Postmodern music

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Punk rock, Disco, Grunge Music, Psychedelic music


How are these styles of music 'postmodern'? I've never heard of them referred to as postmodern music, though I've never heard any music at all referred to as postmodern, so maybe I'm just ignorant... -- SJK


No, you're not. I think it is certainly possible for certain musicians to be postmodern, but amongst the key features of postmodernism are a tendency towards self-referentiality, and a fair degree of irony which disqualifies Punk, Disco, Grunge and certainly the first wave of 60s psychedelia in one fell swoop... A good example of a postmodernist musician would be someone like Tom Lehrer who was so far ahead of his time that he was a postmodernist before postmodernism had been thought of... sjc


These qualities (self-referentiality, irony) surely don't disqualify recent forms of electronic dance music, such as House music, Techno music & hip hop, though. Ian Holmes