What is an indie guitarist ?

This question is essential when it comes to defining the content and the boundaries of this blog. Indeed it’s not so obvious to categorize a guitarist as an indie guitarist or not. Think of grunge guitarists like Kurt Cobain for example, they became so mainstream that it’s hard to consider them as indie anymore. Therefore what could be the criteria for labeling a guitarist as indie guitarist without writing a doctoral thesis ?

Indie guitarists are part of the indie rock ecosystem

As a matter of fact an indie guitarist makes indie rock music. So the initial question can be shifted from the angle of guitarists to the angle of the genre of music they play. But then what is indie music ?  To answer the question it’s useful to come back to the roots of that genre of music and to remind that “indie” applied initially to the labels releasing bands playing indie music and not to the genre of music itself as Wikipedia mentions it:

The term indie rock, which comes from “independent,” describes the small and relatively low-budget labels on which it is released and the do-it-yourself attitude of the bands and artists involved. Although distribution deals are often struck with major corporate companies, these labels and the bands they host have attempted to retain their autonomy, leaving them free to explore sounds, emotions and subjects of limited appeal to large, mainstream audiences.

So, to define indie guitarists, I actually followed a loop passing from guitarists, then to the genre of music, leading then to labels that host bands and, finally, their guitarists. It’s a kind of review of the ecosystem of indie rock music and it becomes now easier for me to propose a definition of indie guitarists inspired by this article of Wikipedia.

Autonomy, exploration and counter-culture define indie guitarists the best

In this blog, an indie guitarist is…

1. a guitarist attempting to retain his/her autonomy
2. to explore sounds, emotions and subjects
3. of supposed limited appeal to large, mainstream audiences.

Which means that a guitarist with hands tied up by a producer and forced to do specific music is not (or no more…) an indie guitarist. Also there is a will for differentiation, in whatever way it is, as the goal is not to desperately reach success by applying a proved pop or mainstream recipe. And finally the initial intent is not to please everyone. The musical project is to some extent a risk-taking. So, these will be my 3 criteria for considering a guitarist as an indie guitarist in this blog.

Now that this is clarified, a question remains: what about guitarists who were initially indie and then “lost their title” because they ended up breaking one of these 3 criteria (most famous grunge bands are the typical examples). Well, I think it would be too restrictive to forget about their contribution to indie rock and I would take the following assumption in this blog : “Indie guitarist once in a lifetime, indie guitarist for a lifetime”…

The next post from the “Features” category will address the different genres of indie guitarists.