EVERY GENRE PACKAGES: Auteurs and Troubadours (8 January 2025)

Jan 09, 2025

28 Bards ideas | bard, medieval jester, court jester

Today’s recap of my 2024 column’s cornucopia of genres focuses on those genres that showcase the talents of musicians who have pushed the pen, dynamically overlaying words and the stories they build as a piece of songcraft.

This is yet another broad category of genres spanning an impressive range of global traditions. Some developed in a sort of continuum, like the European songwriter genres parallel to French chanson that emerged in the 1950s, including Russia’s avtorskaya pesnya, German liedermacher, and Italian canzone d’autore. In the US, we’re pretty much all familiar with the idea of a singer-songwriter. Those genres continue traditions of storytelling like Portuguese fado that sung the woes of the lower class for centuries, and even farther back, the medieval lyric poetry synonymous with the troubadours of Occitania that built the bard mythos.

The Court of the Troubadours - Poitiers History Walks

Many of these musical forms allow for robust thematic expressions that stem from dissecting individual expressions but resonate universally, like Filipino kundiman’s tender love songs, emo’s moody and self-deprecating catharsis, or Malian wassoulou’s insights into women’s issues. Many rap genres rooted in pride for place, while chronicling challenges also stand out as poetic portraits, particularly UGK’s Dirty South narratives or G-funk’s tales of the West Coast.

It’s not always easy being a bard. Take Vietnam’s xẩm as proof, as a musical career was one of a limited set of routes for survival as a blind person for centuries. Ethiopian azmari nomadic bards’ razor-sharp observations on royalty, social dynamics, and life may earn them an audience, but not always fans, per se.

Others leverage their words for a purpose, like Turkish özgün müzik’s cries against inhumanity, Sahrawi folk artists like Aziza Brahim’s convictions for independence, many jazz poets’ shrewd observations, or singer-songwriter Reet carrying the spirit of Estonian autonomy while the country was tethered to the Soviet bloc.

Though these genres centered on authorship often carry a spur-of-the-moment, confessional air, others are considerably more demanding, based on cultural conventions of what is demanded of a musical storyteller. Korean pansori, Mongolian urtiin duu, and Portuguese desgarrada interpersonal jabs stretch these limits.

For the album I chose to listen to today, I listened to my first Bob Dylan record. Collective groans and gasps ensuing, perhaps. Justified. To have gone this far down the music journalism rabbit hole, or even simply just claiming to be a voracious listener and not having listened to a Dylan album yet is perhaps my worst act of blasphemy. I have this strange proclivity at times that causes me to shy away from delving into certain all-time greats because it seems there is so much pretext and lore I should know before I listen to properly delve in. This column was an attempt at shaking that habit, though, and I’m both happy and devastated to declare I have now experienced Blood on the Tracks, an album that so wisely captures the non-linear and chaotic nature of a breakup: the indignation, the devastation, the need at some point to turn the knife on yourself (we all breathe idiot wind sometimes). Simple yet profound similes stick with you in his deeply honest vocal reading: “Time is like a jet plane / It moves too fast.” That being said, it’s time to read some of my writings about musical writing, if that interests you.

CHECK OUT THESE GENRES I COVERED! <3

Singer-Songwriter Types

Fado (Portugal)

Canzone d’autore (Italy)

Canto a lo poeta (Chile)

Singer-Songwriter

Xẩm (Vietnam)

Avtorskaya pesnya (Russia)

Azmari (Ethiopia)

Chanson alternative (France)

Liedermacher (Germany)

Americana (guess where)