Barely a week freshly off the proverbial boat in a vibing and musical city and already I've learned about a handful new genres I never knew existed. Take for example, leaving the King Britt show at Mighty the other night, a flyer-distributor-dude hands me a stack of flyers 'cos apparently my cool is cool enough for his party. Since I'm still navigating the labyrinthine word-soup of venues, parties, DJs, weeklies, etc, I figger this is a good way to orient myself.

Now flipping through the flyers, I happen upon one that is just plainly flagrant in its invention of meaningless genre names. This flyer features such musica as: Future Samba, Fonk Arabic, Ragga dis'n'dat and Digital Zulu!! huh? What the hell is Digital Zulu ?!?!

Before we tackle this intriguing question, what is regular Zulu music? Well it is music of the Zulu ethnic group (duh!) of the KwaZulu-Natal Province in eastern South Africa. Most people in this ClearChannel controlled country haven't heard many traditional African musics, let alone Zulu. Probably the main Zulu group singing in isiZulu with any international exposure (thanks mostly to Paul Simon) is Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

... there are two distinct [Zulu music] styles: the township-rooted Mbaqanga, which is characterised by strong rhythms, vocal harmonies and deep lead groaning male vocals, and Mbube or Iscathamiya, an acapella form originating in the 1920s out of the vocal competitions held by migrant labourers who had left their families behind to work in factories or the mines, living in all-male hostels. Mahlatini typifies the Mbaqanga style, while Ladysmith Black Mambazo are typical Iscathamiya performers.

There so now you know what Zulu music is, the question still begs, What is Digital Zulu? Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a Nord Lead or MPC 2000? or maybe DJ Shaka tearing it up on his pair of Technics SL-1210s.

Whatever the literal meaning of Digital Zulu, the impression I got from this flyer was that Digital Zulu is a disposable name, easily replaced with names such as Digital Mandingo or Digital Swahili or Digital whatever-seems-distinctly-African. These genre names are fundamentally disingenuous and do a great disservice to the layman out there duped into thinking such genres actually exist.

On the other hand, the promoters responsible for this night might be trying to futilely carve out a niche for themselves, like “The Bay Area's hottest Digital Zulu Night, every Wednesday at ...”.

So aside from that, I've also noticed a general wanton disregard for actual specifics (e.g. Alt Country) and a strong proclivity to lump stuff, even singletons, into these broadly ambiguous categories (e.g. Austrian trip-hop) Maybe I'm being too demanding but seriously what's going on people ...? Having a hard time describing the music thoroughly yet succinctly without reverting to played out cliched descriptors like “Future”, “Alternative” or “Digital” ?

Admittedly talking about music is tough, and has been likened to dancing about architecture, but I wouldn't have beef if I detected more substance, less posing and riding on other's laurels.