Genres appeared as a necessity to classify the huge amount of art works into groups that have the same

set of particularities. They exist in almost every art domain like music, poetry, theatre or films.

Theorists try to find resemblances between several songs, like their rhythm structure, lyrics, tonalities used, tempo, but their definitions vary quite a lot. Chandler (2000) cites Jane Feuer (1992) who says that "A genre is ultimately an abstract conception rather than something that exists empirically in the world". I partially agree with this, because genres cant be well defined, being ideas which are constantly debated and contested (Walser: 1993, cited in Wall: 2013) but, on the other hand, they do exist in the world but with various definitions, mostly depending on the listeners point of view.

I suggest that genres in music cant be strictly defined by their years of development and their success among listeners. They may continue after that point overlapping with other new genres, thus resulting continuity in time, not fragmentation of music. This point of view can be supported by Chandlers (2000) statement: Each new work within a genre has the potential to influence changes within the genre or perhaps the emergence of new sub-genres (which may later blossom into fully-fledged genres).

Reference: Chandler, Daniel (2000) Introduction to Genre Theory, Available at: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1.html , last accessed: 31st Oct. 2013 Wall, Tim (2013) Studying popular music culture, 2nd edition, London: Sage Publications