I’ve gotten this question a dozen of times from friends, relatives and strangers: “What exactly is indie music? What makes it different from what I hear on the radio?”
To begin to answer this question you could look at Wikipedia, which has a utilitarian definition of indie music. However, to me, indie music expresses the spirit of freedom in an otherwise commercialized industry. Without record labels or suits informing these musicians on how to speak, act, or think we are left with music that begins to explore the creative realm of ones soul.
Indie often has an internationalist outlook, which stems from a sense of solidarity with other fans, bands and labels in other countries who share one’s particular sensibilities; small indie labels will often distribute records for similar labels from abroad, and indie bands will often go on self-funded tours of other cities and countries, where those in the local indie scenes will invariably help organize gigs and often provide accommodation and other support. In addition, there is also a strong sense of camaraderie that emerges from a selflessness among indie bands and often results in collaborations and joint tours.
Indie artists have always been associated with rebelling against prevailing trends by twisting these trends in some sort of ironic matter (for example, the twee pop movement that started in the 1980s was a reaction against hair metal and other forms of power rock). Indie artist embrace a more rough and imperfect sound and by deliberately introducing artifacts into their recordings that separate themselves from the more polished commercial music. In modern times, this line has since become blurred, due to the ease of high-quality recordings made with inexpensive computer-based recording systems. Also, commercial music will sometimes intentionally add a more rough sound to give their records a more indie feel to them. Some indie artist have rebelled by making their recordings more “main-stream” like.
There are several subcategories which music from the overall indie scene are often grouped broadly into. Music ranging from alternative rock to punk rock to experimental music has long existed in indie scenes, often independent from one another. Indie rock and indie pop are the most common groupings that conform to an “indie” sound. The difference between these is difficult to pick up from the instrumentation or sound, as both genres include distorted guitar-based music based on pop-song conventions. If anything, the key distinction comes not from instrumentation or structure but from how strictly they follow cultural constructions of rockist “authenticity”.
So with that said what does indie music mean to you?
