But they could also be described as different “styles”. Jazz, rock or classical are terms frequently used to distinguish between different “genres” of music. For that reason, medium, style and form are additional terms that can help us to distinguish between different kinds of art. In painting, between a landscape and a portrait, or between oil and water colour. In literature, the term can be used to distinguish between poetry, a novel or a play.

In music, as in other arts, the word “genre” is not used consistently. Even if it so happens that cultural diversity is, or has been, coincidental with the various human “races” as they evolved, musical diversity has to be seen as culture-specific, not race-specific. So, the existence of different genres has to be regarded as a manifestation of our cultural diversity and not of our racial makeup. And since the new environments they encountered differed vastly from one another, a great diversity of cultures developed in response – and continue to develop all the time. As they dispersed, they lost contact with their respective cultures. If that is so, how are we to understand the undeniable existence of different musical genres? As humans dispersed out of Africa and across the world, they took their culture with them. They have done so since the dawn of humankind in Africa. By engaging in music, humans articulate their humanness and – even more so – their humanity. It has to come as a tremendously liberating realisation that music is one of the attributes that makes humans human. We should take delight because in respect of music, there is only one race: the human race. Our preferences for specific musical genres do not have a basis in our genetic makeup, if one regards race as a genetically determined phenomenon. It says a lot about our state of mind that we have become used to linking matters to race even if they don’t have a racial basis. But it is also understandable that, for many forward-thinking people, they are highly troubling. In societies obsessed with and manipulated by the notion of race, these questions are understandable. One frequently hears questions such as: Why do different races generally listen to specific genres of music? Why do music genres have a huge racial divide?

What does articulate mean in music