Reinterpret – Revive / Revamp – Resurrect! A Theoretical Model for Understanding Postmodern Prog

Contemporary progressive music, as a musical phenomenon, is very difficult to map and understand in a coherent and comprehensive way. Its variety makes it hard to grasp what the ultimate essence of what prog might be, but it also stimulates theoretical thinking, especially when it comes to the topic of music genres. In this paper I draw on previous research and theorisation to identify two main strains of contemporary progressive music (neo-progressive and post-progressive) and explain their peculiarities using postmodern lenses – which challenge the view of progressive rock as a late form of rock modernism and furnish a theoretical framework that describes divergent ways of engaging with the genre’s canon, ideology and tradition (reinterpretation vs revivalism). Such framework, I argue, could be usefully adopted to understand the current state not only of progressive music, but also of other genres that showcase complex relationships with their musical roots. So, in the process of validating my theoretical model, I compare the contemporary incarnations of prog with genres and subgenres – e.g. synthwave, vaporwave, post-punk, post-black metal – that situate the idea of revamping or resurrecting pre-existing music at the core of their aesthetic purposes. While they might seem very distant from progressive music, I argue they can all be understood as different kinds of music sharing very similar processes of canonisation, discoursivisation, historicisation and, ultimately, genre construction – the most relevant of which will be explored throughout paper.