Race and Genre Ambiguity in the Critical Reception of Popular Music

Abstract

In this article, we link the sociology of culture with the sociology of race and racism to examine how race shapes perceptions of genre ambiguity in popular music. Notable studies in the sociology of culture have recently shown how intermediaries, such as food or literary critics, subtly devalue categories associated with non-White producers and highlighted the obstacles Black musicians and audiences face in spanning racialized genre boundaries. In contrast, we focus on a less visible yet pervasive racial structure that shapes the likelihood that critics identify a musician or group as spanning genre categories. We bring insights from critical race theory (CRT) into direct conversation with empirical scholarship on categorical ambiguity by analyzing 47,230 reviews of 3,252 albums archived on the Metacritic database from 2000 to 2007. We find that critics are less likely to describe Black musicians as category spanners relative to White musicians, and that multiracial music groups are the most likely to have ambiguous genre identities.

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

“…We see our work as also contributing to emergent trends in the sociology of culture, and the study of media industries more broadly. First, culture scholars are increasingly sensitive to the interaction of categories and classification systems with sociodemographic difference, and the resulting effects on inequality (Gualtieri 2022;de Laat and Stuart 2023;Mears 2010;van Venrooij et al 2022). As Erigha (2019Erigha ( , 2021 shows, "racial valuations" operate through an interaction between creators' racial identities and the genre categories their works are slotted into.…”

“…For example, race-based valuation, evaluation, and classification are found across creative industries, including in music ( Grazian 2005 ; de Laat and Stuart 2023 ), film and television ( Erigha 2021 ; Friedman and O’Brien 2017 ; Yuen 2016 ), fashion ( Mears 2010 ), art ( Buchholz 2022 ; Rawlings 2001 ), museum curatorship ( Aparicio 2022 ; Banks 2021 ), dance ( Robinson 2021 ), comedy ( Jeffries 2017 ), radio ( Chávez 2021 ; Garbes 2022 ), cuisine ( Gualtieri 2022 ), and literature ( Chong 2011 ; Saha and van Lente 2022 ). More substantively, in the restaurant industry, critics rely on different logics of evaluation for “ethnic” versus “classic” cuisines ( Gualtieri 2022 ); in Hollywood, “racial valuations” are deployed in profit forecasting for films with black directors and casts ( Erigha 2021 ); and in the classification processes for music, race “acts as a master category that overrides other feature values” when musicians engage in category blending ( van Venrooij, Miller, and Schmutz 2022 :575). For art and media there is also a general belief that, unlike in say pet grooming or accounting, “representation matters.” 3 We believe that the centrality of identity in art and media and the public-facing nature of the work create conditions in which, to the degree that diversity is valued, the “showcasing” of diversity ( Shin and Gulati 2011 ) may also occur.…”

Feature-Based Structures of Opportunity: Genre Innovation in the American Popular Music Industry, 1958 to 2016

“…Intermediaries, such as critics, also demonstrate biases in categorizing musicians based on race, further perpetuating racial disparities in the music industry. Black artists are less likely to be categorized as boundary spanners, making it more difficult to be identified as an artist who recombines existing genres into something new (van Venrooij, Miller, and Schmutz 2022). We integrate racial and organizational dynamics into our analyses by considering a broad range of artist demographics and their overall representation in the market.…”

“…For example, research suggests there is a relationship between inequality and creativity (Godart et al 2020; Storper and Scott 2008), pointing to an alignment between social distinctions (e.g., race, gender, and class) and musical differentiation (e.g., creating new genres) (Roy and Dowd 2010). Race and gender also play a role in the genre attributions “assigned” to artists (Peterson 1997; Phillips and Kim 2009; Schmutz 2009; Singerman 1999) and whether artists are permitted to span categories (van Venrooij et al 2022), both of which will affect the likelihood of being among the first artists to be identified as representing a new genre. Considering the power dynamics at play in the music industry, it is possible that minorities could be a source of innovation (Phillips and Owens 2004) or be restricted from innovation opportunities (van Venrooij et al 2022).…”

“…Race and gender also play a role in the genre attributions “assigned” to artists (Peterson 1997; Phillips and Kim 2009; Schmutz 2009; Singerman 1999) and whether artists are permitted to span categories (van Venrooij et al 2022), both of which will affect the likelihood of being among the first artists to be identified as representing a new genre. Considering the power dynamics at play in the music industry, it is possible that minorities could be a source of innovation (Phillips and Owens 2004) or be restricted from innovation opportunities (van Venrooij et al 2022). Furthermore, work on the relationship between innovation and group dynamics suggests innovation is more likely to come from teams than from individuals, as collaborative efforts allow for specialization and the efficient division of labor (Guimerà et al 2005; Uzzi et al 2013).…”