While there are numerous musical genres that arose in the past century, classical music seems to be only subdivided by form or period: did musical genres exist before the 1900s the way they exist now?
The same question would be interested to be analysed also in terms of spaciality and not only temporality: we mostly think of music from a western/US perspective, as most of the genres we listen to nowadays originated there, while everything else gets bundled under World/Folk music, so it feels that a genre such as "African music" exists in itself without the possibility of as many layers of subdivision. Do we apply to past music the same treatment?
u/a_simple_human — 9 days ago