October 26, 2021

EP. 128 — How Genres Shape Music with Kelefa Sanneh

Many musicians and fans reject genre labels as narrow-minded restrictions on what music can be. But what if the opposite is true? What if our notions of genre actually shape what it means to make and enjoy music on a fundamental level? Joining Adam on the show today is journalist and music critic Kelefa Sanneh. Check out his book Major Labels at factuallypod.com/books.

Transcript

FACT-128-20211025-Sanneh-RCv02-DYN.mp3 Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hello everyone, welcome to Factually. I’m Adam Conover, thank you for joining me once again for, honestly, my favorite part of my whole week. When I talk to an incredible expert about their new book or their work (or whatever incredible thing they know that I don’t know) and my mind is blown, your mind is blown. We have a great time learning from them, together. We’re going to have a great time, thanks for joining me. In this episode, we are going to talk about music. Now, music is one of the most basic things that humans do. You cannot find a culture in which music does not exist, you cannot find a person who does not prefer some combination of sounds to some other combination of sounds. For some ineffable reason, some combinations of sounds just make us feel good and we seek them out. That is part of being a human, and we don’t know why. But here’s the thing. It’s not just about the sound

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