Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think so, yes. Back in college, an Anthropology professor told our class "a culture is a set of ready-made solutions to common problems". It's one of the best definitions of anything I've ever heard. In music, I think genre is the same thing. If you sit down try to make "music", you are faced with just an astronomical number of choices to make before you get to a finished compositions. What instrumentation? Acousti…
That's a wonderful definition, I'm still turning it over in my mind a day later. I like how it provides a "why" for culture, with a pretty grounded reason. I tried to locate the origin of it, but just found a bunch of paraphrasings without attribution. Any idea where it originated?
I don't. I have no idea where my teacher got it from but, man, is it a good definition.