Editing Outsider music (section)

==Definition and scope==

Although outsider music has existed since before [[written history]], it was not until the advent of [[sound reproduction]] and music exchange networks that such a genre was recognized.<ref name="Misiroglu2015"/>  Music journalist [[Irwin Chusid]] is credited with adapting "outsider art" for music in a 1996 article for the [[Tower Records (music retailer)|Tower Records]] publication ''Pulse!''.<ref name="Plasketes2016">{{cite book|last=Plasketes|first=George|title=B-Sides, Undercurrents and Overtones: Peripheries to Popular in Music, 1960 to the Present|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U203DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA43|year=2016|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-17113-3|page=43}}</ref> As a DJ on the New Jersey radio station [[WFMU]] in the 1980s, he had been an influential figure in [[independent music]] scenes.<ref name="Harperthesis" /> In 2000, he authored a book titled ''[[Songs in the Key of Z|Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music]]'', which attempted to introduce and market outsider music as a genre.<ref name="Misiroglu2015"/> He summarized the concept thus:

{{quote|... there are countless "unintentional renegades," performers who lack [an] overt self-consciousness about their art. As far as they're concerned, what they're doing is "normal." And despite paltry incomes and dismal record sales, they're happy to be in the same line of work as [[Celine Dion]] and [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]]. ... Their vocals sound melodically adrift; their rhythms stumble. They seem harmonically without anchor. Their instrumental proficiency may come across as laughably incompetent. ... They get little or no commercial radio exposure, their followings are limited, and they have roughly the same likelihood of attaining mainstream success that a possum has of skittering safely across a six-lane freeway. ... The outsiders in this book, for the most part, lack self-awareness. They don't boldly break the rules, because they don't know there are rules.{{sfn|Chusid|2000}}}}

As was common with journalists who championed musical [[primitivism]] in the 1980s,{{sfn|Harper|2014|pp=48, 53, 63–64}} Chusid considered outsiders more "[[authenticity in art|authentic]]" than artists whose music is "exploited through conventional music channels" and "revised, remodeled, and re-coifed; touched-up and tweaked; Photoshopped and focus-grouped" by the time it reaches the listener, to the point that it is "Music by Committee". On the other hand, outsider artists have much "greater individual control over the final creative contour", either because of a low budget or because of their "inability or unwillingness to cooperate with or trust anyone but themselves."{{sfn|Chusid|2000}}

Outsider music does not generally include [[avant-garde music]], [[world music]], [[novelty song|songs recorded solely for their novelty value]], or anything self-consciously [[camp (style)|camp]] or [[kitsch]]; Chusid uses the term "incorrect music" for music that is intentionally recorded to draw bad reactions, [[Golden Throats|from non-musician celebrity entertainers attempting to]] [[crossover (music)|cross over into music]], or from artists who are talented and self-aware enough not to produce such music but do so anyway. Works are usually sourced from [[home recording]]s or independent [[recording studio]]s "with no quality control".<ref name="Misiroglu2015">{{cite book|editor-last=Misiroglu|editor-first=Gina|title=American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j4KsBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA541|year=2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-47729-7|pages=541–542}}</ref> In ''Songs in the Key of Z'', Chusid explicitly avoided discussing "unpopular", "uncommercial", or "underground" artists, and disqualified "just about anyone who could keep an orchestra or band together."{{sfn|Chusid|2000}} He did include a few acts in the definition that broke through to mainstream fame as novelty acts; [[Tiny Tim (singer)|Tiny Tim]], for example, is included despite a consistent three-decade career in the music industry that included a major chart hit, [[Joe Meek]] was one of the United Kingdom's most influential and successful sound engineers of the 1960s, and the [[Legendary Stardust Cowboy]] had [[15 minutes of fame|a brief moment of widespread fame]] in the 1960s with several national television appearances.{{sfn|Chusid|2000}}

[[Brian Wilson]] of [[the Beach Boys]] is regarded as the most famous example of an outsider musician.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Vivinetto |first1=Gina |title=The bipolar poet |url=http://www.sptimes.com/2003/07/19/Floridian/The_bipolar_poet.shtml |newspaper=[[St. Petersburg Times]] |date=July 19, 2003|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030825171545/http://www.sptimes.com/2003/07/19/Floridian/The_bipolar_poet.shtml|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 25, 2003}}</ref> Chusid felt that "it's difficult" to argue for Wilson as an outsider due to his popularity, but acknowledged that his struggles with mental illness and the widely circulated bootlegs of [[The Beach Boys bootleg recordings|his unreleased 1970s and 1980s demos]] "certify his outsider status".<ref name="Chusid2000"/>