and the context of those gestures” (Ibid. 441). Moore simplifies

the difference by relating genre to “what,” and style to “how” music is made. In this divide,

genre describes the reception of a musical product, while style concerns its production. For

example, journalist Ybema describes Werkman as a “song cycle,” considering the musical

6 Allan Moore analyzes discourses from art historians, media scholars, literature scholars, folklorists, sociologists and musicologists in his article “Categorical Conventions in Music Discourse: Style and Genre.”

Vrouwenvelder 14

product in its totality, thus assigning it a genre in Moore’s terms. Hence, Moore’s division

equates genre with form. On the other hand, Ybema also indicates how the music was

produced by referring to “saxophones” and “wind instruments” meeting Moore’s

understanding of style.

Other distinctions, Moore observed, reflect the idea that genre is culturally

constructed while style is naturally given: “in its concentration on how meaning is

constituted, genre is normally explicitly thematized as socially constrained … Style, on the

other hand, in its emphasis on technical features and appropriability, … is considered to

operate with a negotiable degree of autonomy” (Ibid.). Style is quotable while a genre is

characterized by structure and convention. For example, journalist Sikkema mentions

Talma’s “Groninger” accent.7 The timbre of his voice is both a technical feature as well as a

natural trait. It is even quotable, as one can imitate Talma’s manner of singing. On the other

hand, Sikkema categorizes the music as classical on the basis that it is composed for a

quartet. This is based on a convention, an intersubjective and thus socially-constructed

truth, by which people associate classical music with composers and quartets.

Lastly, Moore claims that style and genre are both hierarchical structures but in

different ways (441-442). Style’s hierarchy is qualitative, according to Moore. For example,

modernism can be described as style because it resulted from a quest for new compositional

techniques, situated in a particular time and place (roughly Europe and the USA in the

twentieth century). The experimentation of a specific composition (or even passage) can

likewise be described as style. On the other hand, Moore argues that genre’s hierarchy is

exclusive and a-historical. This hierarchy is quantitative, because so-called meta-genres (e.g.,

pop, classical, etc.) contain many genres (e.g., soul, metal, etc.), which can be further divided

into sub-genres (e.g., black metal, speed metal, etc.) and these categories consist of a

number of musicians or composers.

The distinctions Moore observed may seem coherent but, in fact, contain

contradictions. The reviews of Werkman penned by Ybema and Hut exemplify this nuance

within Moore’s theorization. For instance, the noted use of saxophones pertains to both

convention and to nature. Ybema observes that “music for wind instruments” (blaasmuziek)

belongs to the northern Netherlands, while Hut argues that the sound of the saxophones

7 This is a strikingly regional accent and immediately recognizable for Dutch listeners.

Vrouwenvelder 15

resembles the music of Michael Nyman. Ybema implies that saxophone music is a tradition,

a convention, and therefore a genre in the northern Netherlands. Hut, by contrast,

associates the sound of the saxophones with the quotable style of a specific composer. Next

to the internal contradiction of this distinction, style and genre invert while switching to the

perspective of the first distinction. Ybema’s mention of saxophones could, from the first

perspective be seen as style, because it refers to how the music is played, and from the

other be seen as genre, because it refers to a tradition and thus to a convention. When

looking at the reviews through the lens of the last distinction (based on different

hierarchies), the attribution of style and genre inverts again. For Ybema, the saxophone

stands for a region (quality and thus style), while for Hut, it places Talma alongside Nyman

thereby implying that they both belong to post-minimalism (quantity and thus genre).

These reviews reveal the incompatibility of perspectives Moore observed in his

discourse analysis. Moore only investigated academic texts and his examination remains

within scholarly discourse. The contradiction shows that researchers often make careless

decisions when deciding whether to call a category of music a genre or a style. This is a

reason why many use the terms interchangeably or reverse their meaning.8 Moore also

showed that the distinction between style and genre are not mutually exclusive or even

complementary, because a grouping of music can be style from one perspective and genre

from another. Moore’s discourse analysis ultimately shows that style and genre cannot be

hierarchically related to each other, contrary to popular and psychological uses of the

concepts. Moore’s approach, despite its contradictory implementations, illuminates the

varying functions of style and genre within academic literature.

3. Genre Ideology

Moore shows that style and genre are not exclusive and operate (i.e., group music) in

different ways. Following from Moore, I will now address the genre theory of musicologist

Franco Fabbri, whose work focuses on popular music. In 1982, the study of popular music

was still to a large extent neglected by musicologists. Hence, Fabbri formulated his theory in

8 Moore gives the example of the theories of the musicologists Philip Tagg and Leonard Meyer who use similar argumentation but assign the concepts style and genre to sets of categories reversed from each other (Moore 433-434).

Vrouwenvelder 16

opposition to contemporary notions of genre in music. Fabbri defined genre as “a set of

musical events (real or possible) whose course is governed by a definite set of socially

accepted rules” (52). In Fabbri’s theory, genre is a concept that indicates a category of music.

Genre is constructed by five “socially accepted rules” which are hierarchically structured.

The structure where one rule is emphasized and another neglected is the “ideology” of a

genre (Fabbri 55). He stresses that genres differ from one another because their

corresponding ideologies differ. Both the specifities of the rules and their hierarchies differ.

Fabbri argues that genre is primarily constructed through formal and technical rules,

which can be understood as form and style. A genre based on a theoretical treatise is a good

example of a genre ideology that emphasizes this rule. He argues that in most musicological

texts, formalistic or technical rules are emphasized in investigating genres. Therefore, the

concepts of genre, style, and form are often confused and used interchangeably. Fabbri

stresses that form and style are among the rules for constructing a genre. The other rules he

identifies are semiotic, psychological, sociological and economic. When considering genre,

Fabbri argues, one has to take more than just its music into account. Therefore, style and

genre are not mutually exclusive, rather they operate in different domains.

Fabbri assumes that the notion of “musical events” is the key problematic in his

definition of genre, because he defines any activity involving sound as a musical event (52). I

disagree;9 I rather see genre’s definiteness in his concept, as problematic. Fabbri states that

“genres cannot coincide with a sociology of musical consumption” (59) because they are

temporal, clashing with his definition of genre as a “definite set of … rules”10 (52). He implies

that genres are a-historical and, therefore, cannot be limited to the trends of a given period.

Genre’s “definiteness” is important in his theory, because he treats genre as a tradition

which prevents the infinite multiplication of genres (Fabbri 54). I contend that infinite

multiplication is not a problem as long as genres are viewed as imposed by scholars or

journalists.

For Fabbri, a piece of music belongs to a genre. This is a top-down approach, because

once its genre is determined, a particular piece of music either fits or deviates from the

9 In my opinion, viewing every sound as musical is not problematic, but sound production can be subsidiary to other effects of an activity, for example driving a car. It is not possible or worthy to include all sounds into a system of categorization. Nevertheless, it is no problem to treat the sound of an engine as music but only if this leads to further insights and not just for the sake of categorization. 10 Emphasis mine.

Vrouwenvelder 17

label. In other words, Fabbri’s approach is genre-centred. Musicologist Eric Drott, by

contrast, investigates a bottom-up approach to genre which is music-centred. Drott deploys

genre as a research tool; a perspective through which to approach a piece of music. He

shows how the meaning of a composition shifts when ascribed to another genre (Drott 10-

11). Hence, genres are not a definite set of rules, nor do they indicate a definite set of pieces

of music. Genres change from scholar to scholar in the research process. Hence, the

(members of the) groupings change as well. Drott shows the agential power of a scholar to

change a piece of music simply by changing the perspective. Bringing his insights into the

field of journalism, Drott’s conception shows that naming of specific genres in musical

reviews is an imposition. Musical journalists ascribe a genre to Werkman; in the process,

consciously or not, they create a perspective or framework through which their readers can

approach the CD, guiding the meanings attached to the record.

In this chapter, I have explored why and how music is placed in categories. Humans

naturally categorize phenomena to inform future experiences with similar phenomena. In

music(ology), both style and genre are used to indicate a category of music. Allan Moore’s

discourse analysis shows how the terms group music in different ways. Nevertheless, the

differences are contradictory or at least inconsistent with each other. I next discussed the

genre theories of Franco Fabbri and Eric Drott, synthesizing them to arrive at a working

definition for this thesis: one could change meaning by putting music in the perspective of a

different genre, and also by putting it in the perspective of a different genre ideology. In the

next chapter, I look at different conceptions of the indie genre, showing how different genre

ideologies can change its meaning. My aim is to analyse the discourse on indie music without

constructing an ‘improved’ genre ideology for the category.

Vrouwenvelder 18

Indie

Talma, not devoid of obstinacy, takes a new course with Werkman, for this

occasion. He set aside the indie rock, he usually makes use of.11 (Jeuring)

In this chapter, I investigate what constitutes indie. It is clear that music reviewers

held an expectation based on Talma’s previous albums and the context in which the new

album was released. To elaborate on that context, I expand my focus to the record company

that released this and many other Talma albums. Excelsior Recordings presents itself as

onafhankelijk which is Dutch for “independent.” The term “indie” is derived from the word

“independent.” This self-categorization creates a set of expectations for the music released

by the company. In order to understand what indie means, I will now look deeper into

Excelsior Recordings.

Excelsior Recordings is a record company established in 1996 in Amsterdam. It moved

to Hilversum, the public media centre of the Netherlands, but returned to its original home

in Amsterdam in 2011. The label’s headquarters is currently located at the Tolhuistuin, a

newly developed cultural area in Amsterdam North at the shores of the river IJ. The

Tolhuistuin hosts, among other organisations, a satellite venue for Paradiso, one of the most

important concert halls for popular music in Amsterdam. It is also home to Studio Sound

Enterprise, which is owned by Frans Hagenaars, a co-founder of Excelsior Recordings, many

of whose bands have recorded there. Excelsior Recordings has released nearly 200 albums

since 1996, ten of which are by Meindert Talma.

Besides Excelsior’s self-categorization as indie, the record company is also

categorized, for example in the Dutch Wikipedia article, as producing alternative music. The

terms “indie” and “alternative” are often confused. The Wikipedia articles12 on the two

terms refer to one another: indie is described as “a genre of alternative rock” while

alternative “is a genre … that emerged from … independent music.” The online

11 Translated from Dutch: “Talma, niet gespeend van eigenzinnigheid, slaat met Werkman voor de gelegenheid een voor hem nieuwe weg in. De indierock, waarvan hij zich gewoonlijk bedient, heeft hij tijdelijk aan de kant gezet.” 12 “Indie Rock” Wikipedia. Web. 31 March 2016. and “Alternative Rock” Wikipedia. Web. 31 March 2016.

Vrouwenvelder 19

encyclopaedia acknowledges that the terms are used interchangeably. The difference

between indie and alternative is often explained along geographic lines with the former

related to the UK and the latter to the USA (for example by the websites About.com13 and

Wikipedia). When scholars (e.g., Fonarow Empire of Dirt 40; Hesmondhalgh 35) investigate

the difference between these terms, they deploy this geographical distinction, while

admitting that musicians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean identify with both terms. This

does not make the distinction clear, nor does this dichotomy account for musicians existing

outside of the US and UK (for instance, Excelsior Recordings, which is an Amsterdam

company). To come to a better understanding of the term “indie,” it is therefore necessary

to look beyond the geographical distinction, while also taking the category of “alternative’’

into account.

In this chapter, I analyse the differing genre ideologies of indie and alternative music.

These ideologies are mainly formulated by scholarly research into each category of music.

Alongside these scholarly approaches, I consider the perspectives of audiences and those

people involved in the production of music. Here, I use the work of English cultural

anthropologist Wendy Fonarow, whose ethnographic research is based on extensive

fieldwork in the British indie scene in the early 1990s, and on her experience as an employee

at various indie music studios. In addition to her academic work, Fonarow penned a column

as the “indie professor,” for The Guardian from 2010 through 2012, where she responded to

readers’ questions about indie music. In this way, she has actively reproduced discourse for

nearly two decades answering queries based on her previous research. For example, in her

second column (Fonarow, What is Indie?), Fonarow restated five characteristics which she

worked out in detail in her ethnography on the indie community (Fonarow, Empire of Dirt

26). For Fonarow, indie music is composed of the following five components: independent

music production and distribution, indie as a musical genre, attitude or spirit of

independence, indie as a superior taste and indie as anti-mainstream.

I understand these perspectives as different genre ideologies, in Fabbri’s terms. The

details outlined by Fonarow, however, do not coincide with the rules formulated by Fabbri. I

do not believe that genre ideologies should be limited to the five rules he defined, but for

practical reasons, I will adhere to his formulation to put him in dialogue with Fonarow’s

13 "Alternative Music 101 - Are 'Alternative' and 'Indie' the Same Thing?" About.com. Web. 31 March 2016.

Vrouwenvelder 20

observations. Therefore, I combine Fonarow’s last three characterizations, because these are

less pronounced and seem to echo Fabbri’s fourth ideology rule. Genre ideologies that

emphasize the fourth rule focus on the genre’s social construction. In the last section of this

chapter, I will discuss indie as a canon, a perspective that is often implicitly expressed in

efforts to define indie music. In this chapter, I will show how the meanings of the words

“indie” and “alternative” shift through changes in genre ideology.

1. Independent labels and distribution

Excelsior Recordings initiated a market for independent music labels (Nederlandse

onafhankelijke label markt) on Sunday, 2 September 2012. Excelsior’s public relations

representative and organizer Adriaan Pels explained in an interview with 3voor12.vpro.nl

(Vrieze) that the market was founded to celebrate independently-produced music. With

independent record stores rapidly disappearing, this market is a new way to sell records,

said Pels. Excelsior Recordings invited many independent record companies to the

Tolhuistuin, as the market was exclusively reserved for independently-produced music. In

this section, I investigate indie as a genre ideology, that foregrounds the economic aspects of

the genre. I refer here specifically to its modes of production and distribution, and to the

company policies of independent institutions (e.g., studios and radios). Franco Fabbri states

that genres with an ideology emphasizing this rule must deviate from the norm, because

otherwise it would not be pronounced enough to sufficiently define the group of music (59).

He adds that only scholars identify genres on the basis of economic rules. With indie,

however, this is not the case.

The first, and most widely-expressed perspective on indie, identified by Fonarow is

the production and distribution of music independent of the major labels (“majors”).

Opposed to the majors are the independents: the indie music labels. Scholarly definitions of

indie and alternative music are built on a similar opposition to mainstream music production

and distribution embodied by the majors. They rarely define what constitutes a major label,

but scholars with a background in musical production often do. Economist Brian Hracs

explains that the majors which gradually came into existence through the 1980s, are large

multinational corporations which own every aspect of the production process and which also

own smaller specialised labels (Hracs 443-445). The majors have full control over the

Vrouwenvelder 21

production process. The source of independence is unclear, because an “indie” label cannot

be more independent than these multinationals with regard to autonomy and self-

sufficiency.

Independence should therefore be conceived from the standpoint of the musician.

An artist loses her or his (creative) independence when signed to a major record label. These

artists have to conform to the artistic and commercial goals of the corporation; at least this

is how the people who are involved in independent music production perceive the majors.

As an alternative to the majors, musicians established their own record labels and

distribution networks in the UK (Fonarow Empire of Dirt 30; Hesmondhalgh 35) while a

similar effort was made for college radio in the USA (Hibbet 58; Kruse 33-34).

Fonarow explains (Empire of Dirt 30-35) that in the UK, music consumption was

influenced by radio programs and weekly music magazines. Music charts were instrumental

in this process, because they were measures of financial success. These charts were a

reflection of sales figures and were therefore dominated by acts signed to majors. In the

1970s, alternative charts were developed to represent music which was not produced or

released by major labels. Companies were founded to manage the distribution of records for

a variety of independent recording labels, while independent charts were informed by sales

figures compiled by these independent distribution companies. This distribution process was

a foundation for the success of the music on independent record labels, according to popular

music scholar David Hesmondhalgh (37-38). This process was cheaper and more easily

accessible than that used by the majors. Like-minded companies worked together, even

internationally, to sell and promote each other’s music. Artists controlled their creative

output, without having to make concessions to the companies, because they were managing

the distribution process themselves. The common characteristic of indie music is that it is

too progressive to be produced via major labels. The independent production process was so

important to its creation that the music was named after the process. This is the British

narrative of indie, according to Fonarow and Hesmondhalgh.

In the USA, the dominant narrative focuses on the network of alternative radio

stations which were typically located at university campuses. Small communities were

connected through the local music they heard on college radio stations and through

community music magazines (Kruse 33-34). College radio was aimed at a young and

educated audience who wanted more experimental and less accessible music, according to

Vrouwenvelder 22

literary scholar Ryan Hibbet (58). The definition of alternative is thus less restrictive than

that of indie. Media scholar Holly Kruse (35) observes that musicians identified themselves

with alternative as long as they believed that their music deviated from the norm. Due to the

fact that the distribution process in the USA was not as transparent as it was in the UK,

anyone could choose to align with the term. Once college radio music gained popularity in

the early 1990s, the term “alternative” was quickly adopted by the majors. Kruse, a self-

proclaimed aficionado and insider, asserts that “real” alternative music fans still insisted on

buying music produced on independent labels and sold at independent record stores (Ibid.).

At this point, alternative and indie have become intermingled. In both the UK and

USA narratives, radio and distribution are crucial for forming an identity in opposition to the

majors. Being an alternative to, or independent of (music signed at) majors are similar ideas,

and thus the terms became interchangeable. A good example is the oft-quoted book by

journalist Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie

Underground, 1981–1991 (2001), which sketches the histories of indie bands in the United

States. Although he adheres to the narrative about college radio, the decisive criteria for

inclusion in his book is whether an artist is signed at an independent label. Azerrad’s policy is

so strict that he does not include the story of R.E.M. who he identifies as one of the most

important bands for the scene, despite the fact that they were signed to a major (Azerrad 4-

6). Azerrad’s book exemplifies the confusion between indie and alternative. I do not contend

that he is wrong, but I think his argument underscores the arbitrary nature of the terms.

In the contemporary music industry, both alternative and indie are still widely-used

terms, though there is a preference for the latter in both academic and popular media.

Nitsuh Abebe, contributor for the influential website Pitchfork, explains that the popularity

of alternative music in the 1990s and the appropriation of the term (and the bands that were

associated with the category) by large corporations and mass audiences led to a preference

for the term “indie,” among those who wished to dissociate from mass culture. Those who

wanted to resist appropriation felt more affinity for indie because it implied independently-

produced music. This confirms Kruse’s observations who noticed a similar stance towards

the terms in 1993. There had been no clear division between indie and alternative to start

with, because both college radio and independent record companies were alternative and

indie. When majors started to infiltrate the independent charts, the terms indie and

alternative did not even refer to these specific forms of music distribution anymore (Desztich

Vrouwenvelder 23

and McClung 202; Fonarow 37; Kruse 35). Indie and alternative became hollow words with

little reference to the distribution of music and therefore ceased to be precise musical

categories. Nevertheless, this account of indie music’s economic ideals is the most

frequently cited explanation of the categories. In light of Fabbri’s genre theory it is

remarkable that indie and alternative are mainly indicators of economic issues related to

music. Fabbri specified that this rule is mostly emphasized by academics (59); by contrast,

the indie narrative I have just detailed is shared by both academic and non-academic

sources.

Excelsior Recordings was founded in 1996, in the midst of this diffusion of terms like

“major,” “indie,” and “alternative.” In the spirit of the times, Excelsior outsourced some of

its activities to subsidiaries of majors (Bambarger). For a long time, their distribution was

managed by MCA Records (subsidiary of Universal) and later by V2 Records (also, at one

time, a subsidiary of Universal). V2 was a third owner of Excelsior Recordings in 2006,

according to a newspaper article (Cabenda), and as they still do the distribution, it is safe to

assume that this is still the case. V2 is currently a big company that does the distribution for

many independent labels throughout Europe.

This supports Hesmondhalgh’s observation that independents were not opposed to

commercial success at all, but simply saw their independence as a more sincere way to

achieve it (35). “Independent” is thus a relative term in this case, because it merely indicates

that Excelsior Recordings operates on its own. This commercial tendency, or lack of anti-

commerciality, is examined by Yoni Drijfhout who researched the stances of musicians from

Excelsior Recordings, through popular media interviews. One example which Drijfhout

provides is that of GEM who composed songs for a television commercial with the intention

of becoming rich and famous, though they succeeded only partially and temporarily

(Drijfhout 43-51). I will not reproduce Drijhout’s research; rather I offer it as evidence that

indie musicians’ attitudes, like indie label business practices, sometimes deviate from the

oft-expressed indie myth of anti-commercialism. When one emphasizes its economic rule,

indie becomes an elastic concept. The record market, which I discussed above, exemplifies

this elasticity. Excelsior Recordings took the lead in gathering independent labels on the

Nederlandse onafhankelijke label markt. Independence seems a strict and easily observable

criterion, but they nevertheless invited the label Top Notch to the market. Top Notch, which

is a subsidiary of Universal Music, is also connected to Excelsior. They have released records

Vrouwenvelder 24

together, the most recent being Armand & The Kik (2015). These collaborations show that

defining music solely on the basis of its production model does not work.

Although regular distribution may be outsourced to a large multinational corporation,

Excelsior Recordings still uses alternative distribution methods to deliver music to their

audience. In 2011, the label started a supporters club to which members subscribe to

receive a new record on a monthly basis. Ferry Roseboom, the owner of Excelsior

Recordings, explained in an interview with newspaper Volkskrant, that the subscription is a

new way to connect with their audience, while also financing the record label (Huut). The

subscription also grants discounts to club members at independent record stores. This kind

gesture shows the network of related companies and the mutual support of independent

enterprises.

In this section, I viewed Excelsior Recordings from the perspective of its distribution

and corporate policy. Excelsior’s practices follow the British narrative and can thus be called

indie music, although their musical output is also often described as alternative. The

narratives of both indie and alternative, whether British or US-American, focus on the 1980s,

emphasizing that since the 1990s, the terms have become less clear in relation to economic

rules. Since Excelsior was founded in the 1990s, one cannot expect it to align with narratives

of the 1980s. Nevertheless, Excelsior Recordings organizes a market and sets up a

subscription system as an alternative or independent means of distribution. The economic

rule, in the genre’s ideology, that initially gave indie its name, is hard to maintain and discern

over the course of several decades. The economy changes and the (production of) music

changes along with it, but since the meanings of indie and alternative now rarely refer to

commerce and corporate policies, this genre ideology no longer suffices to identify a

particular category of music.

2. Guitars, guitars, “jangly” guitars

In an album review for the music journal Lust for Life, Chris van Oostrom uses only

two sentences to describe the music of Werkman. He claims that the music is remarkably

more serious than Talma’s usual “droogkloterigheid” (“dry humorousness” in English) and

that the sound is “autumnal.” Most journalists do not put much effort into describing music.

The vast majority of scholars who write about indie or alternative music likewise neglect this

Vrouwenvelder 25

task, either because they focus their research on other aspects or do not possess the

capacity to accurately describe it. Nevertheless, they strain to offer descriptions of the

music. For instance: “Indie would be stylish four-piece beat combos with skinny guys and

skinny girls in skinny jeans wearing their everyday clothes on stage, a twee, retro, or lo-fi

sound, simple songs” (Fonarow, What is Indie?). The music is often described with a series of

vague adjectives and frequently combined with a description of the band members and their

dress code. Often the writer provides just one definite characterisation, but when describing

the evolution of a genre, the description does not gain clarity. Take this example by

journalist Simon Reynolds:

Back in the 1980s …. indie was about defiant amateurishness and naivety. Its

defects – shaky rhythm sections, weak voices, clumsy playing – were a refusal

of the perfectionism and professionalism of 80s rock and pop. [In the 2000s]

all [indie bands] were significantly more dynamic rhythmically than the late-

90s Britpop afterbirth. (Reynolds 2010)

Although descriptions of the genre are vague there seems to be a clear consensus on some

parts of describing the music and at the same time there are contrasting differences.

Almost all sources stress that indie music is guitar-centred. A quick look at the

records released by Excelsior Recordings confirms that indeed many of them feature the

guitar as a prominent instrument, yet several of the songs by Spinvis, one of Excelsior’s top-

selling acts, feature little to no guitar. Nevertheless, while many Excelsior bands reserve a

prominent place for the guitar in their music, this is no indication of how the music actually

sounds. About.com uses the word “jangly” (among other adjectives) to describe the

technique or sound of the guitar. This adjective is also used by scholars to characterize the

guitar (Hesmondhalgh 38; Kruse 36). The word lacks clarity, but seems to indicate that the

guitarist plays a bit carelessly, without precision. “Jangly” has also been used to describe the

sound of a twelve-string guitar introduced by the Beatles and the Byrds in the 1960s.

Guitarists discuss how to simulate this sound without a twelve-string guitar, on the internet

forum Thegearpage.net. Their suggested technique is to narrow the ambitus of the chords

and to use the same tones in different chords to create a drone; this is created by playing so-

called “open chords.” By maintaining one’s grip and only changing the position of the hand,

a guitarist does not have to adjust their fingering. This results in a drone of open strings

complemented by the principles of a chord. While this is a relatively simple technique, the

Vrouwenvelder 26

combination of the drone and the chords can result in “difficult” intervals like ninths.

Nevertheless, it is an easy way to play the guitar, and one which obscures harmonic

progression. Scholars stress this carefree, slightly sloppy style in ‘’jangly’’ guitar playing.

This understanding of a sloppy technique reflects the assumption that indie and

alternative music emerged from punk (Azerrad 6; Fonarow 28; Hesmondhalgh 34; McDonald

356). Some regard it as an extension of punk’s anti-professional stance and its distillation of

rock aesthetics through short songs with simple structures (Fonarow 48). Others stress the

more experimental side of indie, which they see as a departure from the anger and straight-

forward guitar assault of punk music (Hesmondhalgh 39-40). Indie music is understood as

both simple and complex; while it may seem contradictory, most people deploy this

dichotomy in their descriptions of the category. As I explained above, indie music is

considered to be different enough to be excluded from major labels and commercial radio

stations.

Ryan Hibbet (55) also identifies several subcategories of indie, but finds two extremes

which explain the complex and shifting nature of the category. These are indie music’s

tendencies towards both simplicity and complexity, as described by others. Hibbet (60-67) is

one of the few observers to identify and delineate the two main currents in indie music. The

first, founded in the singer/songwriter tradition, is lo-fi and noisy, making minimal use of

instrumentation; it is characterized by cynical lyrics which are focused on self-deprecation.

The second is a movement of bands and musicians who use unconventional instruments or

who deploy unusual playing techniques. The music of artists in this latter category is often

heavily-produced in studios, suggesting that these bands consider the recording studio an

extension of their creative output. Indie’s lo-fi movement, by contrast, takes a defiantly

sloppy stance towards recording techniques. These descriptions are again not very precise,

but Hibbet helps to clarify the two dominant (and conflicting) strands of music that people

associate with indie.

Turning to the case of musician Low Barlow, Hibbet (63) argues that self-deprecation

and a lack of seriousness are foundational for indie. He connects these attitudinal stances

with a tendency towards simplicity and minimalism. Here, minimalism not only refers to the

number of musicians, but also to the sound quality; a lo-fi sound is preferred while song

structures are kept as short as necessary (Kruse 36). This brevity is achieved through the

omission of bridges and instrumental solos, which are regarded as narcissistic and

Vrouwenvelder 27

pretentious (Fonarow Empire of Dirt 42, 67; Kruse 36). Hesmondhalgh (38) explains that

indie bands often rejected dance rhythms in response to the domination of the pop charts

by techno, funk, disco and hip-hop music. Likening this stance to protestant Puritanism,

Fonarow (Empire of Dirt 40) characterizes indie with words like “simplicity and austerity,”

“hypervaluation of childhood,” “nostalgia,” and “guitar fetishism,” while concluding that

indie can also be seen as technophobic. On this latter point, Fonarow also admits that indie

music has embraced dance rhythms and technology at various points in its evolution. This is,

she argues, due to the inherent nostalgia of indie music (ibid. 46, 71); as some techniques

grow older, it is permitted to use them.

The gradual appropriation of older techniques is a hallmark of the second type of

indie music, which is often described as eclectic and complex. The lyrics are foremost

connected with this tendency in the music. Simon Reynolds, who is perhaps most influential

in this discourse, describes it as “head music,” intended for contemplation spurred by

sophisticated lyrics (Reynolds 13-14). Or as Fonarow expressed it in her second column, this

strand of indie music is characterized by “songs with intelligent, nostalgic, escapist, or

depressing lyrics” (What is Indie?). These adjectives are only explicitly expressed in relation

to the lyrics, but they also implicitly refer to the music. Musicians deliberately opt for formal

simplicity; it is an intentional choice taken to convey a particular message. As I argued above,

the resulting music is often too inaccessible and complex to be played on mainstream radio

or signed to a major record label. There are no non-musicologists who can explicate the

complex and inaccessible qualities of the music.

Musicologists David Blake (1) and Chris McDonald (356) both emphasize that the

essence of indie is “difference;” therefore, they look at how indie music differs from

mainstream music. McDonald examines guitar-oriented alternative music, discovering that

much of it is centred around third relations. Especially significant are what he calls “modal

subversions.” In modal subversions, a major key is implied (for instance, in the vocals) while

the harmonic progression centres around a relation with a minor third taken from the

respective minor key, or the other way around (McDonald 358-361). McDonald argues that

this is possible through the use of tonally ambiguous power chords as fundamental chords

(Ibid. 356-357). Power chords are simply a sounding interval of a fifth and thus omit a

defining third. This differs from the jangly guitars described above, because a jangly guitar

Vrouwenvelder 28

sound can feature sevenths and ninths. McDonald argues that modal subversion through

third relations is distinct from techniques found in metal, rock and pop music (Ibid. 362).

Blake takes a different approach to investigate the difference in indie music. He also

focuses on the guitar, but narrows his research to timbre, which he claims is the

fundamental aspect of pop music. Blake works from the assumption that timbre reflects

intentional decisions in studio production. He observes, for example, that My Bloody

Valentine’s guitar on “Only Shallow” (1991) sounds “similarly full, … more distorted, … less

digestible, and it is not homogeneous”14 (Blake 7) in comparison to a mainstream guitar

sound. After analysing another two songs, he comes to the conclusion that neither example

is homogeneous by mainstream standards. A homogeneous sound is one which does not

develop or change over the course of a song or in relation to other songs (Ibid. 6). Blake

therefore argues that indie is bound by a heterogeneous timbre (Ibid. 11).

Blake’s observation is as true as it is arbitrary; he studied music which already differs

from the mainstream and, after analysing it, concluded that it differs. McDonald made a

similar move: by specifically looking for third relations in alternative music, he ignored other

chord progressions or other kinds of music which contain similar harmonies. These

musicological analyses are interesting but the conclusions that follow from them are weak as

the answers were already concealed in the hypotheses. These studies do not observe indie

music (as a grouping) and discover these characteristics within the music, but instead

assume these characteristics from the outset, using them to prescribe and delineate which

music is indie. Indeed, the results could vary simply by researching another set of songs.

“Difference” is thus not firm ground upon which to construct a category like alternative or

indie.

What the work of these musicologists does show, is that musical decisions are always

deliberate, contradicting the opinions of laypeople who describe indie music as simple and

sloppy. I want to argue that the terms “indie” and “alternative” do not describe a particular

sound, song structure or musical form. At least there is no consensus about this in the

literature. Indie cannot be described as a genre ideology that emphasizes technical and

formal musical rules. In addition, no clear distinction can be made between alternative and

14 Blake elaborates on these qualifications extensively in his paper but the discussion has no added value in this thesis.

Vrouwenvelder 29

indie on the basis of their sound. McDonald does explicitly cite alternative music’s use of

power chords, while others associate indie with jangly guitars, but both techniques obscure

tonality. However, McDonald fails to differentiate between indie and alternative, instead

researching modal subversion through third relations in alternative music. This is consistent

with most scholarly and popular writing which falls short of articulating a musical difference

between indie and alternative.

3. Elitism

Most scholars (Azerrad, Fonarow, Hesmondhalgh, Hibbet, Kruse, Reynolds) who write

about alternative and indie have no musicological background. Most studies focus instead

on the music community, researching how people experience the music. They often describe

indie by conveying peoples’ (musicians as well as the audience) stances towards the music.

From the literature, I distilled four ways of describing indie without directly referring to the

modes of production or the sound of the music. First, those involved with the music are

described as having an alternative stance towards making music. This attitude is often

expressed as “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY): a philosophy of being independent in musical self-

expression, without conforming to the commercial dictates of corporations. Azerrad puts it

this way: “the key principle of American indie rock wasn’t a circumscribed musical style; it

was the punk ethos of DIY” (6). In this narrative, the attitude comes first, leading to

unconventional music and innovative methods of production. This ethos also promotes the

idea that everyone can participate in making music, blurring the line between performer and

audience. Azerrad proudly states that one does not need money, nor a pair of binoculars to

see an indie performance, thereby implying that the music is for everyone. Despite this view,

many scholars find elitism in indie music culture. Independence for the indie listener means

freedom from imposed opinions and mainstream tastes, leading to elitism. This involves

people’s stance while listening to music.

Hibbet (58) points out that, although indie stems from independent, this connection

is only understood by a select few, and thus functions as a shibboleth; keeping those who do

not know the true origins of the word on the outside. By regulating the membership of their

community, indie fans seek to distinguish themselves and their superior tastes, from those

who are just obedient followers of simple mainstream music. Fonarow (Empire of Dirt 57)

Vrouwenvelder 30

acknowledges that this is also true within the indie community. Indie fans often regard

themselves to know (and to know before others) which music is worthy of attention;

introducing music to friends is a way to demonstrate one’s superior knowledge. Hibbet,

drawing on the theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, adds that this endows the

“knower” with cultural capital (56).

This tension between accessibility and elitism is also visible in the Excelsior

Recordings supporters club. The combined monthly releases from the supporters club form

the core of Excelsior’s output. In every month since 2011, the record company chooses the

most representative of their new recordings, establishing an inner hierarchy. The motto of

the subscription service, drawn from classic mythology,15 is Experto Credite (See Appendix:

figure 2) which means “trust the experienced one.” Another motto, referring to classical

antiquity can be found on the pressed labels (See Appendix: figure 3) of the CDs: Musis

Sacrum. This means “dedicated to the muses” and refers to the nine Greek goddesses of

inspiration. The last, and most obvious reference to the classics is found in the name of the

record company itself: excelsior meaning “superior” or “always higher.”

These Latin phrases and the ubiquitous crown in their branding imagery might be

perceived to betray Excelsior’s pretentions. I do not think, however, that Excelsior aspires to

promote an elite culture; membership is easily accessible and the subscription service grants

free admission to many concerts. On the other hand, Excelsior’s logo is perceived as a mark

of quality and is displayed on every album cover they release (Cabenda). Indeed, an Excelsior

release can be easily identified by glancing at the cover (See Appendix: figure 4). Perhaps

aware of potential elitism, Excelsior changed their lay-out in 2015, introducing, via a

supporters club release, a new logo-free cover design with The Miseries (2015), the debut

album of The Miseries (See Appendix: figure 5). The self-awareness and modesty of this

decision suggests to me that Excelsior is far from elitist. It thus deviates from Hibbet’s

description of indie, instead recalling Azerrad’s formulation. Accessibility aside, the

supporters club could still be perceived as elitist, because membership is seen as a sign of

superior taste. The supporters club thus shows that both perceptions about easy

accessibility and elitist taste are understandable, or at least applicable to Excelsior

Recordings.

15 Aeneid by Vergil.

Vrouwenvelder 31

The third description of indie most often expressed in the literature, refers to the

aesthetic aims of the music. Musical quality is indicated with words like “authenticity” and

“inventiveness;” in order to maintain authenticity, the music must reinvent itself. Cultural

capital is ephemeral, because “new” music rapidly grows “old” (Hibbet 64). Indie culture

measures authenticity by discerning the music’s potential to be played live by real people

using real instruments (Fonarow Empire of Dirt 69). It is additionally expressed through indie

fashion or paradoxically, through the apparent rejection of fashion. Fonarow (Ibid. 43-45, 76)

emphasizes this latter point by noting that indie performers often wear the same clothes on

stage as in daily life, in contrast to the artifice of mainstream musicians. All of these aspects

foster the illusion of unmediated performance, as if dressing and playing in an unadorned or

ordinary fashion is not also a deliberate choice. In her research on authenticity and kitsch in

indie music, musicologist Emily Dolan (464) argues that this predilection for authenticity is

motivated by nostalgia.

Indeed, in contradiction to the idea that music becomes rapidly outdated, indie is

characterized as deeply nostalgic, perhaps longing for childhood or the 1960s (Dolan 464;

Fonarow Empire of Dirt 45). Fonarow argues that since indie is a diminutive of independent,

it immediately evokes smallness and childhood. She claims that indie is spelled with a lower

case ‘i’ as opposed to the capital ‘A’ in alternative, distinguishing the relative immaturity of

British indie from US-American alternative music. Fonarow further elaborates this distinction

by associating the former with femininity and the latter with masculinity (Ibid. 40).

Dolan (463-467) argues that a (childlike) drive to obsessively collect the music of the

past, which she identifies as kitsch, takes root in the sound of contemporary music.

Hesmondhalgh also discerns this longing for the past, specifying that it is the era of the

1960s which indie aficionados most long for (46-47). While these scholars are mostly

concerned with the 1980s and 1990s. Vice.com observes that contemporary indie bands are

now adopting fashion from the 1980s (Cills), suggesting that the focus of nostalgia has

changed over time likely coinciding with the childhood era of the performers. Following this

logic, it only makes sense that a nostalgia for the 90s should appear in current indie music.

In this section, I highlighted several currents in the music that are highly subjective

and contradictory. Using Fabbri’s theory, these currents can be understood as behavioural

rules. Viewing indie as a genre ideology that emphasizes the stances of listeners and

musicians toward the music is inherently contradictory. Academic and popular discourse

Vrouwenvelder 32

characterize indie as both accessible to everyone through its DIY ethos and paradoxically

elitist. This tension also applies to notions of authenticity which rely on conflicting values of

invention and nostalgia. These principles are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but the

divergent perspectives on indie are the inevitable result of differing frames of reference. My

assumption is that these observations are probably not wrong, but that the conclusions

drawn are often inverted. Music scholars label music or a community as “indie” because it

matches the specific characteristics they assign to indie. As a result, contradictory

characteristics are attributed to indie. Hereby, it seems that just indie, not alternative, is

described in these terms but this is perhaps due to the predilection to use the word indie.

4. Canon

For a final perspective on indie and alternative music, I will now discuss the

construction of canons. Excelsior Recordings has made some playlists available via Spotify16

which contain songs by their own artists, as well as those outside of the Excelsior imprint.

These playlists function as a canon, with a clear bias toward Excelsior’s own output. These

lists are unpretentious and, perhaps, merely reflect what Excelsior’s office staff enjoy

listening to while working. On the contrary, in 2012, a group of fifteen self-proclaimed Dutch

authorities on indie music17 were asked to compose a list of songs to answer the question:

“what is indie?” The institutions that formed this canon are all closely related to Excelsior

Recordings. The record store Concerto (where Excelsior members are granted discounts) and

Paradiso, which is a neighbour to Excelsior-affiliated Studio Sound Enterprises were both

participants in the survey. Most of the few Dutch contributions to the list are signed to

Excelsior Recordings.

Many scholars also implicitly form canons. Azerrad’s book obviously seeks to

construct a canon for US-American indie using the stories of thirteen bands, while others

include a list of bands in their articles or books. Fonarow, for example, provides a list (Empire

of Dirt 41) without differentiating between British and US-American bands, and declares it all

indie. She even includes The Hives, which is a Swedish band. This contradicts the distinctions

16 An internet music streaming service: https://play.spotify.com/, accessed 17-7-2015. 17 These fifteen persons represented pressed media (LiveXS, Oor, Revu, Volkskrant), weblogs (Bright, Kicking the Habit, Stereo), national broadcasting (3FM, 3voor12), a concert venue (Paradiso) and a record store (Concerto), see http://www.paulsdevelopmentservices.nl/oor/, accessed 26-6-2015.

Vrouwenvelder 33

she made between the geographical differences and gender associations of indie and

alternative, thereby obscuring her own definitions. The problem with a canon is that it is

often not clear whether it is meant to describe the core or the totality of the music. It also

obscures the shared characteristics that include or exclude music from such a list.

Often, there is a certain hierarchy or linearity implied (which echoes the elitist

tendencies I described in indie music). Canons rarely seem to include music which predates

punk. Hesmondhalgh even states that indie is essentially post-punk (35). Thus, when viewed

as a canon, indie seems to imply a specific time period. This view can be challenged by

looking at some of the artists who have been influential on indie music. For instance, Alex

Chilton (Kruse 36), The Byrds (Hesmondhalgh 46) and Velvet Underground (Dolan 459) are

all mentioned as founders, predecessors or trailblazers for indie music. The formation of

canons would seem to contradict most of the characteristics of indie (with perhaps the

exception of elitism). Canons imply authoritative knowledge backed up by institutional force,

which clashes with independence and alternativity. The formation of a canon is thus not only

useless in distinguishing between indie and alternative, it is also impractical for delineating

either one of the genres. Neither Franco Fabbri nor Allan Moore deploy canons.

Nevertheless, I observed a tendency to make lists in the literature I analysed. This tendency

results in the vaguest description of indie. On the other hand, my research found that indie

refers to a period, a characteristic that other genre ideologies did not explicitly show.

5. Indie as a Genre

Although most scholars who try to define indie use the terms “genre” and “style”

interchangeably, there seems to be a preference for the former. Musicologist Chris

McDonald is the only scholar who uses the term style to describe alternative music. This

seems no coincidence when McDonald’s research is viewed in light of Allan Moore’s

observations about the difference between style and genre. Moore found that when making

categories, musicologists favour style, while popular music scholars favour genre (Moore

434). This latter group mostly consist of non-musicologists, often hailing from a cultural

studies or sociology background. It should be no surprise, then, that one of the few

musicologists who writes about alternative describes it as a style, but there are more

reasons for this.

Vrouwenvelder 34

Let me briefly reiterate the division between genre and style, according to Allan

Moore’s discourse analysis. Genre expresses the reception of music and relates to cultural

conventions; its hierarchy is quantitatively constructed. Style, by contrast, reflects the

production of music and can be appropriated; its hierarchy is qualitatively constructed. This

could explain why musicologists, who have specialized knowledge about the production of

music, favour style, while those who primarily study music holistically as finished products

favour genre. McDonald researched the specific harmonic progressions that characterize

alternative music. This seems like a plausible explanation, lending support to Moore’s

observations. Musicologist Blake, by contrast, presents a nuanced understanding of indie as

a genre, with some specific styles (e.g., ‘shoegaze’) attributed to it. His study of timbres is

thus also an inquiry into the style(s) of the indie genre. Musicologist Dolan asserts that

alternative is merely a style and can therefore be adopted by non-indie bands (460). Echoing

Blake, she proposes that indie is the overarching genre and alternative is just one of its many

styles. It is a style quotable by others.

To examine the different views, I used the notion of genre ideology by Franco Fabbri.

The problem with Fabbri’s theory is the definiteness which characterizes a genre ideology.

This definiteness also concerns the rigidity of a genre’s ideology; which rules are emphasized

or not. The multitude of different approaches to indie is discordant with Fabbri’s rigid

theory. For instance, Dolan decodes indie’s semiotics of “kitsch” and “nostalgia,” while Blake

emphasizes its technical properties. Hesmondhalgh defines indie through its independent

production and distribution, which remains the most frequently cited origin of indie. Fabbri

argues that genres may not coincide with a sociology of musical consumption, which is

ephemeral by nature. This reveals that Fabbri, in his search for a universal reality, neglects

the fact that genres are often created for sale on the capitalist market and thus ultimately

reflect musical consumption. Indie, in this light, is also often defined by a sociology of

musical consumption, specifically one that deviates from mainstream ways economic

models.

Multiplicity is allowed, even necessary, in Drott’s theory. He argues that different

conceptions of a genre exist and that this variation allows to highlight distinct aspects of a

grouping of music. This is a good explanation for the differing and often contradictory views

on indie and alternative. Nevertheless, there is one implicit problem with these different

views, which Fonarow’s work alone highlights. In the conclusion of her chapter, she argues

Vrouwenvelder 35

that each of the different views of indie fails to accurately describe the experienced reality.

Her solution is to define indie by the very discussion of its boundaries and to locate indie in

its own discourse (Fonarow Empire of Dirt 77). This argument reveals, what remains implicit

in other texts, that definitions of indie are rarely about the music itself. They are instead

derived from and refer to the discourse about the music.

This problem arises because most scholars start from a conception of a genre and

look for examples in the music to support their view. These researchers follow Fabbri’s top-

down approach to genre and to music(ology) as a whole. Drott alone views genre from the

bottom-up, starting from an individual artist, or even from a composition, finding that the

same piece of music conveys different kinds of meanings based on one’s chosen perspective.

Meaning in this sentence indicates meaning in the broad sense from semiotic significance to

functional intention. These shifting meanings show that the naming of a genre constitutes an

imposition on music. For Drott this imposition is not a calculated deceit but a research

methodology. In Drott’s theory, categorization not only reflects humans urge to structure

the world, but also stems from, in Deleuzian terms, a rhizomatic understanding of the world

and its concomitant performativity.

In the first chapter, I argued that the concepts of genre and style cannot be defined

or, at least, cannot cover all discourses within the same semantic meaning. Moore’s

dichotomy of genre and style is contested by indie, because indie is often defined by its

social context and as a sub-category of pop music. Both are aspects of a genre, but one can

only label a particular band as indie if one knows how the music is produced, which is an

element of style. I do not contend that the terms should be abandoned, but I do argue that

they should be used more carefully. The solution for the (academic) use of the terms can be

found by taking Drott’s ideas to a larger scale. Not only does a scholar have to specify how a

specific genre or style is used, but one also has to specify what is indicated by those terms. In

the first chapter, I formulated a working definition of genre, by combining Fabbri’s and

Drott’s theories, in order to analyse the discourse on indie. My analysis showed that indie

resists being pigeonholed as a genre. Indeed, one may wonder why indie is even considered

a musical genre, but the fact remains that it is widely discussed as such, both in popular and

academic discourses. For example, the Spotify application’s main page (see Appendix: figure

6) suggests genre specific “radio stations” among which one can choose “indie/alternative.”

Vrouwenvelder 36

This is typical of the confusion between indie and alternative and the widespread

misperception of indie as a music genre.

In this chapter, I showed how indie changes as the genre ideology changes. In the

first, and most often expressed perspective, indie came to existence in the shadow of major

record companies. From this perspective, indie exclusively refers to a mode of musical

production. From the second perspective, indie is characterized by unconventional and

guitar-oriented music. Third, indie is also defined through the behaviour of participants in

the indie scene. Finally, with the perspective of indie as a canon, I enumerated four genre

ideologies expressing different meanings of indie. Respectively, indie is the independent

market, a specific type of music, the scene (its producers and listeners) and a specific time

period. These perspectives do not necessarily exclude each other, although they seem

internally contradictory. Nevertheless, the different genre ideologies illuminate how people

conceive of indie and (in relation with) alternative.

Vrouwenvelder 37

Werkman

Ik was een verklaarder van het onverklaarbare.18 (Talma “Verklaarder van het

Onverklaarbare” 2015)

Werkman by Meindert Talma and The Melisma Saxophone Quartet was recorded in

honor of “Werkman year 2015,” the memorial year for the Groninger printing press artist

Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, who was shot dead by the Nazis in 1945. The text in the booklet

accompanying the CD suggests that one can hear Werkman telling his life story on the

album. Although Talma is the composer and singer, the lyrics are largely comprised of

Werkman’s texts, which the former has set to music. These texts are complemented by lyrics

written by Talma who was inspired by Werkman’s letters and the artist’s biography by Hans

van Straten.

The songs on Werkman are sung from a first person perspective. The ‘I’ tells the story

of Werkman’s life, as if it were sung by Werkman himself. Meindert Talma’s Northern accent

promotes this illusion, because Werkman hailed from the same region and one can imagine

him having a similar voice. Most of the lyrics are written in the past tense which suggests the

idea that the artist is looking back at his own life. Werkman can be divided into two parts:

the first six songs depict Werkman’s artistic career and rise to success, while the four closing

songs recount the second world war, culminating in the artist’s death. The first part is sung

from a pre-war perspective, while the second part is sung from the hereafter.

The first song, “Leens,” narrates Werkman’s move to Groningen after the death of his

father. The move enabled him to become an artist but also to reflect upon and appreciate

life in his hometown of Leens. This leads to the next song, “M’n Eerste Vrouw Noemde mij

Poedel,” which details his marriages, his successful printing company and his eventual

disinterest in the business. The rapid succession of events is contrasted in the next song, “De

Ploeg,” which is solely devoted to recounting Werkman’s membership in the Groninger artist

collective of the same name. “De Ploeg” contains parts in the imperative (as opposed to the

past tense deployed in other songs). These sections are excerpts from a manifesto; this does

18 Translated from Dutch: “I was an explainer of the inexplicable”.

Vrouwenvelder 38

not affect the retrospective style, because the rest of the song is still in the past tense. It

seems as if Werkman is remembering this manifesto or revisiting it from another point in

time. In the fourth song, “In Mijn Wolkenkrabber,” Werkman walks up and down the stairs

of his “skyscraper” to eventually find himself content in the attic. Although his

contemporaries assumed Werkman was down in the dumps over the failure of his printing

business, he was actually up in the attic inventing a new art form, by way of the printing

press.

The two central pieces of the album, “Zie de Drukkersrollen Rollen” and “Een Ril

Doorklieft Het Lijf Dat Vreest,” are sung in the present tense. These songs contain passages

from poems Werkman wrote in 1923 and 1926. The present tense deployed in these songs

leaves the impression that all of the preceding songs were sung from a 1926-perspective. In

“Leens,” Werkman sings that he would like to return to his hometown someday. This

supports my interpretation of the songs as coming from a 1926-perspective, because

Werkman was still alive (in contrast to the succeeding songs) and thus still capable of moving

back to Leens. In addition, the narrative, up until these two pieces, has concerned

Werkman’s establishment as a printing press artist. These first six songs do not allude to his

death of which he would be unaware from a 1926-perspective.

The final four songs are sung from the vantage of the afterlife. The split between the

two parts of the album marks Werkman’s changed attitude. In the sixth song, Werkman

expresses his longstanding belief that the world can be changed through art. However, the

seventh song, “Papierman,” depicts Werkman as apolitical and disengaged, sketching an

encounter with a paper supplier who does not like Werkman’s art. The artist does not mind,

because the supplier offers the most competitive price for paper. “Vrouweneiland,” the

eighth song, expresses Werkman’s desire to escape the horrible events of WW-II and to take

refuge on an island.

The penultimate song, “Mijn Hart is Zwart,” reveals the grim reality and depicts

Werkman as a publisher of anti-Nazi druksels.19 With pinched voice, he sings about his tragic

death, which came just a few days before the liberation. Since it is still sung from a first

person perspective, it seems like Werkman is talking from beyond the grave. The last song,

“Verklaarder van het Onverklaarbare,” supports this reading. The song does not emphasize

19 Druksel can be translated as “printing”. Werkman coined this term to indicate his art discipline.

Vrouwenvelder 39

one period in the artist’s history, but rather considers Werkman’s life in its totality. The

desired escape imagined in the eighth song, and the brutal deprivation of life and times of

war in the ninth song, are settled by death in this final piece. Werkman reviews his life in this

last song, and delightedly concludes that he was “an explainer of the inexplicable.”

Four saxophones provide the music for Werkman. This deviates from Talma’s former

projects in which he recorded songs with a band consisting of drums, guitars and keyboards.

Werkman’s reviewers attempted to describe this unconventional character leading to a

cacophony of clashing categorizations. Together these categorizations do not illuminate

what Werkman is, but only refer to what it is not: indie. In this chapter, I investigate whether

Werkman is indie or not, or whether there are better descriptions that might apply to this

unusual record.

1. Indie or not?

Music journalist Ernst Jeuring explicitly states that Werkman is not indie without

providing an explanation, while another journalist, Peter de Koning, implies that the use of

saxophones excludes the album from the indie category:

“Talma narrates the life of Werkman in ten songs. He is accompanied by the

four woodwind instruments of The Melisma Saxophone Quartet. The music

sounds like a modern chamber orchestra rather than the indie rock Talma

used to draw attention with.” 20(De Koning)

Both reviewers emphasize this departure from indie. Talma has released ten records on

independent record label Excelsior Recordings, so it is likely that his music will be widely

understood as indie. Websites like Wikipedia, Muziek Encyclopedie and Last.fm all describe

Talma’s music (solo or with his band The Negroes) as indie or alternative.

Indeed, Talma fits within the aforementioned discourse on indie music. In an

interview with music journal Oor (2003), Talma explains that he “does it himself” when he

produces music. Nevertheless, he prefers for Excelsior Recordings to handle the business

associated with his music, admitting that he reaches a larger audience thanks to the record

20 Translated from Dutch: “In tien liedjes vertelt Talma het leven van Werkman. Daarbij wordt hij begeleid door de vier rietblazers van het Melisma Saxophone Quartet. De muziek neigt eerder naar een modern kamerorkest dan naar de indierock waarmee Talma zich eerder op de kaart zette.”

Vrouwenvelder 40

company. He further states that he could reach an even larger audience by releasing music

on a major record label, but thinks that this would diminish his creative freedom (Pereira). In

2005, he reiterated this opinion by saying that while he would like to have a larger audience,

he is satisfied with the current arrangement (van der Heide). Talma thus reproduces the idea

that independents grant artists the ideal balance between creative freedom and commercial

success. Werkman was created in the same environment as previous Excelsior records. The

fact that this album was commissioned by the Werkman corporation does not undermine

Talma’s creative freedom, because he, as an educated historian, often composes for

museums and other cultural institutions.

In 2011, journalist Sander Pleij described Talma ironically as “the most unknown pop

star of the Netherlands.”21 Two years later, Talma seemed to welcome this claim when he

adopted it as a subtitle for an autobiographical album and book (Kelderkoorts: Nederlands

Onbekendste Popster 2013). Talma’s attitude reflects indie’s “do-it-yourself” ethos and its

flair for self-deprecation. In addition, his albums, including Werkman, are produced by an

independent record company and never broadcast on mainstream radio. It is only his latest

album which seems to resist the indie label, due to its lack of guitars. However, as I

concluded in chapter 2, the guitar-driven sound is often described as alternative; a style or a

manner of playing that is often adopted by so-called indie musicians. Talma collaborates

with the saxophone quartet precisely because he is free to create music in his own manner.

Therefore, I contend that Werkman is indie music, in spite of (or indeed because of) its

intentional lack of guitars. With this statement, I do not intend to categorize the music.

Instead, I argue against the implicit and invalid premises in the album’s reviews, as I strongly

disagree with the blunt categorization of music. Yet, I am still left to explain why music critics

struggle to describe the album. For this, I finally turn to the music on the album.

2. Werkman’s Saxorgan

As with its lyrical content, Werkman’s music is divided into two parts. The texture of

the music gradually expands, as the saxophones grow more polyphonic over the course of

the album, while the intensity increases towards two climaxes in the sixth and tenth songs.

21 Translated from Dutch: “Neerlands onbekendste popster”

Vrouwenvelder 41

“Leens” commences the album with a static sound, as I explained in the introduction to this

thesis. The baritone saxophone plays short notes accentuating the pulse, but these are

almost imperceptibly soft and only heard in the last verse. The sounds of the individual

saxophones blend, because they play in the same rhythm without air noise, growling or

vibrato. The listener becomes accustomed to the homogeneous sound of the saxophones.

Over the course of the song, it easy to forget that one is listening to four saxophones, as they

sound like a single unified instrument.

The second song, “M’n Eerste Vrouw Noemde mij Poedel,” proceeds with this

homogeneous sound but in another register, making the saxophones sound like an organ.

Talma has played the keyboard on all of his previous records and, in the interview with

Knaack, reveals that he was educated as a church organ player (34). It is thus very likely that

he composed this music with his keyboard. The second song plays with the ambiguity of

perceived instrumentation, also starting with a calm tempo which gradually becomes more

dynamic. In the second verse, one can hear arpeggios; although these are played in one

breath, some notes are emphasized more than others. This is enhanced by the baritone

saxophone, which plays with the same technique near the song’s end. In the second-to-last

chorus, the saxophones, sounding again like an organ, play staccato chords on every eighth

note. This inventive technique makes the instrumental ambiguity and the organ simulation

complete.

“De Ploeg” continues with the use of staccato chords; the tones are accentuated

because every note is blown separately. The two lower saxophones perform their

characteristic hum. This humming was already carefully introduced at the end of the

previous song, but here it features prominently. This change mirrors the shift in the text as

the last verse of the second song tells about Werkman joining De Ploeg and losing interest in

the printing business. Although the saxophones make their characteristic sound, they

continue to play in unison as if they are one instrument. In contrast, the soprano plays a solo

melody, proceeding onwards from the first chorus. This saxophone sounds fresh and new,

because it stands out as a solo instrument. It sounds even more saxophone-like than those

which came earlier, even though it lacks the characteristic saxophone hum. This effect is only

possible because the saxophone was not deployed as a solo instrument before this point.

This rebirth of the saxophone is paralleled by the story of Werkman who, after losing his first

wife, remarried and discovered that his goal in life was to become a visual artist.

Vrouwenvelder 42

The fourth song, “In mijn Wolkenkrabber,” builds on the two different saxophone

sounds heard in “De Ploeg” with the lower saxophones emphasizing the rhythm and the

higher ones playing a harmonic progression. While the text describes Werkman walking up

and down stairs, the saxophones play ascending and descending scales as ornamentation

throughout the song. Werkman’s ascent to the attic is also suggested by an ascending

harmony in the choruses. At the end of the song, three distinct saxophone sounds can be

heard, but this effect is built up carefully and softly, so that it does not stand out.

The music of the two central songs is the most vivid of all the work on the album. In

“Zie de Drukkersrollen Rollen,” one hears two separate parts: the higher saxophones play a

melody emphasizing the after-beat, while the lower saxophones accentuate the beats.

Combined with a spatial divide, captured through stereo technique, this creates a swinging

feel. The oft-repeated word “rollen” (‘to roll’) evokes a connection with Rock ‘n Roll music,

as does the swinging feel of the music. These associations work together with the text of the

song which tells about Werkman’s artistic breakthrough through the use of his printing

press.

In the other song, “Een Ril Doorklieft Het Lijf Dat Vreest,” one hears the most

“explosive” music. Talma, channeling Werkman, cries out for change among his fellow De

Ploeg artists; the four saxophones play staccato chords homorhytmically and because the

players blow every single note, their instruments are humming. The singer is doubled in the

choruses, as if a crowd is shouting along. The saxophones allow a little variation of the

rhythm towards the end of the song, but this is almost imperceptible as the rest follow the

imperative cadence of Talma’s voice.

In contrast to this fiery song, and signaling the beginning of the second part of the

album, is the seventh song “Papierman.” The chords are composed of long sustained tones

and the timbre returns to the clear sound which opened the record. The soprano plays a

chromatic melody along with the chords. This division is apparent from the beginning of the

song and not carefully built up as in the earlier tracks. The second part of the album shows

no gradual establishment of polyphony. The immediate division into several musical parts

also features in the eighth song, “Vrouweneiland,” which starts with a tripartition: a

sustained fundamental tone, arpeggio chords and a melody. In the verses, the arpeggios are

omitted causing them to stand out even more in the choruses.

Vrouwenvelder 43

The music of the penultimate song, “Mijn Hart is Zwart,” is also divided into three

parts from the very beginning, alluding to a four-part organisation that is only resolved in the

final track, “Verklaarder van het Onverklaarbare.” The pinched voice of the ninth song,

relaxes here as well. The quartet joins in its full capacity, allowing us to easily distinguish

between the four parts, as each one is pointedly introduced and each has a distinct timbre.

To sum up, Talma has taken the listener on a journey through Werkman’s life story.

He creates an illusion by pretending to be Werkman singing in his own words from a first

person perspective, with the saxophones combined to sound as if they are a single

instrument. The music develops gradually and deliberately, following the structure of the

narrative. Werkman’s story is told from two retrospective points: before the war and after

his death, both of which are reflected in the music that builds towards these events. The

saxophone quartet plays in four parts, in full polyphony, only in the final song. This

corresponds to Werkman’s statement that “art” represents the “truth,” “divinity,” and

“happiness,” even in times of horror. The three songs leading up to the conclusion, take

place in these times. The music alludes towards the “truth”, that is, the full polyphonic

sound of the saxophone quartet in the final song, because the saxophones do not have to

develop towards a multi-part organisation of the music but start immediately with it. In the

last song, the saxophones do not resemble one instrument (an organ) anymore, but instead

sound like a quartet of saxophones. This conveys the idea that Werkman is not in this world

anymore and is looking back on the horrible events of his final years.

Talma’s project not only confounds the listener, but also mystifies reviewers who do

not know how to adequately describe and categorize Werkman. Most of the album’s critics

identify themselves as journalists who write primarily about popular music. I assume that

they are expected to review Werkman because Talma belongs to the domain of popular

music. These journalists were presented with music that not only deviates from Talma’s

usual sound, but also seems to buck the rules of popular music. Werkman’s careful

development of music, which proceeds in accordance with a coherent narrative from song to

song, is atypical for popular music. The structure, in which each song is contextually-related

to the preceding song, is not suitable for commerce, which value singles and radio hits. This

could explain why Joey Huisman, from the well-respected music journal Oor, found the

music tedious. In addition to these factors, Talma uses an ensemble of saxophones (which is

Vrouwenvelder 44

also unusual in popular music), making them sound like one homogenous instrument instead

of four individuals.

Each journalist categorized Werkman differently, but all sought to express the

deviant character of the music. Because of this, they only found deviance, and thus failed to

give an account of the music itself. Journalists and scholars often view music from a genre

bias, which tends to force music into a particular genre. If Werkman has been judged a

failure, it is likely because music journalists have failed to listen from any but their own

limited perspectives.

Vrouwenvelder 45

Conclusion

In this thesis, I have argued that musical categorization falls short in describing

Werkman by Meindert Talma and the Melisma Saxophone Quartet. Although critics attempt

to fit the album into a broad category of music, in effect, they merely imply to which

category it does not belong: indie. In the first chapter, I researched why and how people

categorize music. I first showed that contemporary music is often categorized by record

companies and journalists, for largely commercial reasons. Additionally, people structure the

world into categories to guide understanding and expectations. They also do this for music,

especially through the concepts of style and genre. I showed that these categories are often

conceived from a top-down perspective. Although scholars pretend to construct a genre by

analyzing particular groupings of music, they are actually doing the reverse because they

search for music that fits their conception of a genre and use this chosen music to reinforce

the boundaries of their chosen categories.

In the second chapter, I looked at the specific music category of “indie,” precisely

because Werkman is assumed to deviate from that label. I conducted a discourse analysis of

academic and popular texts which theorize or define indie as a category of music. To

establish the context between these texts and my case study, I then shifted my focus from

Werkman to Excelsior Recordings, the record company that released the album. The genre

ideology that emerged from the analyzed text focuses on the production of music, its

corporate organization and the attitudes of the people involved in the production and

consumption of the music. Some scholars claim that indie is associated with a particular

sound or music, but I showed that these statements clash with other widely-held

assumptions that music is defined as indie, precisely because it does not conform to trends

or rules. I argued that scholars attribute a specific sound to indie because they confuse it

with a particular style, often called alternative, that clashes with the other rules of indie’s

genre ideology.

In the last chapter I turned to Werkman again. The previous chapters allowed me to

explain why music journalists could not agree on a category for the album. I first argued, in

contrast with these writers, if one even needs to decide whether Werkman is indie. I posed

this question because the indie genre does not indicate a certain type of music but only

Vrouwenvelder 46

points towards the context in which that music is produced. Werkman was created in an

indie context. I then explained that reviewers failed to come to a consensus category

because they only wanted to stress the unconventional character of the album’s music. I

showed that the structure of the music, the lyrical narrative, and the sound of the

saxophones did not align with the journalists’ expectations. Because these journalists were

confronted with music that did not conform to their experience, they were ill-equipped to

describe it to their readers

This thesis is a contribution to the ongoing debate on categorization in music.

Categorization, on the one hand, seems harmless, even helpful in sorting through the vast

variety of music. On the other hand, it promotes a hierarchy and thus a power relation

between different musical traditions, and even among individual musical compositions. I am

not arguing for the abolition of categorization, only that we should construct categories with

greater care. I am also not arguing that journalists should abandon categorization. I

recognize that discussions of genre are often limited to a few words in a review. I even think

that categorization in popular reviews of music is helpful to establish the terms of a

discourse. This, of course, must always be treated critically, but it is a legitimate way to put

music into perspective. One key drawback of hasty categorization, however, is the effect it

has on individual bands or musicians, especially if an imprecise category takes hold in the

critical discourse. Fabbri makes clear that genres have an ideology which guides the

perception of the categorized music. Scholars should be aware of the performative power of

genre ideologies in order to better conduct their research.

This thesis provides an overview of a large body of research into indie, but also

reveals the relations between this research. I showed that scholars who discuss indie music,

often do not take into account the powers of the genre ideology and how this imposes

meaning onto music. I also showed that the discourse on indie music rarely involves the

music itself. Scholars often proceed with a reversed argumentation; their analyses do not

reveal what indie is, but instead start with a preconception, working backwards to prove

their own definition. In other words, scholars, like popular journalists, often fail to question

their own premises when confronted with new music.

Finally, this thesis provides an analysis of Werkman: an album which music journalists

judged a failure because they failed to categorize it. I made an effort to remain inside the

realm of popular journalism by omitting score analysis, as such methods are uncommon in

Vrouwenvelder 47

non-academic media. Besides, a musicological analysis (e.g., Schenkerian) does not suit this

research. I showed that on the basis of listening and observing the visual material provided

with the music, one can come to an elaborate analysis of the music. I showed that such an

analysis could only work as long as there is no predetermined analytical toolbox for

evaluating the music, which is a common pitfall when one depends on categories. Beyond

the discourse on indie music, one could discover how Werkman establishes an interesting

relation between a historical narrative and a saxophone quartet. To take one example, the

unique structure of the music would have remained neglected if scholars only evaluated

Werkman from an indie perspective. This explains why Werkman resists consistent

categorization. Journalists from a particular background (in this case indie or pop music)

were assigned to review an album that does not fit within their frames of reference. They

were left expressing the mis-fit, hence the various (and vague) categorizations. Werkman

shows that categories are often inappropriate, as they enforce an undesired frame of

expectation and appreciation, leading to misguided perceptions of the music.

Vrouwenvelder 48

Appendix

Figure 1. Front cover Werkman

Figure 2. Logo Excelsior's supporters club with Latin captions: “Experto Credite.”

Figure 3. Excelsior’s label with Latin captions: “Musis Sacrum.”

Vrouwenvelder 49

Figure 4. CD cover with Excelsior’s logo prominently present at the top.

Figure 5. CD cover of The Miseries by The Miseries that features an explicitly empty strip displaying no logo.

Figure 6. Main page of Spotify. Among the “genres and moods”, the radio Indie/Alternative. It features a guitar as its logo.

Vrouwenvelder 50

Works Cited

Abebe, Nitsuh. "The Decade in Indie." 25 February 2010. Pitchfork. Web. 6 December 2015.

Armand and The Kik. Armand & The Kik. Amsterdam: Top Notch and Excelsior Recordings,

2015. CD.

Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground

1981-1991. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001. Print.

Bambarger, Bradley. "Excelsior: Indie Rock's Prime Mover." Billboard 11 February 1996: 1-82.

Print.

Barad, Karen. "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter

comes to Matter." Signs: Journal of Woman in Culture and Society 28.3 (2003): 801-

831. Print.

Bearcat. "Meindert Talma & the Negroes." 14 November 2015. Wikipedia. Web. 7 December

2015.

"Biografie Meindert Talma & The Negroes." n.d. Muziek Encyclopedie: Beeld en Geluid. Web.

7 December 2015.

Blake, David. "Timbre as Differentiation in Indie Music." Music Theory Online 18.2 (2012): 1-

18. Web. 7 December 2015.

Cabenda, Pablo. "Keurmerk Excelsior." Volkskrant 2 June 2006. print.

Carew, Anthony. "Alternative Music 101 - Are 'Alternative' and 'Indie' the Same Thing?" n.d.

About.com. Web. 6 December 2015.

Cills, Hazel. "Why are Indie Bands Dressing like Goths from 1980-something?" 19 September

2013. Vice. Web. 7 December 2015.

"Database Guidelines 9. Genres / Styles." n.d. Discogs. Web. 5 December 2015.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London:

Bloomsbury Academic, 1988. Print.

Desztich, Rachael and Steven McClung. "Indie to an Extent? Why Music Gets Added to

College Radio Playlists." Journal of Radio Studies 14.2 (2007): 196-211. Print.

Dolan, Emily. "'... This Little Ukulele Tells the Truth': Indie Pop and Kitsch Authenticity."

Popular Music 29.3 (2010): 457-469. Print.

Vrouwenvelder 51

Drijfhout, Yoni. “Jongen, je zou eens wat commerciëler moeten denken.”: Nederlandse indie

rock artiesten in een digitaliserend muzieklandschap. Utrecht: Utrecht University,

2010. Print.

Drott, Eric. "The End(s) of Genre." Journal of Music Theory 57.1 (2013): 1-45. Print.

Dude00007. "Alternative rock." 5 December 2015. Wikipedia. Web. 6 December 2015.

Fabbri, Franco. "What Kind of Music?" Popular Music 2 (1982): 131-143. Print.

Fonarow, Wendy. "Ask the Indie Professor: What is indie? And how does rainfll make it

better?" 19 July 2010. The Guardian. Web. 6 December 2015.

—. Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music. Middletown: Wesleyan

University Press, 2006. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The Aarcheology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language. Trans. A.M.

Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Print.

"Frequently Asked Questions: What are Genres?" n.d. AllMusic. Web. 5 December 2015.

Frith, Simon. "Genre Rules." Performing Rites: on the Value of Popular Music. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1996. 75-91. Print.

"Genre." September 2015. OED Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 5 December 2015.

Hargreaves, David and Adrian North. "Developing Concepts of Musical Style." Musicae

Scientiae III.2 (1999): 193-216. Print.

Heide, Peter van der. "'IK BEN NIET ZO'N DRUGSMAN': 'Friese' Groninger Meindert Talma

presenteert zesde cd." Dagblad van het Noorden 6 May 2005. Print.

Hesmondhalgh, David. "Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music

Genre." Cultural Studies 13.1 (1999): 34-61. Print.

Hibbet, Ryan. "What is Indie Rock?" Popular Music and Society 28.1 (2005): 55-77. Print.

"How do you get a "jangly" sound?" 1 April 2013. The Gear Page.net. Web. 7 December

2015.

Hracs, Brian. "A Creative Industry in Transition: The Rise of Digitally Driven Independent

Music Production." Growth and Change 43.3 (2012): 442-461. Print.

Huisman, Joey. "Meindert Talma & The Melisma Saxophone Quartet: Werkman." Oor July

2015. Print.

Hut, Arjan. "Talma schijnt licht op leven Werkman." Friesch Dagblad 17 June 2015. Print.

Huut, Thomas van. "Zes albums per jaar voor een tientje per maand bij Excelsior." Volkskrant

10 February 2011. Print.

Vrouwenvelder 52

Jeuring, Ernst. "Werkman: muzikale biografie door Meindert Talma: Veelzijdigheid en

eigenzinnigheid ontmoeten elkaar op Werkman." 23 June 2015. VPRO 3voor12:

Groningen. Web. 5 December 2015.

Kalope. "Indie Rock." 30 November 2015. Website. Web. 6 December 2015.

Kaspers, Wiebe. "Suver wat surrealistysk..." 3 June 2015. Skanomodu. Web. 5 December

2015.

Knaack, Nina. "Net als Werkman ben ik een laatbloeier." Groninger Museum Magazine (1)

2015: 33-34. Print.

Kohl, Jerome. "Music Genre." 30 November 2015. Wikipedia. Web. 5 December 2015.

Koning, Peter de. "Werkman - Meindert Talma & The Melisma Saxophone Quartet." June

2015. Muziekweb. Web. 5 December 2015.

Kramer, Gijsbert. "Meindert Talma & The Melisma Saxophone Quartet: Werkman." De

Volkskrant 24 June 2015. Print.

Kruse, Holly. "Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music Culture." Popular Music 12.1 (1993):

33-41. Print.

McDonald, Chris. "Exploring Modal Subversions in Alternative Music." Popular Music 19.3

(2000): 355-363. Print.

McKay, Cory and Ichiro Fujinaga. "Musical Genre Classification: Is it Worth Pursuing and how

can it be Improved?" Proceedings of the International Conference on Music

Information Retrieval (2006): 101-106. Print.

"Meindert Talma & The Negroes." 2 June 2015. Last.fm. Web. 7 December 2015.

Melisma Saxophone Quartet. n.d. Web. 11 December 2015.

Moore, Allan. "Categorical Conventions in Music Discourse: Style and Genre." Music &

Letters 82.3 (2001): 432-442. Print.

Oostrom, Chris van. "Meindert Talma & The Melisma Saxophone Quartet: Werkman." Lust

For Life June 2015. Print.

Pereira, Roy. "Oor: De zaak van de onafhankelijke afhankelijke." 12 July 2003. Meindert

Talma. Web. 7 December 2015.

Pleij, Sander. "Fanclub Bulletin Meindert Talma." Vrij Nederland 11 June 2011. Print.

Reynolds, Simon. Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop. Berkeley:

Soft Skull Press, 2011. Print.

Vrouwenvelder 53

Schaik, Job van. "Werkmans levensverhaal in muziek." Dagblad van het Noorden 29 May

2015: 10. Print.

Sikkema, Roel. "CD-recensies: van Maaike Ouboter tot Charles-Marie Widor." 2 July 2015.

Nederlands Dagblad. Web. 5 December 2015.

Tagg, Philip. "Analysing popular music: theory, method and practice." Popular Music 2 (2015

[1982]): 1-23 [37-65]. Web. 7 December 2015.

Talma, Meindert and The Melisma Saxophone Quartet. Werkman. Amsterdam, 2015. CD.

Talma, Meindert and The Negroes. Leave Stumper. Amsterdam: Excelsior Recordings, 2001.

CD.

Talma, Meindert. Meindert Talma. 10 December 2015. Web. 11 December 2015.

Tekman, Hasan and Nuran Hortaçsu. "Aspects of Stylistic Knowledge: What are Different

Styles Like and why do we Listen to Them?" Psychology of Music 30 (2002): 28-47.

The Miseries. The Miseries. Amsterdam: Excelsior Recordings, 2015. CD.

Valentine, My Bloody. "Only Shallow." Loveless. London: Creation Records, 1991. CD.

Vrieze, Atze de. "Onafhankelijke labels beginnen eigen platenmarkt: Eerste Nederlandse

Onafhankelijke Label Markt op zondag 2 september." 15 August 2012. VPRO 3voor12.

Web. 6 December 2015.

Ybema, Jan. "Talma bezingt 'Picasso van de drukpers'." Friesch Dagblad 27 May 2015: 34.

Print.

Zwennes, Erik. "Excelsior verhuist mét studio naar Amsterdam-Noord: Panden Tolhuistuin

nieuwe plek voor studio Sound Enterprise, het indielabel en Beggars distributie." 4

May 2011. VPRO 3voor12. Web. 7 December 2015.