Categories are used for many things, some good and some bad. Cataloging permits groupings for finding similarities and directing us toward a style we enjoy or are interested in. In music categorizations are useful and necessary, it saves me the trouble of browsing through the Rap, Opera, and Country Music. But categories also carry the negative association of generalizations. These generalizations hide the beauty of those items that are on the fringes of classifications, offering a blending or a breakout from predefined catalog definitions.
We could use a greying ambiguity as we get to edges of a genre. These bridging and difficult to define efforts deserve a highlighting and consideration. These are artists that are pushing the envelope, testing the boundaries - arbitrary and generalized as they are. This is progress, this is the future, it deserves a consideration for the effort if not always the result. Because even these genre breaking works can be bad, but at least they are trying something new and not attempting to follow a formula. This is the real meaning behind a progressive classification.
In music and in life let us use the classification and preconceptions after we see if they are trying to confirm the generalization or break from it.
