[mplpost] Folk Def

[Howard Kaplan]

At 8/11/2000 09:24 PM, Russ Musgrove wrote:

>There is a great stereo shop and record(CD)store combination the big
>town of  Sebringville, Ont. not far from Stratford.  The owner, Neil
>Matheson, decided to specialize in selling only Canadian music.  He has
>a huge selection.  He solved the problem of defining and deciding what
>music fits where by just putting it all in alphabetical order.  No
>catagories, no pigeon-holes.  Just music.  Thus the name of his shop.

The last time I was there, in the fall of 1999, there were definitely 
categories.  Folk and roots were at the far back on the left, "classical" 
was at the close left, pop was in between them, and I don't remember where 
the other categories were.  Thinking that things might have changed since 
then, I looked at my undeleted incoming E-mail and found the store's latest 
newsletter, dated 8 July.  It includes the categories "Jazz / Easy", "Rock 
/ Blues", "Country", "Classical / Vocal", "Roots / Fiddle", "Choral", and 
"Children".

Yes, categories are frustrating if what you think is "Folk" is what the 
store owner thinks is "Celtic" because that's what customers ask 
for.  Nonetheless, it's a lot easier for a browser with specific interests 
to look through just the obviously-relevant and possibly-relevant 
categories than to look through everything.  Would you subscribe to this 
list if it were devoted to all kinds of Canadian music, or is it valuable 
to you because it more-or-less corresponds to a category that defines one 
of your prime interests?  Bad categories are worse than no categories at 
all (especially if you're trying to find something specific 
alphabetically), but reasonable categories are better than no categories at 
all.

Of course, all of this applies only to physical stores and organized 
lists.  On the Internet, you can let the computer search for the same thing 
six different ways and have a reasonable chance of finding it by any of 
them, which is one of the reasons why many people like E-commerce.



Howard L. Kaplan
Songwriter and occasional performer
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://home.inforamp.net/~hkaplan

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