Magic moments: the textuality of musical memory in contemporary Hollywood cinema

by Philip Drake

IASPM03 - MONTREAL Table of Contents Desired Exotics: Icelandic and American Popular Musics in Contact Stephen Amico 14 “For Rockin’ at the Sock Hop or Listenin’ to Liszt”: Marketing the Phonograph to Teen Girls in the 1950s Steve Bailey 22 Praxis as Play: Singing and the Musical Practices of Pre-teen Girls Sarah Baker 29 Popular Music and the End of Apartheid: The Case of Kwaito Christopher Ballantine 34 Focus Shift: An Essay On the Overlooked Musical Inﬂuences in Québec Popular Chanson of the 1960s Luc Bellemare 41 American “Old time music” Mediation with French-Canadian Recordings Sandria P. Bouliane 53 Ideology, Historiography, and the Rock and Roll Hall(s) of Fame: Writing Off Rush? Durrell Bowman 64 You Walk Alone: Jandek and the Relationship Between Biography and Textuality in Popular (and Not-So-Popular) Music Kevin John Bozelka 70 What Does Their Music Mean: Argentinean Music for a Quebec Musician Pascal Bujold 77 Understanding Contradictions Through Popular Music: An Analysis of Coplas and Canción De Autor Mercedes Carbayo-Abengózar and Esther Pérez-Villalba 84 Skinny Ties and Valley Girls: Gender, Genre and the 1980s Teen Movie Theo Cateforis 100 FinalScratch: Inaugurating a Virtual Authenticity? Sara Wei-Ming Chan 107 Fresco or Freeway?: An Aural impression of Montreal’s Lachine Canal Owen Chapman 114 Cultural Capital and Cultural Memory among Mexican Migrants in the United States: The Performance of Corridos and Norteño Music among Migrants Martha Chew 118 Mapping the Music Industry in Scotland: Building an Industry or Building an Empire? Martin Cloonan and John Williamson 129 “Our Disagreement is a subtle one of Methodology”: Music Theory and the Clash of Ideologies in Discourse on Popular Music John S. Cotner 139 Dance Tribes and Club Cultures. Experiences, Imageries and Values Concerning Dance Clubs in Rome Francesco D’Amato 146 Some Reﬂexions on Song Theory, Signed Song and Traditional Song Jean N. De Surmont 156 When No Sense Makes Sense. Voice, Words and Stars in Italian Pop: Elio e le Storie Tese occurrence Angelo Di Mambro 166 Magic moments: the textuality of musical memory in contemporary Hollywood cinema Dr Philip Drake 172 Scenes Dimensions of Karaoke in the U.S. Rob Drew 179 Reloading the Matrix: A Perceptual Geography of Zion Mark Evans 187 The Many Lives of Cotton Eyed Joe Holly Everett 195 The Handmaiden’s Tale: Black Women Back Up Singers in White Rock Susan Fast 203 The Practice of Popular Music at a Brazilian University: Challenges and Possibilities Heloisa Feichas 211 Deep and/or soulful?: The Politics of House Music in New York City Kai Fikentscher 218 Genre Subversions in “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” by Jane Siberry France Fledderus 225 Musical Performance and the Evolution of Television Conventions, 1948-1955 Murray Forman 245 Crossroads: Intertextual Strategies And Economic Relations In The Age Of Digital Music Héctor Fouce 256 Broken Bottles and Barbed Wire: Performative Violence and the Boundaries of Fiction in Extreme Rock Michael Free 263 Popular Songs as a Form of Knowledge and Gathering for People Jorge Frozzini 271 You Gotta Work Your Jelly Cynthia Fuchs 290 “Sneaking Into the Boys Club”: Gender and the Independent Record Shop Lee Ann Fullington 298 ‘Unbearable Intimacy’ and Jeff Buckley’s Transgendered Vocality Shana Goldin-Perschbacher 306 “Boy Racer”: Morrissey at the Intersection of Nationality and Gender Nicholas Greco 316 From rock in France to French rock: Towards the formation of an autonomous expression Gérôme Guibert 322 Performing Musical Chronicles in Mexico Eduardo Guízar 329 Vision Versus Sound: Media Competence as a Touchstone in the Tango Singing Contest at the Seinäjoki Tango Festival Yrjö Heinonen 337 The Case of New Fascist Rock Music in Germany: An Attempt to Distinguish Scalar and Vectorial Sign Components Jan Hemming 344 Talking About Good and Bad Music David Hesmondhalgh 354 “Got to Deconstruct”: The Theory and the Practice of Henry Cow’s “Bittern Storm over Ulm” Kevin Holm-Hudson 366 Killing the Music – Whodunnit? I: The Crime Shane Homan 375 New Folk Music in Chinese Pop Music Yang Hong 381 Atomic Primitivism: Akira Ifukube’s Sound Design for Godzilla Shuhei Hosokawa 386 ‘Revives’: Old Gold in Reggae Hasse Huss 393 Lithuanian Audiences, Diasporic Texts Bjorn Ingvoldstad 400 Human Nature? Madonna’s queer(ing) identities Freya L Jarman-Ivens 406 Killing the Music: Whodunnit? The Criminal - First Interrogation Bruce Johnson 418 Claiming Authority Lars Kaijser 426 Is There Green Popular Music (Studies)?: Approaching the Question through Pulp’s Album We Love Life Kari Kallioniemi 434 “At Times, We May Have Gone a Bit Too Far”: Technologies of Spectacle in Pink Floyd’s P.U.L.S.E. Stage Performance at Earl’s Court, London 1994 Kimi Kärki 439 Across the River: The Stage Performance Design Co-operation of Peter Gabriel and Robert Lepage Kimi Kärki 447 The Practice of Music Fandom on the Internet Marjorie Kibby 454 The World Wide Web and Music Activity: Metaphor or Analogy? Geoff King 464 Effects of effects: exploring the message behind the use of echoes on vocals John Klepko 472 Tears and Screams: Performances of Pleasure and Pain in the Bolero Dr Vanessa Knights 478 The Film Music of Tôru Takemitsu: Sound and Silence in Double Suicide 486 (Shinjû Ten no Amijima) Kyoko Koizumi Intertextuality as a Tool for the Analysis of Popular Music: Gérard Genette and the Recorded Palimpsest Serge Lacasse 494 Beyond the Yellow Submarine: Aspects of the Sublime in The Beatles’ “It’s All Too Much” Jim LeBlanc 504 “Simulacra or “Stimulacra”?: Musical Inﬂections on Quasi-Realism and Parody Claire Levy 510 Join the ranks! Québec’s Musical Union and “Emergent Musics”: A New Field of Cultural Activity? Martin Lussier 517 Disco, House and Techno: rethinking the local and the global in Italian Electronic Music Paolo Magaudda 535 Almost Famous: Finland’s Quest for International Popular Music Stardom, 1961–1999 Janne Mäkelä 552 Digital Recording Technologies and New Music-Making Practices: A Case Study of Young Musicians in Rural Canada Jan Marontate 559 Centre/Periphery Relationships in Connection with Cultural Flow and the ‘Problem’ of Local and Ethnic Traits in Danish Popular Music since 1990 Henrik Marstal 569 Character and Popular Music in West Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums Kari McDonald 578 Discommunication: Noise Music in Post-80’s Japan Anne McKnight 587 Problems in Popular Music History Writing Morten Michelsen 605 Girls on top, or Stealing the Phallus Richard Middleton 613 Behind the Practices; Catching Up With Depeche Mode 101: Verite Very Tara Mimnagh 618 Liminal Sounds and Images: Transnational Chinese Popular Music Tony Mitchell 625 Queering the Pitch: A Historical and Political Comment Martha Mockus 636 Skill, Music, and Energy in Punk Performance Eugene Montague 643 Practicing Formerly Popular Music: The Roots Music Community of Montreal Craig Morrison 649 The Impact of New Technologies on Contemporary Music Management Practices Guy Morrow 656 Great Big Mistake: Fandom as Magical Practice, Stockwell Day and Spoiled Identity Peter Narváez 662 From the ‘Nay’ List to the Play List: Increasing Local Music Airplay in New Zealand Without Enforced Regulation Karen Neill 670 Dialed Tone: Signature Guitars as Cultural Signiﬁers Wade Nelson 681 Night of a Thousand Stevies: Queer strategies and the forging of femininity Jason Lee Oakes 689 Flowing together or alone?: On self-controlling music participants in the media society Hiroshi Ogawa 697 “Tearoom” – A Programme for Young People Broadcast by a Culture-Oriented Station in the Czech Republic Aleš Opekar 706 South of the Border: Constructing A History of Rock in a Non Anglo Country; The Case of Mexico Julia E. Palacios 714 Queering the Pitch Karen Pegley 719 The BBC and Popular Music Broadcasting in the UK: Digital Radio Strategies Mark Percival 722 Beyond the Music: Political Popular Music & Social Justice in an Age of Fragmentation Elizabeth Perea 729 Pop/rock Music, Cultural Uniqueness and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism Motti Regev 742 Musical Consumption and Subcultural Identities Among Urban Cuban Youth Mario Rey 748 The Real Slim Shady: Mediation and Performance Leenke Ripmeester 756 Music for Nothing or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect Cheyanne Vanderdonckt and Gilbert B. Rodman 764 Creatio ex ?: How do members of pop and rock bands develop musical ideas? Anja Rosenbrock 772 Canonic Implications of Greatest Hits Albums: The Case of Oh What A Feeling Gordon Ross 789 Hell Bent for Leather: Masculinity, Heavy Metal, and Rob Halford Katrina Rudmin 797 Glenn Gould and Recording Technology: Linking Popular and Classical Recording Practices Paul Sanden 807 Toward a Phenomenology of Contemporary Music Video: Programming, Consumption and Analysis Patricia Schmidt 816 Alternative Jazz Pedagogy: An examination and analysis of the teaching methods of Barry Harris Andrew Scott 824 Creating A Collector Constituency: The Historical Development of Record Collecting The 78 Era Roy Shuker 833 Fragments of a Musical / Narratological Practice: Reading Pop Music as a Narrative, Musicians as Characters Gianni Sibilla 843 Machismo, mediation, maquiladoras: a Stephen Patrick Morrissey Mystery Colin Snowsell 854 “Bu Vatan Bizim” [“This Land is Ours”]: Nationalism in Turkish Rap in Diaspora and in the Homeland Thomas Solomon 873 Making Sense of MIDEM Richard Sutherland 890 Spinning Feminism: Feminism in the Media Coverage of Destiny’s Child Samantha C. Thrift 900 Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris: Introducing Chanson to Anglophone Audiences Chris Tinker 909 Lady Day the Torch Singer: The Vocal Persona of a “Woman Unlucky in Love” Robert Toft 916 Creativity, Thievery and the Musical Commons Jason Toynbee 923 “Canadian Cottage Weekend”: Place in Blue Rodeo’s Music and Videos Gillian Turnbull 932 Hearing Difference: The Seme Tobias c. van Veen 942 The Mutation Industry: Cyberdog, Apoptygma Berzerk, and the future of Industrial Music Marc Vera 955 “Grand Funk Live! Staging Rock in the Age of the Arena” Steve Waksman 962 Remaking Bob Marley: The Global Branding of a Soul Rebel Thomas J. Weber, Ph.D. 970 The Night Canadian Music Comes Home: Organizational Practices and the Juno Awards David Young 981 The Transmolecularization of [Black] Folk: Space is the Place, Sun Ra and Afrofuturism Nabeel Zuberi 991 IASPM03 - -MONTREAL IASPM03 MONTREAL Desired Exotics: Icelandic and American Popular Musics in Contact Stephen Amico I n his article on Icelandic “power poets” or kraftaskáld, folklorist and anthropologist Richard Bauman 2. strikingly or excitingly different or unusual; and (1992) focuses not on traditional culture but, rather, the traditionalization of cultural productions, a process whereby objects – in this case, the verses of the kraftaskáld - are imbued with a sense of “tradition” via their embedding within and relationships to other speech genres. In this brief paper, I would like to suggest that we take a similar view of something which permeates our perception of much popular music – speciﬁcally, the idea of the exotic. Despite the fact that this word may conjure up visual images of tropical paradises, peopled by Gaugin-esque “primitives,” or perhaps distant strains of gamelans, my contention is that nothing is, in essence, “exotic” – rather, certain musics are made exotic by their placement within systems and relations to speciﬁc listening subjects. Certainly the word “exotic” has taken on a somewhat sedimented meaning, and recent works such as John Hutnyk’s book (2000) have examined the political implications of just such a usage. However, I’d like to consider Webster’s deﬁnition of the word, which has the following meanings: 3. of or relating to striptease (a meaning to which I’ll later return) Lacking in these deﬁnitions is any mention of geographic placement, race, or assumptions regarding so-called modernity. So if this term has taken on almost racist overtones, if its meaning has become eclipsed or co-opted by a putative modern, white center, projecting fantasies upon a periphery populated by “others,” why not simply retire it from any sort of quotidian or academic lexicon (save for its interpellation as an operation upon an “other”)? To do this, I believe, would be a mistake, as it forecloses the possibility of illuminating one of the main modalities of cathexis between listener and music – that of desire. Through an examination of two Icelandic artists – the singer Páll Óskar Hjalmtysson (who generally dispenses with the patronymic) and the band Sigur Rós - I want to raise the possibility that the “exotic,” produced by the listening subject, is instrumental in his or her apprehension of their musics. Furthermore, by attempting to “rehabilitate” the term, I 1. introduced from another country: not native to the place where found; hope to destabilize – if only theoretically – conceptions of “self” and “other,” or “center” and “periphery.” I’ll 15 begin with the music of Páll Óskar, with a focus on three variables: ﬁrst, his use of American musics in his compositions; second, his visual expressions of alterity; and third – often concomitant with the second – his homosexuality. Much of Páll’s music has drawn not only upon the stylistic conventions of American disco, but has also incorporated actual samples. For example, on one of his earlier CDs – 1993’s Stuð (roughly translated as “vibe” or “energy”) – the ﬁrst track, “TF-Stuð,”1 makes prominent use of a horn riff from Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real”. Not only is the riff present, but the melody performed by the female singers is strongly reminiscent of Chic’s “Good Times.” Samples by both Michael Jackson and Kool and the Gang are present on the CD as well. Likewise, on the 1999 CD Deep Inside, he makes use of both samples and styles; his “Better Be Good” uses an extended sample from Patrice Rushen’s “Haven’t You Heard”, and on the title track, the arrangement – most notably the driving, sequenced bassline – suggests Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” . Indeed, during my interview with him in Iceland, much of what I had simply assumed regarding his musical inﬂuences was conﬁrmed: he noted a great afﬁnity for the work of such singers as Diana Ross and Donna Summer, speciﬁcally noting that “Deep Inside” was, indeed, meant as a “tribute” to the latter. This song – “Deep Inside” – brings me to Pall’s presentation of his homosexuality, which has seemingly progressed – at least visually, via what might be seen as a somewhat “stereotypical” image – from unnamed yet implied, to unambiguous. While the images from his 1993 CD, Stuð (Figures 1-3) may indicate a sexuality abundantly clear to even the naïve viewer, there is still some room for subjective interpretation which might not wish to acknowledge his homosexuality. By the time of the release of Deep Inside, however, Pall’s self-presentation seems to foreclose any sort of ambiguity regarding his sexuality (Figures 4-7). Not only were these images used in the packaging of the CD, they were also prominent in the winter of 2000 as life-sized cardboard cutouts in the two major record stores in Reykjavík, Skifan and Japis. These visual images were furthermore accompanied by song lyrics which, while certainly rife with double entendre, were rather unequivocal in their referencing of homosexuality; for example, both the title song and another track – “Enter Me” – suggest anal intercourse, while a dysfunctional gay relationship is the subject of “Please Reject me Like My Father Did.” But Páll’s visual alterity has not only been effectuated vis-à-vis a heterosexual listening audience; his decision to dye his naturally blond hair black, for example, was, according to him, a self-conscious way of differentiating himself from the “typical” Icelandic visage. This difference is 16 quite noticeable, for example, on the back cover of his CD with the group Casino (Figure 8). Of course, difference, exoticism, should not be taken as stable, quantiﬁable terms or states; the production of exoticism must not overstep the line between difference which compels and that which repels; Antti-Ville Kärje gave a paper about just such a dynamic at the 2001 IASPM international conference. As such, overriding personal or societal mores may dictate at which point the exotic becomes transgressive to the point of social or psychological danger – that is, destructive to the (imagined) stability of known and accepted codes of operation. This may explain, in part, why Páll’s last CD, Deep Inside – the one on which his sexuality was unambiguously vaunted, and his only work entirely in English (including the anglicized version of his name, “Paul Oscar”) – was the only one to have produced a ﬁnancial deﬁcit. But if sexuality and visual difference might be seen as contributing to the exotic, can his use of “American” musics be viewed as producing the same effect, in a country where their promulgation has been so unrremitting? American popular musics have been present in Iceland since at least 1941, when American troops were stationed in Hvalfjörður, and even a cursory scan of Icelandic radio stations today will reveal a barrage of the latest American hits. However, one must also note the efﬂorescence of innumerable local bands, as well as a wide array of Icelandic artists in record stores, many of whom have enjoyed much success within the country, such as Bubbi Morðens; and although some of these acts – Sálin or Skítamórall, for example – may sound like “Anglo-American” pop to the non-Icelander, this may not be the case for the Icelanders themselves. For example, one young man, discussing these aforementioned artists with me, somewhat jokingly referred to them as “bands that go around playing for drunken teenagers in gymnasiums”; yet he still evinced a certain fondness for them, and noted that they were “typically Icelandic”; in his opinion I, being a foreigner, would not be able to fully understand the Icelandic-ness of their sound. But even more generally, there’s a great danger in the refusal to believe that what is American cannot, in any time or place, be “exotic”; such a belief has the underlying suggestion that not only is American culture, indeed, the culture of the world, unfettered by temporal or spatial difference, but that it is also immutable and transparent in meaning This is not to deny the asymmetrical situation of access to capital and the attendant ability to promulgate without constraint or responsibility; however, such promulgation does not always or necessarily eclipse indigenous production. Páll’s music, while certainly drawing knowingly upon American musics is still Icelandic, full of allusions to things known largely only to Icelanders, something 17 which engendered a certain amount of difﬁculty for me in translating the lyrics. I’ll now turn to Sigur Rós, an Icelandic band which has in the past three years met with an exceptional amount of critical acclaim and commercial success both in Iceland and abroad. Beginning their career as many bands in Iceland do – playing small venues to small audiences throughout the country - they have progressed to securing a spot as the opening act for Radiohead on an international tour, and to headlining to standing-room-only crowds in such New York City venues as Irving Plaza and Radio City Music Hall. Their 1999 release Ágætis Byrjun was named one of the top 20 albums of the year by Spin magazine, and the encomia they have received from the press sometimes borders on the embarrassingly effusive; for example, of Ágætis Byrjun, Melody Maker gushed that “[t]hey sound like God weeping tears of gold in heaven, like a glacier seeping through the harsh Icelandic landscape, like whale song beamed to Earth from a distant planet. Their staggeringly emotional performances leave onlookers in tears or lost in dreamworlds” (Watson, n.d.) What has also been notable in press accounts, as adumbrated in the preceding quote, is a recourse to stereotypical images of Iceland, which may be seen as “exoticizing” the band for a non-Icelandic audience; for example a reviewer in Time Out New York, described their songs as having a “volcanic intensity,” with tempos that are “positively glacial,” ultimately “conjuring visions of deep space and towering ice sculptures” (Aswad, n.d.) Perhaps one of the most beautiful (and most popular) tracks from Ágætis Byrjun is “Svefn-G-Englar” (roughly translated as “Sleepwalker/Angel,” due to a play on words which combines the verb “að ganga” [to walk] and the noun “engill” [angel]. The lyrics, mainly in Icelandic, also contain a word – “tjú,” the hook of the chorus – which is untranslatable. Although the band originally perpetuated a “hoax” of sorts – willingly taken up by the majority of the English-speaking press – that their songs were written in an invented language called “Hopelandic,” in reality no such language existed – rather, the socalled “Hopelandic words” are more akin to vocables. Although the majority of songs on Ágætis Byrjun are clearly in Icelandic to anyone who knows the language, one song, for example – Olsen, Olsen – is entirely made up of such vocables. But in both cases, both the “real” and the “invented” language – and the band’s invention of the “story” of “Hopelandic” – may be seen as contributing to the image of the exotic. The last area on which I’ll focus is sexuality, speciﬁcally relating to the voice of the lead singer Jón Þor Birgisson, or Jónsi as he is called. His use of falsetto often gives the listener the impression that 18 the singer is female, and a reviewer in Spin described his voice as the sound of a “12 year old girl encased in permafrost” (Greenwald, n.d.), while Rolling Stone referred to the vocals as “startlingly feminine” (Blashill 2000).2 While the falsetto has been used throughout the history of popular music – from Jimmie Rogers to Jimmy Sommerville – the variable of femininity has not always been a correlate; however, Jónsi’s voice in particular seems to dispense with the trappings of stereotypical masculinity, often sounding fragile or androgynous, even when not making use of his falsetto, as, for example, on the track “Starálfur.” That his sexuality was questioned by many people with whom I spoke was not entirely surprising; and, indeed, with his recent “coming out,”3 it appears his homosexuality has become yet another variable used by the press to assert his “difference,” often mentioned in the same breath as his one blind eye. I have noted the variable of sexuality regarding both Páll and Jónsi as a marker of the exotic, and want to reference here Philip Brett’s article which has drawn the parallel of the otherness which accrues to the musician/musical in general with that which is produced (by majoritizing discourse) in connection with the homosexual. In examining the connections between music and sex, sexuality or “sexiness” – often an a priori assumption – there’s much to be gleaned from attending to the lure of the exotic. But exotic is not simply a synonym for “different,” but, rather, a certain kind of difference – one which is – again returning to Webster’s – foreign to the subject, exciting and sexual – as, for example, in the case of “exotic dance.” In closing this section, I will reference the fourth track from Sigur Rós’s latest album, the title of which is only a pair of parentheses; the individual tracks are, likewise, without titles4. Sung only in vocables – neither English nor Icelandic – the song lacks actual “words,” and the band has decided to allow listeners to post their interpretations of the lyrics on their interactive website (http://www.sigur-ros.com). When I last visited, it seems people had decided that the lyrics centered around the word “desire.” This is not only rather telling, but also rather convenient for me, as I want to ﬁnish up with a broad discussion of the production of desire, and here I’m going to draw upon – albeit in a rather simpliﬁed form – some of Jacques Lacan’s ideas; this is not, however, a “Lacanian analysis” – it is, rather, simply my use of some key concepts, which I may or may not be using in a way acceptable to Lacan himself. Caveats notwithstanding, what I want to stress is that desire may be seen as related to desire of the Other – and this has two meanings: ﬁrst, the desiring of the other, a desire to be returned to the presymbolic relationship with the primary other; but also, the wish to be the object of the other’s desire. In short, desire may be seen as a desire to be desired, for recognition, for 19 being understood – and this is certainly part and parcel of Lacan’s assertion that we’re all narcissists. So perhaps this is a way of approaching the often profound relationships people feel towards popular music and performers. Might we consider that the allure of the “exotic” other – she or he who is different from me, who is exciting, who is sexual, whose communication is under-determined or foreign enough to allow the insertion of my subjective fantasies – is then imbued, by me, with the ability to desire, to recognize me? I’ve often heard people express that they related to a speciﬁc music because of the performer’s ability – through sound, through word – to reach them, to “understand them.” And while we know that the performer does not sing only for us, the fantasy often remains. None of this is meant to absolve the use of commodiﬁed exotics as libidinal playgrounds for the privileged few; however, attention to the exotic – as more than simply an antiquated, othering term – may prove quite productive in our attempts to understand cathexis. Furthermore, the enterprise of conceptualizing centers and peripheries in new ways – such as Gestur Guðmundsson does in examining rock’s discourse of “authenticity” – cannot but have a salubrious effect on the ability to understand the machinations of musical and social discourses. A perspective which allows for the perception of the self – the Icelander, the American – as the exotic other is not only more accurate, but entirely necessary. Bauman, Richard. 1992. “Contextualization, Tradition Aswad, Jem. n.d. “Sigur Rós: Ágætis Byrjun.” Time Out New York. 111. 4. While there are no “ofﬁcial” titles for the tracks, the band’s website does list “working titles” for each; according to this listing, track four is known as “Njósnavélin” (“The Spy Machine”). 3. Although “coming out” removed any ambiguity regarding Jónsi’s sexuality, publicity photos and magazine covers prior to this “event” often suggested a non-heterosexual (or non-gender conforming) sexual identity (Figures 10 and 11). 2. The “otherworldly” quality of his voice is, furthermore, often a product of his singing directly into the pickups of his electric guitar (Figure 9). Endnotes 1. The “preﬁx” of the track’s title – “TF” – references the Icelandic practice of naming all aircraft, all such names beginning with this preﬁx. In this song, “TF-Stuð” is the “disco airplane,” of which Páll is pilot/captain. Selected Bibliography 20 and the Dialogue of Contexts: Icelandic Legends of the Kraftaskáld.” Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, eds.) Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press. 125-145. Hayes, Jonathan. n.d. “Ágætis Byrjun, Sigur Rós: Warm as Ice.” SonicNet. (http://www.sonicnet.com/ artists/ai_album.jhtml?id=1123375&ai_id=961007) Helms, Colin. n.d. “Review: Ágætis Byrjun.” CMJ. com (http://www.cmj.com/articles/display_article. Bellman, Jonathan, ed. 1998. The Exotic in Western Music. Boston: Northeastern University Press. php?id=30015). Hutnyk, John. 2000. Critique of Exotica: Music, Blashill, Pat. 2000. “Sigur Rós: Ágætis Byrjun.” Rolling Stone. 850(September 28, 2000): 61. Politics and the Culture Industry. London; Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. Brett, Philip. 1994. “Musicality, Essentialism and the Closet.” Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (ed. Philip Brett et al.) New York: Routledge. 9-26. Kärjä, Antti-Ville. “Secure(d) Otherness: Towards Popular Cultural Identity.” Paper presented at the 2001 IASPM Biennial Conference in Turku, Finland. Célestin, Roger. 1996. From Cannibals to Radicals: Figures and Limits of Exoticism. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis: Lacan, Jacques (trans. Alan Sheridan). Écrits: A Selection. New York: W.W. Norton. 1974. Radano, Ronald and Bohlman, Philip, eds. 2000. Greenwald, Andy. n.d. “Spin review of ‘Svefn-gEnglar’.” Spin.com. Music and the Racial Imagination (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology, Philip V. Bohlman and Bruno Nettl, eds.) Chicago; London: University of Chicago Guðmundsson, Gestur. 1999. “To Find Your Voice in a Foreign Language: Authenticity and Reﬂexivity in the Anglocentric World of Rock.” Young. 7(2). (http:// www.alli.fi/nyri/young/1999/articleGestur99-2.htm) Watson, Ian. n.d. “Sigur Ros [sic]: Stunningly Beautiful Soundscapes.” Melody Maker. Press. 21 Selected Discography Páll Óskar. 1993. Stuð. Smekkleysa: SM32CD Páll Óskar og Casino. 1998. Stereo. Japis: JAP98582. Paul Oscar. 1999. Deep Inside. Japis: Pop 006 CD. Sigur Rós. 1999. Ágætis Byrjun. Smekkleysa: SM79CD. Sigur Rós. 2002. ( ). MCA: 1130912. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “For Rockin’ at the Sock Hop or Listenin’ to Liszt”: Marketing the Phonograph to Teen Girls in the 1950s Steve Bailey T he following essay examines the marketing of the phonograph (and with it phonography) to young that are linked to audio technology: sociality, sexual attractiveness, aesthetic “style,” portability, practicality, and pleasure. women in the 1950s. My conclusions were derived primarily from analyzing advertisements in several publications, with a focus on 17 magazine. My interest was in the connections between gender, technology, and culture in the ﬁfties and the ways that this was perpetuated in the marketing of technology. My initial assumptions were that it would be a fairly predictable, sexist appeal and not particularly sophisticated at that. What I found, though, was rather different—a multifaceted and sophisticated strategy that suggested a fairly complex relationship between a variety of symbolically potent elements. . Unlike television, the phonograph was a plausible consumer item for teenagers in the 1950’s. With prices as low as $25, the phonograph could be sold speciﬁcally to a youth market in a way that the television, which was roughly ten times as expensive, could not. The advertising resulting from the attempt to attract this market thus offers a unique glimpse into a self-conscious attempt to articulate a place for audio technology in the cultural frame of ﬁfties female teen culture. An examination of this advertising (and some related editorial content) reveals six key qualities I use the term “sociality” to refer to the sense of audio technology as the enabler of an enjoyable social interaction, as “the life of the party” (ad for V-M phonograph, May ’56) and as a crucial element in social life. This is reﬂected in the frequent use of graphics and/ or pictures of party scenes, dancing couples, even a group of happy, dancing insects (“Crazy Hi-Fi Bugs,” VM phonograph ad, May ’56). An ad for the “Pat Boone” line of Roland phonographs (October ’59) epitomizes this approach, repeating the “life of the party” claim, and suggesting that these phonographs will produce “a party with Pat Boone!,” illustrated by a photo of Pat looming over a girl who appears to be planning a party—she is chatting on the telephone—while sitting next to her Pat Boone “Playmate” model phonograph. Nearby, two other teenage girls sit clustered around another telephone beneath a large photo of Pat, apparently talking to the ﬁrst girl. Here, the ritual of the phone conversation, and its particular resonance in teen culture as a form of mediated social interaction, is linked with the phonograph. 23 This theme is repeated in a multiple-product advertising layout with a slumber party theme (April ’57), featuring four girls drinking Canada Dry Ginger Ale, grooming each other with Coty cosmetics, and enjoying RCA LPs on an RCA Victor phonograph. In this case, the phonograph is linked with important social rituals: the slumber party, mutual grooming, and the conviviality of the “all-girl affair.” It also appears, in a more general sense, in some editorial pieces. An article on giving successful parties presents ﬁve new phonographs under the headline “Essential: A Music Maker” (June ’55), and also offers a cartoon featuring a dancing female exclaiming “It would be a catastrophe if the record player broke down.” Another article on phonographs, titled “Music makes the party” (September ’57), claims that “Music and parties just naturally go together. . . like fall and football,” yet another tie with a youth ritual. This sense of the phonograph as an essential element for successful socializing is probably the most pervasive theme in the advertising and editorial content of Seventeen, but there are several other important motifs. In addition to the tie with sociality, the phonograph is also presented as a useful tool for attracting the attention of males. Admiral offers “5 ways to be very, very popular!”—ﬁve new phonographs—with an illustration of a young woman enjoying some LPs with a clean-cut young man (September ’56). RCA claims, “You’ll turn heads with a new ‘Victrola’ Phonograph,” and goes on to suggest that you “let your RCA Victor dealer show you how to catch every eye and ear” (May ’56). In this case, the illustration is more suggestive: a young woman using her phonograph while reclining beneath three archetypal photographs of males: a leatherjacketed rebel, a football player, and a fellow in a white dinner jacket—“turn every head,” indeed. An earlier RCA ad also features this theme, with a girl and her unfortunately named “Skipper” phonograph attracting the attention of two well-dressed fellows (February ’56). The ad attempts to inspire a bit of intra-gender rivalry, with a reference to two women who sit, phonograph-less, in the background of the photo: “You can bet that’s [visiting the RCA dealer] what the two green-eyed girls on the other bench are going to do.” V-M takes a more subtle approach, offering a “Memo to Mom and Dad,” that begins “Sweet girl graduates (and their fellas) want the new ‘teentime’ 45 portable” with a child-like drawing of a bow-tied male looking amorously at a teenage girl (June ’56). In all of these cases, the phonograph appears as a means of garnering sexual interest, as a sure-ﬁre way to attract male attention. This appeal is also used to sell LPs; another ad suggests that you can “Dazzle your date with Great Music. . .on Decca Records” (December ’56). 24 Other advertisements construct explicit links between phonography and adolescent sexuality. Admiral grounds its claims in aesthetics, presenting “The Hi-Fi Components he’d choose—in a cabinet she’ll adore” (October ’57). In this case, masculine demands for technical superiority can merge with a feminine concern for stylishness. In the case of a V-M ad from April 1958, male and female are analogized with the two channels of stereo with an illustration of a couple joined beneath V-M components that are “Yours for a Lifetime of Pleasure!” The most remarkable linkage of technology and sexuality, though, appears in Webcor ad (October ’60), boasting that its new automatic multi-disk phonograph is “the greatest ‘changer’ since Cinderella’s godmother!” The Webcor, the ad continues, “(can) change a dateless evening into a dance-sation” and “change you to a dancing doll, any lonesome night” [italics in original]. With the wordplay on “changer” and the reference to Cinderella, the ad suggests a supernatural power to produce an attractive “doll” from any “lonesome” girl. While the Admiral ad refers to its stylishness, others take direct steps to claim aesthetic allure as a feature of the phonograph. V-M parallels Admiral’s approach with an ad featuring the phrase “beautiful to look at” in a “hand-written,” characteristically feminine typeface juxtaposed with “more wonderful to hear” in a thicker, “masculine” font (December 1957). A Zenith ad boasts of “fresher styling” (September 1956) and an editorial piece from August 1956 describes the new radios and phonographs, “now bright with color.” In this aspect, the audio technology matches the discourse surrounding the introduction of television (Spigel 49-50); the apparatus must meet aesthetic demands as well as those of technological function. The emphasis in ads directed at teenagers, predictably, is more concerned with high style, “spring’s smartest phono fashions,” than bourgeois good taste, but the major emphasis in either case is that of transcending the conﬂict between practicality and aesthetics by offering components that succeed in both areas. The discourse on audio also matches the pitches made for television by emphasizing the practicality of audio equipment. As Spigel notes, televisions were sold by suggesting that they would enable rather than disrupt the smooth functioning of the household, as in the claims that television could ease the burdens of domestic labour (86-98 ). V-M is particularly fond of this pitch, urging teens to “Go Back to the Books with a Song!,” and that “Music lifts your spirits, lightens your load” (August ’58); another ad asks, “who could crack a book without it [music]” (December ’58). To sell more expensive tape recorders (at $225.00, near the top of the price range for teenagers), V-M broadens its claims, “Perfect for language. . . speech. . . music students! Helps you 25 learn faster and remember easier!” (November ’60), and includes a drawing of a girl saying “je v-m adore!” (I love V-M!) into a microphone as a boy sits nearby reading. In all three, there is the suggestion that the equipment eliminates the need to choose between practicality and pleasure: you can “Learn it up or Live it up.” After all, VM is the “last word in pleasurable utility!” (August ’58). While the emphasis on practicality is similar to the discourses surrounding both television, advertising for the phonograph and tape recorder can make one claim that was impossible for television in this era—portability. While television could never offer much mobility, this was a major part of the appeal (for teens) of the phonograph. Admiral directly contrasts its portable models with bulkier “console” stereos, producing “from 2 pieces of matched luggage. . . console stereo sound!” (October ’59). V-M offers “a BIG sound you can take with you” (April ’57); another ad features a phonograph that can serve “In your bedroom, In the rumpus room, In the dorm, For parties, For platter sessions, for fun everywhere” (April ’58) while housed in a “blue and white carrying case as chic as your smartest overnight case.” In addition to the merging of aesthetics and portability, the ad is interesting in its selection of typically “teenage” sites— social (parties, the rumpus room) and solitary (bedroom, dorm) spaces. The phonograph, ultimately, “gives you pleasure everywhere,” keying into teenage fantasies of a sophisticated, distinctly cosmopolitan life. In this vein, RCA’s ad for its portable model—“as easy to own as it is to carry”—features a photo of a young woman plugging in the speakers while a sweater-garbed, bongo-playing fellow looks on, all of this in a room decorated with college pendants and percussion instruments (March ’60). While the portable phonograph allows you to take your pleasure with you, pleasure itself is a common motif in the advertising and editorial presentation of audio equipment. The advertisements tend to feature models that gaze rather dreamily at the appliance itself. Ads for Admiral (October ’57), RCA (May ’56), and Zenith (June ’58) are exemplary here. They are certainly not “cracking the books,” as other ads may have implied. The copy in many ads reﬂects a similarly dreamy milieu—“ear tingling,” the “dreamy wonder of stereo,” “you’ll feel as if you were actually. . . dancing on a cloud,” “make the ‘best days of your life’ even happier,” and so on. There is a clear attempt to engage a cultural sense of music as a visceral pleasure; while the phonograph may meet the demands of style and function, it is ultimately a device of pleasure, and a distinctly physical pleasure at that. “Long Playing Fashions” and Hi-Fi Hygiene: Music and Marketing in Seventeen If images of cosmopolitan sophistication were crucial to the sale of phonographs, there is a kind of reverse symbolic ﬂow in advertising for other products. In this case, it is music and especially phonography 26 that becomes a rich device for constructing a discourse of stylishness and sophistication to sell fashion and grooming products. Music-related imagery and prose recurs continually in fashion advertising in the period, suggesting the cultural-symbolic potency of music for teenagers in the era. rhetoric: Teena Paige utilizes a photo of a woman holding a 45 record to sell dresses that are “pretty as a melody” (March ’56). Darlene sweaters takes a more direct approach, claiming its clothing will make you “number one on the boys’ hit parade,” illustrated with a drawing of a woman changing records on a phonograph while a man leers at her (September ’56). An editorial Some ads use music as a direct incentive (e.g., free 45s with the purchase of Breeze detergent) but others employ music in a connotative fashion and thus may say a bit more about its particular symbolic value. Sometimes, there are references to speciﬁc genres, as in the following “jazzy” Hathaway ad, “Pretty Combo! Soft purr of the clarinet. . . sweet slam of the big bass. . . and the lovely note struck by this two piece shirtwaist (dress).” The accompanying photograph features a woman dancing while a man in the background plucks a bass; a clarinet and an LP record sit on the ﬂoor (April ’56). Betty Rose fashions suggest both rock and jazz in a 1957 ad, telling teens to “Rock into spring. . .Roll into fashion” with “Classic note,” “Hot note,” and “Blue note” dresses. Max Factor offers a “Calypso Beat” line of “hi-ﬁ lipstick,” with a woman in tropical garb playing a conga drum. In these examples, rock, jazz, and calypso seem to suggest an exuberance and vivacity which should be associated with such “real gone” (to use Betty Rose’s terminology) products. Other ads are less genre-speciﬁc but use similar fashion spread repeats the phonograph theme, offering “Night Music in Sweet Tones of Rayon” with a photo of models holding records and surrounded by giant LPs (November ’56). Dan River dresses (August ’58), Treo Bras (April ’56), and Betty Barclay’s “Long Playing” dresses (September ’56), and Gassard’s Bras—using a pun on “record heat”—all use photos of models with records and/or phonographs in their advertisements. Two advertisements, though, move beyond this iconography and suggesting a bizarre connection between audio reproduction and hygiene. The ﬁrst is an ad for Bonne Bell skin products that offers a “Treatment Trio” package of skin products, including a record which contains Bonne’s “personal recorded advice on complexion care for your skin” (October 1960). The accompanying photo features a young woman reclining in front of a phonograph, presumably as the Bonne Bell advice record offers its “Sound Personal Advice to teenagers with skin problems. . .” The choice of the recorded medium for the advice and as a prominent 27 feature of the ad is interesting; apparently, a written pamphlet would lack the high-tech implications of a vinyl disk. The woman in the photograph is wearing a modish pair of striped trousers, additionally suggesting the kind of forward fashion sensibility noted in the earlier examples. The ﬁnal example in this section is stranger, and makes an explicit tie between hygiene and audio. The following citation is quite long, but the example, an ad for Dandricide rinse, demands it. Under the headline “Record Collector. . . Uses Dandricide,” the copy reads, “Muriel Franklin boasts one of the best record collections in the ’61 class. She has “Sing along with Mitch” and nearly every top album from “Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five” to Johnny Mathis’ latest. . . you name it— and Muriel probably has it. Muriel knows, a valuable collection of records requires careful handling and attention. The same is true of your personal grooming. Lint on a good platter can prove as disastrous as dandruff on our pretty shoulders. That is why Muriel uses pleasant, effective DANDRICIDE after each shampoo. She knows DANDRICIDE is one sure way of keeping unsightly dandruff out of her life. Whether you’re a collector or not, you’ll ﬁnd DANDRICIDE best for removing dandruff. . . and keeping it away. At the top of the ad is a photo of a girl, presumably Muriel, laying on the ﬂoor, with a rather dreamy look, contemplating an LP sitting on the ﬂoor in front of her. An open phonograph sits on the table behind her. This ad is particularly fascinating for several reasons. There is the explicit comparison between the proper care of the body and of the record collection, and the demonstration of Muriel’s broad tastes—Louis Armstrong to Mitch Miller (hot jazz to the ultimate easylistening). More generally, music is being used to carry a considerable symbolic weight here; the love of music is utilized to invoke cleanliness, afﬂuence (in her large and valuable collection), and the kind of cosmopolitan sophistication reﬂected in broad, eclectic taste. The examples in this section rely, in varying degrees, on this symbolic potency, and I should mention that other forms of popular media are rarely used in a similar fashion. There are no “televisual dresses” nor any “cinemascope cosmetics,” to mention two concurrent technologies, in the pages of 17. Beyond such metaphoric connections, there are few photographic images within advertisements or editorial content that reference any other media (e.g., television is not used as a prop). Some of this is easily explained: television does not have the connections with teenage social life (it is more clearly domestic) that phonography carries, ﬁlm-going is difﬁcult to reference through props in the manner of the phonograph and LP, and print certainly does not carry the high-tech connotations of 28 the electronic media. However, these factors seem to offer only a partial explanation of the overwhelming popularity of music related imagery. There are historical factors which might be signiﬁcant as well. For example, the work of Richard Leppert offers an extensive analysis of music related imagery in European painting in the 17th and 18th centuries which also demonstrates the cultural-symbolic power of music and its particular links with “feminine” culture (see Leppert, 1977 & 88). While Leppert’s extensive studies are obviously quite distant from the ﬁfties teenage milieu, they are an excellent demonstration of the long-held symbolic force of music in western culture. What is particularly fascinating in the case of 17 is the fusion of this classic iconography with the technological advances of the era; the phonograph displacing the piano or harpsichord as a powerful symbol of feminine sophistication. It is also striking that the actual symbolic content of music is so consistent—the link with sophistication, afﬂuence, and feminine pleasure appearing in 18th century painting and 20th century advertising. Selected Bibliography (All Ads From 17 magazine 1955-60 unless otherwise noted) Leppert, Richard. Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology & Socio-Cultural Formation in 18th-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ---. The Theme of Music in Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. Musik und Musiker im Bild: Ikonologische Studien, No. 1. Series edited by Walter Salmen. 2 vols. Munich: Musikverlag. Spigel, Lynn. Make Room For Television: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Praxis as Play: Singing and the Musical Practices of Pre-teen Girls Sarah Baker T his paper draws on the musical practices of seven pre-teen girls aged eight to eleven years old who homes, and even over the phone. The girls’ research tapes reﬂected this interest in singing. They included everything from the taunting playground-like singing of nine year old Amelia to a partially self-composed pop ballad by nine year old Rosa. were participants in my doctoral research undertaken in Adelaide, South Australia, during 2000. They all attended the same Catholic college and the majority of my ﬁeldwork took place in the after school care centre located in the school grounds. An integral part of my ethnographic approach was to provide each of the girls with a still camera and portable tape recorder which they could play with for a period of six months (see Baker). With these unconventional methodological tools each girl documented not only their musical practices but also other aspects of their everyday lives as they experienced it. In this paper I focus on one particular area of the girls’ musical practices - singing. Singing was captured on most of the girls’ research tapes. Eight year old Felicity, however, did not return her tape to me. Felicity told me that she could not give me back her research tape because her mother had taped something on it. She looked embarrassed. “She taped you doing something on it?”, I queried. Felicity nodded her head, indicating she had, and covered her face with her hands. “You singing”, I suggested. “Yes”, admitted Felicity, blushing. Although she was a member of the school’s junior choir, Felicity The ability to sing, or at least the ability to give the impression that one can sing, is an important aspect of being a professional performer of teenybop music, the form of popular music marketed to young girls. Likewise, a number of the girls in my research indicated that singing was an important aspect of their social worlds. During my ﬁeldwork it was a rare occasion not to hear at least one girl break out into song. I heard the girls singing at after school care, in their was clearly not yet comfortable with sharing her voice if unaccompanied by others. Although she may have had a wonderful voice, Felicity had not yet mastered “the use of the corporeal as a form of capital” (Shilling 88). This translated, in part, to a rather diminutive position of power for Felicity among her pre-teen peer group in after school care. This is indicative of the way in which the management of the body, in this case the voice as physical capital, can be transformed into positions 30 of status in the girls everyday lives as it becomes converted into social capital (Bourdieu). The ability to sing well was a mark of distinction in the girls’ after school care peer group. that any young girl could be in their position as famous pop stars. But words like “dreams” and “fantasy” are suggestive of a trivial connection, with links to notions of pretence and make-believe. But if dreams of fame are part of the girls’ singing, their practices are in In order to accrue this capital a number of the girls in the research attended singing lessons. For example, at the beginning of the 2000 school year, nine year old Kate began having singing lessons at the school. Rather than having individual tuition, Kate was learning in a small group of other girls. She told me that her class-mate Rosa also used to be in this group but, “… now her Mum has put her in individual lessons. I don’t know why. They’re more expensive but it’s exactly the same thing”. The girls were taught to sing current pop songs such as Madison Avenue’s ‘Who the Hell Are You?’ and ‘Shala La La La’ by the Vengaboys. Of all the girls it was Rosa who had been learning for the most time. She claimed to have “… been going to singing lessons for four years”. fact ‘hard work’ (Willis) and are underpinned by ‘the human seriousness of play’ (Turner). In the girls’ play with popular song, the pop star identity is momentarily embodied. Their singing, then, opens up a sensual space of becoming, a space to question “who and what ‘I am’ and could become” (Willis 11). So now we turn to a photograph of ten year old Emlyn posing as a pop star, becoming-pop star. Her eyes are closed, her head leans to one side and is tilted backwards slightly, one hand is clenched tightly around an imaginary microphone, as she silently belts out a nondescript pop song. The pose reminds me of the female singer Anastacia in her music video ‘I’m Outta Love’. In fact, not long before this photo was taken Emlyn had been to see a live performance by Part of the attraction of these lessons, of learning to sing pop songs, is that age-old teenybop dream of pop-stardom (see Walkerdine). Fame is said to be “the ultimate girl fantasy” (Hopkins 4). This seems to be conﬁrmed on Kate’s research tape where she sings the words of Fame - “Baby, remember my name/ Fame”. Pop groups like the Spice Girls, exude the impression Anastacia when the singer came to Adelaide to give a short promotional concert. But whereas Anastacia performs as a recognised star on the celebrity stage, Emlyn poses in her school uniform, standing on the bench under the shade of the school rotunda with only a handful of girls, including myself, participating in her performance. What is striking about this photograph is 31 that it has captured one brief moment in which Emlyn’s fantasy - a fantasy to be a pop star - was embodied. “Yes”, she replied. “Would you like to be a singer?”, I questioned her further. “Yes, but not wear all that makeup”, Emlyn said. “But I’d like to put out a CD and stuff”, Emlyn wanted to be a singer and she wanted to be famous. The expression of Emlyn’s desire was encapsulated by the persona she adopted for the school’s ‘Book Week’ parade in which she dressedup and presented herself as ‘the new Britney Spears’. Although she wanted to be a singer, Emlyn was very particular about what she wanted to sing. Unlike some other girls in the research, Emlyn did not participate in the school’s junior choir because she did not like the type of music in the choir’s repertoire. Emlyn told me: she added. But for Emlyn, the fantasy of being a famous pop star was cruelly shattered. Not long into the third school term Emlyn said to me, “My singing teacher wrote in my report that I was crap, that I can’t sing, so now Dad won’t let me go to singing lessons any more”. Emlyn had only been receiving lessons since the beginning of the school year. She explained to me that, “It’s hard singing with the piano because it doesn’t sound like the CD”. “Do you still sing at home?”, I asked I went to choir practice once and it was so boring. All it was, was breathing, teaching us how to breathe. And when we actually got to sing something it was only ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree’, no modern stuff!. However, in the very early stages of my research Emlyn told me that she attended private singing lessons at the school. “But you’re not in the choir?”, I queried. “No”, said Emlyn, “I don’t like Opera and that classical stuff”. I asked her what she sang in the lessons and she replied, “Modern stuff”. “Like what?”, I questioned. “Like the Spice Girls”, she stated, matter-of-factly. “Like the music you listen to on the radio?”, I asked. her, and she answered, “No, because I don’t have a CD player”. “But you’ve got CDs”, I said. “That’s why I can never play them”, Emlyn replied, “I only have a radio”. However on a visit to her home I had seen a stereo system in the kitchen/ living area so I queried, “But you have a CD player in the house?”. “Yeah”, said Emlyn, “But I can sing ﬁne when I’m on my own, but I sing crap when there’s another person there”. Being told that she was not a competent singer meant Emlyn had to quickly re-negotiate her dreams and desires. A week later she asked me, “Do you want to be famous?”. “Do you?”, I immediately questioned back. “Yeah, I want to be an actress because anyone 32 can learn to be an actress”, and then she added quietly, “I’d rather be a singer, but I can’t sing”. Being told she did not have the ability to sing did not necessarily mean that Emlyn would discontinue any fantasy of being a pop star. It was more likely that this identity, explored in play, had been repositioned rather than having been given up entirely. But for Emlyn this fantasy now highlighted the acquisition of “envied skills and success” (Sharpe 91). ﬁeldwork she conﬁded in me that, “I’m going to leave school when I’m sixteen and join a record company and become a singer”. Over the course of the ﬁnal two terms at school Emlyn had refocused and gained a new conﬁdence in her voice. She again began testing out her singing skills around others - and this was where troubles arose. Most noticeable was the conﬂict which developed between Emlyn and Rosa over the relative merits of their voices. On one occasion when Emlyn was singing Bardot’s ‘Poison’ Rosa looked at Emlyn, Indeed, after being told her singing abilities lacked sufﬁcient merit, Emlyn began questioning her previous pop aspirations. She said to me: “I can’t believe when I was six I thought I was going to be a pop star. My brother was even my manager. I must have been getting desperate. I really believed I would be a pop star. How stupid was I?” Emlyn also became far more critical of the singing abilities of others. In terms of pop stars, she expressed that: for Christina Aguilera “all her songs are the same, she screeches”; and although she thought Britney Spears’ voice was overall “funky”, of the song ‘Lucky’ she said: “Its ok, but gets a bit annoying. She can’t really sing in it. It shows she has quite a weak voice”. then looked at me with her nose turned up, then she rolled her eyes, before looking the other way. Another time, it was Rosa who was singing and Emlyn kept joining in. Each time she did this, Rosa would stop singing and simply glare at Emlyn - a real ‘How dare she’ look. But the girls’ feelings were mutual. In the ﬁnal days of my ﬁeldwork Emlyn was talking to me about a number of newly released songs that she had recently heard. She then proceeded to sing one of these songs, Wheatus’ ‘Teenage Dirtbag’. Sitting on the other side of me was Rosa. She was a big fan of this particular song and couldn’t resist joining in. However, about halfway through Rosa stopped and whispered to me, “Doesn’t Although Emlyn had been told that she was not a good singer by her voice coach, she retained her enjoyment of singing. In fact, on the ﬁnal day of Emlyn know she can’t sing?”. Once Emlyn had ﬁnished, Rosa started to sing the song again, only on her own this time. This prompted Emlyn to whisper in my other 33 ear, “Does she really take singing lessons?”, screwing her face up in disgust. In this e-mail from Emlyn that I received the year following the ﬁeldwork, a similar sentiment is expressed: Selected Bibliography Baker, Sarah. “Rock on, baby!: Pre-teen girls and popular music.” Continuum, 15 (2001): 74-82. Rosa must be in the playground because i can’t here her vibrating sounds of what she calls SINGING [and i am not joking and what the rest of us call “SHUT UP” On occasions like these the struggle for capital amongst the girls became particularly obvious and resonated with a certain intensity. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000. Hopkins, Susan. Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture. Annandale: Pluto Press Australia, 2002. Sharpe, Sue. ‘Just Like a Girl’: How Girls Learn to be Women. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978. Shilling, Chris. “The body and difference.” Identity and By going ‘behind the scenes’ of young girls musical practices like this, we ﬁnd that what is ‘behind the practices’ is serious play. As the above examples have demonstrated, the girls’ investments in mastering the voice constituted hard work. Singing (and its associated capital) was struggled over by the girls to consolidate their position (of power or dominance) in the peer group. However, it seems that for some girls, no matter how much time and effort they put in to developing the physical capital of the voice, there was always the risk that it would not be sufﬁciently appreciated or valued by others. These are the risks involved in becoming-pop star. Willis, Paul. Common Culture: Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1996. Walkerdine, Valerie. Daddy’s Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1997. Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982. Difference. Ed. K. Woodward.London: Sage, (1999): 63-120. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Popular Music and the End of Apartheid: The Case of Kwaito Christopher Ballantine I n February 1990, in the very week that the apartheid government announced the release of our sons come home and give the score of the dead, seven for us and three for them, like a football result?” (Sachs 147). But this was a revolutionary moment, as Sachs understood: the title he gave to his document was “Preparing Ourselves for Freedom.” Young people had played a crucial role in the anti-apartheid struggle, commonly at the expense of their own childhood and youth; and when democracy ﬁnally arrived in 1994, they avidly started reclaiming their youth and seeking to live out their new freedoms. Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC, an extraordinary document surfaced in the South African press. It was written by Albie Sachs, one of the senior intellectuals within the African National Congress (ANC). Referring to role that the arts had played in the struggle against apartheid, Sachs put forward a scandalous idea. “The ﬁrst proposition I make”, he said, “is that our members should be banned from saying that culture is a weapon of struggle. I suggest a period of, say, ﬁve years.” Sachs urged musicians and other artists to “shake off the gravity of their anguish and break free from the solemn formulas of commitment”; and he asked them to remember that the anti-apartheid struggle was “for the right to express our humanity in all its forms, including our sense of fun and capacity for love.” Indeed, he asked, “what about love? […] Can it be that once we join the ANC we do not make love any more, that when the comrades go to bed they discuss the role of the white working-class?” (19-21). There’s no surprise in the fact that this document caused an uproar. As one activist responded, “How can we write poems about the beauty of the Valley of a Thousand Hills when blood is being spilt in the streets, when One of the most vivid signs of this dramatic turn was the rapid appearance of a new, locally composed dance music. Among its most striking prerequisites were the ready availability of modern sound-production technology, an interest in international house music, and an identiﬁcation with aspects of hip-hop culture. At dance events, DJs began to slow down house tracks from 120 beats per minute to around 100; soon they added a layer of keyboard and percussion, plus new lyrics – though usually these lyrics were chanted, rather than sung or rapped. Local musicians then began to make their own CDs in this style – but record companies spurned the products, believing that the new music was just a passing fad. So at ﬁrst the CDs were sold on 35 the streets, or from the trunk of a car. Later a number of black-owned record companies sprang up, with the speciﬁc aim of producing and marketing this music. By the time the new style became the dominant force on the South African scene, everyone knew its name: they called it kwaito. This music came to see itself as the idiom that quintessentially represented the aspirations and the freedoms of the new social order. But what was this new order? What were its features? Political freedom, of course, was one. Another feature, much less attractive, is identiﬁed by the now familiar criticism that the state actively fostered the growth of a new elite – as a priority. Ostentatious, self-obsessed and massively acquisitive, this new elite beneﬁted directly from ofﬁcial policy, particularly after 1996, when the government adopted a neo-liberal, macro-economic outlook of almost Thatcherian proportions. Kwaito moved to this beat. Certainly it shook off the “gravity and anguish” of the struggle era, as Sachs had proposed. But it also turned hedonistic, and embraced the ﬂashy tokens of huge personal wealth; one of the record labels, in fact, is named Mo’ nyuku, meaning “more money”. Another social feature was that as crime spiralled to crisis levels and the criminal justice system struggled to cope, a perception grew that crime and corruption do pay; and this added value to much older tendencies to glamorise the gangster lifestyle. The very name “kwaito” is relevant here. Kwaai is an Afrikaans word meaning angry; on the street, kwaai has come to mean cool, bad, wicked; and in the 1970s and 80s Soweto was terrorized by a notorious gang called the amaKwaito – meaning “The Bad Ones”, or “The Wicked Ones”. Gangsters spoke, and still speak, a coded patois known as tsotsi-taal; in the songs of many kwaito groups, this became the language of choice. Of course, none of this was exactly what Albie Sachs had had in mind. Not surprisingly, characteristics such as these have brought kwaito an unwelcome notoriety. No less a ﬁgure than South African president Thabo Mbeki has urged the youth of his party to beware of what he called the “distraction of kwaito” (qtd. in Jubasi). Here’s an example of the sort of selfregarding, anti-social and unashamedly sexist kwaito that Mbeki undoubtedly had in mind: Thebe, “Bhek’Indaba Zako” [Mind your own business] [Translated excerpt:] I screw girls You get jealous of me I go for cars You say it’s a Jo’burg style I screw girls You make me crazy 36 I’m just grooving And you are looking at me I control everything! There’s enough reason for Mbeki’s concern. Apathetic and largely depoliticised, only a quarter of South Africa’s youth voted in the December 2000 localgovernment elections (qtd. in Jubasi). Yet kwaito is hardly the culprit. In the words of one youth leader, the problem is rather that “we still go to bed hungry, our parents have no jobs, and now they charge us huge amounts for water and electricity.” Another deﬂected the blame back to Mbeki himself: the president, he said, has a “disastrous view on HIV/AIDS,” a view “which is killing young people” (ibid.) Now there’s an important paradox here. These disillusioned and angry young people –who still go to bed hungry, whose parents have no jobs, whose families and friends are dying of AIDS, and who, after such a long and bloody struggle for the vote, now fail to vote – these young people are also the audience for kwaito. How then is kwaito their music? How might it speak to their concerns? For an answer, we have to turn to a rather different tendency within the genre. Since 1994, unemployment has soared to around 40 per cent, there’s been little progress in the alleviation of poverty, crime is rampant and the AIDS pandemic is out of control. In keeping with these experiences, a mature and critical voice has developed within kwaito; this voice has grown in strength and accomplishment, so that today many of the most interesting and popular kwaito releases are associated with it. Some of these take aim directly at the anti-social values advocated by pieces like the one you have just heard. For example, there is a category of songs that stresses what we might call an ethics of accountability. These songs emphasize, say, the importance of work – or of personal responsibility, as in the song that declaims, “Every frog jumps for itself: who do you think will jump for you? / Every lion hunts for itself: who do you think will hunt for you? / Who is supposed to die now: me or you?” (M’du, “50/50”). For another category of kwaito songs, crime is a matter of intense concern. Leading singer M’du, for example, has a song that paints a bleak picture of crime and its consequences. Linked to the sounds of violent explosions, breaking glass, and sirens, the song is a restrained, monotonal chant, built over a dirge-like ground bass. Accompanied by a hint of a tolling bell, this dance moves almost like a funeral march: M’du, “Bab’ ugovernment” [Father government] [Translated excerpt:] Father government! We are tired of stealing cars Now is the time to stop this crime and live a 37 normal life Just like anybody else Father government! We don’t like being here behind bars The boss is calling us: Six o’clock! But we need to sleep We like ﬁghting Life like this is not good Friday afternoon, 12 o’clock, it’s hot, hot The brain is weak, I cannot think clearly When I open the fridge, it’s empty, only water inside When the kids see me: “We want bread!” When my mother sees me: “Go and look for a job!” When my girlfriend sees me: “You’re useless!” When we hide behind corners we are thinking We don’t want always to be running away from the police We want a brighter future When we hide behind corners we are thinking We don’t want to be wanted, always on the run Given enough opportunities we can go forward, sure thing! How is that? how is that? how is that? How is that, guys? how is that? We must be able to think when there is hunger in the family! In other categories, there are songs that rail against the attitudes of the new elite and their presumption of superiority; or that condemn violence against women; or that seek to raise public awareness of AIDS; or that speak of moral decay and social disintegration. Bongo Mafﬁn, a leading kwaito group, explicitly address the country’s youth in a song that asks: “Black child where are you heading? / […]You scare me: you rape women / You kill your own brothers. / […] You’re trying to rule / […] If you don’t respect your customs / You won’t make it, black child” (Bongo Mafﬁn, “Azania”). But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of all these songs is just how much of their work of criticism they entrust to music. More speciﬁcally: as part of their strategy of admonition, these kwaito songs frequently make direct reference to other musical styles and idioms, speciﬁcally those that lie some distance outside kwaito’s own musical conventions. In a nutshell, what we might call “foreign” musical elements are imported into particular kwaito songs for their normative signiﬁcance. Because of the associations carried from their home domains, these imported “vehicles of meaning” (to use 38 Clifford Geertz’s term) can do particular kinds of work in their new, unfamiliar kwaito contexts. This practice is now so prevalent that it seems set to become part of the genre’s own self-deﬁnition. What’s more, I think it’s unprecedented in South African popular music. Let me give some examples. Critical kwaito artists frequently make explicit allusions to so-called “traditional” music; in so doing, they associate the gravitas of local cultural knowledge with whatever point the lyrics are trying to make. For instance, there’s a song where M’du identiﬁes a social ﬂaw and offers a rebuke; but far from depending on lyrics alone, he includes a number of features loosely derived from so-called “traditional” music: monotonal trumpets (evocative of those of the Shembe church), non-simultaneous entries of parts, the responsorial singing of short cyclical fragments whose beginnings and endings overlap, vocal harmonisations in fourths and ﬁfths, and a pounding drumming style. These evoke the historic authority of the communal, and seek to give the claims of the song a sense of “authentic” social morality: M’du, “Ku Hemba” [Telling lies] but the music does, at least allusively. By incorporating popular maskanda musician Hash’elimhlophe, the song accesses a register with powerful connotations. Not only does this widen the song’s public reach; it also deepens the meaning of the lyrics by tapping into popular memory. Signiﬁcantly, the song’s title means “Hold each other”: Boom Shaka, “Bambanani” [Hold each other] In modern kwaito these complex hybrids involve a surprisingly wide range of extraneous idioms – for instance precolonial music, local popular music of the 1950s, protest music of the apartheid era, Western popular music, gospel, jazz, Classical music, and ethnically marked music from other parts of the globe. And because the contexts change, and because opportunities for multiple combinations abound, the range of signiﬁcations expands exponentially. Extraneous idioms are blended into kwaito songs for irony, or to connote transgression, or as ﬁgures in a symbolic enactment of integration, or as tokens of a newfound freedom, or as celebrations of alternative identities. After the dark years of apartheid, these And in a passionate song calling for a peaceful and non-racial future, the group Boom Shaka accomplish an extraordinary fusion of kwaito and the Zulu migrantworker idiom known as maskanda. The lyrics make no reference to the long and bitter history of labour migrancy; idioms participate in kwaito’s joyous acts of reclaiming, reconnecting and renewal. TKZee, for example, have an album (Trinity) that is a jubilant, triumphal celebration of South Africa’s reintegration into the world. The album sets off explosively, like a ﬁrecracker, with soaring 39 “strings” and an “orchestral” sound that connotes a mood of swelling pride. We quickly become aware of a range of very diverse musical sources – but here they’ve been integrated, in a context that announces a joyous, post-apartheid internationalism. The music invites us to think about South Africa in the world: so there are musical icons for the “West”, the “USA”, “India”, and of course “South Africa” itself (thanks to rerecorded elements of the Savuka song “Ibhola Lethu” [Our football], originally written for the World Cup). Over the course of the album, the musical references keep piling up, in an almost swaggering assertion of freedom, autonomy, and sophistication. TKZee’s international sources here include gospel singer Andrae Crouch, soul singer Lisa Stansﬁeld, George Michael and his group Wham!, Dennis Edwards of the Temptations, and several others – plus a number of local idioms. As one of these songs puts it, “The world is yours, the world is mine.” Even more remarkable perhaps – and certainly easier to illustrate in a short exerpt – is the very recent awardwinning album by Kabelo, on which he exhorts listeners to take responsibility, have pride, seize the moment, make plans, achieve goals. “I can be what I want / You can be what you want”, he sings; and the chameleonlike changes within the album’s stylistic hybrids illustrate the point musically. Here, brieﬂy, is one of them: a hyphenated identity we might call “kwaito-jazz”: Kabelo, “Diepkloof” Perhaps surprisingly, Classical music is a frequent interloper: it’s often drawn into the kwaito mix because its connotations of “educated seriousness” are deemed useful in the emphasis of particular points. The group TKZee, for instance, use extensive Classical references to buttress their textual subversion of a narrow, asocial hedonism. As you will hear in this example, their allusion to Baroque stylistics includes a ground bass, and multiple counterpoints: TKZee, “Come Intro” South Africa today is a dynamic young democracy, full of achievement but also struggling with old legacies and new problems. In case we had any doubt about that, the practices of kwaito a decade into the new order make it very plain. But they also show – to return to where I began – that there is still important work to do before South Africans can, or should, fully let go of the idea that music is a “weapon of struggle”. Perhaps that also has some relevance to other places, and other struggles. 40 Kalawa Jazmee, 1999. Selected Bibliography & Discography Bongo Mafﬁn. “Azania.” IV. Kalawa Jazmee, 1999. TKZee. “Come Intro.” Halloween. BMG Africa, 1998. Boom Shaka. “Bambanani.” 7th Anniversary. Bula Music, 2001. ---. Trinity. BMG Africa, 2001. Jubasi, Mawande. “Dancing in the dark.” Sunday Times 10 Dec. 2000. Kabelo. “Diepkloof.” Rebel with a cause. Electromode Music, 2002. M’du. “Bab’ ugovernment.” No pas no special. M’du Records, 2000. ---. “50/50.” The Godfather. M’du Records, 2001. ---. “Ku Hemba.” ibid. Sachs, Albie. “Preparing ourselves for freedom.” Spring is Rebellious: Arguments about cultural freedom. Ed. Ingrid de Kok and Karen Press. Cape Town: Buchu Books, 1990. ---. “Afterword: The taste of an avocado pear.” ibid. Thebe. “Bhek’indaba zako.” The Vibe Continues. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Focus Shift: An Essay On the Overlooked Musical Influences in Québec Popular Chanson of the 1960s Luc Bellemare I n the changing Québec of the 1960s, chanson entered a golden age as it became more politically and socially The fact that musicologists’ attention is traditionally focussed on the classical and folklore répertoires is one explanation to the literary-sociological hegemony in francophone chanson studies. Because music scholars have been likely uninterested in the study of Québec mainstream chanson until the last few years, the musical dimension has been mostly overlooked in all Québec chanson répertoire of early 1960s, thus advantaging Chansonniers over Yé-yé. However, and through IASPM, the growth of Popular Music Studies and scholar study of chanson is in progress. Today, most scholars interested in chanson have agreed on the interdisciplinary nature of any research that would pretend to some kind of exhaustive results4. So to say, a contemporary chanson analysis has to consider the written score, the live performance of lyrics and music, the implications brought by the recording process, and the image(s) mediated by the artist (e.g. “look”, videoclip, album sleeves, etc.), all of this in addition to the context and the written lyrics’ perspectives - which respectively correspond to the “traditional” sociological and literary contributions. Of course, I cannot pretend to dealing in the present article with this whole program engaged than ever before. Indeed, while intelligentsia was especially worried that French language would be assimilated to North America, the genre undoubtedly contributed to reveal a Québec identity - meaning “not Canadian”. This being said, when we look at the literature discussing Québec chanson of that period, we notice that the artists and recordings of the era have been clearly divided in two main categories: (1) the Chansonniers (Félix Leclerc, Raymond Lévesque, Claude Léveillée, Gilles Vigneault, etc.)1, and (2) the Yé-yé (Les Classels, Les Mégatones, Les Sultans, but also Michel Louvain, Michèle Richard, etc.)2. It seems that history has judged these two distinct Québec chanson aesthetics of the 1960s almost exclusively on the basis of a literary-sociological paradigm. Whereas the aesthetic of Chansonniers were mainly concerned with “good” patriotic and poetical French lyrics, generally limiting the musical accompaniment to an acoustic guitar or a piano, Yé-yé would rather focus on playing a “bad” dance and entertainment music gathering youth, thus giving very little attention to the lyrics3. 42 for all of Québec chanson released in the 1960s. Modestly, (1) I will discuss the ambiguities with the deﬁnitions Chansonniers – Yé-yé, (2) I will point out artists that doesn’t ﬁt the simple dichotomy, (3) I will talk shortly about critiques made against Yé-yé, and ﬁnally, (4) I will conclude by putting forward hypotheses to the musical inﬂuences behind 1960s Québec chanson. Definitions of Chansonniers – Yé-yé literally exclude all Québec chansons of the 1960s that are not socially or politically engaged, its broad meaning could include as “Chansonnier” all the social critiques or engaged “monologues” by non-singing poets, theatre actors and stand-ups of the period (e.g. Yvon Deschamps, Jean-Guy Moreau) - not even talking of the non-French-speaking ones! One has to remember that the Chansonnier movement became only progressively engaged on a political level for the independence of Québec. Now let’s assume that I leave behind the deﬁnition provided by the Robert (which is a France reference dictionary) for a French Québec authority – the Multidictionnaire de la langue française by MarieÉva de Villers. The ﬁrst Chansonnier deﬁnition proposed is exactly the same, but there is a second one speciﬁc to Québec: “Person that performs its own chansons”8. Unfortunately, if the ﬁrst deﬁnition was too exclusive, this new one is deﬁnitely too inclusive, for it could ﬁt the members of quite a few Yé-yé bands that compose their own chansons9. Oversimplifying the problem by making the Chansonnier a synonym for singer-songwriter (or in French,author-composer-performer[auteur-compositeurinterprète]) adds up new difﬁculties, for it does not allow us to tell apart the French Québec, the France and the Anglo-Saxon so-called “singer-songwriter”. Moreover, and from an interdisciplinary standpoint, the simpliﬁcation If the separation between Chansonniers and Yé-yé appears evident in the literature and the media (newspaper clippings, magazines, etc.), the lack of precision with the deﬁnitions actually given to these two categories seems ﬂagrant. In this sense, I intend to suggest here that both of these categories are not as monolithic as history has led us to believe. On the one hand, the Chansonnier: the prestigious French language dictionary Robert deﬁnes it as a “person that composes or improvises satirical chansons or monologues”5. Strictly speaking, this deﬁnition excludes almost all of Yé-yé, for this aesthetic rarely includes explicit social or political critiques6. However, we have a problem since the very same deﬁnition does not ﬁt important parts of the so-called Chansonniers répertoire (e.g. most of the chansons by Félix Leclerc, Claude Léveillée, Jean-Pierre Ferland, and a lot of Gilles Vigneault’s, to name a few7). And while the limited perspective of such a deﬁnition would 43 leaves behind both the mediation of image and the signiﬁcance of the recording process, the latter being an aspect that musicology currently explores10. The Québec lyric author Stéphane Venne also gives an attempt to deﬁne the Chansonnier: “The chansonnier has to be young. He has not chosen to make chansons but he has somehow got a kind of vocation for it. He gives a special-effect-free show in a small and simple room, and with a minimum of musicians. In the best circumstances, he plays alone, accompanying himself only with a guitar or a piano. He is a little clumsy on stage, but the lyrics and the music of the chansons he performs are generally its own. Finally, he should talk at the ﬁrst person”11. First, one might notice that all of this is strangely alike the folk singersongwriters of the US, a style that is easy to tell apart from chanson from an aural perspective. In addition, the so-called “Chansonnier vocation” sounds like a rhetorical way to elevate those artists as consecrated geniuses, always over Yé-yé. And again, if this deﬁnition of the Chansonnier gives a better abstract image of the artist, the live-performance-centered character of the deﬁnition still underestimates the role of the recording process. Definitions of Yé-yé for variety - a wider meaning than in Québec), there is one deﬁnition in the Québec Multidictionnaire: Yéyé: “Style of a chanson in trend at the beginning of the 1960s”12. This general deﬁnition surely recovers the Yéyé bands’ aesthetic, but the absence of details could let us include others styles such as folklore, countrywestern, and crooning - all similar in some way to Yéyé with the lyrics but not with the music. The deﬁnition could even touch some Chansonniers that were also “in trend” among Québec youth at the beginning of the 1960s, like the Bozos that opened the ﬁrst “Boîtes à chansons”13. We have then to precise the criteria. Richard Baillargeon, an historian specialized in Yé-yé, deﬁnes it as an energic, noisy, and rebel music for youth that is strongly inﬂuenced by Rock and Roll, soul, surf, chacha, samba, and chanson française. He also separates the Yé-yé era in three periods: the instrumental period - inﬂuenced by west coast surf music (1962-1964); the commercial period - after the Beatlemania (1964-1965); and the marginal period - close to psychedelic music (1965-1967). Here, Baillargeon is speciﬁcally referring to Yé-yé bands that covered in French the Anglo-Saxon music. First conclusion If nothing is said about it in the France Robert (although the style existed in France as a synonym After the 1960s, history has not denied the growing importance of the musical dimension in 44 Québec chanson. Paradoxically, Chansonnier is still a polysemic word: nowadays, it refers author-composerperformer [auteur-compositeur-interprète] as well as to a person that performs the chansons of other artists with an acoustic guitar in a bar - no matter if they are francophone or anglophone14. This short discussion about deﬁnitions is only an indication that there is more research to be done, especially regarding the artists out of the canon in both aesthetics - Chansonniers and Yé-yé. Off the beaten tracks the other side, Yé-yé gathered about a million people out of a 5 M population in La belle province at that time - mostly young people aged between 15 and 25. Apart from the well known ﬁgure in both categories, we ﬁnd easily other artists that have tended to be classiﬁed by history on one side or another mostly according to the content of the lyrics they sang. Nonetheless, and following what I have mentioned in my introduction, some classiﬁcation problems emerge when enlarging the paradigm from a literary-sociological approach to an interdisciplinary approach -notably including musicology. I have For the purpose of the discussion, let’s assume now that the canonical ﬁgures of both Chansonniers and Yé-yé have been “perfectly” categorized by history15. In fact, we still know very little about all the other artists in the era - they are a majority -but also about their social and political impacts in Québec. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia (article “Chansonniers”), they were more than 2000 people to audition for a place in the numerous “Boîtes à chansons” of the 1960s. On another hand, Baillargeon said that there were more than 500 Yé-yé bands and that at least 50 of them had a successful career - all of this not including the solo artists playing other musical styles. In a social perspective, we know that Chansonniers gathered a few thousands of people - a community mostly composed of intellectuals and university fellows from the “cours classique”. On singled out a few obvious examples to illustrate my view. First, performer singers such as Pauline Julien, Monique Leyrac and Monique Miville-Deschênes have covered iconic Chansonniers, and have been closely associated to the Chansonnier movement. However, they seldom composed and performed their own chansons, a sine qua non condition to be considered Chansonnier in the 1960s. To mention another example, and according to the deﬁnition given by the Québec lyrics author Stéphane Venne, a singer and guitarist like Paolo Noël has all the appearing characteristics of a Chansonnier: he sings its own songs on stage accompanying himself with an acoustic guitar and expressing the beauty of the nature (the sea in its case). The only missing thing 45 seems to be an engaged poetry for the lyrics content, which makes him more closely associated with the Yé-yé. There are also people situated exactly in between: after having its own rock and roll bands in the 1950s (the Rock and Roll Kids, The Midnighters), Jacques Michel wrote for the Yé-yé band Les Lutins (“Monsieur le robot”, “Roquet belles oreilles”) but he became a great Chansonnier in the 1970s. In the years 2000s, his chansons have been closely associated with Star Académie, the Québec equivalent to American Idol. Tex Lecor is another example of the in-between, since he opened “Boîtes à chansons” and wrote both serious and light-folklore-orientated chansons. He composed “Gogo Trudeau” for the Sinners, an engaged song for a Yé-yé band, and “La Bolduc 68” for Marthe Fleurant, an artist associated to folklore that covered Vigneault and Brassens Chansonnier - as well as Québec country-western idol such as Soldat Lebrun and Paul Brunelle. As an open conclusion to this section, here are a few more artists that remain difﬁcult to classify precisely as Chansonniers or Yé-yé during the 1960s: Jacques Labrecque, Claude Dubois, Les Alexandrins, Les Cailloux, Jacqueline Lemay, Ginette Ravel, Pière Sénécal, Guylaine Guy, Marc Gélinas, Lucien Hétu, Jen Roger, Dean Edwards, Roger Miron, André Sylvain, André Lejeune, Ginette Reno, Raoul Roy, Éric, Pierre Perpall, Daniel Guérard, Gilles Brown, Tony Massarelli, Shirley Théroux, Johnny Farago, Denise Brousseau, etc. What’s the problem? In short, what have Chansonniers exactly said against Yé-yé - meaning all the music that was not Chansonnier in their eyes - to be advantaged over them? Is it the fact that their music was all about stupid and repetitive love texts? Or the fact that they were generally limiting themselves to cover songs by Anglo-Saxon artists - without any creativity? Let’s look closer to these assumptions. First of all, Chansonniers have not always been the “great emblematic, iconic and respected poets” they are today in French Québec. As I’ve pointed out earlier, their popularity was originally limited - a few thousands of people - compared to Yé-yé’s - a million. During the 1960’s, the Chansonnier Félix Leclerc literally remained in the shade of the other Chansonniers that he had somehow inspired. The political engagement that characterizes its work came only after October 1970. To take another example, Raymond Lévesque was severely critiqued for its use of “joual”, the Québec slang. Because of that, its success in France remained limited after Félix Leclerc’s. One also has to remember that in 1960, the beginning Chansonnier Gilles Vigneault made a scandal with the abject language of its ﬁrst chanson (“Jos Monferrand”)16. 46 In my eyes, there is no discriminative judgment that stands for the treatment of a love subject in repetitive texts and music. From opera airs in Art Music, to chanson française and Anglo-Saxon hits, love has inspired thousands of anthology chansons and songs. Even some of the greatest hits by Québec Chansonniers are repetitive love songs (“Le doux chagrin” by Gilles Vigneault, “Quand les hommes vivront d’amour” by Raymond Lévesque, “Notre sentier” by Félix Leclerc, etc.). Sometimes, repetition even becomes a matter of meaning for Chansonniers (“God is an American” by Jean-Pierre Ferland) as well as in Yé-yé (“Québécois” by La revolution française [Les Sinners]). Covering chansons is not either a justiﬁcation for a discrediting critique. As I said, performers such as Monique Miville-Deschênes, Monique Leyrac and Pauline Julien owe their name to the Chansonnier répertoire they covered. Curiously, a few labelled Yé-yé artists (Les Quidams, Les Bel-Canto) have also covered Chansonniers without to achieve such a success after several decades. And if Chansonniers have not been turned down for covering their pairs’ répertoire, Yé-yé artists have never been really recognized for the few original compositions they have realized. If the form of political engagement sang by Chansonniers is unique to Québec, the simple idea to support an ideology with chanson is developing in France (Brassens, Ferré), and even maybe more in the US with the Civil Right Movement that folk singersongwriter have defended - Bob Dylan has been identiﬁed as the iconic ﬁgure of this movement. The Québec Chansonniers Gilles Vigneault acknowledged the inﬂuence of Dylan, and he composed “Chanson pour Bob Dylan” on the album Le temps qu’il fait sur mon pays (1971). When we argue that Yé-yé’s aesthetic is founded on US music, we forget that it is also the case for Chansonniers’ aesthetic. Before Révolution tranquille of the 1960s Québec, popular music inﬂuences can be summarized as follow: a) French, Irish and Scottish folklores-chansons-dances (Ovila Légaré, Oscar Thiffault, Madame Bolduc - Joseph Allard, Ti-Jean Carignan); b) chanson française (Henri Cartal, Alfred Fertinel) c) classical music (Éva Gauthier, La bonne chanson, the Trio Lyrique with Lionel Daunais); d) jazz, blues, contemporary US Popular Music of Tin Pan Alley - crooning - (Fernand Perron, Robert L’Herbier, Fernand Robidoux); e) country-western (Soldat Lebrun, Willie Lamothe); and f) a little South American music (Alys Robi). In the 1960s, the rock and roll bands - called Yé-yé - followed the inﬂuence of rockabilly, which itself came from a mixture of rhythm and blues, Jazz, “electriﬁed” country-western (steel guitar) and South American inﬂuences. For the Chansonniers, it is plausible to believe that the use of acoustic guitar as 47 accompaniment emerged mostly from the inﬂuence of US Blues and country-western music styles17. Probably coming from the South American Spanish colonies, acoustic guitar was not important in North America until the 19th century - with the rise of peasant blues, country-western and jazz (popular music of the time). From the 1920s to the 1950s, those music massively came to Québec through radio, 78 rpm and concert tours. Of course, Chansonniers have also been inﬂuenced by classical music and chanson française (although Leclerc inﬂuenced Brassens, Brel, and many others both in France and in Québec), but it remains bizarre - although probably workable - to think of a comparison between Félix Leclerc and Jimmie Rodgers or Woodie Guthrie. Conclusion: What solution? and (5) country-western musicians (Paul Brunelle, Willie Lamothe, Bobby Hachez). We easily observe that if the Chansonnier style is clear on the lyrics level, it is far more eclectic on musical and performance levels. Of course, this modest musicological contribution is only constituted of a few hypotheses that could form a solution to the deﬁnitions and lack of research problems that I have observed. `In further research, one would have to know more about the whole répertoire - all the forgotten artists off the beaten tracks -, the context in which the phenomenon evolved, and fundamentally, to deﬁne the kind of engagement more accurately: after all, singing French in North America could stand as a political statement, thus making the Yé-yé socially engaged! The Québec Chansonnier Gilles Vigneault once said [quotation]: “Things are more what we make them than what they really are”18. The sentence brings us back to the dichotomy “created” around Chansonniers and Yé-yé in 1960s’ Québec chanson history - that I mentioned in the introduction of my presentation - but it also appeals to the way my paper questions 1960s’ Québec chanson history from the musicologist’s perspective. However, if I only have a partial solution to offer, I do believe that the more perspectives of the same history we will have, the best will be the results of an interdisciplinary work. In conclusion, I wish to build from the traditional Chansonniers – Yé-yé separation in 1960s’ Québec chanson history. An easy way to do so is to establish ﬁve musical styles to help out in the process of classifying the musical inﬂuences of all the artists mentioned: (1) French folk musicians - the Chansonniers singing engaged poetry (Gilles Vigneault, Raymond Lévesque); (2) rock and roll bands - the Yé-yé bands (Les Sinners, Les Bel-Canto, Les Lutins); (3) crooning inﬂuenced solo artists (Michel Louvain, Michèle Richard); (4) traditional folklore performers (Les Cailloux, Pierre Daigneault); 48 Yé-yé: see Baillargeon, Côté, 1991; Line Grenier 1992; Endnotes 1. The other main Chansonnier artists identiﬁed in the Québec of that era are Jean-Pierre Ferland, Clémence DesRochers, Claude Gauthier, Georges Dor, Jacques Blanchet, Pierre Létourneau, Pierre Calvé, Jean-Paul Filion and Hervé Brousseau. Thérien, D’Amours, 1992; Chamberland 2002, De Surmont 2004, and Baillargeon et al. 2005. 4. About contemporary theoretical approaches to chanson, see among others Calvet 1974, Hennion 1981, Giroux et al. 1993, Hirschi 1995, Dufays, Maingain 1996, Beaumont-James 1999, and Melançon 1999. 2. Other important Yé-yé bands identiﬁed include Les Baronets, César et les romains, Les Jérolas, Les Sinners, Les Hou-Lops, Les Lutins, Les Excentriques, Les Habits jaunes, Les Miladys, Les Chanceliers, Les Aristocrates and a few more. There are also a good number of solo artists that have been closely associated to Yé-yé: Pierre Lalonde (from Jeunesse d’aujourd’hui, on TV), Tony Roman, Donald Lautrec, Joël Denis, Patrick Zabé, etc. 6. A few exceptions are Les Sinners (La Révolution française) with “Québécois” and Les Scarabées with “Le Coeur de mon pays”. There are also a few Yé-yé bands covering chansons of the Chansonnier répertoire: Les Quidams, Les Bel-Canto. However, the 3. To mention a few sources that endorse the “superiority” of Chansonniers over Yé-yé at different levels, see the periodical Liberté, July-august 1966; Maillé 1969; L’Herbier 1974; Normand 1981; and Giroux et al., 1984, 1985, 1993, 1996, 1999; Roy, 1977, 1978, 1991. The Canadian Encyclopedia online provides articles entitled “Chanson in Quebec”, “Chansonniers”, “Boîtes à chansons” and others dedicated to emblematic Chansonnier ﬁgures, but barely nothing about Yé-yé. However, a few works will insist on studying carefully 7. The chanson “Le grand six pieds” (1961) by Claude Gauthier provides a good example of ambiguities with Québec nationalism across the 1960s: we can see the lyrics go from “nationalité canadienne-française” to “nationalité québécoise-française”, and ﬁnally to “nationalité québécoise”. Later in the decade, we have to mention “Québec mon pays” (1965) and “Bozo-lesopposite - Chansonniers performing Yé-yé - seems not to be true. 5. Chansonnier: “Personne qui compose ou improvise des chansons ou des monologues satiriques”. My translation. 49 culottes” (1967) by Raymond Lévesque among the ﬁrst few politically engaged Québec chansons. However, nothing seems explicitly engaged on a political level with Félix Leclerc before the events of October 1970. Following this idea, if Gilles Vigneault sings “Mon pays” (1965) and a few other chansons, its engagement is much clearer in the 1970s (“Lettre de Ti-Cul Lachance à son premier sous-ministre”). And moreover, nothing seems explicitly engaged on a political level with Claude Léveillée, Clémence DesRochers, or Jacques Blanchet during the 1960s. Finally, Jean-Pierre Ferland gives Jaune (1970) only after seeing l’Osstidcho by Robert Charlebois, Louise Forestier, Yvon Deschamps and cie. 11. “Le chansonnier doit être jeune, n’avoir pas choisi de faire de la chanson mais y avoir plutôt une espèce de vocation, il doit donner son spectacle ‘sans artiﬁce’, dans un cadre le plus dépouillé possible, avec le minimum de musiciens, idéalement sans autre accompagnateur que lui-même à la guitare ou au piano, il est un peu lourdaud sur scène et, principalement, il doit avoir composé les paroles et la musique des chansons qu’il interprète, et y parler préférablement à la première personne.”, Stéphane Venne, in Parti Pris (January 1965). My translation. 12. Yé-yé: “Se dit d’un style de chanson à la mode au début des années soixante. Le yé-yé est-il 8. Chansonnier (Québec): “Personne qui interprète ses propres chansons. Félix Leclerc était un merveilleux chansonnier”. Multidictionnaire de la langue française. My translation. démodé?”. Multidictionnaire de la langue française. My translation. 13. Jean-Pierre Ferland, Claude Léveillée, Raymond Lévesque, Jacques Blanchet, Clémence DesRochers, 9. Let’s just think of Denis Champoux from Les Mégatones: “Voici les mégatones”; Jérôme Lemay from Les Jérolas: “Méo Penché”; François Guy from the Sinners: “Québécois”; Simon Brouillard from Les Lutins: “Laissez-nous vivre”; the duo Bolduc-Letarte from Les Bel-Canto: “Découragé”, to mention a few examples. and Hervé Brousseau. They named themselves “Bozos” after a chanson that was composed by Félix Leclerc in 1946. 14. In Québec city, let’s just think of the chansonniers bars like “Les yeux bleus” and “Les voûtes de Napoléon”. At “Chez son père”, an acoustic guitar lies on the wall 10. About this issue in musicology, see Lacasse (2005a and 2005b). beside a large picture of the “great chansonniers” [“Les plus grands”] (from left to right, Robert Charlebois, Félix 50 Leclerc, Gilles Vigneault et Raymond Lévesque). ragou: une histoire de la musique populaire au Québec. Montréal: Triptyque, 1991. 15. See notes 1 and 2. Beaumont-James, Colette. Le français chanté ou la 16. The folklorist Jacques Labrecque that performed this chanson for the ﬁrst time was censored of radio and TV because it used the word “ass” (in French, “cul”). This information is reported in Sermonte 1991: 18; Smith 1974: 20, and Vigneault 2000: 26-27. Calvet, Louis-Jean. La chanson française aujourd’hui. Civilisation. Paris: Hachette, 1974. langue enchantée des chansons. Chanson et langages. Paris, Montréal: L’Harmattan, 1999. 17. Before Félix Leclerc in 1950, acoustic guitar was only dominant in Québec for Country-western music. Until then, the iconic musical instruments of Québec were ﬁddle and accordion. Chamberland, Roger. “De la chanson à la musique populaire”. Traité de la culture. Ed. Denise Lemieux. Québec city: Éditions de l’IQRC; Presses de l’Université Laval, 2002. 18. “Les choses sont beaucoup plus ce qu’on les construit que ce que la réalité les fait”. Vigneault 1974: 112. “Chanson in Quebec”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. 11 Sept. 2005 < http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia. com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU00006 63 >. Selected Bibliography Baillargeon, Richard, et al. Québec info musique. 11 Sept. 2005 <http://www.qim.com>. . De Surmont, Jean-Nicolas. “Quand la chanson devient la lanterne de la culture québécoise”, Cerrados, Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Literatura, 13, 18: Baillargeon, Richard, et al. Yé-yé: revue musicale . d’agrément, vol. 1-6. Québec city: [no editor mentioned], 1983-1989. 151-170. Universidade de Brasília, Brazil, 2004. De Villers, Marie-Éva. Multidictionnaire de la langue française. 4th ed. Langue et culture. Montréal: Québec Baillargeon, Richard, Christian Côté. Destination Amérique 2003. 51 Dufays, Jean-Louis, and Alain Maingain. “Lire, écouter, voir la chanson : propositions pour un parcours d’appropriation en classe de français”. Présence francophone 48 (1996): 9-55. Hennion, Antoine. Les professionnels du disque: une sociologie des variétés. Paris: Métaillé, 1981. Hirschi, Stéphane. Jacques Brel: chant contre silence. Paris: Librairie A.-G. Nizet, 1995. Giroux, Robert et al. En avant la chanson. Montréal: Triptyque, 1993. Lacasse, Serge, dir. (2005a). Incestuous Pop: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music. Québec: Giroux, Robert et al. La chanson: carrière et société. Montréal: Triptyque, 1996. . Lacasse, Serge (2005b). “La musique populaire comme Giroux, Robert et al. La chanson en question. Montréal: Triptyque, 1985. discours phonographique: fondements d’une démarche d’analyse”. Musicologies 2 (2005): 23-39. Nota Bene. Giroux, Robert et al. La chanson prend ses airs. Montréal: Triptyque, 1993. L’Herbier, Benoît. “Boîtes à chansons”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. 11 Sept. 2005. < http://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE Giroux, Robert et al. Les aires de la chanson québécoise. Montréal: Triptyque, 1984. &Params=U1ARTU0000352 >. . L’Herbier, Benoît. La chanson québécoise: des origines Giroux, Robert, Constance Havard, and Rock Lapalme. Le guide de la chanson québécoise. 3rd ed. Montréal: Triptyque, 1999. . Liberté (July-august 1966) 8, 4. à nos jours. Montréal: Éditions de l’Homme, 1974. Grenier, Line. “Si le Québécois pure laine m’était chanté”. Les pratiques culturelles de grande consommation: le marché francophone. Eds. Denis Saint-Jacques, and Roger de la Garde. Québec city: Nuit Blanche, 1992. Melançon, Johanne. “Lesmécanismesdel’interprétation Les mécanismes de l’interprétation dans la chanson populaire (d’expression francophone): proposition d’une méthode d’analyse”. Doctoral thesis, Sherbrooke, Université de Sherbrooke, 1999. 52 Maillé, Michèle. “Blow up” des grands de la chanson au Québec. Montréal: Éditions de l’Homme, 1969. Mass Media Music Scholars’ Press, 2003. Thérien, Robert, Isabelle D’Amours. Dictionnaire de la Normand, Pascal. La chanson québécoise: miroir d’un peuple. Montréal: France-Amérique, 1981. musique populaire au Québec: 1955-1992. Québec: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1992. Roy, Bruno. “Chansonniers”. The Canadian < http://www. Vigneault, Gilles. La chanson comme miroir de poche. Ed. Jacques Lacourcière. Outremont: Lanctôt éditeur, 2000. Encyclopedia. 11 Sept. 2005. thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE &Params=U1ARTU0000664 >. Vigneault, Gilles. Propos de Gilles Vigneault. Ed. Marc Roy, Bruno. Et cette Amérique chante en Québécois. Les beaux-arts. Montréal: Leméac, 1978. Venne, Stéphane. “La chanson d’ici”. Parti pris, 2, 5 Roy Bruno. Panorama de la chanson au Québec. Montréal: Leméac, 1977. Roy, Bruno. Pouvoir chanter. Montréal: VLB éditeur, 1991. (January 1965). Gagné. Montréal: Nouvelles Éditions de l’Arc, 1974. Sermonte, Jean-Paul. Gilles Vigneault: le poète qui danse. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1991. Smith, Donald. Gilles Vigneault, conteur et poète. Littérature d’Amérique. Essai. Montréal: Québec/ Amérique, 1984. Tagg, Philip, Bob Clarida. Ten Little Title Tunes: Toward a Musicology of the Mass Media. New York, Montréal: IASPM03 - MONTREAL American “Old time music” Mediation with French-Canadian Recordings Sandria P. Bouliane I n the 1920s, the increasing popularity of rural music in the U.S. coincided with a rising number of that identity and cultural issues generated by an AngloAmerican inﬂuence had on French-Canadian popular music productivity. recordings, events and publications involving FrenchCanadian traditional music. Although some believe that the American disk, as a phonographic medium, had an effect on French-Canadian songs aesthetics and cultural practices (Baillargeon et Côté 1991; Blais 1994) no in-depth documentation has been done to examine these cultural factors. This paper will present the results of a preliminary study of the ‘old time’ music movement in the U.S. and a movement toward traditional FrenchCanadian music between 1900-19321. In the ﬁrst part of the text, I will present a comparative analysis of some Canadian and American sociohistorical elements. To familiarize you with the context of recording in Canada at the time, I will go through the major events that mark the debut of Canadian phonography. Then, in the second part I will explore the extent to which the American phonographic aesthetic and content were connected to the emergence of a unique French-Canadian aesthetic for traditional music. For this purpose I will present the careers of two artists and their managers who evolved under similar conditions in their respective countries. This paper seeks to discuss the seemingly paradoxical beneﬁt 1900 – Beginning of recording in Montreal: The Berliner Gram-O-Phone Company It was in 1900 that the inventor of the ﬂat disc and the gramophone, Emile Berliner (1851-1929), came to set up a company in Montreal. The gramophone, patented in 1896, quickly proved to be competition for the phonograph, which used a cylindrical medium and was manufactured by strong companies like Edison and Columbia. After an injunction forced him to cease gramophone sales in the United-States in 1900, Berliner founded a pressing plant in Montreal. Canadian innovations attributable to this factory include: the ﬁrst recording studio, built in 1904; the construction of the ﬁrst Montreal’s reinforced concrete building in 1908 and by 1921, the Berliner Gramophone Company was the owner of one of the most modern factories in Canada. These facts are mentioned here in order to indicate the degree of technological advancement of the phonographic industry in Montreal, which had no cause to envy its American or international counterparts. 54 The establishment of Berliner’s pressing plant and later the Compo pressing plant, founded by Berliner’s son, in 1918 had a major effect on phonographic production in Montreal. Even though most production consisted of English-language recordings not intended for the Canadian market, the technicians, engineers and other professionals working in Montreal were in touch with the technology and production methods of the new music medium. It is my belief that the social context, ideology and the speciﬁc aesthetic formation that these professionals were exposed to, marked the beginning of a “behind the scenes” diffusion of the American conception of recording into the production of traditional French-Canadian music. Ethnographic Collections Franz Boas (1858-1942) in 1914. While Lomax was collecting songs for the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song, Barbeau undertook his collections for the National Museum of Canada. Because of their exhaustive collections (still prized today) Lomax and Barbeau are considered the point men for the valorization and recognition of the folk repertoire. Early “old time” music recordings, 1900-1920 Few people, mostly in the cities, possessed a gramophone or phonograph and thus the choice of music being recorded had to take in to consideration the social economic status of the market. In Canada the French-language series from American labels preferred to employ French musicians (from France), since these artists were better known and Even before the ﬁrst appearance of traditional music in commercial recordings, Canadian and American anthropologists, ethnologists, and eventually those now known as folklorists were collecting recordings of an ethnographic type. This interest arose quite simultaneously in both countries. In the UnitedStates, John Avery Lomax (1867-1948) devoted his entire life to American Anglo-Saxon musical traditions and later derivations like “hillbilly,” “blue grass,” and “country”. In Canada, Marius Barbeau (1883-1969) began to collect songs from the French-Canadian oral tradition following an encounter with the anthropologist appreciated by the French-speaking elite. Even when a French-Canadian was selected to sing a traditional repertoire, the performer chosen would be someone like Joseph Saucier (1869-1941) who possessed a strong classical formation. The resultant recordings would possess characteristics of Tin Pan Alley—the early style of mass-marketed popular music in the United States. The music-buying public would have to wait until the 1920s for traditional music interpreted in a more traditional style. In the United-States, a similar reﬁnement of folk music for an upscale audience was taking place. 55 Table 1: Lomax and Barbeau: Two folklore anthropologists John Avery Lomax (1867-1948) Marius Barbeau (1883-1969) Collect American musical traditions of Anglo-Saxon origin, “hillbilly,” “blue grass,” and “country Meet Franz Boas in 1914 Work for the Libraray of Congress 1916-ﬁrst phonographic collections of French-Canadian traditional songs By 1916, the Tin Pan Alley-blues singer Vernon Dalhart (1883-1948) was already singing music that would eventually come to be known as “old time music” but with a classical orientation (Palmer 2003). However, Dalhart was not perceived as an “authentic” representative of the traditional genre – neither was Joseph Saucier – but rather as a “popularizer” of a traditional art form that fit well with the prevailing moral standards that were the fashion in the post-war context. I will discuss these moral standards and their implications in more detail later but what should be noted here is the recognition of certain elements of “traditional” music by both the U.S. and French-Canadian recording industries. This was the basis from which they would develop specific types of artists, interpretations and song aesthetics that would, by the 1920s, suggest a more traditional character. Post First World War Ideology The ﬁrst great global conﬂict had an effect on the North-American identity with regards to its European ancestors. The population’s morals and values were strained by, among other things, the war effort, technological advancements and the movement of rural populations to the cities. At the end of the war, the U.S. government attempted to reassure the people with a “100% American” movement that preached conservative principles, afﬁrmation of American values, and the cultural expression of national pride (Tischler 1986). A group of American Romantic composers attempted to place folklore and popular music into symphonic works for the concert hall. In 1986, Barbara Tischler devoted an entire chapter to this phenomenon and notes that nationalists, like Henry F. Gilbert (1868-1928) and Olin Downes (18861955), asserted in their own words that America 56 could only ﬁnd its musical identity in: local versions of transplanted English folk ballads, Native American tribal melodies and work songs of African-Americans (Tischler 1986, 5). Downes wrote the following in 1918: While the currents just discussed are not directly related to phonographic production, it is necessary to understand the context in which questions of authenticity would arise because recorded music also had a role in expression of national ideals. In order to explore this idea further, I will examine the course “[T]he spiritual consciousness of the people and the musical idioms transmuted and developed from the original folk-songs, rather than the material, are responsible for the highly specialized expression of a leading composer, who remains a true prophet of his people” (Tishcler 1986, 34). In Canada, the show Veillées du bon vieux temps serves as an example of bringing the folklore to the stage. Marius Barbeau was one of the show’s main organizers and expressed the same preoccupations as Gilbert and Downes : of two protagonists of the traditional/popular recording industry who beneﬁted from this new infatuation for a national “old time” music. Ralph Sylvester Peer (1892-1960) In 1918 the Okeh record label was established in New York and all recordings were pressed in Montreal from its inception until the early 1920s. Ralph Peer was the company’s recording engineer but his reputation and most of his income would be derived from his eye for talent and his keen business sense. It was during his time at Okeh that Peer is credited with the ﬁrst commercial recording of blues music by an African-American – Mamie Smith in 1920 “In order to take part in a fundamental manner in the culture of a nation, the popular song must lead to the creation of more important works: rhapsodies, concertos, quartets, symphonies, cantatas, ballets or operas. Our waiting will be fulﬁlled only when our composers will use it as a muse and when their works will be heard in the great halls of the world” (Barbeau 1929, 132)2. – and the ﬁrst “country” recording of musician without classical training– Fiddlin’ John Carson – in 1923. In 1925, Peer left Okeh for the Victor Talking Machine record company and made his fortune trading an annual salary of one dollar for keeping the copyrights to all the songs he collected and published for his own Southern Music Publishing Co. According to Peterson : 57 Table 2: Peer and Beaudry: Two intuitive managers Ralph Sylvester Peer (1892-1960) Louis Roméo Beaudry (1882-1932) 1919-Director of production with the General Phonograph Corporation 1915-Worked for the ‘Ethnic’ francophone series of Columbia 1918-Manager of the French division of the Starr Company of Canada 1929-First French-Canadian artist singersongwriter, Mary Bolduc 1920-Recording director of Okeh records 1920-Mamie Smith:ﬁrst blues recording sung by an African-American 1923-John Carson: ﬁrst “country” recording of an untrained musician 1924-Found the Radio Music Publishing Co. in Montreal 1928-Found the Southern Music Publishing Co. in New York “Peer was looking for old songs that had not yet been copyrighted and newly written songs that sounded old-fashioned to ﬁll the recently discovered demand for ‘old-time tunes’. By 1927, Ralph Peer had come to see traditional music as a renewable resource, and he developed a system of production that committed creative singer-songwriters to the quest for new oldsounding songs” (Peterson 1997, 33). From this we can see how Peer’s entrepreneurship inﬂuenced the creative motivation for the popular American musical tradition. According to Porterﬁeld, the success Peer made of artists like 58 Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter Family : “set basic patterns that shaped the future of country music as an industry and as an art form” (Porterﬁeld 1992, 99). Meanwhile in Canada, a French-Canadian was having the same impact on the ﬁeld of French-language song production. Romeo Beaudry (1882-1932) In search of authenticity: La Bolduc and Jimmy Rodgers In 1927, Ralph Peer met the man who would become the father of “Country Music”, Jimmy Rodgers (1897-1933). Two years later, Beaudry was introduced to Mary Bolduc (1894-1941), who would come to be called the “mother of Quebecois song”. While it is unlikely that the two singers met, the similarities are numerous. Rodgers’ early musical inﬂuences included English-Ballads and work songs while Mary’s: “consisted of Irish melodies from her father’s heritage and French-Canadian folk tunes from her mother’s side” (Virtual Gramophone, n.d.). They were both from the working class and adapted existing popular or folk tunes by adding more and more of their own words : in a Southern accent for Rodgers, and in the typical French-Canadian patois, known as joual, for Mary Bolduc. While Rodgers innovated by incorporating a yodeling technique to his songs, Mary Bolduc added passages in onomatopoeia, or syllables called turlutes, to the refrains of these songs. In addition to the above-mentioned similarities, both singer-songwriters had short but productive careers of less than ten years. However, the most important thing they had in common was the musical inﬂuence over the artists that followed them—an inﬂuence that is still noticeable today. Romeo Beaudry was the first Canadian of Quebecois origins to play a fundamental role in the mass production of French-Canadian music. He began with Columbia Gramophone in 1915 and in 1918 Beaudry was named general manager of the French division of the Starr Company of Canada. Starr’s recordings were pressed in Montreal by the Compo Company, the same one that pressed the Okeh label. During the 1920s, according to Robert Thérien, 693 French-language records were produced on the Starr label—almost twice as many as those of HMV and Columbia combined. Beaudry and Peer were both talented A&R men and they both owned a sheet music publishing company. However, Beaudry also accompanied artists on piano, did music orchestration, he wrote more than 200 French versions of successful American songs3 and composed more than one hundred melodies recorded by folk-song artists of the period. 59 Table 3: Rodgers and Bolduc: Two pionners artist-singer-songwriter Jimmy Rodgers Mary Bolduc 1927-“father of Country Music” 1929-“mother of Quebecois song” Working class Working class Southern accent French-Canadian “joual” Yodeling technique Turlutes” technique Inspired by English Ballads and working songs Inspired by Irish tunes and French oral tradition Pioneer-artist singer-songwriter Pioneer-artist singer-songwriter Compositions published by Ralph Peer Composition publisher by Romeo Beaudry Career of less than 10 years Career of less than 10 years Great inﬂuences on following artists Great inﬂuences on following artists 60 Even if it is not in the scope of this paper to establish the inﬂuence of American trends on the music of Madame Bolduc, I propose that the social context and the contemporary ideology in Quebec may have had a similar impact on recorded music as it did in the United States. In addition, until the beginning of the 1920s the two labels for which Peer and Beaudry worked for were pressed in the same Montreal pressing plant. This is a good example of where a ‘behind the scenes’ mediation took place and would have provoked a circulation of inﬂuences from a culture to another and this, even if workers, like Peer and Beaudry, never met. “Fabricating Authenticity” Northern United States, reluctant up to this point, ﬁnally succumbs to this charm and assures the success of future artists such as Roy Acuff, Gene Autry and Hank Williams. Once again, it is possible to establish a socio-historical comparison with French Canada. Conrad Gauthier (1885-1964) was one of the pioneers of radio and folk records in Quebec, and made a name for himself in Canada and the United States. He recorded more than one hundred monologues and songs with Victor and Columbia. What’s more, it was Gauthier who presented Mary Bolduc to Roméo Beaudry. His greatest achievement was probably his management of Veillées du bon vieux temps from 1921-1941, the most well known traditions bearer. In the show, the portrayal of an authentic or pure laine (lit. “pure wool”) FrenchCanadian image was the goal. People were captivated and inspired by log drivers and woodsmen with the famous ceinture ﬂêchées (lit. “arrow-patterned belt”) and by the 1930s, the cowboy hat that had become so popular in the U.S. was also added… Afterwards and Conclusion With the growing popularity of hillbilly music, the record companies and Hollywood wanted to have an image that reﬂected a reassuring “typically American” style, inspired by good values and timehonoured traditions. Indeed, they wanted to create as authentic a false image as possible. Richard Peterson (1997) showed that Jimmy Rodgers perfectly illustrates the search for a style that ﬂuctuates, mainly through wardrobe changes: from a good family man to a singing brakeman to a Texas cowboy. The Texas cowboy style was adopted by the cultural industries and by the market, even though in reality, no one would have worn that kind of outﬁt while working at a ranch. Nevertheless, the Caucasian population of the Mediation between U.S. and Canada cannot be avoided; technology development, ethnographic preoccupations, social ideologies and cultural contexts did affect or inﬂuence the music creation in nuanced ways. Creativity that originated from their interactions is 61 very rich. I attempted to show that two different language groups and cultures like English-American and FrenchCanadian shared a popular music evolution that was not a ‘pure’ coincidence. There is a clearly identiﬁable parallel between the Canadian and American sociohistorical contexts that allowed the appearance of a phonographic traditional music industry. The American inﬂuence was addressed here in a subtle and incomplete manner, but in a way that was nonetheless sufﬁcient to generate a few hypotheses. The French-Canadian industry adopted the American model of recording artists from a rural environment without musical training, but the content was not “consciously” inﬂuenced by the American concept. It was shown that the recording industry workers in Canada were also mainly from the U.S. and that Canadian pressing plant started out pressing American masters. It can be seen then that, as early as the turn of the century, the basics of the music industry machine was, in many ways, American. I ask if, on this level, which ideological consequences are implied. According to Jean Bertrand : This explains, accurately I think, what happened in French-Canada. The circulation of ideological principles appears directly in the French translations of American successes and in the search of an ‘authentic’ image such as the one that was spread by the Veillées du bon vieux temps and by Jimmy Rodgers. This does not prevent the possibility of breeding a distinct culture since here the language constraints become an advantage for the preservation of a French-Canadian identity and its diffusion. For, if the Americans developed a cultural model permitting the promotion of their traditional music heritage, the imitation of this model by the French-Canadians would give them the supplementary tools for their own cause. This preliminary research leads to a second determining step, that of studying in greater depth the network of contacts maintained mainly by the people who were in charge of the recording industry mentioned earlier. In the same way, the corpus of popular American recordings circulated on the Montreal market over the studied period must be deﬁned in order to undertake The importation of format, but also of ideas, attitudes, methods, does not seem to me to do anything but good, or almost. All cultures need hybridizing. Adapting foreign formats can prevent having to import foreign products (Sauvageau 1999, 193). a comparative analysis of phonographic parameters such as melody, harmony, form; but also performances parameters timbre, rhythm, micro-intonation, etc. and those that rely to the uses of technology echo, sound wall, reverberation, etc. (Lacasse 2000 and 2002) on American and French-Canadian recordings. 62 vocale dans “Front Row” (1998) d’Alanis Morissette ». Endnotes 1. Quick precision here, most of the French-Canadian population lives in the Province of Québec. Musirgia : analyse et pratique musicales 9,2 Fall 2002: 23-41. Lacasse, Serge. « “Listen to My Voice”: The Evocative Power of Vocal Staging in Recorded Rock Music and Other Forms of Vocal Expression ». Doctoral Thesis. Liverpool : University of Liverpool, 2000. 2. Autor’s translation 3. « Y mouillera p’us pantoute » (“It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo”); « La Chanson du prisonnier » (“Prisoner’s Song”); « Un coin de ciel bleu » (“My Blue Heaven”); « Ange de mon berceau » (“Pal Of My Cradle Days”). Moogk, Edward B. En remontant les années : l’histoire et l’héritage des enregistrements sonores du Canada des débuts à 1930. Ottawa : Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1975. Selected Bibliography Baillargeon, Richard et Christian Côté. Destination ragoût : une histoire de la musique populaire au Québec. Montréal : Triptyque, 1991. Palmer, Jack. (2003) « Vernon Dalhart ». Tim Gracyk’s Home Page. 28 sept. 2005 <http://www.garlic.com/ ~tgracyk/dalhart.htm>. Barbeau, Marius. « French and Indian Motifs in Our Music ». Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1929: 125132. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music : Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1997. Blais, Marie-Josee. « De l’américanité dans l’oeuvre chansonnière québécoise contemporaine ». Doctoral Thesis. Ottawa : National Librairy of Canada, 1994. Porterﬁeld, Nolan. Jimmie Rodgers : The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1992. Lacasse, Serge. « Vers une poétique de la phonographie : la fonction narrative de la mise en scène Sauvageau, Florian, ed. Variations sur l’inﬂuence culturelle américaine. Culture française d’Amérique. 63 Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1999. Wile, Frederic William. Emile Berliner, Maker of the Microphone. Indianapolis : The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Savary, Claude, ed. Les rapports culturels entre le Québec et les États-Unis of the Colloques de l’Institut Québécois de recherche sur la culture, 2124 september 1983, U du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Québec : Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1984. 1926. Smart, James. « Special presentation: Emile Berliner ». Vers. 2001. Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry. Library of Congress : American Memory. 28 sept. 2005 <http://memory.loc. gov/ammem/berlhtml/berlhome.html>. « Madame Édouard Bolduc (Mary Rose Anne Travers), folk singer and songwriter (1894-1941) ». The Virtual Gramophone, Library and Archives Canada. 28 sept. 2005 <http://www.collectionscanada.ca/gramophone/ m2-1031-e.html>. Thérien, Robert. L’histoire de l’enregistrement sonore au Québec et dans le monde 1878-1950. Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003. Tischler, Barbara L. An American Music : The Search for an American Musical Identity. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1986. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Ideology, Historiography, and the Rock and Roll Hall(s) of Fame: Writing Off Rush? Durrell Bowman I n 1999, when the Canadian rock band Rush became eligible for induction into the Rock and Rush began in 1968 with several Toronto-area working class teenagers, including original drummer John Rutsey, and they initially played a hodge-podge of songs originally recorded by Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Buffalo Springﬁeld, and others. In 1969, the band picked up on the eclecticism, high vocals, and distorted electric guitar of the newlyformed U.K. rock band Led Zeppelin, and by 1970-71 Rush mostly played original songs in this hard rock and proto-heavy metal vein. In 1972 the band’s ﬁrst fulllength concerts of original songs (with occasional cover songs) took place in Toronto and Detroit. In 1973, the band recorded a cover version of Buddy Holly’s 1957 rock ‘n’ roll classic “Not Fade Away,” but Geddy Lee’s still-immature use of a piercing, high vocal style proved ill-suited to Holly’s pop-rock song. The single ﬂopped, but in 1973 the band also opened for the New York Dolls in Toronto and booked off-peak recording time to make a full-length album. The resultant self-titled debut was released in Canada in January of 1974 on the startup label Moon Records. It combines Led Zeppelin’s acoustic/electric rock eclecticism with boogie/blues hard rock, something like KISS or ZZ Top. After the album’s success via import copies in Cleveland in the spring of 1974, Mercury Records signed Rush, re- Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone senior editor and Hall of Fame adviser David Wild said: “Regardless of their success, Rush has never achieved critical acclaim and no one will ever vote for them . . . most of [the band’s] music gives me a headache” (Wild, website). Geddy Lee’s virtuosic bass playing and countertenor singing, Alex Lifeson’s precise-yettuneful guitar playing, and Neil Peart’s elaborately constructed drumming and lyrics comprise the central features of Rush’s music. The band’s fans revere it for having pursued an eccentric and individual path over several decades, for working hard and learning along the way, and for offering themselves as “musicians’ musicians.” Many rock critics considered Rush’s music “pretentious boredom,” and some even called it “fascist.” For example, in 1978 U.K. rock critic Miles, of the New Musical Express, called Rush “proto-fascist,” but without providing supporting evidence for this in a discussion of any music (Miles, website). By comparison, one of my anonymous Rush fan-informants summarized that the band “teaches musicians to grow and improve themselves” (Bowman, unpaginated). 65 released the album in the U.S., and sent the band on tour—when it often opened for KISS and with its brandnew drummer Neil Peart. Rush’s ﬁve studio albums from 1975-78 combine the power-based aspects of heavy metal with bluesy hard rock and metrical and structural complexities from progressive rock. They also introduce Peart’s middlebrow, semi-literary lyrics. By “middle-brow/semi-literary” I refer to a positive aesthetic milieu in which certain types of rock music culturally resonated for reasonably well-read, moderately well-educated, working- and middle- class rock music fans and musician-fans. Rush’s breakthrough came with the individualist- and science-ﬁction-themed 2112. The opening title suite relates somewhat to the novella Anthem, an early anticollectivist/pro-individualist work by Russian-born U.S. writer Ayn Rand. Although “2112” remains ideologically somewhat confusing (even among Rush fans), the work hardly inscribes the “considered nod toward fascism” suggested by Reebee Garofalo in his popular music textbook (292). Rush’s two most musically progressive albums appeared in the late 1970s. They contain individualist/explorer mini-epics, an anthem of socioeconomic diversity, an extended suite about bridging Apollonian vs. Dionysian tendencies, a dreaminspired epic instrumental, and the libertarian anthem “The Trees,” which rejects principles of enforced equality. In the same period Rush became a major headlining act in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., and it quickly graduated to large arenas. The band’s success enabled it to base its activities in Canada and, in a decidedly libertarian and entrepreneurial move, to run its own business: Toronto’s Anthem Records. In the early 1980s, Rush toned down its individualism and also stopped composing extended compositions. The band knew that elements of progressive rock would only survive beyond the 1970s if it—and its fans—allowed the music to change. Among other things, the band explored post-punk (itself inﬂuenced by reggae), jazz-rock, and synth-rock. The band’s second breakthrough came in the early-1980s, including the album Moving Pictures, which is Rush’s best-selling album, certiﬁed as U.S. quadruple platinum in 1995. The band’s early-’80s albums include its ﬁnal mini-epics, album-oriented rock staples, its ﬁrst of two Grammy-nominated rock instrumentals, and a synth-pop- and new wave-inﬂuenced hit single, but J. Kordosh of Creem magazine still accused Rush of being Ayn Rand-following fascists (32). Rush wrote and recorded what became its only U.S. Top 40 hit in several hours. “New World Man,” which peaked at #21 in 1982, provides a good sense of Rush’s early’80s interest in combining post-punk hard rock with world music inﬂuences and music technology—as well as one of the earliest examples of Lee tentatively providing his own backing vocals. However, the song 66 contains no unusual time signatures, no guitar solo, and no virtuosic instrumental segments. Thus, I ﬁnd it quite strange that Catherine Charlton chose this song to represent Rush in her textbook, Rock Music Styles: A History (248-9). On its three albums from 1984 to ’87 Rush combined its inclination towards hard rock and progressive rock with synthesizers, samplers, and other music technology— including music videos. Then, on its four studio albums from 1989 to ’96, the band gradually reduced the sounds of music technology in favour of a guitar/bass/ drums aesthetic. From 1998 to 2000, the band went on sabbatical because of the unrelated deaths in 1997 and ’98 of Neil Peart’s daughter and spouse. Rush reunited in 2001 to make its 17th studio album, Vapor Trails, a texturally rich and varied work that gets rid of all keyboards (for the ﬁrst time since 1975) and favours emotional lyrics, strong vocal melodies, powerful percussion, and multi-tracked guitars and vocals. The stripped-down sounds evoke jangly 1990s’ BritPop as much as anything, but the music still sounds like Rush because of how the three musicians continue to interact. In 2002 the band also toured once again in about seventy shows in arenas and amphitheatres across North America, and in July of 2003 the band played at a fourteen-artist post-SARS mega-concert in its hometown: Molson Canadian Rocks Toronto. By 2003, Rush had sold about 40 million copies of its twenty-six albums, and it had also won eight Canadian music Juno awards and numerous additional Canadian music industry and civic honours. In the U.S., only a dozen artists have more gold, platinum, or multi-platinum albums than Rush’s twenty-two (see http://www.riaa.com). Of artists in that longevity range, all have won Grammys except for country singers Hank Williams Jr. and George Strait and hard rock bands KISS and Rush (see http://www.grammy.com). This suggests a bias among recording academy voters against country music and hard rock. Also along these lines, between 1990 and ’95 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which began in 1986) inducted numerous post-rhythm-and-blues and blues-rock artists that released debut albums between 1964 and ’69 (see http://www.rockhall.com). Such artists include the Kinks, the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Yardbirds, Cream, Janis Joplin, and Led Zeppelin. However, other than inducting “classic Top 40” rock bands Aerosmith and Queen in 2001 and AC/DC in 2003, it excluded numerous hard rock, heavy metal, and progressive rock bands that released debut albums between 1968 and ’76. Such artists include Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, Styx, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Judas Priest, Kansas, KISS, Boston, and, of course, Rush. 67 The context for much non-rock-critic- acknowledged an interest in at least some of Rush’s music. A number of hard rock and death metal cover versions of Rush songs appear on the ﬁrst two of three full-length Rush tribute albums. More surprisingly, classical string players (e.g., Rachel Barton and the third Rush tribute album), trip-hop artist DJ Z-Trip, and jazz pianist Dave Restivo have also fully translated certain Rush songs. In 2003, I created a collage of several tribute versions of Rush’s most famous song, 1981’s “Tom Sawyer.” The collage demonstrates friendly rock music involves what I call the “postcounterculture.” Among other things, the 1970s and ’80s fostered individual efﬁcacy, differentiated interests, professionalism, technique, business acumen, libertarianism, entrepreneurialism, and technology. These elements enabled a post-industrial reconstitution of the working and middle classes. To account for this, in the late 1980s Ralph Whitehead coined the terms “New Collar” (as in, updated Blue Collar) and “Bright Collar” (as in, updated White Collar). Basically, New Collars are working-class “service” folks—like most of my relatives— who ended up using automated machines in their work. Bright Collars are middle-class “ofﬁce” folks—like most of my college buddies—who ended up participating mainly in various areas of information management (44). New Collars (such as technicians, clerks, customer service representatives, administrative assistants, and courierdrivers) and Bright Collars (such as lawyers, teachers, architects, social workers, engineers, administrators, and computer programmers) listened mainly to rock music, several million of them played music themselves (mostly as amateurs), and a similar number of them listened to Rush. Rush’s work ethic and eccentric music appealed to New Collars, and its interest in progressive rock and individualism appealed to Bright Collars. A wide variety of professional musicians—especially from the U.S.— also musically, verbally, and/or visually Rush’s inﬂuence from 1992 to 2002 on: the pop-rock band the Barenaked Ladies, trip-hop artist DJ Z-Trip, the death metal band Disarray, the alternative-industrial band Deadsy, and a group of classical string musicians. The trip-hop and death metal versions both replace the song’s 7/4 “asymmetrical” instrumental middle section with 4/4 “common” time. The collage appears at the following link on my website: http://durrellbowman. com/music/tom_sawyer_full_remix.mp3. Obviously, Rush has been highly respected by an extremely wide variety of musicians. Related to this, the members of the band won numerous reader polls in musician-oriented magazines throughout the 1980s and early ’90s. Periodicals such as Modern Drummer, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, and Bass Player implemented Halls of Fame (sometimes called “Honour Rolls”) in order to elevate the status of certain multi-year and multi-category winners to that of constant backdrops, 68 thus somewhat resembling the prestigious editorial boards of academic journals. In the same period, even formerly Rush-sympathetic general interest music magazines (such as the U.K.’s Melody Maker) disingenuously downplayed the band’s inﬂuence and relevance. On the other hand, in 1996 Rolling Stone’s Jancee Dunn disclosed that its readers had requested a major cover story on Rush more often than on any other artist (33). To investigate this disparity, I surveyed Rolling Stone’s year-end album and singles lists for the period 1977-’82. I found that its readers excluded its critics’ picks 50-88% of the time (in lists of 5-11 items). The critics tended towards rock ‘n’ roll, punk, post-punk, experimental pop-rock, blues, rhythm-and-blues, soul, funk, disco, and early recorded hip-hop. The readers tended towards post-r&b/hard rock, progressive-inﬂuenced rock, and pop-rock. This suggests that music inﬂuences fans much more than critics do, and it also makes me ask: “What is a rock critic’s job?” exclusively in musicians’ magazines, and in 1997 even declined the development of an episode of VH-1’s popular TV series “Behind the Music.” In 2002 rock critic Anthony DeCurtis expressed surprise that his interview with Rush’s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson could so easily disarm what he called his “standard issue anti-prog[ressive]-rock bias” and his “resistance” to Rush (DeCurtis, website). DeCurtis, who holds a Ph.D. in American literature from Indiana University and has taught there and elsewhere, allowed himself to accept that formerly “suspect” musician-songwriters could be “smart, modest, honest, friendly and open-minded.” Without realizing it, in that string of adjectives DeCurtis perfectly encapsulated the “progressiveness” of the postcounterculture in which Rush’s music found a place of honour among New Collar and Bright Collar fans and musician-fans. In 1994, bassist-singer Geddy Lee said: If our music says anything, it’s that we make [it] for ourselves, and we hope other people dig it too. . . . Do what you like, what you think is right, and stick to it. [T]here are a million ways to live, a million ways to write and play music, and you have to ﬁgure out which makes you the happiest . . . . We’ve been lucky to get away with that. Not everybody gets that chance. (Aledort, website) Unless I am horribly mistaken, this doesn’t sound anything like fascism. In the early to mid 1990s, listeners of the leading album-oriented FM rock radio stations in Los Angeles and Houston selected Rush as their favourite all-time rock band, and nine of the band’s eleven studio albums from 1980 to 2002 charted in Billboard’s Top 10, several as high as #2 or #3. But the sensationalist-oriented mainstream media had little to go on with Rush—the band had no scandals, very little pop chart success, made music videos only haphazardly, gave substantial interviews almost 69 Garofalo, Reebee. Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the Selected Bibliography Aledort, Andy. “Guitarist Alex Lifeson and Bassist Geddy Lee revisit their stripped down, power trio roots on Counterparts, the strongest Rush release in years.” Guitar World, February 1994. Text at http:// www.r-u-s-h.com/nmsmirror.com/HTML/articles/ gw0294.html. USA. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. Kordosh, J. Article-interview with Neil Peart, “Rush: But Why Are They in Such a Hurry?” Creem, June 1981. Miles, New Musical Express, 4 March 1978. Text at http:// www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=699. Whitehead, Ralph Jr. “New Collars…Bright Collars,” Psychology Today, October 1988. Bowman, Durrell. “Each Another’s Audience: A Rush Fan Survey” (St. Catharines, Ontario). Unpublished survey questionnaire results, 2000. Wild, David. Quoted at http://inthe00s.com/archive/ inthe90s/bbs0/webBBS_450.shtml. Bowman, Durrell. “Permanent Change: Rush, Musicians’ Rock, and the Progressive PostCounterculture. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in musicology, UCLA, 2003. Charlton, Katherine. Rock Music Styles: A History, 4th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. DeCurtis, Anthony. “The A List,” May 2002. Interview: “Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson discuss Vapor Trails.” See http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/playvideo. asp?cid=1555. Dunn, Jancee. Article-interview, “Geddy Lee of Rush.” Rolling Stone, 12 December 1996. IASPM03 - MONTREAL You Walk Alone: Jandek and the Relationship Between Biography and Textuality in Popular (and Not-So-Popular) Music Kevin John Bozelka A t the closing plenary for the 2003 IASPM conference in Montréal, several scholars expressed joy audience before playing the disc, the music of Jandek was a self-consciously structured absence in my paper. One of the functions of the space left vacant by this absence was a critique of any musicological analysis with claims to some sort of purity of inquiry. To privilege music over other objects of study (like biography, for instance) points to a willful refusal to engage with the social and/or historical determinants of popular music, that “something else” about which scholars of “music itself” would rather remain silent. Inﬂuenced as it was by feminist ﬁlm theory, my paper thus reveals feminist concerns to be relegated to that “something else” place. Delving further into the Milli Vanilli angle would have shown issues of race and sexuality to reside there as well. In short, what the celebrants at the closing plenary were attempting to do was to freeze the study of popular music into a solely formalist enterprise precisely to avoid dealing with these issues among others. And yet, there is no reason why formalist and, say, feminist approaches need be incompatible or antagonistic. There is nothing to mourn in the following quote from feminist ﬁlm theorist Mary Ann Doane (inserting “popular music” for “cinema”): over the fact that so many of the conference papers forged a return to the study of music itself. Popular music studies, it seems, had been hijacked by those who wished to use music as a foundation for exploring something else. What that “something else” might be was never alluded to by the celebrants. No matter – some of us, including Philip Tagg who thankfully spoke up as a “Marxist musicologist,” were still trying to ﬁgure what “the study of music itself” could possibly mean. Nevertheless, this rather sour dénouement to an already turbulent conference provided a context for my somewhat unfettered analysis of popular music biography. I am not sure if any of the above celebrants attended my presentation. But if they did, it would have no doubt been escorted off into that music-as-foundation category. Indeed, the ﬁrst question asked of me was “What does Jandek’s music sound like?” This is a perfectly legitimate question and one I fully anticipated answering by bringing along Graven Image, the ﬁrst Jandek album released on CD.1 But as I reminded my 71 “Feminism cannot be a formalism. The object is cinema only insofar as cinema is understood not as formal object or as a repository of meanings but as a particular - and quite speciﬁc - mode of representing and inscribing subjectivities which are sexually inﬂected.”2 Given Doane’s own astute close readings of texts, perhaps she should have written that feminism cannot only be a formalism or that it cannot wind up a formalism. Nevertheless, feminism or “something else” can open out from formalism to make popular music studies a richer discipline. Furthermore, I would argue that my paper was formalist anyway with a crucial shift of concern. I sought to treat popular music biography as a text and to analyze its formal qualities. So maybe biography has nothing to do with “music itself.” But whither record stores, record covers, record collectors, copyright law, folklore, scenes, tours, band practice, etc. (skimming the surface of just a few of the presentations I managed to catch)? Do the celebrants at the closing plenary really mean to set the object of popular music study so rigidly as to exclude all of these and more? make?” In this query, we have a movement from biography (they - Green Day) on one side to textuality (the album - Dookie) on the other and some kind of interference occurs along the way. But could we ask the same question (“Did they make the album they wanted to make?”) of Green Day’s ﬁrst two albums recorded for the independent label Lookout! and wind up with a similarly interrupted motion?4 It seems absurd to even ponder it because there is supposedly an easy relationship between biography and textuality with independent and avant-garde music. The text is conceived more or less as a direct expression from the artist and biographical data merely supports this idea if indeed anyone bothers to trot it out - the text may speak so absolutely of the artist that it speaks for and of itself. Pop music on major labels, however, will necessarily compromise an artist’s expression in the drive for proﬁts. Some pop music artists such as Milli Vanilli or countless disco “groups” can be said to not even exist. Thus it often proves difﬁcult to determine even the author of a text since they are missing from at least one point on that line of movement from biography to text whether that be the creative process, the recording Back in 1994, I overheard two acquaintances talking about the latest Green Day album, Dookie, their ﬁrst for a major label.3 As it was on its way to selling eleven million records in the US, one of my acquaintances asked “Did they make the album they wanted to studio, the photo shoot, etc. Indeed, this hole at the center of activity is frequently given as “proof” of pop music’s lesser value. Here we have some familiar dichotomies: indie vs. major; avant vs. pop; and we can throw in Richard A. 72 Peterson’s distinctions between hard-core vs. soft-shell country music performance styles since they get at the affective energy that activates these dichotomies. To quote Peterson: “The basic promotional claim made for hard-core country music is that it’s authentic - made by and for those who remain faithful to the ‘roots’ of country. The corresponding claim made for soft-shell country is that it melds country with pop music elements to broaden its appeal for the much wider audience of those much less familiar with or knowledgeable about the hard-core style.”5 Now notice how this sentence is constructed: hard-core country music is made by someone whereas soft-shell country (represented as “it”) melds country with pop music elements seemingly without human agent. This discrepancy points to two things: one, biography is absolutely central to Peterson’s distinctions; and two, biography is suppressed to varying degrees in soft-shell music since such music is often expressive only in spite of itself. Again, soft-shell music of any stripe is vexing to so many fans for this very reason – with only a void to attribute our pleasure, we are left alone in it which can confuse, delegitimize or even deﬂate that pleasure. But while Peterson’s distinctions offer a ﬂexible, transhistorical model for exploring the biographical dimensions of textuality, they say little about the textual dimensions of biography. How do we know the indie, avant or hard-core artist whose singing style is marked by personal conviction, whose lyrics reference personal situations and whose stage presentation is personally revealing? And we can ask of Green Day or any other band, who is this “they” that we think we know enough to determine when their wants are being betrayed? How are “they” constructed? What led me to even ask such questions is a brilliant, inﬁnitely quotable article, John Leland’s “Temporary Music” for his August 1989 “Singles” column in Spin magazine.6 In this piece, Leland longs to uncover the “fraudulent conceit” of energy and hard work in recorded music. Using the mutability of digital musical information in Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True,” he deconstructs the “naturalness” of any recorded experience and thus any claims of superiority that can be made on it. Similarly, there is no naturalness to biography. It is constructed out of mutable information as well, the product of the technology that delivers it. What puts this idea into relief for me is Jandek, an artist squarely on the indie, avant, hard-core side of the equation: as Douglas Wolk writes of Jandek’s songs, “they are absolute, pure self-expression, an unfocused, unlit snapshot of his entire adult life.”7 In order to introduce you to Jandek, I would like to quote at length the Background section of Seth Tisue’s amazingly informative website A Guide to Jandek which is not only an excellent introduction; it also traces the activity of a diehard fan trying to 73 construct a biography out of available information.8 “So who is Jandek? No one knows for sure. He doesn’t perform live or give interviews; he has never made any public statement of any kind. Jandek is unlike most reclusive types in that he is very proliﬁc: 33 albums since 1978, with at least one album every year since 1981. Jandek albums are produced by the Corwood Industries record label, which one supposes is his own. It’s had the same Houston P.O. Box since 1978: P.O. Box 15375, Houston TX 77220. One of the richest sources of speculation about Jandek, after the lyrics to his songs, are the photos on the album covers. They are almost invariably blurry, indistinct, enigmatic. One of the things you’ll see on the covers is Jandek himself, on 18 of the 33 covers. No one else ever appears. If you write Corwood Industries a check, it comes back signed on the back by “Sterling R. Smith”. If you write to Jandek care of Corwood, you may get a few handwritten words in reply, particularly if you ask a factual question about ordering or request permission for something. Most other questions and communications are simply ignored. Irwin Chusid exchanged a number of letters and phone calls with Sterling Smith in the early 80’s, but I don’t know of any other such extensive contact with the man more recently, with Chusid or anyone else. So, other than general impressions gleaned from the album covers, very little is known about Sterling Smith’s life.” After this general background, Tisue then launches into what he calls an “epistemological disclaimer”: “Here, I’m going to try to connect the dots, to make the inferences and possible generalizations that the records and other available information appear to suggest. For example, I personally believe that Jandek is Sterling Smith is the man depicted on the album covers is the man singing is the man playing the guitar. I will assume that the records’ release order more or less corresponds with their recording order, that ﬁrst-person song lyrics are at least semi-autobiographical, and other such reasonable-seeming but undeniably questionable assumptions. But as you read bear in mind what I won’t explicitly mention again: the possibility that some of the available signs may be misleading or intentionally deceptive. Personally, my sense of Jandek is that he might hide or misguide, but wouldn’t intentionally fabricate or deceive.”9 The idea that Jandek would never intentionally deceive us is in explicit contrast to Milli Vanilli, the standard line on whom is that they did indeed intentionally deceive us. The duo we saw on the record covers and in the videos and in concerts and on Arsenio Hall were not the people who sang “Girl You Know It’s True” and whatnot in the recording studio. Again, they were not present at every point on that line between biography and text. Now in order for Jandek to deceive us, he would have had to have similarly disappeared from some if 74 not all points on this line. In this scenario, everything from Sterling Smith to the record covers to the release order to the name Jandek to the music itself could have been appropriated in their entirety, thus taking on a sample-like quality. In short, it heightens the constructedness of that “he” we know as Jandek, the textual evidence we use to assume that “Jandek is Sterling Smith is the man depicted on the album covers is the man singing is the man playing the guitar.” If energy and hard work can be had at the push of a button with Milli Vanilli, then an artist’s very biography can be had via similar forms of reproduction with Jandek. My goal here is not to produce an alternative “who is Jandek” theory.10 Rather, it is, to quote another piece that has inﬂuenced this one a great deal, Patrice Petro’s “Feminism and Film History,” to “rethink what claims can be made on the basis of textual analysis and to reconceptualiz(e) what constitutes textual evidence in relation to questions of sexual difference” which, to be sure, encompasses biography.11 I want to use Jandek creatively, to question our probably-correct-but-so-what assumptions and to seize on the textuality of his biography. Of course, one way to verify the labor along the line from biography to textuality is live performance. But we hardly need to rehearse the Milli Vanilli scandal to understand that live performance offers no such guarantees. We have Peterson’s account of Roy Acuff policing band member Rachial Veach’s sexuality so that she became Dobro player Pete Kirby’s sister instead of a young, single woman travelling with a group of unrelated men.12 Or we have Robert Christgau recalling a 1982 concert where George Jones forgot the words to “Still Doin’ Time” and after each line, he’d lean across to a guitarbearing ﬂunky, who’d whisper the next line which he’d then deliver. According to Christgau: “Each line sounded like his life.”13 And then there was the Jandek event of the century. Someone did actually manage to see Jandek live in a way. Katy Vine, a writer for Texas Monthly, did some detective work to actually ﬁnd Jandek. Eventually, she wound up at a home in “one of Houston’s nicer neighborhoods.” “When I heard the garage door open, I walked back to the driveway and approached a man who looked like a late-thirties version of the youth on the record covers. He was neatly dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt with beautiful cufﬂinks, black pants, a black tie, and black shoes. I introduced myself and asked him if he knew anything about Corwood Industries. He paused for a long time, then said, “What do you want to know?” I asked if Corwood Industries was involved in projects other than Jandek records. He said yes but he couldn’t tell me anything about them. When I asked if he could tell me anything about Jandek, he started to appear upset. I said that I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but it was too late. There was an awkward silence as he stared at the ground. Suddenly he looked up and asked, ‘Do you drink beer?’ 75 He didn’t want there to be any physical evidence of our meeting. He wouldn’t draw me a map to our destination, he wouldn’t let me tape-record him, and at his request I cannot reveal his name, occupation, address, or phone number. But I have no doubt he is indeed the person who makes the music.”14 They wound up at an upscale bar and had a pleasant chat where he wasn’t forthcoming with information. Before they parted ways, he told her that he never wanted to be contacted by anyone ever again about Jandek. I ﬁnd it intriguing that it was woman who ﬁnally managed to track Jandek down since women have often been excluded from writing and even having biographies. Moreover, we see in this fascinating account the textual dimensions of biography in full force: the suppression of textual evidence - who gets to suppress it and who gains access to it; the potential time and resources to maintain a joke “so scrupulously for more than 20 years” to quote Wolk on the improbability of Jandek being a put-on; the other people who seem to know something including that rather creepy scene at the bar where I am not 100% convinced that the men were winking and nudging for the reason Vine suggests. All this active work with biography points to the reason why we need to attend to it so carefully. Because for whatever we do not know about Jandek, we know even less about Nancy and John. Around the third Jandek album, other musicians began to appear on Jandek records, introduced by the songs “Nancy Sings” and “John Plays Drums.” As of 1993, they were gone and remain gone up through the latest record released in the summer of 2003. How do we account for this erasure? And, in “Nancy’s” case, do we situate it in a history of male avant artists overshadowing female collaborators such as Tricky and Martine or Loren Mazzacane and Suzanne Langille? I think it is important that we attempt the difﬁcult task of historicizing Nancy because like Leland’s comments on digital sampling, these questions of biography center on what constitutes evidence of work. For ﬁnally, Milli Vanilli, as excellent dancers/lip syncers who kept their bodies lean, were indeed present at all points along a different axis of biography and textuality. And as the death of Milli Vanilli’s Rob Pilatus makes painfully clear, if we fail to reconceptualize evidence of work in popular (and no so popular) music, then artists will disappear from more than just that line between biography and textuality. 76 underline my own construction of Tisue’s construction. Endnotes 1. Jandek, Graven Image (Corwood 0761: 1994). 10. Nor is it to engage in a contest to ﬁnd the most reclusive artist (J. D. Salinger, The Residents, etc.). Jandek was most useful to me for my study of biography and textuality. If indeed there is an even more reclusive artist than Jandek out there, so be it. 2. Mary Ann Doane, “Feminist Film Theory and the Enterprise of Criticism,” typescript. 3. Green Day, Dookie (Reprise 45529: 1994). 11. Patrice Petro, “Feminism and Film History,” Aftershocks of the New (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 45. 4. Green Day, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hour (Lookout! 22: 1991). Green Day, Keprlunk (Lookout! 46: 1992). 12. Peterson, 240. 5. Richard A. Peterson, “The Dialectic of Hard-Core and Soft-Shell Country Music,” in Reading Country Music, ed. Cecelia Tichi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 237. 13. Robert Christgau, Grown Up All Wrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 36. 14. Katy Vine, “Jandek and Me,” Texas Monthly, August, 1999, 90-6. 6. John Leland, “Singles: Temporary Music,” Spin, August, 1989, p.87 7. Douglas Wolk, “Mystery Man,” Boston Phoenix, September 30, 199. 8. Seth Tisue, A Guide to Jandek, http://tisue.net/ jandek/discussion.html. 9. I have edited these quotes considerably in part to IASPM03 - MONTREAL What Does Their Music Mean: Argentinean Music for a Quebec Musician Pascal Bujold I am a musician before being a researcher. Playing professionally came into my life before doing several difﬁculties one would be likely to encounter when learning to perform “foreign” music. Most of them were related to cultural differences, for instance not knowing the language, different scales, the ability to hear micro-tonality discrepancies, etc. He saw the importance of different ways to learn music, and how useless the use of scores could sometimes be. Learning to perform research1, and my ﬁrst interest was in playing music from other cultures. At ﬁrst I was fascinated by West African music and Eastern Europe gypsy music. Then my interest moved towards South American music, particularly from Argentine. I can say that, unlike many ethnomusicologists, my goal is to play the music before understanding what it means. I’m not saying my position is better (at least not publicly), but it seems at least to be different. My research focuses on performance and I’m proposing to study meaning from that perspective. I learned to play the chacarera, an Argentinean dance accompanied on the guitar. Being a guitarist myself I was mainly interested by that accompaniment. To present my approach to music from other cultures, I’ll present how I learned to perform the chacarera. Bi-musicality Later, John Baily proposed “learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology” (Baily, 1994/2001). By learning to perform, and become “musical” in a music of another culture, Baily argues that one can gather a great deal of information on that culture’s music. He observed ﬁve advantages: First, there is the acquisition of performance skills by the researcher. One learns from inside, differentiating between what is essential to the In 1960, the ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood (1960) coined the term “bi-musicality”, referring to a musician’s ability to “be musical” in two different musical cultures. Hood based is article on his observations of UCLA students learning to perform “exotic” music. He noticed instrumental performance and what is not, and also gaining operational understanding of the music. Second, one can learn how they learn; is there a formal training or not, A theory? 78 Third, one can get better accepted by the community, even get access to events, as a musician, to which one wouldn’t normally have access. I’m the most important when I perform. What I mean is that my own perspective is worthier of consideration, for me of course. My understanding, my perspective of the Argentinean music is certainly different from an Argentinean’s simply because I’m from the province of Fourth, by participating, it is possible to see things a musician sees, or as Baily puts it: “it [is] a matter of musical relationship forming the basis for social relationships.” Quebec in Canada, I speak French, and I discovered Argentinean music when I was 24. And when I share my ﬁndings, I’m not saying how someone else will react towards the chacarera, but what type of changes he could probably expect. Finally, once the ﬁeldwork is done, the researcher will most likely continue to play the music he learned, sometimes composing his own pieces, and probably getting in contact with the culture’s Diaspora. Study meaning from another perspective But then again, what is knowing the other culture? Is it knowing what it is, or knowing how to deal with it? Or how to communicate with that culture? Or else, how to express what you are to the Other, or with his codes? I will not try to answer the question here, but these are all thoughts that dwell in my mind, and that may explain some of my methodological choices. In my opinion, however, the meaning that music allows for the other culture is something very difﬁcult to study. I understand that it is possible to determine the “superﬁcial” meaning of a given music for its home culture. For example, we can observe what is the context, several ethnographic elements, but I feel we can never really approach what the Other perceives physically and emotionally. In a way, I’m looking for deeper meaning. As I said also, as a performer I’m interested mostly in performance, and in the meaning that music has for me. It may sound selﬁsh, but as far as I’m concerned, My approach is about participation. Charles Keil’s theory of “participatory discrepancies” is worthy of note for that matter. Here’s an interesting quote that is directly linked to what I propose: Keil (1995:10): “Unless people make and give music to others, they can’t really receive it. […] Hours of listening, day in day out, sleeping with the radio on, year after year, massive ‘exposure’, does not capacitate people. On the other hand, learning to play a simple clave 79 beat, holding it in relation to another drum beat, watching someone smile and dance to the groove you generate, can capacitate people in profound ways, can become the equivalent of a conversation experience for some, and even the least moved by the experience will, I believe, by listening kinesthetically ever afterwards, that is feeling the melodies in their muscles, imagining what it might be like to be playing what they are listening.”2 In the book published by Solís in 2004: Performing ethnomusicology: Teaching and representation in world music ensembles, which is strongly related to my approach, there is a chapter by Kisliuk and Gross in which they present some thoughts about what learning to perform can do to you. engenders a kind of self-awareness that leads to activity instead of abstraction.” For all those reasons, the perspective I’m proposing to study meaning with another culture’s music consists in learning to perform and afterwards analyze what that learning has changed in oneself (the learner). It is a kind of heuristic research, as developed by Moustakas (Douglass & Moustakas, 1985). This can be considered a branch of phenomenology, where you “immerse” yourself in a phenomenon, or in my case music, to study it from one’s own perspective. I study my own construction of meaning, with my own background, what I am; I’m the subject of my own study. Since I am talking about my own perception, perspective, and understanding, I must warn the reader that what I say about the chacarera is not to be taken as a reference on that music. Rather, it must be considered as a personal Kisliuk and Gross (2004: 250): “First hand embodied experience that students have with music and dance can facilitate an understanding, or at least an awareness, of both macro- and micropolitics. In learning to dance and sing in new ways, one becomes vitally aware of issues of self and the other, and of ‘here’ and ‘there,’ challenging the distancing that takes place in much disembodied scholarship. Direct involvement in a process of musical creation point of view, or experience. So I will summarize my own construction of meaning of the chacarera by presenting an auto-ethnographic account of my learning of that music followed by the analysis I did of the experience. Auto-ethnographic data I went to Argentina in 1996 with the goal of learning to perform the chacarera on the guitar. I knew very little about it, having only seen notation of the rhythm and 80 heard a couple of songs on a cassette. I had no idea where, nor how to ﬁnd it in Argentina. My initial idea to learn to perform was to observe Argentinean guitarists playing the chacarera, to later reproduce what I saw. Through very nice encounters, I learned that the place to go was Santiago del Estero, a province situated in the North-West of the country. Her name is Juanita. She was very curious about me, and since she had lost her short term memory, every day she would ask me the same questions about Canada. Her picture will be relevant later. A week after my arrival, I was invited to stay at the house of the son of a famous violinist named Sixto Palavecino. His son Rubén always accompanies him on the guitar, so it was a nice place for me to learn, to observe the movements I wanted to imitate. I was received very well in that family. I stayed with them for a month and a half. Very frequently, we would have gatherings around the famous Argentinean asado, a very tasty barbecue, with a lot of wine, but most importantly with a lot of music playing. They always made me play, being honored by the fact that a stranger coming from such a great distance was interested in their music to the point of wanting to learn how to play it. One of the best food you can have over there is the empanada, a meat paté cooked in a clay oven. It is one of the things I will never forget. These are all “meaning material”, as I realized later when analyzing my experience. I could be presenting more for hours, but I hope you get the idea. I didn’t just learned how to perform a guitar rhythm. It was a profound experience in many ways. So, moving back to the guitar, I had several occasions to observe the instrumental movements I wanted to reproduce. I came back to Montreal and continued to repeat the movements on my guitar. I was repeating them without trying to get better, or anything else. Most probably because I had received so many comments in Santiago del Estero about how good my playing was, that I was playing “the right way.” So I repeated the movements until they became automatic, over a period of about two years. And this is when something happened. Changes I began to notice, ﬁrst of all, that my understanding of the chacarera was very different than it was before learning how to play it. I could say that I was, and still am, understanding it “physically,” whereas in the beginning I was only struggling to understand it intellectually. I observed two types of physical sensations coming from playing the chacarera. First, the “guitar sensations.” Basically, it is the sensation (in my hand and arm) of doing the movement of the following example (ﬁrst slowly and then at regular speed): 81 I would recall the sensation, without doing it, while listening to a chacarera. It corresponds to what Baily calls kinesthetic perception (Baily, 1977: 309). The second type of “physical” sensation is harder to explain. I call it a “general” sensation. When playing the chacarera with other Argentinean musicians, I would get different types of real physical sensations, all linked to the way they play with rhythm. They would play syncopated patterns contrasting with what I was playing, which produced new physical sensations of movement. I realized that I was craving for those sensations. At the same time, and this was not expected, I realized that my perception of rhythm in general had changed. This is something which is, again, hard to explain given the very physical nature of the sensations. The sensations I had playing the chacarera on the guitar were always “with me”. Listening to any kind of music I was always trying to recall those sensations, and with several musical styles it worked. For example, with the Moroccan chaabi I could easily follow as if it was a fast chacarera. The whole relation I have with rhythm is changed since then. I play differently, and my approach to rhythm is different. On another level, I became aware of my own emotions towards these physical sensations, recalling the emotions I had experienced in Argentina. For example, the people I met, the asados, or interestingly the empanadas. In the example by Sixto Palavecino I played earlier, you probably noticed that he plays the violin “out of tune.” At ﬁrst it annoyed me. But then, after “collecting” sensations in Santiago del Estero, in particular the monte (bushes) which is a very special place, with its “crooked trees”, and people’s particular sense of humor (interestingly close to mine), Sixto Palavecino’s “out of tune” way of playing became very ﬂavorful to me. I knew from the commentaries by the locals that this way of playing was on purpose, that he wasn’t playing like that because he’s 85 years old. And it isn’t microtonality either (but that’s just me talking). Performing now As Baily noted (Baily, 1994/2001), I’m still performing Argentinean music now. I have learned what Baily calls the “motor grammar” (Baily, 1977). Like any language, if you know the grammar and how to speak, you gradually become able to express your own ideas, who you are, keeping in mind that there is always someone who will not understand you. In a similar fashion, it felt natural for me to use Argentinean traditional music elements to accompany my own traditional music (Acadian). I’m combining things that are all part of me, either learned or inherited. All the moments I’ve lived in Argentina and what followed is now part of what I do and who I am. 82 Conclusion Endnotes 1 In conclusion, I believe that this approach reveals what is too often forgotten: the researcher’s own construction of meaning, his own experience of the Other’s music. I’m sure that anyone who learns to perform music from another culture experiences a transformation of himself, to whatever scale. This transformation may come from the music, but also from all the experiences during the learning process; meeting people, trying new things, etc. As for me, a key element is that I participated, and through my participation I constructed my personal meaning of the chacarera. By that I mean academic research. 2 Baily also presented that phenomenon, to which he refers as kinesthetic perception (Baily, 1977: 309) 3 Miguel jr. Selected Bibliography Baily, John. “Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutâr.” The Anthropology of the Body. Ed. John Blacking. London: Academic Press, 1977. Hood, Mantle. “The Challenge of « Bi-Musicality ».” Ethnomusicology 4.2 (1960): 55-59. Baily, John. “Learning to Perform as a Research Technique in Ethnomusicology.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10.2 (2001/1994): 85-98. Keil, Charles. “The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies : A Progress Report.” Ethnomusicology 39.1 (1995): 120. Kisliuk, Michelle, and Kelly Gross. “What’s the “It” That We Learn to Perform? –Teaching Baaka Music and 83 Dance.” Performing Ethnomusicology : Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles. Ed. Ted Solís. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 249-60. Solís, Ted. Performing Ethnomusicology : Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Douglass, Bruce G., and Clark E. Moustakas. “Heuristic Inquiry: The Internal Search to Know.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 25.3 (1985): 39-55. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Understanding Contradictions Through Popular Music: An Analysis of Coplas and Canción De Autor Mercedes Carbayo-Abengózar and Esther Pérez-Villalba I n this paper we would like to deal with two typical instances of popular song associated with two and somehow oversimpliﬁed version of the Francoist period and the Spanish Transition. We are aware of the particularities of the different phases of both historical periods, as well as of their complexities, ambiguities and contradictions (1). However, due to obvious practical limitations, we will not tackle such complexities here. In spite of its limitations we hope that this section constitutes a useful introduction to the purpose of this paper, especially for those readers who are not totally familiar with the Spanish context. Our main interest is to pay attention to constructions of Spanishness (2) in different hegemonic discourses, both during Franco’s dictatorship and during the Spanish Transition. We are especially interested in seeing how these discourses on Spanish national identity interact with the categories of gender and sexuality. Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975) important periods in the history of contemporary Spain. We are referring to coplas, a musical genre which was at its peak during Franco’s dictatorship especially in the 40s and 50s, and to canción de autor, a very important musical genre in the process of transition from Francoism to democracy in Spain. Here we will refer particularly to the well-known copla “Y sin embargo te quiero” (“And yet, I love you”) from the 1940s, written for, sung and performed by Juanita Reina and to the 1978 song “Mi vecino de arriba”, (“The neighbour above me”) written and sang by singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina. Before dealing with coplas and canción de autor generally and with “And yet, I love you” and “The neighbour above me” speciﬁcally, we will give a very brief and general overview of the historical periods in which these two musical genres were most popular. This will help us to see both musical genres in their context. Spanish national identity: a crash course on hegemonic socio-political discourses Especially in its ﬁrst two decades of existence, Francoist Spain underwent a period of harsh autarky and isolation from the rest of the world. Such isolation was used in Francoist ofﬁcial propaganda to publicly present and disguise the Spanish nation as independent This section constitutes only a very rough 85 and self-sufﬁcient. Throughout its existence, Francoism also made use of an extreme version of Catholicism in its characterisation of Spanish national identity. According to Francoist ofﬁcial discourses, being Catholic was innate to the Spanish character. It is also important to remember that during Franco’s dictatorship there was an intimate relationship between issues of national identity and gender. As Yuval Davies (1997) would put it, it was very clear that Spanish women and men were expected to fulﬁl very different roles in serving their patria. It was also quite clear what being exemplary Spanish men and exemplary Spanish women meant. All these gender roles and expectations were based upon very traditional and static notions of femininity and masculinity (e.g.: woman as patient and enduring housewife and mother, etc). Franco’s regime very much believed in censorship. Such censorship was ﬁerce and threatening, while at the same time arbitrary and often rather ‘clumsy’ (Cisquella et all; Sinova). This censorship did not only affect the mass media, but also the lives of ‘normal’ citizens on a daily-life basis: those who dared dissenting publicly from the regime or its values could easily become involved in serious trouble. Another important aspect of Franco’s regime was its faith in tradition. Tradition played a crucial role in Francoist society. But probably one of the best wellknown aspects of Franco’s ideological stands was his insane obsession with unity at different levels: Spain was considered one state and one nation; only Franco’s political party was legal and there was only one trade union, that of the state or ‘Sindicato Vertical’. Thus, Franco’s regime overlooked the existence of the ‘nacionalidades históricas’ such as Catalonia, the Basque Country or Galicia; it publicly denounced the democratic system as chaotic and degenerative, and ignored and repressed the existence of class struggles in Spanish society. Coplas had emerged early in the century and became very popular in the 20s, but it is in the Francoist period that they were best widespread and were used as typical instance of popular song of the time. The Spanish Transition (1975-1982) (3) Most scholars agree that The Spanish Transition and consequently the 1978 Constitution were the result of a period of consensus; a period in which Spaniards’ crave for democracy and freedom gathered together people of all political orientations. In this section, however, we will pay particular attention to the discourses of the Spanish Left of the time. This is because we believe that, since the sixties, the pressure exercised by the Spanish Left, both theoretically and practically, was probably the main driving force in the process of democratization of the country. Unsurprisingly, in many ways, the discourses of the Spanish Left during the Transition period opposed frontally Francoist 86 hegemonic discourses. While Francoism was mainly a period of autarky, the Spanish Transition boasted about its internationalist character. Although in the late 70s Catholicism still continued to be an inﬂuential element in Spanish society, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 declared the Spanish state secular: “ninguna confesión tendra carácter estatal” (4) ( “no religion will have ofﬁcial status”). At a different level, the discourses of the Left apparently supported more modern ‘moveable’ notions of femininity and masculinity. Such discourses also promoted more sexual freedom for both Spanish women and men. Also, the 1978 Constitution in its Artículo 20 acknowledged the right of Spanish citizens to freedom of expression. The constitutional text also brought about other crucial changes such as the legalization of all political parties and trade unions, as well as the ofﬁcial acknowledgment of the existence of different nations/regions within the Spanish state. In this context, canción de autor (singing-songwriting) appeared as a very relevant strand of popular song that voiced especially the discourses of the Spanish political Left of the time. Coplas and canción de autor: some similarities... and some differences. both enjoyed a huge popularity in the contexts in which they emerged. As suggested before, they somehow appeared as representative genres of their time, as they supposedly supported, ‘encapsulated’ and recreated certain hegemonic discourses of their socio-political contexts. In fact, in Francoist times, copla appeared as the ‘canción nacional’ (‘national song’). It was a genre very well-supported by the regime because it apparently promoted Francoist values and national identity. Even the dictator himself was very fond of this musical genre and its (usually female) copleras or ‘copla performers’. Already in the mid-to-late sixties, canción de autor or political singing-songwriting acquired a very important active role in voicing issues raised by the political Left of the moment. Singing-songwriting was then more than a loud cry for political freedom. The canción de autor of the Transition period was a determining factor in the construction and shaping of a new, more ﬂuid and progressive Spanish national identity. Francoist authorities were very much aware of the potential dangers of singing-songwriting. Thus, they, often unsuccessfully, exercised different types of censorship in order to prevent singer-songwriters from releasing their records and/or organising recitals and concerts. We have chosen to speak about coplas and canción de autor because, in spite of all their differences, they both share some similarities. They Structurally speaking, both musical genres are also similar in some respects. Their songs are often constructed in such a way that it is inevitable to 87 pay attention to their lyrics. Thus, they often offer a narrative account, a story with a classical beginningmiddle-and-end structure. Also, these musical pieces are not ‘catchy’ and they are deﬁnitely not appropriate for dancing (5). Some genre conventions also suggest that these songs are pieces to listen to, rather than to dance to: the public performance of both coplas and canción de autor often entailed the presence of a sitting public, physical position that somehow encourages and shows a disposition towards an attentive listening of the song lyrics. Another important similarity between both genres is their recurrent direct/indirect use of poetry and/or poetical allusions (6), and/or their link to poetry. Let us just mention one example: “The neighbour above me” was included in Joaquín Sabina’ ﬁrst album Inventario (Inventory). Most of the songs in this album were ﬁrst published as poems a few years earlier during his exile in the UK (Menéndez Flores 39). This fact clearly reveals the importance that words and ideas expressed in the songs in Inventario should be given. As we can see, all these characteristics prove that lyrics or rather “lyrics in performance” (Frith) are crucial elements in both coplas and canción de autor. Consequently, our approach to the analysis of “And yet I love you” and “The neighbour above me” in this paper will greatly rely on a textual analysis of their lyrics. In spite of all the similarities that we have mentioned in the paragraphs above, there are also crucial differences between coplas and canción de autor. This is where listeners’ expectations and preconceived ideas come to the fore in the process of reception of both musical genres. Those listeners acquainted with Spanish music and contemporary history are likely to approach coplas and canción de autor with certain expectations. Among these expectations is the idea that coplas are likely to be very traditional in their construction of Spanishness regarding gender and sexuality. On the other hand, we would expect canción de autor to be more dynamic, ﬂexible and modern in that respect. Therefore, as both feminists and aware of both Francoist and transitional pro-democratic Left wing ofﬁcial discourses, we EXPECTED to dislike the copla “And yet, I love you” and to like “The neighbour above me”. However, this did not happen. When we ﬁrst listened to both songs as curious ‘fans’ rather than as ‘critics’, we found ourselves feeling somehow closer to “And yet, I love you” than to “The neighbour above me”. This ﬁrst response disturbed us, for it came as a real surprise and apparent contradiction and this is why we decided to approach both songs with a more critical eye. By reﬂexive self-examination of our own responses towards both songs we expected to ﬁnd out 1) what processes we as (female) listeners had been involved in, 2) why our responses towards both songs were so complex, problematic and, we thought, contradictory, as we felt both love and hate, detachment 88 and sympathy towards both “And yet, I love you” and “The neighbour above me”. “Y sin embargo te quiero” and “Mi vecino de arriba”: an analysis of their lyrics in performance... subjectivity, to the expression of their individual self, to their own feelings, desires, and anxieties. Moreover, in this song motherhood is an important part of the female implied narrator’s life but it is not her whole life; but just one more aspect of the implied narrator’s multi-faceted In our detailed analysis of “And yet, I love you” and “The neighbour above me” we realised that our a priori expectations regarding coplas and canción de autor were not fulﬁlled. In fact, these expectations proved to be highly misleading: while “And yet, I love you” seemed to transgress Francoist hegemonic discourses on gender and sexuality, an examination of “The neighbour above me” also proved surprising in a different way: it still showed some traces of conservatism in its construction of gendered and sexualised Spanishness. Starting by “And yet, I love you”, a closer reading of this copla suggests that the song could be read as a vindication of Spanish women’s desire, for example by looking at how openly the female implied narrator expresses her (sexual) desire and passion towards a male implied addressee: “y bajo tus besos/en la madrugá” (“And under your kisses at dawn”). The boldness of these lines is signiﬁcant if we place them in context, a context in which social decorum and propriety were the respectable options, particularly among ‘decent’ Spanish women (7). From a different perspective, it is also interesting to see how this song asserts Spanish women’s right to life. This should be contrasted with the abnegation and self-sacriﬁce promoted in Francoist hegemonic discourses on motherhood. The following quotation from Otero’s facsimile compilation of Francoist documents is self-explanatory: “Through all her life, a woman’s mission is to serve. When God made the ﬁrst man he thought: ‘it is not good that man is on his own’. And then he made woman, for his help and company, and so that she would serve as a mother” [our translation and emphasis]) (Otero 17). “And yet, I love you” could also be interpreted as a feministaware critique of the social and legal discrimination that affected Spanish women at the time. The implied narrator faces a desperate situation: she is a probably working class single mother who receives no economic or emotional support from her child’s father. On the contrary, the implied addressee openly sleeps around: “Vives con unas y otras” (“From woman to woman you go”) without suffering social or legal punishment. This song could be also taken as a critique of male irresponsibility and promiscuity: the implied addressee does not even want his ‘illegitimate’ son to bear his name. He does not care about his child’s future or about the serious problems 89 (economic, social, legal, etc) that single mothers had to face in Spain at the time. “The neighbour above me” is a problematic text in its construction of Spanishness regarding gender and sexuality. As we pointed out before, some traces of a ‘masculinist’ approach to gender and sexuality are still present in this song. The following examples will hopefully illustrate this idea: a feminist reading of this text suggests that Spanish women’s sexuality is not presented here as an ‘end’ in itself, but rather as a ‘means’ used by men to achieve their purposes. In this particular case Spanish women’s sexuality is used by the male implied narrator in order to take revenge of his pro-Francoist neighbour: in this song an intimate relationship between the anti-Francoist implied narrator and the neighbour’s daughter is established. The existence of this relationship, as such, is not negative. However, the implied narrator’s account of it is, as seen in the problematic use of the vulgarism “magrear”somehow similar to the English term “to grope”. Paying attention to performance here is essential to notice that the implied narrator is showing off. His tone of voice is pretentious. He is behaving boastfully because he has managed to seduce his enemy’s daughter. In this sense, his ‘showy’ attitude does not differ completely from that of the neighbour above, that “macho español” (“Spanish male”) whom he abhors and ridicules. This song seems to be constructed to lead the listener to sympathise with the implied narrator as the implied addressee is presented as a pro-Francoist fanatical disdainful ﬁgure that deserves laughter, hate and pity. Thus, the implied narrator’s promiscuous and irresponsible behaviour seems somehow justiﬁed in the narrative. Again, the problem here is that women are the playing objects of both men, and especially of the implied narrator: his speech suggests that he is not only sleeping with his neighbour’s daughter, but also with his neighbour’s wife. The real problem here is that he does never consider the trouble that his casual relationships with his neighbour’s daughter and wife may bring to both women. There is another aspect of both songs that determined our reception of both musical pieces. We are referring to the meaningful cluster music-performance (on vinyl). When analysing why we felt so positively touched by “And yet, I love you” we realised that it was not only a matter of content, of the possibility of giving its lyrics a feminist reading. We noticed that the interaction of the loud and dramatic music with the passionate and also loud performance of Juanita Reina’s voice gave this song powerful emotional strength able to have a big impact on its (female) audiences. In a way, the intermingling of content, voice performance and music in this song translates into a positive public defence and assertion of, usually privately conﬁned, aspects of (‘feminine’) sentimentality and emotionality. Such 90 emotionality contrasts with the more frivolous and lighthearted music-hall tones in “The neighbour above me”. However, this is not a recurrent characteristic of singingsongwriting. In fact, during the Spanish Transition singer-songwriters and political singers often appealed to sentimentality and emotionality in their music, lyrics and performance (e.g.: Víctor Manuel’ s “La planta 14”, Joan Manuel Serrat’s “Manuel”, etc). Working out how to go beyond contradictions… at times contradictory, messages. Although the former allows a positive feminist interpretation, it also has some problematic points from a feminist point of view. It presents a female implied narrator stereotyped in her uncontrollable passion and love for her undeserving lover, (“I love you more than my eyes/I love you more than my life/more than the air I breath/more than the mother that gave birth to me”). She also appears in a complain mood and with a passive attitude towards getting out of the situation (“Crying by the cradle/the Given the analysis of “And yet, I love you” and “The neighbour above me” that we have presented in the previous section, we will now try to explain our feelings of love and hate, sympathy and detachment towards both songs. As stated above, we like “And yet, I love you” and, at the same time, we ﬁnd “The neighbour above me” problematic in its construction of national identity regarding gender and sexuality. The question now is: why do we still feel uncomfortable with “And yet, I love you”, and we do still enjoy listening to “The neighbour above me”? It seems to us that the complex nature of these texts allows (female) audiences to engage in complex processes of construction of meaning at the level of reception although we are not too sure, however, that the authors of these texts considered such issues at the level of production. Thus, both songs contain different, day I greet/my child has no father/how unlucky I am”). On the other hand, “The neighbour above me” is also highly ambiguous as it allows a positive feministoriented interpretation as well. Like “And yet, I love you”, this song manages to create spaces for female agency in different ways: consider, for example, the neighbour’s daughter’s open-minded and direct approach to sexuality (“Take off your trousers”). Spanish women’s sexuality is presented in this song ‘aseptically’, with no implicit moral judgement against either the neighbour’s wife or daughter. In fact, in this song sexuality empowers Spanish women too, even though we are told about it from the implied narrator’s rather macho point of view. The signiﬁcance of the neighbour’s wife and daughter’s daring sexual behaviour should be understood in context. As García Curado points out (44) throughout its whole existence, the Francoist state was especially 91 concerned with the implementation of very strict and oppressive sexual regulations. However, these sexual regulations, a good example of Francoist double morality, did not affect men and women in the same way. Such discourses affected women negatively much more than they did affect men. Spanish women’s sexuality was totally repressed and female ‘chastity’ was enforced. They were taught that sex was a ‘wrong necessary for procreation’, always within the acceptable limits of marriage, of course (García Gracia & Ruiz Carnicer 93, 121). At a different level, both songs could be seen as ‘relief valves’ that somehow ‘materialise’ some (heterosexual) female (sexual) desires and fantasies. The term ‘fantasy’ often appears as problematic in feminist criticism. Janice Radway in Reading the Romance reaches the conclusion that the materialisation of fantasies in ﬁctional texts (i.e. romances) is not really empowering for women, as that realisation of fantasies does not actually translate into real changes in real life, but very much the opposite. On the contrary, like Cora Kaplan, we believe that fantasies are not necessarily negative. In fact, fantasies and day-dreams are signs of our humanity and necessary elements/processes of the human psyche. Moreover, as Kaplan also points out, fantasies are not good or bad a priori. Instead, we should look at what kind of fantasies are being constructed and pay attention to the ideological and political implications of particular fantasies (153). In other words, “Our priority ought to be an analysis of the progressive or reactionary politics of the narratives to which they [fantasies] can become bound in popular expression.” (165). Considering this argument, the following interpretation of Sabina’s song seems plausible: in “The neighbour above me”, the neighbour’s wife is given a (mediated) voice to complain about her unsatisfactory sexual relationship with her husband. She is given the voice that her authoritarian husband and Francoism denied her. The narrative also gives her the moral right to ‘spice up’ her alienating marital sexual life with the excitement of an affair. In the case of “Y si embargo te quiero”, the song gives the implied narrator a voice to express a desire and determination that are indeed very daring for a woman living in Francoist Spain. She tells us that she was warned about that man was but she “decided” not to listen. Instead, she followed her own heart and desire, a very unusual thing to do for a woman under Franco’s dictatorship: “A thousand times I was told/but I never cared to listen”. In this paper we have offered our personal interpretation of both “And yet, I love you” and “The neighbour above me” from a feminist perspective, always considering the broader historical contexts of both songs. However, in our examination of both musical 92 pieces, other questions and issues regarding audience reception have risen. We know that both songs were well received by a wide female audience in Spain at the time they were released. We are interested in exploring to what extent these (female) audiences were aware of the contradictory messages latent in both songs in their constructions of gender and sexuality. If they were (fully) aware, it would be interesting to know to what extent they cared about such issues and how their feminist-oriented/feminist-aware audiences Endnotes 1. For detailed analyses of both historical periods see the following works, all of them good examples of modern Spanish historiography: Asociación “Mujeres en la Transición democrática”, 1999; Moradiellos, 2000; Barciela, López et all, 2001; Gracia García & Ruiz Carnicer, 2001; Fusí, 2000; García Curado, 2002; Eslava Galán, 1997, etc reacted towards both songs, both in Francoist times and/or during the Spanish Transition. Another question that emerges is to what extent these feminist-oriented audiences felt that these two songs managed to open up spaces for them that satisﬁed some of their needs at different levels. In order to ﬁnd some answers to these questions we have started carrying out some ethnographic research that, although still in its infant stages, is already showing some interesting outcomes. We expect this ethnographic work to help us go further in our research and in the understanding of some of the contradictions that we have posed and tried to examine in this paper. In the process, we also hope to gain some knowledge of our (at times contradictory) selves as (just to mention a few adjectives) Spanish, feminist and political subjects. 2. Following scholars such as Anderson (1983), Billig (1995) and Gellner (1983) we will consider the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘national identity’ to be historical ﬂuid human constructions, rather than static natural givens. In the case of Francoist Spain the omnipresence of an essentialist conception of ‘Spanishness’ was an everyday-life issue from 1939 up until Franco’s death in 1975. Issues around concepts of what being Spanish meant also dominated the Spanish Transition in a different way. This paper will also rely upon the following ideas: 1) these very complex categories of ‘nation’ and ‘national identity’ offer interesting contextual particularities; 2) these speciﬁcities are in part the result of the interaction of other also complex constructed categories such as gender and sexuality, which, in turn, are often also context-speciﬁc (Yuval Davies, 1997; Yuval-Davies & Anthias,1989; Mosse,1985; Parker et all.,1992). 93 3. Choosing dates for the beginning and end of the so-called Transición Española is a highly problematic and controversial matter since its chronological boundaries vary depending upon the criteria one is focusing upon: economic, strictly political, musical, cultural, or social. For purposes of clarity here we have chosen 1975, year of Franco’s death, as the starting date, and 1982, year in which the Spanish Socialist Party came to power as the closing date. However, we must emphasize that both periods overlap especially when considering cultural and musical factors. 6. While canción de autor made obvious/latent use of often complex highly regarded poetry (by Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, etc), coplas often made use of more accessible poetry by ‘minor’ poets or from cancioneros populares. 7. We are aware of the theoretical difﬁculties implicit in the use of the term ‘women’, or even ‘Spanish women’, as other categories such as gender, age, sexual orientation or class interact in its construction. For the purpose of this essay, however, we will assert the validity of the rather general label ‘Spanish women’, adopting Denise Riley’s ‘pragmatic’ position towards 4. Constitución Española, 1978 (http://alcazaba.unex. es/constitucion/indice.html). the category ‘women’: “it is compatible to suggest that ‘women’ don’t exist-while maintaining a politics of ‘as if they existed’-since the world behaves as if they 5. Considering Spanish standards and context, of course. As Peter J. Martin points out, we believe that “the meanings of music are neither inherent nor intuitively recognised, but emerge and become established […] as a consequence of the activities of groups of people in particular contexts. The way that we ‘make sense’ of music is not innate but depends on our acquisition of commonsense, taken-for-granted ideas about how it ought to sound. In every culture, some conventional patterns of organised sound becomes accepted as normal and even natural.” (1995: 46, 47). unambiguously did” (1988: 112). 94 sabes que tienes un hijo Appendix Y sin embargo te quiero y ni el apellido le vienes a dar. Llorando junto a la cuna me dan las claras del día mi niño no tiene padre qué pena de suerte mía. Y bajo tus beso en la madrugá sin que tu notaras la cruz de mi angustia solía cantar... Y sin embargo, te quiero. And yet, I love you Me lo dijeron mil veces más yo nunca quise poner atención cuando vinieron los llantos ya estabas muy dentro de mi corazón. Te esperaba hasta muy tarde ningún reproche te hacía lo más que te preguntaba era que si me querías. Y bajo tus besos en la madrugá sin que tú notaras la cruz de mi angustia solía cantar. Te quiero más que a mis ojos te quiero más que a mi vida más que al aire que respiro y más que a la madre mía. Que se me paren los pulsos si te dejo de querer que las campanas me doblen si te falto alguna vez. Eres mi vida y mi muerte te lo juro compañero no debía de quererte, y sin embargo te quiero. Vives con unas y otras y nada te importa de mi soledad A thousand times I was told but I never cared to listen when the tears came you were already deep inside my heart. Till the early hours I waited for you never a reproach crossed my mouth all I dared ask was if you loved me. And under your kisses at dawn without your noticing my agony used to sing. I love you more than my eyes I love you more than my life More than the air I breathe More than the mother that gave birth to me. Let my beating stop 95 if ever my loving dies let the bells toll if I ever betray you. You are my life and my death I swear mate I should not love you And yet, love you I do. From woman to woman you go and my loneliness no longer counts you know you have a son to whom you even deny your name. Crying by the cradle the day I greet my child has no father how unlucky I am. And under your kisses at dawn without your noticing my agony used to sing... And yet, I love you. Mi vecino de arriba en lo universal, que busca en esta vida respetabilidad, que predica a sus hijos responsabilidad. Llama libertinaje a la libertad. Ha conseguido todo menos felicidad. Mi vecino de arriba hizo la guerra y no va a consentir que opine a quien no la ganó. Mi vecino es un recto caballero español, que siempre habla ex cátedra y siempre sin razón. Mi vecino de arriba es el lobo feroz, que va el domingo al fútbol y ve television; Mi vecino de arriba Don un Fulano de Tal. Es un señor muy calvo, muy serio y muy formal, que va a misa el domingo y ﬁestas de guardar que es una unidad de destino engorda veinte kilos si le llaman ‘señor’, que pinta en las paredes: “rojos al paredón”. Al vecino de arriba le revienta que yo deje crecer mi barba 96 y cante mi canción. Mi vecino de arriba es más hombre que yo, dice que soy un golfo y que soy maricón. Mi vecino de arriba se lo pasa fatal y que yo me divierta no puede soportar, cuando me mira siente ganas de vomitar; si yo fuera su hijo me pondría a cavar. Mi vecino de arriba en la barra del bar, cuando se habla de sexo dice que es Superman. Es una pena que su mujer no opine igual: “De sexo, las mujeres no debían opinar”. Mi vecino de arriba un día me pescó magreando a su hija dentro del ascensor. Del trabajo volvía cuando reconoció la voz que me decía: “quítate el pantalón”. Aún estoy corriendo, no quiero ni pensar lo que habría sucedido si me llega a alcanzar. Como hay niños delante no les puedo contar lo que con un cuchillo me quería cortar. Me he cambiado de casa, de nacionalidad, pero, a pesar de todo, todo ha seguido igual; los vecinos de arriba inundan la ciudad, si tu vives abajo, no te dejan en paz. The neighbour above me The neighbour above me, Mr X, is a very bald, serious and formal sir who goes to mass on Sunday and observes other religious celebrations, who is ‘unity of destiny in universality’ who looks for respectability, 97 who preaches responsibility to his children. He confuses freedom with libertinism. He has got everything but happiness. The neighbour above me made the war and will not allow anyone who didn’t win it express an opinion. My neighbour is a strict Spanish ‘gentleman’ who always speaks ‘ex-catedra’ but is never right. The neighbour above me is the ﬁerce wolf; he goes to see the football match on Sunday and watches TV, he feels so proud if someone calls him ‘sir’, he paints on walls: “Death to reds”. The neighbour above me really hates it when I grow my beard and sing my song. The neighbour above me is more of a man than I am, he says I am an urchin and a poof. The neighbour above me never enjoys himself and he can’t stand it when I’m having a good time. When he looks at me he feels like vomiting. If I was his son he would teach me what life is all about. The neighbour above me in the bar when talking about sex says he is “Superman”. It is a pity his wife doesn’t agree; “Women should not think or talk about sex” One day my neighbour caught me ‘groping’ his daughter inside the lift. He was coming from work when he recognised the voice telling me: “Take off your trousers”. I’m still running, I don’t want to think what would have happened if he had caught me. As there are children around 98 I can’t tell you what he wanted to chop off with his knife. I have moved houses, I have changed my nationality but, in spite of all this, everything is still the same. The ‘neighbours above’ dominate the city if you live below them, they don’t leave you in peace. Eslava Galán, Juan. Coitus Interruptus. La repression sexual y sus heroicos alivios en la España franquista. Barcelona: Planeta, 1997. Frith, Simon. Performing Rites. On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: University Press, 1996. García Curado, Anselmo J. ¡Qué tiempos aquellos, coño! Madrid: EDAF, 2002. Gracia García, Jordi, and Miguel Ángel Ruíz Selected Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983. Carnicer. La España de Franco (1939-1975). Cultura y vida cotidiana. Madrid: Síntesis, 2001. Asociación “Mujeres en la Transición democrática”. Españolas en la transición: de excluidas a protagonistas (1973-1982). Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1999. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Kaplan, Cora et al., ed. “The Thorn Birds; ﬁction, Barciela, Carlos et. al. La España de Franco (19391975). Economía. Madrid: Síntesis, 2001. Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage, 1995. Martin, Peter J. Sounds and Society. Themes in the sociology of music. Manchester: University Press, Cisquella, Georgina et. al. Diez años de represión cultural: la censura de libros durante la ley de prensa (1966-1976). Barcelona: Anagrama, 1977. Menéndez Flores, Javier. Joaquín Sabina. Perdonen la 1995. Fantasy, Femininity”. Formations of Fantasy. New York: Methuen & Co, 1986. 99 tristeza. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 2000. Moradiellos, Enrique. La España de Franco (19391975). Política y sociedad. Madrid: Síntesis, 2000. Otero, Luis. La Sección Femenina. Madrid: Edaf, 1999. Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance. New York: Verso, 1987. Riley, Denise. “Am I that name?” Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History. London: Macmillan, 1988. Sinova, Justino. La censura de prensa durante el franquismo (1936-1951). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Skinny Ties and Valley Girls: Gender, Genre and the 1980s Teen Movie Theo Cateforis T he summer of 2003 marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of the American teen popular music soundtracks and youth market revenues. By 2001, the 80s and 90s teen movie genre had become such a familiar presence on American movie screens that it had even inspired a parody, the aptly named Not Another Teen Movie. A brief examination of a clip from Not Another Teen Movie, which lampoons some of the genre’s most entrenched cliches, can be used to illustrate some of the typical ways in which teen movies currently utilize the pop music compilation score. movie classic Valley Girl. A movie forever linked to its depiction of 1980s suburban California youth culture, a large part of Valley Girl’s cult status also derives from its collected soundtrack of new wave songs from the early 80s which includes selections from such artists as The Psychedelic Furs, Modern English, Sparks, The Payolas, Josie Cotton, and many more. In 1994 and 95, Rhino records recognized the movie’s special legacy by reissuing not one, but two Valley Girl soundtrack CDs, featuring a total of over 30 tracks.(1) As I argue in this paper, the movie Valley Girl stands at a crucial juncture not only in the history of the teen movie genre but in the use of the popular music score within these ﬁlms. Furthermore, I suggest that examining the use of new wave songs in Valley Girl can help to historicize some of the meanings surrounding the new wave movement of the early 1980s. In recent years popular music scholars have turned their attention more and more to the use of compilation scores and popular songs in ﬁlm studies. (Brackett, Smith, Wojcik and Knight). Few ﬁlm genres seem more naturally suited to this type of study than that of the American teen movie, a genre typiﬁed by its reliance on The excerpt in question occurs near Not Another Teen Movie’s beginning, where we are ﬁrst introduced to many of the ﬁlm’s main characters who are modeled after familiar teen movie stereotypes. Like the use of many popular songs in ﬁlm, the ones that we encounter here are used for their referential or associational properties, drawing on the audience’s knowledge of the songs or styles in question. As the clip begins, the camera follows the characters roaming the hallways of the local high school. The ﬁrst character, Ricky, is a parody of Duckie, the notorious platonic ‘boyfriend’ from the 1986 ﬁlm Pretty In Pink. His entrance is accompanied by a modern re-recorded version of The Cure’s 1985 single “In Between Days” (performed by California punk rockers Face To Face), a selection 101 that establishes the appropriate mid-80s reference point. The clip then cuts to the next scene which uses a re-recorded version of The Vapors’ 1980 hit “Turning Japanese” (also by Face To Face) to underscore the ridiculous scenario of a caucasian student pretending to be Asian (a parody on the more familiar white teenage appropriation of African-American hip hop culture). The “Wannabe” Asian character is used to segue to the next scene, where he is joined by two other freshmen, who together form a trio of geeks. The music here is less conspicuous than in the previous two scenes; it is the song “Lucy” by the mid-major alternative rock band Sprung Monkey, and it is the only contemporary example from this clip. Because, however, it is muted in the soundtrack it seems to act less referentially, and more as a type of ﬁller.(2) The fourth and last example from the clip is used to transition to the next scene. We cut to a female character’s ‘slow motion walkby’, modeled on Jennifer Love Hewitt’s portrayal of Amanda Becker from the movie Can’t Hardly Wait. Amanda is the object of one of the freshman geeks’ chaste, unrequited romantic interests, and her gracrful descent down the school’s ﬂight of stairs is underscored by the airy opening keyboard strains of the mid-80s power ballad standard, REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling.” While the score here obviously is particular to its parodic goals, the reason its humor strikes a chord is precisely because the use of the songs is so typical of recent teen movie soundtracks. Like most recent teen movies, Not Another Teen Movie employs a diverse song selection, drawing from a large repository of different genres and periods of recent pop music history.(3) Also, these songs appear in overwhelmingly nondiegetic contexts; rather than emanating from the movie’s ﬁctional space, the songs are used to instigate scene changes and emphasize stereotypical characters. On the surface, Valley Girl is a ﬁlm that seems to share many similarities with these basic teen movie tropes. The movie’s title, for example, derives from one of the most celebrated teen stereotypes of the early 1980s, the suburban California “Valley Girl” whose teenage slang and ritualized shopping habits were ﬁrst famously satirized by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa in their hit single “Valley Girl,” from 1982 (a song, which does not, however, appear in the movie). The plot of Valley Girl like so many teen movies centers around the social obstacles that threaten to prevent the teen protagonists from realizing their romantic desires. In this case, Julie, a popular, straight-laced girl from the valley, wants to be with Randy, a rebellious vaguely punk-ish outsider from Los Angeles, who is played by Nicholas Cage in his ﬁrst starring role. The disjunction between these two lead characters is underscored in the ﬁlm by the use of the music score. 102 Julie is associated with a commercial, dance-oriented (and supposedly ‘artiﬁcial’) style of synthesizer pop, while Randy is linked with the masculine ‘authenticity’ of guitar rock and bar bands. Midway through the movie Julie and Randy’s romance appears doomed as Julie’s trio of girlfriends and her ex-boyfriend from the Valley, Tommy, pressure her into leaving Randy. As with so many other teen movies, however, the broken relationship is eventually salvaged at the high school prom when Randy rescues Julie from her suburban Valley fate and whisks her away into the night. For all the structural plot similiarities between Valley Girl and the current crop of today’s teen movies, the use of music is much different than what one ﬁnds in more recent ﬁlms. Unlike the clip described above from Not Another Teen Movie, the majority of Valley Girl’s pop song score is employed diegetically. A brief discussion of three scenes from Valley Girl will reveal how the use of this diegetic music serves to reinscribe divisions of gender, taste, and physical space, all of which drive the ﬁlm’s basic plot. Way” playing in the background. The diegetic music in this scene is produced through one of the most conventional of cinematic devices: the interior female space of the adolescent girl’s bedroom, with the song emanating from a radio or perhaps a record player. (4) More signiﬁcantly, the music establishes early in the ﬁlm Julie’s association with synthesizer pop. The second excerpt is taken from after Julie and Stacy have arrived at the Valley party at the point Randy and his friend Fred show up, unannounced and uninvited. Valley Girl, like almost every teen movie, uses the party scene as one of the most obvious physical spaces for the introduction of diegetic music. In this case the synthesized pop dance music that we hear – the song “The Fanatic,” courtesy of the obscure new wave group Felony – immediately signals Randy and Fred’s discomfort and serves to accentuate the cultural distance between them and the suburban Valley teenagers. Like many of the other songs featured in the party scene, what is most remarkable about “The Fanatic” is that we hear the track in nearly its entirity. Director Martha Coolidge presents the scene as The ﬁrst excerpt – roughly half a minute in length – is from early in the ﬁlm, as Julie and her friend Stacy get dressed in Julie’s bedroom, preparing for a night out at a party in the Valley. As Julie and Stacy discuss Julie’s ex-boyfriend, Tommy, who Julie has just dumped, we hear The Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My ‘realistically’ as possible. Party scenes in more recent movies rarely feature an entire song, instead opting to use song cues to announce and emphasize different spaces within the ‘party house’. Julie and Randy eventually meet at the party, where they immediately form a connection. But before 103 anything can happen between the two, Tommy and his friends kick Randy and Fred out of the party. Randy, however, sneaks back into the party to retrieve Julie, and they leave together with Fred and Stacy, venturing in Fred’s car out into the dark urban street setting of Los Angeles. In the third clip – roughly one and a half minutes in length – we ﬁnd the two couples in a noisy club where their late night travels through L.A. have landed them. Here, the ‘live’ diegetic music is provided by local Los Angeles rock band The Plimsouls who perform “Everywhere At Once” followed by “Million Miles Away” (in actuality they are lip-synching to the recordings). The gritty interior of the bar and the Also, like many early 80s teen compilation scores, Valley Girl’s selection of songs draws entirely from contemporary popular music.(5) While the music in Valley Girl is undoubtedly introduced to beneﬁt the dramatic conventions of the storyline, and to highlight the polarized differences in gender, social status, and musical taste, at the same time the songs all emanate from within a single genre: that of new wave. I want to suggest that a consideration of the contrasts in musical style embodied by Julie and Randy reveals a basic ambiguity in the deﬁnition of new wave itself, that by 1983 had reached a critical peak. To gauge the measure of this ambiguity, one need only look at the inﬂuential Trouser Press Guide To New Wave Records, published in 1983 (the same year of Valley Girl’s release) by rock critic and Trouser Press magazine editor Ira Robbins. In the introduction to the Trouser Press Guide, Robbins admitted that while his book was an attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of new wave music on record, this had become a hopeless task. As he claimed, new wave, a genre that had initially emerged via the 1976 punk revolution had become by 1983 too broad and stylistically diverse to properly categorize or catalog. The historical loud guitar-based music serve to establish both the public domain and masculine authenticity of Randy’s character. Based as Valley Girl is on the cultural and even geographical differences of its two main characters, it is quite different from many of the teen movies of the past twenty years. Released in 1983, Valley Girl stands as one of the last of the genre to appear before the rise of John Hughes’ popular and inﬂuential mid-80s teen ﬁlms. Unlike most of Hughes’ produced/directed features, Valley Girl is a movie largely devoid of the intra-high school social heirarchies and youth caricatures (such as the geek, the jock, the popular girl, etc…) that Hughes intoduced with his directorial debut, Sixteen Candles and then a year later with The Breakfast Club. segmentation behind this diversity is on display in Valley Girl. On one level, the character of Randy, for example, is meant to represent the original new wave spirit of punk, a connection that many ﬁlm critics at the 104 time commented upon. This connection, however, is never truly established in the score, as Randy is linked not with punk music but with The Plimsouls, one of LA’s premiere power pop bands. Power pop had ﬁrst achieved recognition in 1978, as one of the earliest examples of the new wave movement to emerge from out of the shadow of punk. And crucially, to rock critics of the time like Greg Shaw of Bomp! magazine, power pop represented a new authentic synthesis of rock’n’roll styles. By 1983, however, power pop was but one of many new wave styles. New wave had distanced itself from punk, splintering into a number of categories, and achieving a wider commercial recognition through the synthesizer-styled bands associated with the character of Julie. Correspondingly, new wave, as Ira Robbins would later describe in 1991, had come to be depicted as a “derisive designation for watered-down bands who affected a hip style but were bland enough for American pop radio” (vii). New wave had become a battleground between authenticity and artiﬁce. By the time Robbins published the second edition of The Trouser Press Record Guide in 1985, a mere two years after Valley Girl, he had completely dropped the label of new wave from the book’s title, explaining that the phrase had lost its musical speciﬁcity, and that furthermore it was no longer in use by most music writers. In the battle of new wave’s conﬂicting meanings, however, it was clear by the mid-1980s which version would have the most lasting representation in teen movies. The feminized “techno rock” that Nicholas Cage’s Valley Girl character had complained about in 1983 had not only survived, it had come to assume its own oppositional stance, most notably in the 1986 ﬁlm Pretty In Pink, where it became associated with the female outsider character of Andy played by Molly Ringwald. With its inﬂuential score featuring British synth-based bands like Orchestral Maneuveurs in the Dark and New Order, the Pretty In Pink soundtrack helped establish a new alternative precedent for new wave music of the 80s. The inﬂuence of this music on today’s teen pop movies continues to be felt, with compilation scores that often feature cover versions of new wave songs. The soundtrack that Maverick records released for Not Another Teen Movie, for example, consists almost exclusively of alternative rock cover versions of 80s synth pop new wave songs, with artists like Marilyn Manson re-doing Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” and Stabbing Westward performing New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle.” In closing, I would like to consider one last clip, an excerpt from Not Another Teen Movie. It is the only scene in the movie that makes any reference to Valley Girl, and it is purely a musical allusion: an updated instrumental version of the Modern English song “I Melt 105 With You,” the track that in Valley Girl is notably used to accompany Julie and Randy’s romantic montage. In Not Another Teen Movie, however, “I Melt With You” is used to underscore our introduction into the post-Hughesian teen movie universe. A re-recorded version of the song (performed by California alternative rock band Mest) plays as a tour leader introduces the incoming freshmen students to John Hughes High School, where he explains that for the next four years they will be expected to adhere to rigid youth stereotypes and caricatures. It is one of the ﬁlm’s most humorous moments, but more importantly it serves to emphasize the line that forever separates the history of Valley Girl’s pre-Hughesian past from the legacy of its generic present. Endnotes All references to songs used in the movie refer to the version of Valley Girl that has been widely available on video for the past twenty years. The original theatrical release included Toni Basil’s “Mickey,” Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me,” Bananarama’s “He Was Really Sayin’ Something,” and Sparks & Jane Wiedlin’s “Cool Places,” all of which appear on Valley Girl: More Music From the Soundtrack, but not on the video. In total, 19 of the 31 tracks on the two Rhino collections were featured in the ﬁlm. I am not the only one to share the assessment that Sprung Monkey’s work resembles ‘ﬁller’ more than anything else. As All Music Guide writer Bradley Torreano describes in his review of the group’s 2001 release Get A Taste: “an entire album that sounds like the ﬁller found on teen movie soundtracks.” The commerical soundtrack that Maverick released for the ﬁlm extends this diversity even further. None of the four examples from the clip are included on that soundtrack. Rather, it is a “gimmick” soundtrack that features twelve cover versions of 80s songs performed by contemporary alternative rock bands. Male protagonists in teen movies are rarely shown with families or in a domestic setting. Randy’s true home is his 106 urban environment of niteclubs and city streets. Mention of his parents, home, or even a job is never made. Torreano, Bradley. “Sprung Monkey Get a Taste.” All Music Guide. 25 June 2003 <http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p =amg&uid=CASS70305170823&sql=Axqc8b5b4psqh> However, it should be mentioned that as with most teen movies, there is a great deal of “composed” music – particularly in the second half of the ﬁlm – that is used to underscore those more complex emotions (frustration, confusion, longing, absence, etc…) that traditionally seem less sufﬁciently served by the pop song. Wojcik, Pamela Robertson and Arthur Knight, eds. Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. Selected Filmography Not Another Teen Movie. Dir. Joel Gallen. Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, 2002. Selected Bibliography Brackett, David. “Banjos, Biopics, and Compilation Scores: The Movies Go Country.” American Music 19.3 (2001): 24790. Pretty In Pink. Dir. Howard Deutch. Paramount Pictures, 1997. Robbins, Ira A., ed. The Trouser Press Guide To New Wave Records. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983. Valley Girl. Dir. Martha Coolidge. Polygram Video, 1996. Selected Discography _____. The New Trouser Press Record Guide, Second Edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. Various Artists. Valley Girl: Music From the Soundtrack (CD). Rhino Records, 1994. _____. The New Trouser Press Record Guide, Fourth Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1991. _____. Valley Girl: More Music From the Soundtrack (CD). Rhino Records, 1995. Shaw, Greg. “Editorial.” Bomp!, March 1978: 4-5+ Smith, Jeff. The Sounds of Commerce. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL FinalScratch: Inaugurating a Virtual Authenticity? Sara Wei-Ming Chan T echnological innovation in music has always prompted change in the relations of musical ability to mix and play digital ﬁles is not a novel concept – indeed, CD-turntables have already allowed for this- FinalScratch distinguishes itself as the only system to maintain the traditional turntable-mixer conﬁguration. Of greater interest is its retention of the feel and functionality of the vinyl record, the analogue device that remains a vital part of electronic music culture. As their website proclaims, FinalScratch lets you “play digital the analogue way!” As we observe its launch into club culture, the possibilities created by FinalScratch help to elucidate both this “new sonic paradigm” and the dilemma posed by digital music technologies to conventional ideas of authenticity and expression. By anchoring this innovation within the debates surrounding music technology, I will argue that our traditional notions of what constitutes an “authentic” musical expression demand revision in the face of emergent technologies and their employment speciﬁcally within dance music cultures. composition, performance, and reception. Consider, for example, the enormous impact following the advent of recording technologies such as the gramophone, which revolutionized the way music was stored, disseminated, and consumed. A more recent example might include the electriﬁcation of instruments—electric guitars, ampliﬁers, and microphones paved the way for the modern rock performance and sound. However, the emergence of digital music in particular has enacted a change more fundamental, what Mike Berk has christened a “new sonic paradigm,” (Berk, 199). What this paradigm of the digital rests upon is a radical revision of the very materiality of music and sound, thus dramatically altering typical understandings of authorship and authenticity. As such, more conventional considerations of how music is made, performed, and received are thrown into question. The new conditions of musical expression enabled by digital technologies call for a reevaluation of what the terms “music” and “musician” mean to us. Amid these debates emerges FinalScratch, a technology allowing traditional vinyl DJs to incorporate digital formats into their performances. While the For nearly a century after the advent of the gramophone, the conditions of musical experience remained fairly stable: audiences attended live performances, or consumed recorded music in the 108 home. However, two key developments served to modify these conditions. The ﬁrst was a change in the mode of reception, when the experience of recorded music shifted from the privacy of one’s living room to public spaces. What the record hop provided in the 50s and 60s, followed by disco in the 70s, was a public forum where people congregated to listen to pre-recorded sounds. This type of listening practice posed a threat to the primacy of the ‘live’ performance as the principal source of listening entertainment (Thornton, 28). Inherently linked to this development was the transformation of the turntable into a musical instrument, inspired by disco DJs in the early 70s and further developed by hip-hop DJs a decade later. As DJs began to manipulate records, programming entire ‘sets’ of continuous dance music and learning to beat-match, layer, scratch and cut, the entire realm of musical meaning began to destabilize (Gilbert and Pearson, 126). Though their original intent was for playback in the home, the vinyl record and the turntable had been reappropriated by DJs, their use redirected towards a new mode of performance and expression. The practice of mixing and manipulating pre-recorded material in order to generate new soundscapes reinvigorated the sonic fabric of recordings. What resulted was what Kodwo Eshun hails as “a whole new conceptual attitude toward sound: the idea that every record is open to misuse and can be combined with a second record” (Eshun, as qtd. in Shapiro, 102). Accompanying these shifts in the modes of reception and performance was an adaptation of what constituted an authentic musical expression. Earlier notions of authenticity were underpinned by a speciﬁc cultural logic: the artist was considered a creative agent, whose works conveyed an original, genuine expression of his or her soul. Such ideas are based in the concept of what Mark Poster calls the “analogue author”— cultural expression, in essence, is an inscription, a mirrorimage analogous to the artist’s authentic, original idea. Walter Benjamin’s writings on the subject perhaps best exemplify this viewpoint. Benjamin claimed that technologies of reproduction and the presence of the copy were stripping art of its ‘aura’ and presence as an authentic, unique artefact. Principles of artistry based on aura, according to Benjamin, considered originality to be the fundamental condition of authenticity (51). Though Benjamin was referring to the visual arts, the emergence of various recording technologies have prompted critics to lodge similar complaints in the realm of music. Michael Chanan has remarked that such reproductive techniques have created a “distance, both physical and psychic, between the performer and audience that never existed before,” claiming that “music has become literally disembodied.” Such critics lament the removal of the bodily presence and aura exuded by live musicians, relegating the recording to a mere 109 level of “copy” of the original or authentic performance. I would argue, however, that such a position fails to envision alternative authenticities by narrowly limiting “aura” or originality to a speciﬁc and outdated model of music-making, performance, and meaning. As such, it has neglected the potential for this very model to change—and in its transformation, the opportunity for new schemas of musical meaning to emerge. It is arguable that recording technologies did not so much remove “aura” as re-locate it, for, to quote Sarah Thornton, “technological developments make new concepts of authenticity possible” (29). This assertion is elaborated in Thornton’s discussion of how authenticity came to surround recorded music rather than the live performance, which had until the mid-80s been the primary site of authenticity. The advent of recording and production abolished this visual ascription of authenticity and erased the physical presence of the musician valued in the live performance. This erasure was accompanied by what Thornton calls the shift from “live cultures” to “disc cultures,” signaled by an inversion of the traditional notion of performance as the original, and its recording as the derivative. As performance and recording swapped status, records accrued their own authenticities through a process of “enculturation,” naturalized by disco and club culture so as to seem “organic and natural” (Thornton, 29). In disc cultures, then, recordings became a given: it was what was done with and to them that enacted a performance. This type of musical expression, constituted by and through the copy, turned the traditional conception of authenticity on its head. Now that the expressive, creative use of records has embedded itself in club and rave culture, however, it is debatable whether the employment of new technologies will reshape how we think about authenticity and authorship. The shift from live to disc cultures, arguably, opened the door for a different kind of creative agent in the shape of the DJ. However, on the brink of this discussion lies the digitization of music and the tools that enable its production and dissemination, and with it the spectre of a new ﬁgure: what Mark Poster calls the “digital author,” a character we will visit in more detail later on. The introduction of the ﬁrst ‘digital sounds,’ created somewhat of a rift amongst musicians and fans. Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson have observed that from the mid-80s onwards, digital music technologies were seen as a threat to “real” music, just as DJs and producers of computer-based music did not garner the status of true musicians (112). Authenticities became increasingly associated with the type of technology used to create a musical piece, creating a division between digital and analogue forms and techniques. Joseph Auner characterizes this debate as an aesthetic battle between 110 analogue sound, (associated with warmth, humanity, and authenticity); and the digital sound, usually considered inauthentic due its coldness and “disembodied” nature (n. pg.). Regardless of these aesthetic debates, digital music has undoubtedly altered the very materiality of music. While the gramophone launched a revolution in the storage and dissemination of sound, digital music marks a different kind of storage and retrieval by facilitating the distribution of data rather than sounds. In this ‘grand upset’ between analogue sound and digital information, the technical reproduction of music is accelerating beyond what Benjamin might have imagined, with one key difference: the digital adheres to no sense of “original;” but rather to a conﬁguration that inherently lends itself to reproduction and manipulation. WIRED magazine editor Kevin Kelly identiﬁes precisely this liquidity of digital music as its most important characteristic (30). The fact that digital music is ﬂuid—and thus re-arrangeable, malleable, open to distortion, layering with other sounds, sampling, and bending—inspires the explosion of do-it-yourself home production and the inﬁnite vault of MP3s circulating on the Net. This, according to Kelly, is where the real revolution lies. Andrew Goodwin concurs, declaring that in the digital era, the traditional musical hierarchy is rapidly becoming outdated as the concepts of “music” and “musician” are rendered as ﬂuid as these new digital forms (77). The MP3 revolution and the abundance of digital composition software and instruments are transforming the landscape of electronic dance music in particular. The increasing accessibility of digital production tools invites DJs to move beyond their role as performer, and into the realm of producer and composer. While club and rave cultures center around a form of music that is overtly technological in nature, however, they retain a curious devotion to the anachronism of the vinyl record. Open to debate is whether the vinyl record can actually be replaced by CDs and digital formats such as MP3s and .wav ﬁles. As most DJs insist, nothing beats the feel of vinyl and the nuances involved in touching, cueing, and pulling back the record when performing. Despite the enormous popularity and potential of digital recordings, the vinyl record and its ‘warm’ analogue sound remains an object imbued with authenticity on an aesthetic, sonic, and technical level in club cultures. Its sound, its look, and its central place in DJ culture indicate that the vinyl record is likely to maintain its dominance in dance music cultures. Emerging now, however, are attempts to draw on the liquidity and advantages of digital formats without compromising the prized tactility of vinyl. FinalScratch, a platform developed by the Dutch company N2IT, leads this attempt. It is the hope of its developers that FinalScratch will bridge the rift between analogue and digital, opening up new spaces for musical 111 performance and expression. While various models of CD mixers have tried, and generally failed, to mimic the feel and function of vinyl turntables, N2IT is the ﬁrst to provide an interface that works exactly like a vinyl record. FinalScratch is ground-breaking in its ability to circumvent concerns over the loss of the “feel” or “touch” of vinyl while effectively incorporating the digital into a culture that has generally balked at using such formats. Screen video vinyl—omitting the time and expense of creating a dub plate or pressing it to vinyl. As a result of these possibilities, the entire creative process is made much more accessible and immediate to the average DJ. Richie Hawtin, a pioneer in the techno scene and one of the ﬁrst DJs to showcase the technology, has spoken out on the creative potential afforded by FinalScratch. As he claims, “Being able to perform with digital ﬁles has caused me to re-evaluate anything I play. I don’t want to play the regular version of any record anymore. I want to edit everything” (Gill, As one might imagine, the implications of this innovation are numerous. On a practical level, no longer must a DJ cart around limited amounts of heavy vinyl, instead being able to carry their entire music collection on their laptop. There are also aesthetic issues raised by the die-hard analogue heads and legal or ethical concerns that situate FinalScratch within those debates concerning peer-to-peer software programs. However, of greater interest in the context of this paper is how FinalScratch aligns itself closely with the possibilities enabled by digital music’s liquidity. FinalScratch is a development that expands the creative potential of any DJ, encouraging them to become producers as well as performers. With the proper software, any DJ can rip a new track from vinyl, CD, or the Internet, and edit it to their liking. However, FinalScratch allows them to play it that evening at a performance as if it were n. pg.). The sanctity of the text, in such a case, is arguably undermined as musical tracks are increasingly rendered ﬂuid, unﬁnished, open to manipulation and revision by other producers and performers. DJs such as Hawtin signal the emergence of Mark Poster’s digital author, a ﬁgure whom he claims will “designate a new historical constellation of authorship” (69). The digital author, unlike the traditional analogue author, works with bits of malleable, sampled data, perfectly reproduced and reproducible. No longer, then, must one expect the fruits of digital labour to be an analogous reﬂection of the author’s originality. As Poster notes, digital authorship “eviscerates the author’s presence from the text, shifting interpretive focus on the relation to a discourse understood in its exteriority, without resort to a founding creator, without reference to the patriarchal insemination of text with 112 meaning” (67). Digital music, particularly in the case of dance music cultures, is open to interpretation and manipulation, put into action by the experience it generates on the dance ﬂoor. such categorical constraints. In light of such practices, a rearticulation of the more traditional models of musicmaking and authenticity is certainly warranted. I contend that we are witnessing a move beyond these strict dichotomies of “real” or “fake,” “digital” or Though FinalScratch will not necessarily become an industry standard in dance music environments, its creation represents a beginning of sorts-- an indication of where music and technology might be heading. The introduction of FinalScratch into electronic music cultures could very well signal the enculturation of digital forms in the same manner that disco and the record hop enculturated recordings decades ago. However, its widespread adoption depends largely on the question of whether people will abandon their devotion to vinyl and the analogue sound. FinalScratch is merely one attempt to answer this question, since it acknowledges the both the DJ’s affection for vinyl and the creative possibilities of digital authorship. Perhaps innovations such as these will serve as the bridge that will carry notions of authenticity to yet another stage; from the real to the virtual. For it is becoming increasingly ambiguous whether our sonic environment is real or fake, analogue or digital, authentic or inauthentic… until we must ultimately marvel at where “real” or “authentic” are even located. Clearly, emergent technologies such as FinalScratch obscure these distinctions and encourage modes of production, performance and consumption that are liberated from “analogue.” Technologies such as FinalScratch and their attendant social or cultural practices signal an emerging set of values, marked by a resolve to move beyond the limitations imposed by these persistent rivalries. This emergent culture, inspired by the possibilities of digital authorship, encourages exploration of the terrain between such binaries, enabling new possibilities of sound and meaning to surface, navigating the limits of this new sonic paradigm. As our lives and our music become increasingly technologized, it remains to be seen how this emergent culture might negotiate meaning and reality as it leaves behind the traditional boundaries of authenticity, aesthetics and sound. 113 Gill, Chris. “The Sounds of Science: Interview with Selected Bibliography Acquaviva, John. 4 Mar 2002. Interview. iJamming! 2001. Richie Hawtin.” Remix 1 Dec 2001. 12 Mar 2002. http://industryclick.com/magazinearticle.asp?releasei d=9654&magazinearticleid=135211&siteid=15&maga zineid=48>. <http://www.ijamming.net/Wine/ JohnAcquaviva1.html> Auner, Joseph. “Making Old Machines Speak: Images of Technology in Recent Music.” Echo 2.2 Goodwin, Andrew. 1992. Rationalization and Democratization in the New Technologies of Popular Music. In Popular Music and Communication ed. James Lull. London: Sage. 75-100. 2000. 15 Mar 2002. <http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/ echo> Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Eds. M.G. Durham and D.M. Kellner. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 48-70. Kelly, Kevin. 2002. Where Music Will Be Coming From. The New York Times Magazine 17 Mar. 2931. Poster, Mark. What’s the Matter with the Internet? Berk, Michael. “Technology: Analog Fetishes and Digital Futures.” Modulations: A History of Electronic Music—Throbbing Words on Sound. Ed. Peter Shapiro. New York: Caipirinha Productions Inc., 2000. 188-201. Shapiro, Peter (ed.). Modulations: A History of Electronic Music—Throbbing Words on Sound. New York: Caipirinha Productions Inc., 2000. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2001. Coe, Jonathan. “FinalScratch: proper reply to your letter.” Personal e-mail communication. 2 Mar 2002. Taylor, Timothy D. 2001. Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture. London: Routledge, 2001. Gilbert, Jeremy and Ewan Pearson. Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound. London: Routledge, 1999. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Fresco or Freeway?: An Aural impression of Montreal’s Lachine Canal Owen Chapman I n the chapter “Walking in the City,” from his The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau visual) simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and a misunderstanding of practices” (93). In conceiving a city as something capable of being observed in its entirety by a single, naked eye, the “Concept-city” constructs itself as a monstrous panopticon, replete with its own ﬁgment of describes the view of New York from atop the 110th ﬂoor of the World Trade Center as one that “arrests” the city: Beneath the haze stirred up by the winds, the urban island, a sea in the middle of the sea, lifts up the skyscrapers over Wall Street, sinks down at Greenwich, then rises again to the crests of Midtown, quietly passes over Central park and ﬁnally undulates off into the distance beyond Harlem. A wave of verticals. Its agitations momentarily arrested by vision. The gigantic mass is immobilized before the eyes. (91) In this chapter de Certeau maintains that this frozen image provides the model and foundation of the “Concept-city”, with its criss-crossed street networks, and undulating urban design and architecture. While this image is useful for “voyeur gods” (93) and those who seek to outline a region such as Montreal as a discrete entity, the practice of everyday travel through the city signiﬁcantly disturbs this construct. To quote de Certeau again: “The panorama-city is a “theoretical” (that is discipline through the notion of controlled circulation. On the Parks Canada website for Montreal’s Lachine canal, one ﬁnds this claim: While strolling along the banks of the Lachine Canal, a complex landscape unfolds before your curious eyes. The locks and walls of the canalized waterway, the 19th-century factories and the downtown skyscrapers compose a fresco testifying both to the canal’s past vitality and to a promising future. <http://parkscanada.pch.gc.ca/parks/quebec/ canallachine/en/visite/ frame_visite_e.html>— July 20th, 2002 Similarly to the gods-eye-view concept of the New York which de Certeau encountered atop the World Trade Center, this statement from the body responsible for the maintenance and promotion of the waterway 115 (which runs, btw, from old Montreal to the West Island municipality of Lachine—about 15 or so kms) focuses solely on the visual aspects of experiencing the canal— articulating an image consonant with the “Concept-city” perspective common to many urban development projects. hand, focuses on the “fresco-like” picture it provides of Montreal’s past and present. As such, it promotes only the desired image of what the canal provides to its users: static, frozen, quantiﬁable landscapes. De Certeau’s chapter on walking in the city is dedicated to the articulation of an alternate conception of the city, a dynamic conception typiﬁed by movement. In a similar In opposition to this visual account of the impact of the Lachine canal upon its visitors/neighbors, “Lachine Canal: Journées Sonores” is a aural research project in which we are documenting shifts in the soundscape of the Lachine canal as it changes with each phase of its revitalization, known as the Blue Montreal project. Like all urban renewal efforts, this multi-year, multi-million dollar investment is having profound effects on how the areas surrounding the canal sound. The weekly soundwalks and soundrides that we have conducted over the past 4 years have not only provided us with an archive of the changing canal soundscape, they have also revealed an everyday perspective on the canal as a space of movement: old warehouses and factories coming down, condos going up, water lapping against the canal’s embankment (recently affected by the canal’s rechristening as a pleasure boating route), ice crunching its way towards the St. Lawrence in the winter, and, of course, the sounds of pedestrians and cyclists throughout the spring, summer and fall. Park’s Canada’s depiction of the canal, on the other vein, my participation in the Journées Sonores project attempts to explore the sound environment of movement along the canal’s length, primarily through the making of recordings while cycling along the bike path. The path has been there in some form since 1974, and has been used heavily since that time both for recreational riding on the weekends and cycle-commuting during the week. The soundscapes which my catalogued trips to the canal have recorded are at once very similar to the sounds of cycling elsewhere in the city, while at the same time contain an undeniable stillness and a rare feeling of being close to nature. Certain sections of my recordings always became overwhelmed with the sound of heavy trafﬁc, while other sections of my canal recordings were almost just as predictably made up primarily of bird sounds, and the sound of wind rushing through leaves. This proximity to a more natural rhythm is what draws people to the canal, I believe, as opposed to the compellingness of its panoramas. Nevertheless, the canal does not exist in an acoustic bubble. The white noise of trafﬁc is ubiquitously present in all my 116 recordings. However, although sometimes quite loud, the canal’s constant rumble does offer a signiﬁcant respite when compared to traveling through Montreal’s downtown core. [Audio examples “Peaceful Canal” and “Downtown Montreal”] work with such a new conception, I’ve developed an audio track based on the sounds of the Lachine canal as they were present to me on July 2nd, 2002—while riding back downtown from Lachine (the resulting track Fresco or Freeway? was played during my Iaspm 2003 presentation). [Audio example “Fresco or Freeway?”] The “Concept-City”, de Certeau claims, needs to be replaced by a new, dynamic appreciation of the narrative elements of movement through a space, as they are displayed in the choices we make as pedestrians (or in my case, as a cycler). As he says, De Certeau’s notion of the metaphorical city involves the decisions one makes while navigating the city’s byways. As streets and alleyways present themselves, one makes choices in the development of one’s route based on how such spaces impact one’s consciousness as a walker. The names of these places as well as their histories and relationships insert their way into a private, mental narrative which is constantly coming to be as the pedestrian moves through the city. My recorded trips along the Lachine Canal have their own such narrative related to my choices as to how I rode down the canal’s length, at what speed, on what terrain, etc, as well as through my relationship to the lay Three considerations inform de Certeau’s attempt to locate these practices: what he calls “operations”, “another spatiality”, and the “metaphorical” nature of pedestrian movement all become touchstones in de Certeau’s attempts to point towards a cityconcept which incorporates the vector-al nature of its daily bustling rituals and negotiations. In an effort to of the land as it has been shifting throughout the canal’s redevelopment. Fresco or Freeway is an aural attempt to explore the structure of these moving soundscapes. Escaping the imaginary totalizations produced by the eye, the everyday has a certain strangeness that does not surface, or whose surface is only its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible. Within this ensemble, I shall try to locate the practices that are foreign to the “geometrical” or “geographical” space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions. (93) 117 Selected Bibliography de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. London: Univ. of California Press, 1988 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Cultural Capital and Cultural Memory among Mexican Migrants in the United States: The Performance of Corridos and Norteño Music among Migrants Martha Chew T he present study explores the role of music in shaping cultural identity through the experience of The Mexican population living in the United States has a diasporic character because its migration were forced by economic conditions, war, and political uncertainty, and includes many undocumented Mexican migrants. The immediate future is very uncertain. Mexican diaspora experience is complicated by the fact that Mexican migration to the United States is probably the most complex and problematic issue facing the two countries. For instance, violations of human rights directed at Mexican immigrants have been addressed by the Mexican government in various binational meetings (Maciel & Herrera-Sobek, 1998). Pressure groups that range from powerful business to civil rights organizations have played a role in determining immigration policies that affect both countries. However, immigration to the United is not a recent phenomenon. Mexican groups have traveled for centuries throughout the regions of Baja California, and Baja California Sur-California, Chihuahua-New Mexico-Texas, and Sonora- Arizona before the Mexico/ U.S. border was established in 1848 (Pérez, 2000). Contemporary Mexican immigration to the United States is different in nature since it has been generated largely listening to, dancing, and singing corridos in the Mexican diaspora in the United States. In particular this study explores the shared aesthetics, social roles, values, and construction of cultural narratives that are embodied in the corrido with lyrics that describe important aspects of Mexican migrant experience in the United States. The corrido is a narrative song, often danced, composed in Spanish that recounts the historical circumstances surrounding a protagonist whose conduct may serve as a model to a community or whose history embodies the everyday experiences and values of the community (Medoza, 1939; Maciel & Herrera Sobek, 1998, HerreraSobek, 1994). The Mexican diaspora community, as all other diasporic communities, is formed by people with a sense of agency, subject to change, resist, contribute and incorporate cultural elements of the new context where they are living and of the contexts they left behind. This study identiﬁes some of the hybrid cultural expressions that were incorporated in corridos and into the uses of corridos. 119 by the needs of the United States industrial expansion, and by poverty in Mexico. Mexican immigrants are not only from border areas; in fact the main contributors to the migration to the United States are the central states of Mexico (Jalisco, Michoacán, and Guanajuato). Mexico’s diasporic culture and its multiple contributions to the economy and society of the United States have not been explored in the public arena. For the most part, Mexicans and Mexican descendents in the United States are subject to racial, linguistic, and cultural prejudices. Currently, the topics related to Mexican and Mexican descendants shown in U.S. mass media are mainly related to immigration, violence, crime, riots, and other forms of deviance, ethnic relations, and cultural differences. Although the mainstream arena denies a space to acknowledge the experiences of Mexican immigrants, they have insisted on recording their history through the main medium at their disposal: Folk songs (Herrera-Sobek, 1994). Under the continued threat of cultural erasure, Mexicans developed a diasporic aesthetic that they feel they can own, perform, share, and reshape as circumstances demand, safely, and in their own terms. Historically, the corridos have functioned as a barometer of the people’s response to social, economic, and political conditions (Herrera-Sobek, 1994). Another characteristic of the corridos that makes them a very useful cultural expression to study is that corridos play a very important role in the oral tradition of Mexican and Mexican-descendent communities. Corridos are learned orally from generation to generation and although some aspects of the corridos may change through time or vary according to geographical regions, the main content of corridos remains the same. In this way the corridos transcend space and time, and past events are transformed into present consciousness despite changes in society. The large number of corridos that describe the immigrant experience provides a unique opportunity to analyze the Mexican diaspora phenomenon. This study will attempt to analyze the formation and reconﬁguration of collective memory through narrative songs, corridos. The data gathering included (1) 40 personal interviews with radio executives, recording producers, musicians, singers, and frequent dancers and listeners of corridos in Chihuahua, Chihuahua; Satevó, Chihuahua; Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua; El Paso, Texas; Dumas, Texas; and, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (2) Participant observation in the daily activities of members of the community and observation of the daily lives of participants of this study as well as of their festivities and dances and some of the dance halls Mexican migrants attend to in the United States (3) Five focus groups interviews were conducted at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; two focus groups interviews were conducted in Chihuahua, Chihuahua; two focus 120 groups interviews were organized in Albuquerque, New Mexico; and, two in Dumas, Texas. The total number of participants in the focus groups was 71. (4) Narrative analysis of 15 selected corridos about immigration sung by conjuntos norteños chosen by participants of this study. Results characteristics of the corridos’ main characters often create social consciousness because such feature have a powerful resonance with the community from which such characters are. The individual stories portrayed in the corridos are transcended by the collective perception and resonance of the corrido. Individual stories are transformed into communities’ stories due to the similarity of the social, economic, and political conditions of both the community and the individuals. The role of the corridos is to inform about events important to the community, but more importantly to offer an editorial, a place of analysis of events worth of keeping in the collective memory and also a place to record the feelings that emerged in such events. The corridos are powerful to the people because they integrate the subjective and objective elements. Some ways in which Mexican descendents and Mexican Immigrants construct their identity around the corrido Participants in the focus groups and interviews considered the corridos as a key cultural expression of Mexican culture. All participants demonstrated a thoughtful and well-conceived understanding of the main characteristics of the corrido. Current as well as of old corridos enjoy high credibility among all participants, regardless of participants’ education, class, gender and geographical region in Mexico and the United States, including those who expressed their dislike for present day corridos. Participants often referred to the corridors as one of the few means in which they can have trust on the content of the events narrated by them. One major role of the corrido is to offer social, political and economic analysis of the context of the narrated event of the corrido The epic dimension of the corrido is particularly meaningful to people who listen to, and dance, corridos. In this regard, some heroes in the corridos are social transgressors whose values and way of life are in line with those of the people. The individual The very “wetback” identity means the transformation of Mexican nationals into “illegals,” one of the undesirable outcasts of the United States society. The border christens Mexicans who cross the Rio Bravo as “wetbacks.” The identity of the wetback is present in most corridos about immigration (“The rich wetback,” “The tomb of the wetback,” “The other Mexico,” “Three times wetback.”) and it is transformed from being a source of shame, as the mainstream 121 societies from both Mexico and the United States have always ascribed to poor Mexican migrants, into being a human and digniﬁed identity that becomes a source of celebration, ethnic pride, a self-centered deﬁnition of hard work and hope. The corridos present the wetbacks as migrants with multiple and contradictory subjectivities. The identity of the mojados (wetbacks) in the corridos is presented as complex, multilateral, multidimentional, conﬂicting, contradictory, ambiguous and discontinuous. However, despite of the marginality of the migrants’ lives, the corridos about immigration are gaining real and symbolic spaces that were often denied to them. Such gains are taking place in urban areas, social events among middle-class people from Mexico and more spaces in dancing halls, radio and television in the United States as well as in Mexico, Latin America and Spain, where corridos and conjunto norteño music are increasingly being performed. Ways in which Mexican descendents and Mexican immigrants narrate their immigrant experience through the corrido experience through ethnic practices, such as certain celebrations, food, religious beliefs, but also through memories of their lived experiences in their country. Mexican migrants recreate their homeland in the United States by performing weddings, christenings, and quinceañeras, coleaderos, and horse races in a very similar manner in which those events take place in their homelands. Conjunto norteño musicians, horsemen and cooks travel northward and southward to perform for Mexican migrant families and communities in the United States. The weekly dances organized by promoters in the United States represent a powerful site of solidarity, recognition and community among immigrants as well as a space of recreating and co-creating home away from home. Listening to music broadcasted by radio stations located both in the United States and in Mexico is a very common, and powerful, act of recreating home. In fact, the most popular radio stations among Spanish speaking people in most cities in the United States are radio stations with norteño music programming. Often The corridos about immigration portray a holistic perspective of the Mexican immigration experience in the United States that humanizes, celebrates and denounces migrants’ everyday challenges, adversities and experiences. Immigrants reafﬁrm their ethnic identity on the basis of their homeland culture and life experiences, not only these radio stations dedicate one hour to corridos played by conjuntos norteños. The above elements play an important role in building a strong sense of communion and catharsis among Mexican migrants in the United States. Corridos provide ample opportunities to Mexican migrants to symbolically re-experience the relationships 122 they have with their homeland, their relatives, and their loved ones. The cultural archive of the Mexican diaspora is continuously co-created and preserved orally, through stories, often embodied in corridos, as well as through the body, that is, through dance performance, musical performance, clothing, food, and through ways of interacting with members of the migrant community. In the case of norteño music dance, the cultural archive is constituted by a corpus of songs and corridos, ways of playing norteño music, ways of dancing and organizing dances. These cultural speciﬁcities are passed down, orally and informally, by the old generations to the new ones. The cultural capital of the migrant community is preserved thanks to the social and cultural actors who invest a substantial amount of effort, talent, time and money in it. The elements that are present in the cultural capital of Mexican migrants are intrinsically related to their present political, social, economic and cultural needs. Some ways in which Mexican descendents and Mexican immigrants negotiate their life styles in the United States Mexico and in the United States, the hegemonic model of culture has been the European one. For the new generations of Mexicans living in the United States as well as those living in Mexico, the hegemonic model of popular culture are most cultural products produced in the United States by European-Americans, sung in English. However, the dominant model leaves interstices. Under such cultural context, norteño music can be seen as a subaltern cultural expression that has appropriated certain elements of the hegemonic model of popular culture but that has also responded to the values and aesthetics of rural and urban working class Mexicans. The performance of corridos sung by conjuntos norteños represents multiple negotiations between of the cultural capital of Mexican migrants and the cultural capital of the United States. Corridos about immigration constantly mention places of the United States, and relationships with other members of a broader diaspora as well as with members of the host culture. The performance of corridos by conjuntos norteños has embraced sophisticated musical and recording equipment from the United States mainstream society as well as ways Cultural expressions need to be explored in their relationships with social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which they develop because often times, cultural expressions can be part of the struggles for contested meanings among social classes. In of getting the music diffused and promoted. Historically, Mexican migrants in the United States, as well as other migrants from Third World countries, have been confronted with racism, ethnicism, xenophobia, marginalization and terrorism. Mexican migrants 123 negotiate in multiple ways their migrant condition in the United States in the face of racist, nativism. Some of their negotiation mechanisms include: the creation of informal, but highly complex and strong, social networks that work as a safety net and cushion in times of economic, family and social crises. There are various and sophisticated levels of negotiation between the narration of the Mexican migrant experience portrayed in the corrido and the U.S. mainstream public arena. The corrido is a trangressive tool that takes full advantage of the loopholes and ambiguities available to Mexican music without being completely and openly oppositional to the U.S. mainstream society. Corridos sung by conjuntos norteños, tend to have a happy rhythm that obscures the political content of the songs. Corridos about migration serve as a way of negotiating migrants’ life style because quite often they narrate stories in ambiguous terms, with metaphors and with inexplicit references to time and places. The chore of the content of the corrido is almost only accessible to the intended audience and can be quite obscure to the audience the corridistas do not want to include. Another way of symbolically negotiating the marginalized position of many Mexican immigrants in the United States, is by inverting power relations in the corrido. There were two main ﬁndings of the present study. First, the present study found a high level of congruence between the personal life experiences of Mexican migrants in the United States, the content of the corridos about immigration and the organization and the performance of corridos. Second, the Mexican diaspora community that consume corridos and norteño music exercise a great control and autonomy over the content of the corridos, the manner of dissemination, the place where the corridos are played, and the performative act of the corrido. 124 Dallal, A. (2000) El dancing mexicano. México, D.F.: Selected Bibliography Acuña, R, (2000). Occupied America. 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Dolgin, D. Kemnitzer and D. Schneider (Eds.) Symbolic Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press. Stokes, M. (1994). Ethnicity, identity and music: The musical construction of place. Oxford, UK ; Providence, RI: Berg. Taussig, M. T. (1993). Mimesis and alterity: A particular history of the senses. New York: Routledge. Thrin, T. Minh-ha (1991). When the moon waxes red. New York: Routledge. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Mapping the Music Industry in Scotland: Building an Industry or Building an Empire? Martin Cloonan and John Williamson R ecent years have seen increased academic interest in popular music policy (Negus 1996, of the entire music industry in Scotland. Simon Frith acted a consultant to the project which was written up and completed in December of that year. What follows is the story of that exercise and some reﬂections upon what it means to be a popular music academic who gets involved in policy-making. We start with some introductions to Scotland and its political landscape. Scotland and Scottish Politics 1998; Strachan and Leonard 1998, Street 1997) and a plethora of reports which attempt to map the economic status of the British music industry (British Invisibles 1995, Dane et al 1996, 1999; National Music Council 2002). There has also been increasing interest in the role of the nation state in formulating popular music policy (Breen 1999, Cloonan 1999, Malm and Wallis 1992, Negus 1996). Scotland has a population of around 5 million This paper is an attempt to think through what happens when the world of academic research gets intertwined with the job of researching the ﬁnancial worth of a national music industry. In many ways this is one of those papers that regularly crops up at IASPM along the lines of: “What are we doing here?” or “Where is popular music studies going?” But we hope to give it a particular slant by examining some ideas from Keith Negus (1996, 1998) who has argued that popular music academics should be trying to produce a form of public knowledge. The most important political development in recent Scottish history was the setting up of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The Parliament has powers over The background to this paper is that in June 2002 its authors won a competitive tender to conduct a “mapping” much of Scottish life with the exception of a number of areas including international relations, defence, and is located in the north of the British Isles. It is half the size of England, but only has about a ninth of its population. Its outlying islands, of Shetland, are actually closer to Norway than the nation’s capital, Edinburgh. Around 2 million of the population live in what’s known as “the Central Belt” around Glasgow and Edinburgh. Of course music is made all over the country, with important folk, pop, classical and jazz scenes. 130 broadcasting, most taxation, employment law and welfare which are all reserved to the UK Government in Westminster (see Symon 2000: 285-286). Thus, for example, the Parliament cannot impose radio quotas nor levies on blank tapes. However, the Parliament does have control over cultural policy, economic development and education. which members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) can pursue their particular hobby-horse. The Groups have no legislative or policy-making powers, but can act as a lobbying force with sometimes ready access to Ministers. Of particular importance to this story was the setting up of a Cross Party Group on the Scottish Contemporary Perhaps the most important economic development agencies are a number of Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) which are brought together under two main bodies, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. In 2001 the main LEC, Scottish Enterprise, announced a budget of £25 million (around $US 38 Million) to promote the creative industries, including the music industry, within Scotland. Importantly the Enterprise network funds businesses, rather than musical projects. It essentially offers short term business loans. But insofar as popular music projects are businesses, they can apply for funding. The other important public funder of the arts and culture is the Scottish Arts Council which gives grants for various arts projects, including music. Cross Party Groups Music Industry. This Group is made up of MSPs, managers, musicians, assorted industry folk and some educationalists. While it has, thus far, remained something of a talking shop (Symon and Cloonan 2002), the group does give some focus to the disparate music industry in Scotland and can effectively act as scrutineer of policy developments. For example, when the Scottish Executive announced its ﬁrst National Cultural Strategy in 2000 (Scottish Executive 2000), members of the Cross Party Group were vocal in their condemnation of its omission of popular music as anything other than a means of facilitation social inclusion. The Group was also concerned about Scottish Enterprise’s apparent lack of interest in music as a creative industry. Such was its concern it summoned One result of the setting up of the Scottish Parliament was the establishment of a number of cross-party Groups, which are effectively means by Scottish Enterprise to appear before it to explain their plans. This happened on two occasions and it is fair to say that these were somewhat bruising 131 encounters. They also led to some rethinking in Scottish Enterprise in what seems to have been a desire to placate the Group and, through this, the wider industry. One result of this new approach was to announce a tender for a mapping of the music industry in Scotland in order to provide an accurate picture of its economic state and to pinpoint the areas in which an economic development agency might be able to assist. John and Martin go to Kilmarnock and industry experience from Williamson and primarily academic and political experience from Cloonan and a wealth of journalisitic and academic experience from Frith. We will return to interpreting our roles later. We also convinced the funders that something more than a mapping exercise would be needed. Thus we got them to agree to fund a project which included not only a map of the economic value of the music industry in Scotland but also a literature review, a The tender for the Mapping Exercise was announced on Scottish Enterprise’s website in May 2002. We put in a bid and were successful, following a meeting with Scottish Enterprise at their Kilmarnock ofﬁce in late June. At the shortlisting meeting we played up certain aspects of the bid. This drew not only on the merits of the team (which we modestly believed to be unequalled within Scotland), but also on the political astuteness which appointing us would be. We knew that other competitors would be from within the industry itself. We thus made much play of our independence as researchers with no particular axe to grind. That independence of mind seemed to be appreciated, but was to cause us problems later. series of interviews with key stakeholders and a number of illustrative case studies. This was to give the report a much ore rounded look. In addition we agreed to produce a Directory of all the economically signiﬁcant organisations and individuals in the music industry in Scotland. In sum, we stressed three factors: our experience, our neutrality and our commitment to give the funders more than they asked for and thus make them look good in a political environment in which they had often looked bad. This convinced the funders and we won the contract. However, it eventually became clear that the funders were only interested in the economic aspects of the industry, rather than the Of course, we also drew on own roles as “experts”. This involved a combination of journalistic, activist broader cultural (and policy) questions which helped to structure that economy. 132 The Research own (www.scottishmusicdirectory.com). Sufﬁce to say that a range of issues emerged, most particularly the extent to which any of the issues facing the industry were particularly “Scottish” or part of more global trends, the limited powers of the Parliament and the extent to which in some instances Scottishness itself is a marketable asset. In many ways these reﬂect Marcus Breen’s ﬁndings about the problems of trying to develop local initiatives within a globalised industry and economy (Breen 1999: 4). But rather than concentrating on the report per se, we’d like to explain and think through what happened to us during the writing of the report. Pressing Problems The research began in July 2002. Throughout it we endeavoured to engage as much as the music industry in Scotland as possible. This was done primarily though questionnaires to all the economically signiﬁcant organisations we could locate. We were also known to various groupings in the industry and the fact that we were a known quantity helped us to gain access to a number of people who might not have been so willing to become involved in something that was just the just the purview of the funders. While this was something of an advantage, as we were effectively acting as agents of the funders and using our professional standing to help the funders’ research, this meant that we ran the risk our professional reputations being damaged if the funders upset the industry or compromised us in any way. This was to happen on more than one occasion. One thing we’d promised the funders was that we would present initial ﬁndings at a music industry convention called Music Works, which was part funded by Scottish Enterprise and took place in October 2002 (www.musicworksuk.com). We were quite happy to do Of course as academics, we began with a literature review and followed it with three other main parts of the research: a questionnaire of all the economically signiﬁcant companies which we could identify, a series of interviews with key “stakeholders” and a selection of case studies. this, but made it clear that the research was unﬁnished and in particular that we had more interviews to do. However we did the presentation at the Convention and then started to receive press enquiries. Headlines which resulted from this included “The day the music died” (Williams 2002), “Popped in and gone missing” (Metro 5 November 2002) “pop idle” and “the bubble has burst We don’t want to go into details of the ﬁnal report, as these can be found on various websites including our and nobody can ﬁnd a repair kit” (Gordon 2002). Thus the media coverage was generally downbeat. But the 133 research was not ﬁnished at this point and one of our concerns was that the press coverage would put words into the mouths of people we had yet to interview. Finishing Up who they did not want to upset. So the independence of mind which we had played up in our initial bid was proving hard to maintain. Following various representations from us, the funders eventually agreed to “launch” the report to an invited audience in March 2003. We had assumed that full copies of the report would be available, however half way through the meeting copies of an Executive Summary were delivered and handed out. This whole event was shambolic. In addition it became clear to us that many of the people we had wanted invited to the “launch” did not get their invites. A promised press Having ﬁelded the press, we carried on working on the report and cutting a long story short, submitted it to the funders in December 2002. Their initial reaction from Scottish Enterprise was that this was “a great report which I am sure will be well received” (SE email, 19 December 2002). Perhaps we should have known what was coming next. First, the funders asked for a summary which outlined the implications for them and this was duly submitted. Then problems started to appear as we began to get emails asking us to change the Executive summary. From our point of view the Executive Summary was simply that - an uncontroversial condensing of what was outlined and justiﬁed in much greater detail in the report. However, it was clear that the funders expected that the Summary was all most people would read. Certainly they placed much greater importance on it than we ever had. So much so, that most of January was spent haggling over the Executive Summary. In essence this revolved around the funders not wanting us to say anything controversial, especially if it involved criticism (implicit or explicit) of them or anybody else release never happened and the hard copies of the full report did not appear. Moreover, the Executive Summary which SE printed listed all their own projects before getting on to our report. In many ways it was simply SE justifying themselves. We were also told that SE would take care of dissemination of the report and that it would appear on the website of an organisation called the Scottish Music Information Centre (SMIC), which is partly funded by Scottish Enterprise. The report did appear on the website, but it was withdrawn after two weeks following a complaint a party within the SMIC board. There is not scope today to go into the reason for this (but, see Fowler 2003). Sufﬁce to say that the complaints came 134 from vested interests in the music industry in Scotland centred on the copyright organisations. thought which we had made so much of in our initial bid was again coming back to haunt us. So what do we make of all this? Following the so-called launch we wrote to SE asking what the next stage would be an inviting them to stage a public debate on the report. Again, cutting a long story short, we got no response to this and so arranged a half day seminar to take place at the University of Glasgow in May 2003. In the run up to the seminar we were contacted by SE and told that they would, after all, be printing the report so that it could be disseminated at the seminar. Conclusion: Policy and Academe: Legislating, interpreting and making public In many ways the story which we’ve outlined here brings us back to the beginning and the question of what it is we are doing as popular music academics. The experience of working on this research has made us think about not only on our roles in what happened to the report, but also about how the ways in which the characteristics which won us the tender - expertise, The seminar has now taken place. It got widespread media coverage (see MacDougall 2003, one of the authors also appeared on Radio Scotland to discuss the report). The day’s events have been written up and distributed and next steps are being considered, although our formal work on the project is over. However, it is worth noting that the report was subject tom a scurrilous attack in the press by a member of the SMIC board (Fowler 2003). Apart from the fact that the attack was wildly inaccurate in a many ways and in at least one instance totally wrong, it seemed to us to be another example of small minded self-interest. Similar vested interests have been found in work on Ireland by Strachan and Leonard (2000: 279) and in Australia by Breen (1999: 18). In our case the independence of independence and expanding the remit - also contributed to what happened to it subsequently. Clearly one practical point which arises from this is the need to ensure that the funders not only share your visions all the way through from the tender to the ﬁnal report (see also Breen 1999: xvi). We thought that we had done this, but had missed some of the politics. The fact that an organisation also funded by our funders would conduct a spoiling exercise was something we hadn’t bargained for. In many respects this shows that when new money becomes available there are a lot of organisations who wish to use it for their own good, rather than for any greater good. We had made much play of the political sense of appointing us, only to fall 135 foul of broader politics which we had not been fully aware of when we bid. becoming politically disengaged (ibid: 219). Negus is highly critical of such writers as Tony Bennett More broadly it yet again raises the issue of what popular music academics can contribute to both music and the policies which surround it. Here we would like to draw upon the work of Keith Negus (1998: 10) who is concerned that too often research is driven by the agendas of state and market. In order to think the roles of popular music academics he draws upon the work of Zygmaunt Bauman, and makes a distinction between the academic as legislator and as interpreter (Negus 1996, 1998). Negus (1998: 9) explains that: (1993: xi) who argue that Cultural Studies, which for today’s purpose includes Popular Music Studies, should make a contribution to the formulation of Government policy in a pragmatic way which those from a more oppositional point of view would discount. For Negus such approaches essentially come from a liberal view of state policy in which the state is viewed as an essentially neutral force which arbitrates between contending forces, rather than a Marxist view which sees the state as representing vested class interests (Negus 1996: 196 ff). Negus veers more to the Marxist ‘The legislator is the person who is researching, reasoning and studying in order to produce expert knowledge that can be used to advocate some type of utilitarian policy… The interpreter, in contrast, is the person who recognises that claims about the authority, truth, value and legitimacy of knowledge are relative’. Negus sees all calls for experts to make musicalaesthetic judgements as leading to them working as legislating intellectuals who ultimately use popular music studies as a form of social engineering (ibid: 217-218). Meanwhile, he says, the problem of the interpreter is that it can lead to popular music studies approach and is concerned that those who advocate state popular music policies as being inevitably drawn into serving the interests of the state and, on occasion, petty nationalism which can come from such things as radio quotas (ibid: 213). We believe that here Negus underplays the contradictory nature of the state. To us, the history of popular music policies does not show them to be as always in the interest of statal forces. The results are more mixed. It is also important to note that the issue of the state is also complicated in the case of Scotland which has a sub nation-state policy system in which not only are contradictory forces present, but so are new ways of 136 understanding popular music policy (Symon 2000, Symon and Cloonan 2002). be assisted by the widest possible dissemination of the report and public discussion of it. In addition the Directory produced in conjunction with the report was We are, however, drawn to Negus’ idea that popular music studies as a form of public knowledge. Here Negus (1998: 12) says that there is a need for popular music studies to try to struggle to be autonomous from both market and state. For Negus (1996: 224) popular music studies as public knowledge involves questioning, critiquing, and creating dialogues between people who are performing and listening to music across cultural, geographical and social divisions. a very practical form of public knowledge available to those seeking knowledge of the industry. Here we have anecdotal evidence that the Directory is proving of particular beneﬁt to those just starting in the industry. However, we have to return to a downbeat note which reﬂects on how the vested interests of the funders and certain parts of the industry served to stiﬂe our attempts at creating public knowledge. Negus (1996: 223) also calls for a popular music Looking back at the Mapping Exercise we seemed to attempting some of these things and the lessons which might be drawn are therefore those of mixing the role of legislator, interpreter and provider of public knowledge. Our legislative role was that of being publicly funded to provide information for an economic development agency to whom popular music was of interest primarily as an economic, rather than cultural, force. Our interpretative role was to broaden the remit so that the some of voices of those working in the industry came through. We then interpreted those voices through a framework drawn from pervious literature and our own experiences. Perhaps the issue to return to is that of contradiction. We had hoped that the funders would fund our autonomy – and thus public knowledge. Instead they wanted to tell the public only that which served their legislative interest. Even interpretation proved problematic for them. However, the report is in the public domain, the interpretation is done and the battle for public knowledge We had hoped that the public knowledge role might is underway. It may not be possible for legislators to studies which goes beyond “experts” discussing policy in rooms and it is perhaps here above all that we failed. Despite our best intentions, the number of people who make their living as musicians who got involved in the research remained small, although such people are always a minority in the industry. 137 fund public knowledge, but it may be able to provide such knowledge despite the legislators’ intent. Selected Bibliography Bennett, T., Frith, S., Grossberg, L., Shepherd, J. and Turner, G. (1993) Rock and Popluar Music: Politics, policies, institutions. London: Routledge. When reviewing popular music policy over ten years ago Malm and Wallis (1992: 256) suggested that the real goal is to ‘maximize music activity’. It is by such standards that both the report and the politics around it should ultimately be judged. Breen, M. (1999) Rock Dogs: Poliitcs and the Australian Music Industry. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press. British Council (2002) Make or Break. Supporting UK Music in the USA. London: British Council. British Invisibles (1995). The Overseas Earnings of The Music Industry. London: British Invisibles. Cloonan, M. (1999). Popular music and the nation state: towards a theorisation. Popular Music, 18:2, 193-207. Dane, C., Feist, A. and Laing, D. (1996). The Value of Music. London: National Music Council. Dane, C., Feist, A. and Manton, K. (1999) A Sound Performance: The Economic Value of Music to the United Kingdom. London: National Music Council. Fowler, T. (2003) “Who lets the dogs out”, Music News Scotland, 2, June 2003, p.4. 138 Gordon, G. (2002) “Pop idle”, Sunday Times Scotland, 10 November 2002, section 11, pp.1-2. Cultural Policy and the Politicisation of Music Industry Concerns: The Case of the Republic of Ireland”, Mitchell, T. and Doyle, P ed Changing Sounds: New Directions MacDougall, L. (2003) “Why Scotland is garbage is you want to be a rock star”, Sunday Herald, 18 May 2003, p.6. and Conﬁgurations in Popular Music, Proceedings of the 10th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Sydney: University of Technology. 279-283 Malm, K. and Wallis, R. (1992) Media Policy and Music Activity. London: Routledge. Symon, P. (2000) “Does Scotland ﬁt the MISC model?”, in Mitchell,T. and Doyle, P. ed. Changing Sounds: National Music Council (2002) Counting The Notes: The Economic Contribution of the UK Music Business. London: National Music Council. New Directions and Conﬁgurations in Popular Music, Proceedings of the 10th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Sydney: University of Technology, 284-289. Negus, K. (1996) Popular Music in Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Symon, P. and Cloonan, M. (2002) “Playing away? Popular music, policy and devolution in Scotland”, Negus, K. (1998) “Legislators or interpreters? Some questions about the politics of popular music studies” in, T.Hautamäki and H.Järvilouma (ed.) Music on Show: issues of Performance. Tampere: University of Tampere, pp.9-13. Williams, M. (2002) “The day the music died”, Business AM, 4 November 2002. Scottish Affairs, 40, pp.99-122. Williamson, J., Cloonan, M. and Frith, S. (2003) Mapping the Music Industry in Scotland: A Report. Glasgow: Scottish Enterprise. Scottish Executive (2000) Creating our Future… Minding our Past… Scotland’s National Cultural Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Strachan, R. and Leonard, M. (2000) “The State, IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Our Disagreement is a subtle one of Methodology”: Music Theory and the Clash of Ideologies in Discourse on Popular Music John S. Cotner “O ur disagreement is a subtle one of methodology.” These words ﬁnd their context Everett and other theorists, “rock music expresses itself on a number of levels that are primarily musical and only secondarily sociological in nature,” and it is the task of the “intelligent well-rounded listener/consumer” to “re-create that expression” (Everett ix). Moore responds by raising the issue of agency, calling attention to the book’s widespread “omission of any theorization of subject position, . . . or of the means through which normative readings are culturally inscribed” (146); the essays of Nadine Hubbs, Susan Fast, and Ellie M. Hisama not withstanding. Such ongoing disagreements between Everett and Moore provide an informative window into the text/context argument, what I am calling the clash of ideologies prevalent in contemporary popular music studies. Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey of these issues, I will discuss problems surrounding analytic listening behavior, particularly with regard to the categories of structure and medium. I will relate these issues to visual, verbal, and sonic metaphors in the ﬁlm montage of “Machine Gun” performed by Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. I have chosen this angle in order to challenge my own analytic biases, and socialize my listening behavior as critic and fan. in Allan Moore’s review of Expression in Pop-Rock Music (2000), edited by Walter Everett; one of three recently published collections of analytic essays on rock music. Here, Moore is referring speciﬁcally to Walter Everett’s lengthy essay entitled “Confessions from Blueberry Hell, or, Pitch Can Be a Sticky Substance.” Along with Philip Tagg, Richard Middleton, and others, Allan Moore and Walter Everett have gone far in the past ﬁfteen or more years to advance the critical analysis of pop and rock music. They tend to focus on similar styles, the Beatles ﬁguring prominently, and both are proliﬁc writers. The “disagreement” to which Moore refers betrays a deeper ideological tension between those who appeal to “the music itself” (“textualists”), and those who say that music can be neither conceived nor interpreted apart from a social context (“contextualists”). This doctrinal anxiety arises early in his review of Expression in Pop-Rock Music, as Moore wonders about the meaning of “expression” in the title, “since it raises questions of who is doing the expressing, and of who the recipient may be” (Moore 145). For 140 Problem of the “Ideal” or “Perfect” Listener and individuality; ideas that held high moral value for modernist thinkers such as Adorno and Schoenberg, and which continue to permeate traditional music pedagogy, theory, and musicology. According to this doctrine, Subotnik tells us, it is the listener’s as much as the composer’s responsibility “to clarify actively the internal intelligibility of a structure, a process that, ideally, frees the meaning of that structure from social distortion and manipulation” (159). Yet Subotnik wants to problematize structural listening by demonstrating how the very historical styles it is intended to elevate — Viennese Classicism in particular — actually resist the ideology. She does this by asserting the irreducible category of medium as counterpart to structure. This is how I understand the phenomenon of musical medium: More than “replete” structure, medium is the concrete spatial and temporal dimension of sound, in all its layers and manifestations, as much perceived and felt, as conceived by the listener. Medium is that aspect of music that counterbalances, even deﬁes structural values by continuously calling attention to the cultural and historical foundations of musical style. An instructive example comes from the third chapter of Subotnik’s book entitled “Toward a Deconstruction of Structural Listening: A Critique of Schoenberg, Adorno, and Stravinsky.” Here, the author shows how Beethoven’s use of orchestral density to articulate In “Confessions from Blueberry Hell, or, Pitch Can Be a Sticky Substance,” Everett proposes the “perfect listener” in response to arguments that “music cannot be studied in isolation,” at the level of the sonic channel. In absence of the perfect, rational listenercritic, Everett asks, “how could one possibly quantify the experiential history and cognitive preferences of any single listener, let alone any group of them, as the basis for the analysis of a piece of music?” (Everett 341). In fact, early in his review Moore contests Everett’s position, “with its attendant refusal to problematize the issue of ‘the experience of the observer’ ” (Moore 148). Rose Rosengard Subotnik, in her seminal book entitled Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society (1996), demonstrates that the notion of an ideal listener emulates what she calls “structural listening,” “wherein the listener follows and comprehends the unfolding realization,” writes Subotnik, “with all of its detailed inner relationships, of a generating musical conception, or what Schoenberg calls an ‘idea’ ” (Subotnik 150). Schoenberg’s “musical conception” is an emergent idea involving the loss and inevitable restoration of compositional balance. Moreover, bound up with the practice of structural listening are loaded ideas of autonomy, unity, development, necessity, 141 structural events also stresses the illusion of any “implicit and intelligible principle of unity” (158) in the music. In his review of Deconstructive Variations, Brian Hyer writes that “No rational, self-evident structure would need the assistance of nonstructural elements (rhetorical stress, orchestral mass, amplitude) in order to make the logic of its arguments plain”; “structure derives at least in part from medium and cannot exist without it, at which point any question of priority becomes undecidable” (Hyer 412). Hyer’s insights are critical to how I want to approach rock analysis because he acknowledges that the physical aspects of sound do not function merely as an accessory to structure. Recognizing the narrowness of Subotnik’s deﬁnition of structure, though, Joseph Dubiel goes about dismantling the structure/medium opposition from yet another angle. To do so, he collapses the formalist underpinning of structural hearing by offering a new deﬁnition: “Simply put, the structure of a work is whatever happens — whatever happens, as characterized through the deployment of whatever concepts help to make the work’s identity speciﬁc and interesting for us. Period.” For Dubiel, structure indicates a path of interpretation “concerned with emphasizing the openness of each sound’s identity to deﬁnition through the relationships in which we understand it to participate” (see Dubiel citation). The problem is not only one of priority, but of language and cultural value. “Machine Gun” by Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys Now I wish to explore how the ﬁlm Band of Gypsys: Live at the Fillmore East (re-released on DVD in 1999) alters my awareness as observer. I will focus on images and sounds surrounding Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “Machine Gun” on January 1, 1970. “Machine Gun’ is relevant as an historical expression of the anti-war movement among youth in America during the Vietnam War. The lyrics of the song are densely metaphorical, reﬂecting, among other states of mind, Hendrix’s intellectual and emotional sensitivity to the dehumanizing effects of war, and underscore his portrayal of the combat soldier as victim of political forces; indeed, the horriﬁc victimization of all humanity in wartime. The implicit theme is death in war, in which the machine gun functions as agent of destruction, a kind of evil devourer. At times, woman is personiﬁed as destroyer, an elusive misogynistic reference worth further investigation. Throughout the song, though, the bullet is a metonym, a property of the machine gun’s function as agent of death. Stylistically, “Machine Gun” is a hybrid of blues phrase rhythms and a deliberate kind of rock-funk groove. About 12 minutes in length, the song interweaving Hendrix’s ominous ﬂoating verses with an extended guitar solo and a closing section highlighting Buddy Miles’ soulful, 142 James Brown-inspired vocals. Billy Cox provides the pervasive riff pattern and drone that secures the openended form. At the risk of reifying context, I want us to view a brief segment of “Machine Gun” in order to witness a speciﬁc series of visual, aural, and verbal signs. We enter the performance midway through the second verse, just prior to the moment when Hendrix launches the long, entrancing guitar solo. ﬁgure is co-present in consciousness with the soldier/ machine gun entity. What were discrete visual and sonic elements now co-exist, to borrow Noel Carroll’s words, “within the unbroken contour, or perimeter, or boundary of a single uniﬁed entity.” The frame of the video screen compels me toward this inference. The visual narrative changes again, as a large gathering of protesters is superimposed with arial bombardments over rural enemy terrain. As marchers slowly cross Colorful stage lighting enhanced the original live performance, and vivid psychedelic shapes pulsated on a large screen behind the band. Now, though, all color and depth has been ﬁltered out of the ﬁlm so that the performance has a sobering starkness and solemn quality. As the music reverberates in the background, my attention is drawn to moving images of combat and wounded soldiers, as war protestors wave slogans reading “Stop the bombing of Vietnam,” “Don’t ﬁght Wall Street’s war!,” “Peace on Earth,” “Texas against LBJ’s war.” These images are spliced with those of soldiers ﬁring machine guns, now synchronized with the rhythm of the song’s machine gun ﬁgure. In this context, the iconic function of the mechanized rhythmic ﬁgure is emphatic; that is, it resembling in both sound and proﬁle, the very machine gun it is intended to represent. Further, this musical metaphor is transformed into a visual metaphor through homospatiality, as machine gun the visual frame, the Lincoln Memorial overﬂows with symbolism, at once pointing to democracy, civil rights, and state authority; and a sign in the foreground reads “Great Society — bombs, bullets, bull shit.” Above the steady rhythmic groove, guitar riffs and bass drone, Hendrix’s vocal phrasing pierces through dense visual imagery: “Well, I pick up my axe an’ ﬁght like a farmer, you know what I mean?/an’ your bullets keep knockin’ me down/The same way you shoot me down baby/ you’ll be goin’ just the same/three times the pain/an’ your own self to blame/way, machine gun!” Now we assume a new arial vantagepoint from inside a warplane, more or less oriented toward the horizon, as residue of destruction slowly rises through the air. Hendrix’s image enters the picture from lower right, confounded by clumsy camera adjustments, the sudden zoom-in jolting my perception before settling mid-frame in perspective. Suddenly, he attacks and sustains the ﬁrst astounding high-pitched, single-note gesture of the 143 guitar solo, as two bombs leisurely guide my mind’s eye to the point of impact. The montage of images suggests that the explosion originates from within Hendrix’s chest, its physical force felt rippling outward from the epicenter, spitting debris, gas and ﬁre across the surrounding area with the ease of inﬂection. The explosion is portrayed in slow motion, giving it time to coalesce in my mind. If only for a moment, I sense that Hendrix is co-present in awareness with the detonation itself; the physical impossibility of which drives the inference (Carroll 1994). David Neumeyer, in Music and Cinema (2000), describes the difference between source/background, or diegetic/ nondiegetic kinds of ﬁlm music. “If music serves a ﬁlm’s narrative system,” writes Neumeyer, “then the primary axis along which ﬁlm music moves is determined by the implied physical space of the narrative world. Thus, music’s ‘spatial anchoring’ is either secure or undeﬁned” (Buhler, Flinn, and Neumeyer 17). Neumeyer explains that the music’s spatial anchoring is secure when it “emanates (or appears to emanate) from a ‘source’ within the depicted world, that is, the diegesis; it is ‘source’ music” (17). Music lacking spatial anchoring within the depicted world of the ﬁlm is underscoring, or background music. Consequently, spatial anchoring of music has profound ramiﬁcations for how messages are coded and narratives deployed in ﬁlm, as is the case in the excerpt from “Machine Gun” we are considering at present. Because Hendrix is diegesis, my attention is drawn to the intensity of his performance. The visual congruence of Hendrix’s initial single-note attack with the bomb’s impact is believable in part because Hendrix is the physical, spatial source from which the sonic burst emanates. Eyes closed, Hendrix is fully engaged in the moment, his body and guitar merged as a single being, now conceptual counterpart to the soldier/machine gun entity. Indeed, the fact that the real sound of the explosion is replaced, or rather erased, by the sound of the guitar further emphasizes the message that Hendrix is source. These same images also capture an aspect of Hendrix’s inner depth, antithetical to the phallocentric masculinity of his Monterey Pop appearance. Steve Waxman points out that Hendrix tired of the extroverted mode of “black male potency” that his Monterey performance deﬁned; and toward the end of his brief career “began to deemphasize the bodily dimension of his style and portray himself as a musician ﬁrst, not a performer” (Waxman 28-29). Waxman argues that “the sight of blackness in the eyes of others had become oppressive,” so Hendrix rejected the public persona for “a realm of pure music where both he and his audience can lose themselves in the power of music” (28-29). Mapped onto these social factors is the equally relevant point that the particular coordination of verbal, visual, and sonic metaphors in “Machine Gun” discloses a disturbing fact, a moral 144 dilemma concerning the capacity of humans to enact evil upon one another. For me, the depicted world of “Machine Gun” expresses this horriﬁc reality. Slowly, the explosion recedes into the background, leaking through Hendrix’s form, as he ends the ﬁrst howling single-note gesture only to coerce it again. The ﬁlm montage comes to an end, and I return to a fuller awareness of Hendrix’s unfolding sonic exploration above the driving groove set down by Band of Gypsys. Later in the ﬁlm, music assumes a background function, and a new series of interviews disrupts the continuity of the performance. The illusion of a coherent narrative collapses under the weight of disparate social dialogues about Hendrix. Dubiel’s view of musical structure as an interpretive designation rather than a matter of compositional logic makes sense in the context of the ﬁlm analysis I have presented. My argument is that the visual, verbal, and musical metaphors I identify in the ﬁlm sequence of “Machine Gun” articulate relationships between material and formal aspects of sound in ways that enabled me to rethink discursive practices in which I participate, as critic, analyst, and fan. For example, this brief analysis of Hendrix’s performance stretched my training as a music theorist by suggesting new ways of listening through the medium of ﬁlm. Of course this interpretive activity is not new for some of you, but it is fresh ground for me; and I see no better way to problematize one’s ideological foundation than to look at a situation from an unfamiliar perspective. In his review of Understanding Rock (1997), edited by John Covach and Graeme Boone, Walser argues that “music theorists cannot use their intellectual isolation as an excuse from the general scholarly imperative to think about one’s premises and methods; loving the music is not enough and Schenker is not universal” (Walser 357). I tend to agree with Walser that the discipline of music theory is slow to scrutinize its formalisms, and quick to sustain the divide between text and context. At the same time, I agree with Henry Klumpenhouwer (1998) who states that “while it may be accurate to view music analysts as running dogs of capitalism, it is not accurate thereby to view contextualists as anything different, mostly because the attempts to overcome the text/context binary have always involved simply weighting contexts . . . with the effect that the binary is reinscribed with inverted dominant terms” (Klumpenhouwer 296). Rarely do music theorists and sociologists work together toward a mutually equitable scholarly discourse, more often than naught “weighting” ideologies to suit a particular view of reality aligned with one’s area of expertise. If we are going to achieve an equitable dialog, it will only happen when we dare to challenge our individual biases. Should not this also be our shared “scholarly imperative”? 145 Moore, Allan. Rev. of Expression in Pop-Rock Music: A Selected Bibliography Buhler, Jim, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer, eds. Music and Cinema. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 2000). Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays, ed. Walter Everett. Music & Letters 82 (2001): 145-156. Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea. Ed. Leonard Stein. Trans. Leo Black. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975). Carroll, Noel. “Visual Metaphor.” Aspects of Metaphor. Ed. J. Hintikka. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994: 189-217. Subotnik, Rose Rosengard. Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society (Minnesota and London: University of Minnesota, 1996). Dubiel, Joseph. “On Getting Deconstructed.” Music Theory On-line 2.2. 1996. 1-5. 21 June 2002. <www. societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.96.2.2.htm.> Walser, Robert. Rev. of Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. Ed. John Covach and Greame Boone. Notes 57 (2000): 355-357. Everett, Walter. Expression in Pop-Rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000). Waxman, Steve. “Black Sound, Black Body: Jimi Hendrix, the Electric Guitar, and the Meaning of Blackness.” Popular Music and Society. Spring 1999. Hyer, Brian. Rev. of Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society, by Rose Rosengard Subotnik and Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, by Lawrence Kramer. Journal of the American Musicological Society 5.2 (1998): 409-424. 1-33. 25 November 2000. <www.findarticles.com>. Klumpenhouwer, Henry. “Commentary: Poststructuralism and Issues of Music Theory.” Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic. Amsterdam: The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Dance Tribes and Club Cultures. Experiences, Imageries and Values Concerning Dance Clubs in Rome Francesco D’Amato T ribalism is the concept adopted by Michel Maffesoli (1988) to deﬁne a form of ephemeral carry out or a on projective tension of agency, but on ‘feeling altogheter’, that is on aesthetic experiences whose sharing is made possible through their setting in symbolic forms or material places which come to constitute the imagery of these experiences. What’s interesting for a research on clubs is then the concept of genius loci, derived from this statement (180-193): with genius loci Maffesoli means the shared feeling that give substance to the ambience or atmosphere of a particular place, which in turn gives to them a recognizable form, shaping the imagery through which the tribe (or ‘community of feeling’) join together. Of course, experiences -and the imagery through which they become recognizable- become part of representations and discourses that elaborate their meaning according to social logics. In other words, starting from elements articulating a speciﬁc atmosphere, or rather starting from what they include and exclude, representations and discourses come to be instituzionalized which tend to distinguish, to enhance the value, and to legitimate the experiences implied, according to a social logic that shows itself primarily in what these representations differ from, in sociability, organized around shared experiences that cause an ‘ethics of aesthetics’ (solidarity based not on utilitarian aims but on proximity) and embedded in speciﬁc habits. The term tribe has been taken up by different scholars in order to describe several instances of youth aggregations and activities, included those taking place in dance clubs (Torti 1997; Bennett 1999), and it has gained such popolarity –at least in Italy- that has become part of the vocabulary used in journalistic accounts of youth sociability (Novelli De Luca 1996). Andy Bennett, for example, use the concept of tribe in order to put in evidence the unstable and ephemeral character of afﬁliations based on consumptions and preferences more ﬂuid compared to what the classical idea of subculture seemed to imply. However, as developed by Maffesoli, the concept has more implications and it refers to a wider perspective clung to his theories of imagery. Basically, through the concept of tribe, Maffesolì intend to critic rationalism and to put in evidence how sociability it’s not based on a task to 147 distaste before than taste. Through these processes the imagery acquires the ability to distinguish, bedises that of connecting. It follows that a comparison and integration with Sarah Thornton approach (1995) to club cultures appears crucial and fruitful. So, at one side, the concept of tribe encourages the assumption of different starting point, compared to most classical subcultural studies: that is, focusing primarily on the aesthetic and emotional experiences embedded in consumption rather than on the rational articulation of meanings and identities throught it; on the other side, its potential utility has often suffered of a dangerous latent ideology and of an excess of simpliﬁcation and abstraction, due to some aspects of the general approach from which it derives (that i can’t discuss in details here) and to its postmodern matrix. If the concept offers some insights for the analysis of dynamics of connection, Sarah Thornton approach allows to explore how these, at the same time, can work as practices of distinction. Both the perspectives have been applied as a general framework for an explorative ethnography on electronic dance music clubs in Rome, which is still being carried out, whose aim is to investigate the experiences of people attending different clubs, the ways such experiences are elaborated, and also the converging and diverging aspects of the imageries that give symbolic form to the clubs atmospheres. Here i will refer in particular, to experiences, imageries and discourses taking place in the two most important clubs of electronic dance music in Rome: Brancaleone and Goa (Berucci 2003). Places and People Brancaleone is a self-managed centro sociale (Mitchell 1996: 148-154) born in 1990 with the squatting of an abandoned block by a leftist group. Its aim is to create spaces of cultural production and experimentation accessible to everyone. Since 1996 it hosts a permanent electronic dance music party – named Agatha - and though isn’t appropriated anymore (since a rent is payed to the city council) it has maintened a no-proﬁt structure and a very low income fee (5 euro). It hasn’t a privè neither front door selection, ﬁttings are simple and plain, it’s very large and diversiﬁed on the inside, including spaces without furniture and without music where is possible just to talk. Nowadays it hosts three different music parties each week, but the most successful and representative it’s still Agatha, where breakbeat, breakstep, 2-step e nu skool breakz are played [See Figure One – Agatha logo]. Goa, on the contrary, has an high entrance fee (20 15 euro), it was born in 1996 as a rather fashionable and selective dance club, it’s characterized by stylized furniture and by entertainment, programme and staff prepared with the greatest care. It has a privè and 148 Figure One - Agatha Logo range-age of Branca regulars has changed from about 40-25 to 35-22, while the age of Goa regulars has changed from about 40-25 to 30-20). Despite their differences, they both have an aura of being the most innovative in Rome, because of the attention paid to the constant changes in dance music trends. However, their atmosphere and the ways people talk about them are quite different. First of all, it’s interesting to notice that ‘atmosphere’ is exactly the term almost everybody has used to describe the decisive factor in choosing and evaluating the place. For all the people interviewed atmosphere is made ﬁrstly by the people and by the music, the most pleasing atmosphere being the one formed by similar people, inasmuch it allows to live the amusements and the pleasures offered by the club in a relaxed manner. This term –recurrent in clubbers it’s frequented by well-dress youngs usually called ‘pariolini’ (since Parioli is the area of Rome associated with wealthy youngs, dressed with expensive clothes and in a quite formal way). As with Brancaleone, it hosts different parties, autonomously organized and managed, but the one who identiﬁes the most the club, is Ultrabeat (on thursday), where the more experimental side of house and ethnic fusions are played. In the last 2-3 years both Branca (as it’s usually called) and Goa have lost a little of their strong connotation, in coincidence with a change in their audience, either in terms of diversifying and of a lowering in age (the accounts– was obviously referred not to the pleasures of dancing but to the context where they take place. Brancaleone, more than any other clubs, is thought by all the kind of people as a relaxed place. The explanations people give refer to a certain freedom of action, either physical – encouraged by the structure of the place – and expressive, fostered by the apparent absence of binding communicative and behavioural codes. Regulars say they appreciate Branca for many reasons: if someone doesn’t want to dance there is a lot of space where it’s possible just talking, without having music in ears; the place is very informal, there 149 isn’t a privè that creates a distinction and it’s even possible to sit on the ﬂoor, while people don’t have to dress in a particular manner; nobody stare at you and the security staff is friendly too, they cheat with the guys and it’s easy to ‘smoke’ without having problems; moreover, thought there are different kind of people, ‘everybody is always smiling’ (see the Agatha logo). All these elements are part of the ‘hip’ imagery that in Italy, especially in some cities, is almost ever associated to the leftist culture. This means that the ‘alternative type’, identiﬁed through speciﬁc informal attitude and look, is almost ever supposed to be leftist, especially after that Centri Sociali have played a fondamental role in developing alternative expressive cultures. However, after becoming famous, its audience appears today extremely diversiﬁed, formed not only by a recognizable or stereotyped leftist audience. Clubbers distinguish, at least, three groups: leftist youngs, much of them going to Branca since many years; the so-called ‘fakealternatives’, wearing different outﬁts from those they wear in their daily routines; and also, though in minum part, ‘pariolini’ who go there without even putting the appropriate ‘mask’. Although also Goa regulars describe this club as a relaxed and familiar place, everybody agree in deﬁning its atmosphere as reﬁned. Here the feeling of the place, connecting the tribe, takes form in an imagery shaped by the convergence of experimentation and ostentation. Figure Two - Goa Logo Its atmosphere is articulated by the elements already mentioned, plus the audience, which is quite more homogeneus than that of Branca. Basically all the people that go to Goa make a distinction between two groups: 40 % of people there are ‘fashion-followers’, they like to dress and to show themselves; then there is also the crowd that differs a little bit. (Oni – Goa) half of the people are ‘pariolini’, who dress all in the same way as during the day, the others are those who change and mask. (Andrea, who lives in Parioli – Goa) Goa regulars identify their activities and 150 pleasures either as ways of exploring the self –a possibility encouraged and sustained by a privileged economical condition– or as an exhibition of ‘style’, meant as a general attitude. It’s a sort of game that, according to different individuals and their particular biographies, is characterized by different levels of irony or personal investment. Here are a couple of quotations that perfectly summarize many accounts (again the ﬁrst one is from Oni, owner of an hair-dressing and fetishist of ‘style’, always in search of creative stymula for his job; the second one is from Andrea, a university student living in Parioli): I go to Branca by motorbike, not by car, because otherwise they look at me bad, and everybody goes like ‘oh, the fabulous has arrived’ -[mocking and laughing]-, but when I go to Goa i get there by car, because i am fabulous… for me is the right situation at Goa like at Branca too, even if I prefer Goa because, at the end, I am fabulous and I like to dress ﬁne, show myself a little bit, and join to those that enjoy this as I do. (Oni – Goa) Goa is the right place for those who want to exhibit or experiment a mask… there you can give the maximum of fashion or reinvent yourself for a night, you totally change your personality or take to the excess your properties… sometimes I dress up too, I dress cool, but the important fact it’s not to take yourself too seriously […] I enjoy all kinds of clubs, from the most trashy to the most trendy, each one having its own appeal, but what’s important it’s not to go there with a ‘snob’ attitude… when I go to a club where they play old trashy Italian revival I enjoy because there’s a part of me who likes to shout ‘Sarà perchè ti amo’, so why should I suppress that part… probably I’ll wake up the next day thinking ‘what the hell have I done yesterday, I sung ‘il triangolo no’, my god! But at that moment it was a lot of fun. (Andrea – Goa) The investment is different, but in both the cases People who go to Goa go to Branca too, but just that 40% that i like, that has a lifestyle like mine and that is different from the people of Branca […] People of Branca has a lifestyle much more… ‘free’ or ‘easy’, I call them ‘fricchettoni’ [friendly Italian version for ‘freaks’], they all are always smiling ‘more’, while at Goa you ﬁnd people more like me […] Infact when I go to Brancaleone I change my look, I put on tennis shoes, jeans and rough t-shirt, because I want to feel comfortable, because in that situation you get down, you sit on the ﬂoor, as you would never do at Goa, so it’s a completely different situation. Anyway, for me, Branca people is ok, i like them, even thought I’m different, different social backgrounds: for example 151 the attitude orientating the practices of consumption is a sort of experimentation, masquerading, exhibition. Oni is one of those who wear a different mask when they go to Branca, while Andrea distinguish himself from does who ‘take themselves too seriously’. These two attitudes explain why many Goa regulars frequent without any problems also Branca, while hardly happens the contrary. It’s seems like if Branca has maintened many elements of the imagery of the leftist and alternative culture, but, at the same times, these appear to be less ‘powerful’, less able to select people than in the past. Possibly this fact is related to general changes in the italian polical imagery but this hypotesis would deserve further investigation. Anyway, in this context, it’s signiﬁcant to notice that for many of those who only three years ago would never have gone to Branca, this place now seems to work as an option for the games and pleasures of experiencing different subjectivities and communicative patterns. On the other side, Branca regulars, apart from their social backgrounds, usually distinguish themselves from those who dress reﬁned to go to dance clubs, which are automatically thought as superﬁcial persons who only want to exhibit or to pick up someone, not paying attention to music (which is, of course, a prejudice). From such accounts arise the stereotypical representation of self as disinterested in exhibition, as not subjected to fashion, devoted exclusively to music (altough they don’t show a particular or greater competence). And, for all of these reasons, the oldest ‘habituè’ of Branca usually don’t go to Goa. What About the Music ? Besides people, the other crucial element in deﬁning atmosphere is music. Interviewees say they choose people and music, despite how the place looks like; nevertheless most of them don’t have any speciﬁc knowledge on electronic dance genres (they very rarely listen to them at home, neither do they talk about it outside of clubs). People and music are not two independent elements, working separately on the club atmosphere, since –at least in interviewees perceptions and accounts- different kinds of music bring different kinds of people. With regard to this, it’s interesting to notice the way such stereotypes rely upon the articulation of different elements: metaphors through which people make sense of musical experiences, discourses through which different tastes come to be legitimated, representations of people listening and dancing to different genres. Such associations concern mostly the only two genres which enjoy wide recognition: obviously, house and techno. House music is usually described as more easy (to dance) and more simple (in structure), and that’s why it’s easily associated with more sociable audience or -by its disparagersto a more superiﬁcial one; but, at the same time, it’s 152 quite surprising how clubbers use similar metaphors to describe the experiences offered by different kind of music, despite the one they prefer: to be a shared imagery comes to be discoursively elaborated in different ways, depending on musical taste. While the youngs preferring house music legitimited their taste talking about its effectiveness in the more the music it’s hard the more you isolate yourself in dancing: you’re more concentrated, you’re just yourself; on the contrary with house music you are more ‘open’, you smile, look around… the beauty of house is this searching for your friend, this looking at each other. (Luca – Goa) i feel dancing to electronic and techno music as something of my own, very personal. I don’t dance with my friends or with people next to me, that kind of music gives me more the sense of ‘dancing by myself’, more ‘closed’, while if you’re dancing to ‘revival’ you joke with people next to you and with your friends… with the other kind of music i don’t even look to my own friends. (Flaminia – Brancaleone) The more the music is difﬁcult, or rather ‘demanding’ in some ways, the more one is concentrated, retired into him/herself and his/her interaction with the musical ﬂow; on the contrary genres like house and revival are considered as fostering a tendence to be ‘open’, to look around, to ‘play’ with others, encouraging communication while dancing. Again, what appears making people feel ‘united’ –through the allowance of a wider range of communicative activities-, people mad about techno, or breakbeat or jungle, didn’t take into consideration this aspect (‘sociability versus isolation’), rather they celebrated and enhaced the value of music able to displace, to space out (or to ‘outdistance from’) the habitual forms of aesthetics determination of the body. Branca music, being more lively on the downside, less ripetitive, makes me wanna shake more my ass, that is, it gives me a better sense of amazement and astonishment. (Valerio – Branca) I like music that makes you loose the contact with reality, without singing, all electronic, or even a rhythm that displace you, which is hard to follow with your body movements. Sometimes I like trying to move and dance in a different way, possibly I look at what others do… that’s why I like variations in rhythm, even when they take place at a ‘micro level’, because that’s when the sparkle could light, it makes you change what you’re doing, or where you’re going, and 153 therefore also ‘who you are’. (Patrizio - Branca) A form of experimentation of self and body takes place even in the relaxed atmosphere of Branca, but, differently from Goa, the accounts tend to locate it more in the musical experience than in style. By the way, apart form distinctions of genres, most of the interviewed distinguish and value two kinds of music: the one that reach its aim and the one that doesn’t, the one which gets you dancing and the one that doesn’t, the ﬁrst one fostering an experience that – at the end – is similar for everybody and well synthesized by Laura: projection, as well as the musical structure based on circular and stratiﬁed ﬂows (Agostini 1998), which replace discoursive construction developed through the interplay of melody and harmony, foster either the appropriation of music in terms of an ambiental experience and a kinesthetic play. The last relevant result, to be mentioned, it’s that the appreciation for a ‘relaxed’ atmosphere often arise by contrast with something deﬁned as ‘classic disco’, a discoursive topos represented through vagues references to bigger dimension, generalist, located outside of urban centers. Such a description seems to it makes me ﬂow without thinking to something in particular, like to a speciﬁc emotion… it’s just like the pleasure of driving nowhere, or rather you play with the ﬂow, it gets you and you have to respond in certain ways to work things out… I never did kajiak but I have the sense it’s just like what i’m talking about: you are in a river, sometimes the stream changes, it changes direction, it becomes more difﬁcult, and you have to respond to it, until you’re completely satisﬁed or too tired and wanna go outside to take a breath, to drink or to cheat Such accounts seem to sustain the idea that the absence of a ‘center’ that catalyse affective point to a model which in Italy, in the past decade, has progressively loose proﬁts and audiences in favour of smaller and more differentiated urban clubs, discobar and discopub (for the ﬁrst time in 20 years). This ‘classico disco’ is associated with demanding long distance travels, considerable investments of time, money and energies, and less freedom to move from one place to another (either for the price of the ticket and for the difﬁculty to reach other places); on the contrary, urban clubs encourage polycentered movements, reticular aggregations, and greater autonomy in the articulation of ‘night surﬁng’ (thanks to Sarah Louise Baker!). On one side, such a distinction parallels the shift from generalist media consumption to post-generalist media format and practices of consumption; on the other is 154 paired with the polifunctional rearrangement of many dance clubs and with the success of genres -such as lounge, minimal techno and microhouse- that in various declensions can be appropriated either for dancing as well as for the construction of particular ‘ambience’ for other activities. Anyway, before asserting a shift in patterns of dance club consumption, a greater level of speciﬁcation is needed: infact, what seems at stake here, is more a lowering in age of goers attracted by a certain type of club, which in the past attracted mostly people over 25 while now even younger, than new kind of dance practices or dance clubs. Selected Bibliography Agostini, Roberto. “Techno ed esperienza ambientale. Stratiﬁcazione, circolarità e ﬂusso”. Techno-Trance, ed. Salvatore G., Roma, Castelvecchi, 1998: pp. 4568. Bennett, Andy. “Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth, style and musical taste”. Sociology, vol. 33 (3), 1999: pp.599-617. Berucci, Flavia. Goa vs. Branca. Tribù a confronto. (unpublished graduate thesis - Faculty of Sociology, University ‘La Sapienza’ of Rome, 2003) Maffesolì, Michel. La conaissance ordinaire. Précis de sociologie compréhensive. Paris, Librarie des Méridiens, 1985 ---, Le temps des tribus. Le déclin de l’individualisme dans les sociétés de masse. Ital. trans., Roma, Armando, 1988 Mitchell, Tony. Popular Music and local identity. London-New York, Leicester University Press, 1996 Novella De Luca, Maria. Le tribù dell’ecstasy. Roma, Theoria, 1996 155 Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures, Musica, media and subcultural capital. Wesleyan University Press, 1995 Torti, Maria Teresa. Abitare la notte. Attori e processi nei mondi delle discoteche. Milano Costa e Nolan, 1997 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Some Reflexions on Song Theory, Signed Song and Traditional Song Jean N. De Surmont I n this paper I will aim to present results of a research which deals with the word French « chanson » and the speculativa deals with all aspects of song that are not related with performance. On the other hand, cantio practica concerns performance in general. Many song phenomenon might be regarded as part of the cantio practica : festival, live radio performance like in the 1920’s, etc. Studying the epistemology of song phenomenon implies the analysis the relationships between cantio practica and cantio speculative. If I have created the word song phenomena, it is because it allows my reﬂection to cover both aspects of performance and theories regarding of song activity. We can observe many meanings in French of the word chanson (noise, story, title of book of poetry, etc.). This polysemy also exists in English and the word chanson has produced famous expressions such has “It’s always the same story” equivalent of “C’est toujours la même chanson” or “C’est toujours le même refrain”. The eclectism of meanings involves considering only the prototype meaning of song, the one that deals with a vocal performance. The genre song is divided in two main categories : traditional song and signed song . Traditional song generally falls within the ﬁeld of social anthropology. While signed song may falls within the ﬁelds of musicology, sociology or literary studies, according to the point of view chosen by the theoricians. song theory. My observations will be conducted within a metalinguistic and a linguistic corpora. Mycorpora was largely constituted by works published in France in addition to other countries in Europe. The study of European dictionaries has shown me how important has become the French song culture in German dictionaries (in which appears sometimes chansonnier and chanson de geste and in Italian dictionaries in which appears chansonnier as a synomym of cantaautore). This presentation contain some diachronical and theoretical observations. The research appears to be the ﬁrst signiﬁcant research conducted about the vocabulary of song in French. This will ﬁnally lead us to present the theoretical vocabulary that we have created to study song phenomena. The study of song phenonema refers to two aspects of song activity : cantio speculativa and cantio practica. The ﬁrst one refers to all theoretical aspects of song : the publication of an essay, an article on song, a lecture or a paper at the IASPM conference, the jury of a contest, etc. The charts of the Billboard magazine and other magazines as Radio Activité in Québec, are also concerned with cantio speculativa. Cantio 157 Signed song, on the other hand is a song that is created in an editorial context and has a known songwriter or a known composer. This distinction between these two song phenomenon concerns the way of transmission of text and music. Traditional song is a song which is transmitted from generations to generations. In order to study popular music correctly, it is important to distinguish it’s object precisely. Perhaps more the than ever before, the Anglo saxon’s theory was inﬂuencing on the study of song. The syntagm popular music indicates a ﬁeld of music formed in the 70’s whose object of study is the song, pop music, rock, jazz, sound tracks, advertising, etc. The study of signed song generally falls within the ﬁeld of popular music (musicology) in Anglo Saxon epistemology, but within French culture it is not necessarily included in musicology. I have been interested for a few years already in the theoretical problems raised in the study of song. During that time I have seen the problems raised in the diachronical study of song object. I have created the syntagm song object to designate the prototypical meaning of song, which means the sung poetry (see glossary). The diachronical study of the song phenomena makes it possible to distinguish hybrid song objects that can be understood starting from certain features which deﬁne the generic interbreedings. The ﬁrst problem is to determine the nature of the song object. Still should it be known that under the Anglo-Saxon inﬂuence (in particular Richard Middleton (1990)) the song object is consider slightly differently in Quebec than in France. France seems less permeable to the Anglo-Saxon’s inﬂuence. Indeed, in Quebec, the study of the signed song is dominant in faculties of music, sometimes included within the ﬁeld of popular music, as at McGill University or the University of Montreal. I consider the song object within the ﬁeld of the popular music but also within all the ﬁeld considered in cantology. In my doctorate thesis, I have analysed the ambivalence of the polysemic syntagm popular music (De Surmont 2001, 371-398). In the faculty of humanities, it is considered much more as a paraliterary phenomenon. In the faculty of music, the inclusion the song object only within the only ﬁeld of musicology assimilating it to a big set of different aesthetics like jazz, blues as song correspond to an Anglo Saxon point of view and seems not ﬁtting well for periods which song was not popular in the sense it is used I.e. /commercial/. For this reason, Stéphane Hirschi proposed the creation of a “science” named cantology (since he builds the word using the sufﬁx -logy which induces a scientiﬁc practice). This approach gathers the ﬁelds of sociology, musicology and literary studies in the study of the song object. This refers to a vision of the study of the song object by regarding it as a whole without locating this study within the branches of human sciences. 158 Moreover, Hirschi has in fact only opened the way to a multidisciplinary study, so that other researchers can propose theoretical solutions, and can consider cantology by comparing it to a multiplicity of ﬁelds that stuffy the song like a multisemiotic phenomenon, at the same time including the ideal song, its execution and its recording. In order to solve the problems raised by the study of the song object in diachrony, I propose creating a supradisciplinary lexicon. My approach is not that to include the song object within the restricted ﬁeld of the musicology that corresponds to the study of the popular music. The reason for this is that in English and Brazilian (MPB), one understands by popular the “commercial aspects”, the mediatized song (Zumthor 1987) of the history of the vocal practices. The study of the song-object tends to –‘reactivate’ a semantic feature of /popular/ (traditional), by forgetting that signed songs existed which did not have anything related to traditional or commerciale songs. Mark Slobin (2003:72)writes : “In addressing the long and complex interaction of ethnomusicology and popular music studies, the word ‘popular’ needs careful consideration in approaches to the methodologies and results of research. One perspective that might facilitate an understanding of ethnomusiscological inquiry would distinguish the study of the ‘popular’ understood’ as the creation and reception of the most broadly accepted musical forms from the study of the ‘popular’ viewed as a technologically produced and managed commodity, although the two overlap in many respects”. It thus appeared signiﬁcant to me to employ the term vocal practices in order to indicate objects of completely different nature and that one could not always reduce to a song, would be this only because the XIXe romantic century “lived a distinction between prose, poetry and song based primarily on the nature of the inspiration” (Jean-Christmas Laurenti 2000, 35), relegating to the second plan the formal opposition. Thus one could invent poetic prose and “prosaic poetry”. In this context, to employ song as a generic term, is almost an abuse of language. Vocal practices and song phenomenon are not more precise, but make it possible to approach a variety of objects without too many compromises. Variation and interbreedings It is primarily the variability of the forms and the components of the songs object that deﬁne the interbreedings. The variation is observed in the musical or linguistic component of the song object, in the rehandling of this object of origin, and thus in the interbreedings which are woven between song of oral tradition and signed song. By observing the song objects, types of variations were indexed. The treatments (wiring for sound, sound recording, handling), the environment (place where interpretation is carried out) and the play of the differences between sung prose and the lyrics can also effect on the nature of the 159 song objects (cf Huguette Calmel 2000, 7-8). I will not develop these various processing of the song objects because according to the epistemic point of view which I’ve adopted they do not constitute that subcategories of the processes of diffusion which induce variations. The pieces can, according to many variables, take different forms. The study of the variation and the interbreedings leads us to observe the transformations which take place and to take account of the various mediators that interfer in the modiﬁcation of the object, whatever the time and aesthetics . From these observations, I have propose, in an article published in the last issue of the Canadian University Music Review (2003), syntagms to be used as a basis for designation of these phenomena. These theoretical proposals regarding the vocal practices can have a wide application to the corpus of song phenomena. In my introduction, I evoked the interest the need to have a metalanguage in order to meet the needs of the researchers wanting to approach song objects of various times and styles. This requires the recourse to the neology. It is by semiotic and lexicographical research of song culture that I have developed a glossary. The internal logic between of the various traditions of the song seemed to correspond. One of the aspect of song culture that have interested me is the process of transmission and thus of transformation of song-object. For example I have named one of those folklorisation. Text of traditional song is prone to variations as it is known. Even if the signed song does not respond to the same process of transmission than traditional song, it allows the songwriter to includes some elements of traditional song making then his object an hybrid object. Signed song, generally identiﬁable, generally (at the XXe century at least) makes only interpretation or the interpreter varying. An analysis of the song phenomena should consider the processes of song’s diffusion and the interbreedings of aesthetics (between traditional and signed song). That seems all the more signiﬁcant to us as it is on the basis of modiﬁcation of the processes of diffusion that the semantic change of the word popular song was established. The mediatisation of the song object by the radio, the type of rooms where the performance is held and the support of reproduction involves the marketing of the objects, thus making obsolete the ancient way of transmitting the traditional song. This reconﬁguration of practices, including that of traditional song which has entered the commercial ﬁeld, means that employing the syntagm popular song no longer refers to any speciﬁc practices. One will rather ﬁnd it beneﬁcial to be interested in the processes of diffusion by distinguishing folklorisation, oralisation, the transformation, parody, pastiche (more subtil than the parody), the dressing-up of a song text in order to evoke the various song phenomena of “modiﬁcation” or contrary to “ﬁxing” (solidifying) of the song objects. 160 The linguistic and musical transformations are not the subject of a particular characterization. The types of alternatives include melodic, rhythmic, phonetic, enonciative, phonetico-rythmo-melodic aspects. immoral contents. The text which takes place instead of previous words is called the contrefactum in this context. The contrafacture consists, says Zumthor, in adapting a new text to the melody and rhythmic shape of another text (2000:131). Then, the substitution which consists in replacing a segment of the version of the oral tradition and imposing another version by mechanical or printed reproduction. One also employs in the world of the media the term adaptation, rather vague concepts, which return to the fact that an artist takes again a song of another artist in its entirety (cover version ), by often using another aesthetics to shape the musical line. This sould not be confused with an arrangement which does not imply an unfolding of object. The degree of intervention of the interpreter on vocal poetry “source” can also vary. The use of rehandling (remaniement) in Romanists circle is relatively widespread to indicate the modiﬁcations which the form of the chanson de geste undergoes. Laforte (1981, 2, 43) proposes also transplantation (“greffe”), referring to the changes of laisse which a song undergoes when two songs are welded to form only one. Let us note also the use of contaminator to mark the conversion, quoted by Hans-Erich Keller (1989, 308), of a chanson de geste in weaving song of the version of Oxford of the Song of Roland. François Suard (1993, 107) afﬁrms in this respect that the canonical form of the poem (the sequence of versiﬁed laisses) remains, but the lyric We distinguish between the process of oralisation and folklorisation in order to clarify the phenomena common to the oral tradition and the printed tradition. Thus the folklorized song is a signed song that quotes thematic features of the oral tradition (sometimes as a pastiche), whereas the oralized song indicates only the results of a process of transmission similar to that of the oral tradition. It means that after so many different interpretation or because the type of execution (a song such as “Happy birthday” would be a typical example), the song loose it’s reference to the normally known composer and songwriter. As for the multiple possibilities of intervention on a vocal piece, one seeks to give an account only of the componential transformations of the songs. We will speak in all the cases about source melody and source text (original song object) and substrate melody and substrate text (transformed song object). This points out the tropes in the medieval liturgy and the “fragments” in the operas of XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries. As for traditional song, two forms of intervention on the text are distinguished. First of all, the sweetening (“edulcoration”), which consists in modifying a “fragment” of the original text in order to attenuate the 161 elements grew blurred with the proﬁt of dominant narrative By taking account of the bodies involved in the invention of the song object (singer-songwriter, lyricist, arranger, copyst, composer, performer) and on the other hand by making the separation of the components (lyrics and music) of the song object we could develop a theory of song culture and song phenomena. The industry of the song of consumption shows to us that the fame of the lyricist and performers exists often to the detriment of that of the songwriter, which does not testify to the same phenomenon, but rather of the prevalence of the text on the music in the process of setting in spectacle of the song (Chion 1982, 272).Whether or not the public singer or street singers is or is not the author of the song does not count, rather the function that this song can exert in a certain social context, and its model of transmission in its center is important (Dôle 1995, 36). The successive wave of interpreters thus comes to conﬁrm the process of oralisation from the text or the music and prove that a signed song or a traditional song can respond to the same process of textual and musical tranformations. Thus, a melody line of a signed song is modiﬁed by the people, insofar as it answers the same criteria of circulation of the song object as the song of oral tradition. One could simply name it oralized melody. Those phenomenon has to be considered as processed of desappropiration of the song’s identity. Conclusion The study of interbreedings between traditional song and signed song has shown reciprocal inﬂuences between the two types of song objects. Folklorisation enriches a signed song by borrowing from another source song and on the other hand it’s possible to observe some effects of the printed tradition on signed song. Gerard le Vot (1998, 113) proposes registry interference (‘interference registrale’) to designate these phenomena. In a longer text already mentioned I’ve analysed these interbreedings between signed song and traditional song. The study of those phenomenon seems more and more important as mediatised song become more open to world music aesthetics and vocal practices closer to oral tradition also beneﬁt from mediatised song. In an other study it would also be interesting to approach the phenomenon of intergenerical quotations where song objects borrows for example elements from dramas or novels and to apply the typology on interbreedings to an internal analysis of musical works. 162 recording closely identiﬁed with the style of a particular Endnotes 1. At the beginning, I was using the syntagm literary song. The term literary, if it functions well to name the literarity of both musical and textual components of the song object composer and poet or/and songwriter), it functions on the other hand badly to indicate only the melody when it is only it which is anonymous or transformed. In fact, the problem, lies at the beginning in the use of literary in order to indicate the fact that one knows the names of the authors as much of authors of which I form part one makes since a score of years. Moreover, the term literary is connoted and gives the impression of a literary value which is not necessarily the case. For this reason, it appeared more relevant to me to employ the syntagm signed song. performer rather than from notated sheet music.” David Brackett, 2003,208. Glossary Folklorisation: Process which consists of the penetration of a topic normally conveyed orally by the oral tradition in another song-object (normally a signed song) in a voluntary way or not. Mediators: Agents (publisher, producer, arranger, sound engineer and distributor) acting and investing themselves signiﬁcantly in the processes of composition, production, distribution and putting into circulation of the song phenomenon. Oralisation: Song Phenomenon which by successive 2. Sometimes the arranger for instance can become as much important as the composer. waves of interpreters or temporary or permanent deterioration by the public of the original text or the original melody of the signed song, ceases being 3. Interpreations of previouly written material are frequently described as ‘cover versions’ (Exceptions to this are songs written in a no-Tin Pan Alley style, such as Lennons’ and McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’, or rock interpretations of standards, such as Janis Joplin’s ‘Summertime’ (with Big Brother and the Holding Company).) A cover version differs from an interpretation of a Tin Pan alley tune due to its derivation from a Signed song: Song-object whose identity of the author and the music composer are known and/or identiﬁable. In the case of the singer-songwriter a same an unique person participates to all the steps of the creation identiﬁed to its original lyricist and/or and reaches anonymity, thus behaving the same manner as a song of oral tradition. 163 of song-object. The song was ﬁrst published and generally circulated by printing since its creation. The attribution of an author is not inevitably a criterion of the literary dimension of the transmission but it is often the condition. Sweetening: Process which consists in removing a “fragment” of the text of origin in order to attenuate the immoral contents. Textual substitution: Process which consists in replacing a segment of the version of the oral tradition and to Song of oral tradition or traditional song: Song object whose identity of the author and the composer are unknown and who generally circulated by the oral transmission, from where the multitudes poured songs. impose of it another version by the process of solidifying due to the mechanical or printed reproduction. Vocal poetry: Any type of poetic text, in free or measured versiﬁcation, calling upon a vocal performance. It names at the same time the poetry of oral tradition and signed Song object: Object prototypically recognized as a song-object, song poetry, vocalized. Constitute a subset of the song phenomena. It is composed of the melody and of the text. Thus the meaning of the song as only poetic forms does not constitute a song object song but a poem. poetry, contrary to the concept of oral poetry proposed by Zumthor which could not gather at the same time the whole of the printed practices and those of oral tradition. It seems that Zumthor uses the adjective oral under the inﬂuence of the oral Anglo-Saxon/relating to the mouth/ rather meaning aural/pertaining to, but received by, the ear/([Catherine Schwarz, ed. ], 1993: s.v. oral and Song Phenomenon: Social and historiographic phenomenon, or considered as such, relating to the song object. The song phenomenon means the whole of the practices, demonstrations or traditions, and supports diffusing and mediatisating the song object, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the whole of research and publications on what is heard like a song or which inﬂuences its statute in the ﬁelds cultural, economic and symbolic system of the entour. aural). Indeed, it is rather the auditive dimension which interests in fact Zumthor because the use of the epithet oral in oral poetry compares any vocal performance to the oral tradition, i.e. with the repertory transmitted anonymously trough generations. We thus prefer the generic use of vocal poetry for the whole corpus which is the subject of a vocal interpretation. Lastly, I understand by vocal poetry the corpus of songs objects that include linguistic vocality (nearer to the poetry known as put in 164 music where the musical quality of the voice is thin) or to musical vocality (where poetry is sung) which makes it possible to establish the distinction between the word and the song, between spoken voice and sung voice (See Catherine Kintzler, 2000). De Surmont, Jean-Nicolas. Contribution sémasiologique et néologique à l’étude des phénomènes chansonniers franco-français et québécois, unité et diversité : Étude théorique et historique. Doctorat thesis. Nanterre : Paris-X University, 2001. Vocal practices: Together song object, sung spoken or said works whose musical line is always present. The vocal practices are vast and can indicate the Lied as well, as the polyphonic songs, the airs of operetta, , the vocal plays of Inuit, etc. Dôle, Gérard. Histoire musicale des Acadiens de la Nouvelle-France à la Louisianne, 1604-1804. Paris : L’Harmattan, 1995. Keller, Hans-Erich. Autour de Roland : Recherches sur la chanson de geste. Paris; Genève : ChampionSlatkine, 1989. Continuum Kintzler, Catherine. “Voix parlée et voix chantée dans l’Essai sur l’origine des langues de J. J. Rousseau : une décision stratégique “. Parler, dire, chanter : trois actes pour un même projet. Eds. Georgie Durosoir. Paris : Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne. Selected Bibliography Brackett, David. “Interpretation”. Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, vol. II Performance and Production. Eds. John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke, (eds.), London and others, Continuum, 2003, 207-210. Calmel, Huguette. 2000. “ Préface”. Parler, dire, chanter : trois actes pour un même projet Eds. Durosoir Georgie. Paris : Presses de l’Université de ParisSorbonne. 4-5. Chion, Michel. “Chanson populaire “. Dictionnaire de la musique des origines à nos jours. Eds Marc Vignal. Paris : Librairie Larousse,1982, 271-276. Republished under the title Dictionnaire de la musique. Coll « In Extenso ». Paris : Larousse, 1998. 2000. 9-15. Laforte, Conrad. Survivances médiévales dans la chanson folklorique. Poétique de la chanson en laisse. Sainte-Foy : Presses de l’Université Laval, 1981. Laurenti, Jean-Noël. La notion d’écart à travers la déclamation et le chant français des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Parler, dire, chanter : trois actes pour un même 165 projet. Eds. Georgie Durosoir Georgie. Paris : Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne. 2000. 35-48. Middleton, Richard. Studying popular music. Milton Keynes : Open University Press, 1990. Schwarz, Catherine, Eds. The Chambers Dictionary. Edimburgh : Chamber Harrap Publishers Ltd., 1993. Slobin, Mark. “Ethnomusicology”. Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, vol. 1Media, industry and Society. Eds. John Shepherd et al. London and others : Continuum, 2003. 72-74. Suard, François. “Chanson de geste”; “Chanson de Roland”. Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Moyen-Âge. Eds. André Vauchiez and Catherine Vincent. Vol. 1, Cambridge : James Clark; Paris : Éditions du Cerf; Rome : Città Nuova, 1997. Zumthor, Paul. “ Chansons “médiatisées””. Études françaises, nos 22-23 (winter 1987) : 13-19. ——— . Essai de poétique médiévale. Paris : Seuil, 2000. Or. Ed. 1972. IASPM03 - MONTREAL When No Sense Makes Sense. Voice, Words and Stars in Italian Pop: Elio e le Storie Tese occurrence Angelo Di Mambro words, performance and performer (pronounce, vocal timbre). But often in Italy these elements slip out from a serene evaluation because of an ideology that gives importance to word and message despite sound, music and musicians. The verbal content itself is considered more than the pathetic working out that singing builds up with other song’s elements. This values hierarchy pushes on to ﬁx an homology between poetry and song words, and to hypostatize the singer songwriter as a singing poet. Music, particularly, is neglected, as it was a useless supplement. A mental disposition that reveals Italy musical education. The Country where everybody sings, just someone can sing and almost no Italian modern song develops by two streams of tradition: on one side folk tunes and storytelling; on the other a reduction of the most famous melodrama’s airs for upper classes entertainment, named “romanza”. Thanks to Record and Radio media, folk song and romanza mixed up and stirred, meeting foreign models and ﬁnally making that accumulation of sounds, voices, emotions and meanings which is Italian song as we know it. Yep, the Meaning. Where does meaning - or sense - lie in a song? The answer is simple in the abstract only: in the working out of music (melody, harmony, timbre, sound), one can play an instrument… not even the stereotyped mandolin! The origins and history of this misunderstanding and its successful exceptions, for instance Italian Swing in the Thirties, should be matter of discussion. But we say: if in Pop music rituals Voice used to be the seal of the deal between Star and Audience, in Italy words’ contents - love or politics, the two main subjects of Italian song -, ampliﬁed this deal through the cathartic nature of the Message, mattering a lot in the common sense deﬁnition of “clever” song. At the end of the concert the Star goes on thanking and Italians sing I talians sing. We just listened to a singer songwriter, Toto Cutugno, that still in 1983 exploited this overwhelming and internationally acknowledged stigma in one of his hits. Cutugno almost sings: Let me sing / A guitar in my hands / Let me sing / I am an Italian. Such as the fact of singing in itself identiﬁed him as an Italian, with the guitar taking the place of the stereotyped mandolin… But What do Italians really sing? 167 introducing the band. In Italian Pop frameworks this is the best left to musicians… When recorded music doesn’t replace them! No attention for conductors, arrangement’s authors, sound engineers and all the people working in that collective piece that is a record. Elio e le Storie Tese and La Terra dei cachi in which tunes had no written words, sung in a odd jam session made through verbal matter. They called it “Jazz on lyrics”. A proposal in which words’ nonsense power comes out by musical performance, one of the strictest you can listen to in Italian Pop. The group from Milan uses a method that explicitly recalls the late Seventies Frank Zappa production (Joe’s Garage, Sheik Yer Bouti, You are what you is): popular music is a huge pile of wastes to select, differentiate, mix up and re-utilize to make a repertory which openly grabs other musics, giving them new use value. Doing so, they can propose a very original material and represent a “practical criticism” of habits in making popular music, not only in Italy. Elio e le Storie Tese use lyrics performing rather than narrating: doing so, they unveil love song stereotypes, avoid the political ones, write words about hardly accepted topics, up to openly singing in a childish style of taboo subjects, such as abortion or menstruations. Their lyrics provide a wide range of lexical material: jargons, slang, proverbs, jokes, acronyms, fake nursery rhymes, foolish sound gags, puns that hide the worst obscenities you can imagine, many kinds of journalistic and media language, from anatomy to engineering, from pornography to politics. Further, they made a song – the title is First Me, Second Me - on the mistakes of an Italian translating English acknowledging vocabulary but forgetting grammar and syntax. Funny is the fact As a further demonstration of this bad listening habit, we have an Italian pop combo that comes out from intolerance to priority given to so called “lyrics” and star-singers in making popular music. Elio e le Storie Tese – that name itself in bastard English “Elio and the Troubled Stories” – come to limelight as the last version of Italian comic and humour song tradition, present in all 20th century but always considered a minor stream, particularly – I guess - by those seeking poetry in songs. Elio e le Storie Tese – so admits the band leader Elio - deliberately chose to give great attention to sound, harmony, melody and timbre, and to offer a deﬁnitely absurd verbal content. As time passed by, Elio e le Storie Tese gave more and more formal attention to rhymes, to amplify the comic effect. But at the start up the words of their songs were hardly comprehensible, totally weird. Up till now sometimes they are simple outlines, traces of a plot that has to be developed through improvisation. In the Nineties they recorded an entire album, Esco dal mio corpo ed ho molta paura, 168 that the American singer songwriter James Taylor has been called to sing half of this tune in this macaronic English. voice of a Chipmunk, the cartoon band that recorded a lot for kids’ fun some years ago! Let’s analyse another example of this practical criticism. In 1996 Elio e le Storie Tese, though relegated in the minor No doubt: the words of this song don’t make sense in Italian, nor in English! Verbal matter in Elio & Co. lyrics is so much heterogeneous that they began to invent words: uollano, zxxyxx, meiùsi, vaulata, krapac… The Milanese band simply adores to sing gratuitous invented words, recalling the kids playing and charismatic faculties of speaking in unheard languages. In few cases only, obscure rhymes come out as a rhythmic and metrical need, like it happens in Afroamerican vocal improvisation. In Elio e le Storie Tese, they are an outrage to the presumed central position of Words in song and to the singer-celebrity authority. An overturning of ideology that idolizes the Pop Star through Body, Voice, clearness of Words and depth of Message, meanwhile musicians remain on the background. Here, on the opposite, the front man Elio sings absurdities, meanwhile his band’s fellows are the only concrete foothold to reasonableness. Deforming voice by effects, Elio goes further attacking the pair Voice-Authenticity, according to which Voice has to be “natural” and as much as possible recognizable, such the star’s sign on the pact with his fans. stream of humour song, got the 2nd place at Sanremo Italian Song Festival, achieving best charts positions and selling more than one hundred thousand records. Before starting the analysis I have to say something about the Sanremo Festival, from 1951 a kind of compendium of Italian song mainstream. Such as every Media Event, Sanremo has got its unwritten rules, that push on till inﬂuencing the structure of tunes in the competition. As Franco Fabbri wrote, the ﬁrst worry of singers taking part to the Event is to get audience approval at the ﬁrst listening. Therefore, Sanremo song usually begins submissively and goes on getting triumphal more and more, to a ﬁnal one tone up key refrain. At the Festival most of the tunes you can listen to are based upon a structure Strofa – Ritornello (Verse-Chorus, where chorus means refrain), as the model rooted in Italy. Concerning words topics, the major stream at Sanremo is love song, then patriotic, in the last 25 years there were attempts to sing of politics, very few cases. Finally, comic song which, such as in Italian song history, is not refused but kept in a friendly segregation. Few words on performance: the front man Elio seems Refrain by refrain, vocal style of “bad” rock becomes the to be on stage by incident, he doesn’t believe any word 169 he’s saying, he is anti authentic, is waiting for Godot on the Road to Nowhere. La terra dei cachi score mixes up all cliches and commonplaces of Italian and Sanremo song, the words are a cruel – a là Artaud – catalogue of Italian people’s bad habits made through recalling some horrifying crime news. La terra dei cachi does not follow a structure Verse-Chorus, because it exploits the Verse, according to theatrical song tradition, as an introduction. In this case it is a very long introduction that begins submissively, as a Sanremo cliché, lying on violins, then goes on with other instruments in a triple time, rooted in Italian folk dances and festivals. It’s a sort of sound miniature history of streams that made modern Italian song: the heavenly violins of romanza, the profane times of folk dances, as we said at the beginning. In words too there is a reference to three tunes exemplifying three streams of 20th century Italian song: the ﬁrst (Papaveri e Papi) inheritance of “romanza”, the second (La donna Cannolo) alludes to “cantautori”, the third (Una lacrima sul Visto) to the Sixties tune, that would have imposed itself as a new model. Verse grows more and more to create a great expectation and collapses in a triumphal tone introducing the Hook “Italia sì – Italia no”. But nothing really happens, it’s a betrayed expectation with ironic reference to patriotism. At least, we can say that La Terra dei Cachi as a whole has been thought of as a system of promised and betrayed expectations. Chorus goes on repeating the Hook, the arrangement gives a quiet tone based upon four trite chords, violins, ﬂutes and a whistle: a paradoxical representation of the undying Italian fatalism. As a matter of fact, lyrics develops by contrast: childish tone, cruel contents. Rhymes are a strict catalogue of media language samples we use daily. Elio e le Storie Tese don’t play in the verbal content ground, they detach banal linguistic formulas from their context, accumulating commonplaces to undress them, mocking of their content meanness, exalting their musicality, their aggregation power. There are invented words too, this time with a rhythmic function: the orchestra chorus – consisting of excellent musicians – sings them and takes signiﬁcant part on the childish comics derived onomatopoeias sob, prot. Elio e le Storie Tese make chorus masters sing in a comics language! Or make them sing “da solo” (that means “alone”) as a reply to Elio, setting an open contrast between the meaning of the word and the fact that in that case Elio doesn’t sing alone. At the end another reference to Italian song history: “Ué“, that recalls well known Neapolitan traditional tunes and dancing. The Coda is far from Sanremo clichés, not one tone up key on the ﬁnal Chorus… No Chorus at all! Just another betrayed expectation with a gratuitous Dixieland Jazz. When asked to perform their song in 1 minute excerpt, as regulation, all singers at the festival sang the refrain, 170 the holy and untouchable element of Sanremo song. Conclusions. Let me sing… more dimensions, grounds and codes. That’s the point. Hence comes by the misunderstanding of the singer songwriter that is considered a poet writing songs rather than a musician. If we think a work, of art or ingenuity is the same, like something to meditate on, something to put in a museum, we can admire song’s rhymes in the shape that modernity imposed to poetry only: the written and silent text. At the opposite, multimedia features of song – its oral features – make it be interpreted more effectively thinking of it as a place to live and to act in rather than a work to be seen with speculation detachment. So, when we speak of song If minding the centrality of verbal meaning, we’d say “Silly Song”. At the opposite, if we consider all elements that concur to song meaning, we should admit that here is a piece built up with above the average knowledge and intelligence. In La Terra dei Cachi words do not mean anything by themselves, they go on extreme NO sense, yet the song makes a lot of sense! It’s a pragmatic sense. This kind of tune has to be exploited, not contemplated. I tell you what I mean: 1. La terra dei Cachi, the only song at the Festival exploiting the entire orchestra on purpose, makes questions: how strong is the listening attitude that exalt verbal contents in song? Elio seemed to sing rubbish, that in a week everyone was singing. How many of them got the joke? meaning we have to mind another way to intend not songs, but meaning and sense: nonsense makes sense not in vertical line, toward depth, but in horizontal line, in the sense of awareness. Sense has to be intended as consciousness, anti-ideological praxis. It’s a matter of scholar’s attitude: studying songs’ meaning seeking Truth and Beauty (and poetry in songwriting), or being 2. It is an oral essay, a practical demonstration about different streams of Italian song, and about being creative in a narrow, even if unwritten, range of rules. La terra dei cachi has a powerful educational value. 3. It can be seen as an anti – ideology practice: though tearing down the verbal content throne in the song, it makes sense openly articulating meaning in ready to ﬁnd in them a way of taking conscience and practicing awareness. If we don’t side on the second horn of dilemma, how could we pretend to go through… even in commonplaces like this? 171 Selected Bibliography Bateson Gregory, Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Balentine Books, 1973 Di Mambro Angelo, L’importanza di chiamarsi Elio - Storia e Gloria del più importante gruppo Italiano. Roma: Castelvecchi 2004 Fabbri Franco, Il suono in cui viviamo. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1996 Fabbri Franco, L’ascolto tabù. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2005 Prato Paolo, They all laughed: irony and parody in popular music. Montreal: 3rd IASPM International Conference, 1985 Salvatore Gianfranco, Mogol-Battisti - L’alchimia del verso cantato. Roma: Castelvecchi, 1998 Sibilla Gianni, I linguaggi della musica Pop. Milano: Bompiani, 2003 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Magic moments: the textuality of musical memory in contemporary Hollywood cinema Dr Philip Drake I n this paper I want to examine how pop music in ﬁlm performs a sense of ‘past-ness’, and how this past- David Lowenthal, for instance, suggests that the main function of memory is adapt the past so as to enrich and manipulate the present (). However so far very little work on memory has been concerned with music, although Lowenthal points out that music is often a means of activating memory. At the same time writing on music has until recently tended to adopt a relatively under-theorised concept of memory. In examining how the past is re-narrated through ﬁlm (and television) far more attention is paid to visual codes of signiﬁcation than musical codes, despite claims by Peter Kivy suggesting that music ﬁlls an ‘expressive gap’, adding a unique emotional resonance to visual codes (). In what follows I want to examine the re-framing of the present by musical memory. In particular I shall use ness functions as an aesthetic and commercial strategy in contemporary Hollywood cinema. More speciﬁcally, what function does ‘musical memory’ perform in narrative ﬁlm? My initial interest in musical memory came when I was struck by a remark made by Fredric Jameson writing on the ‘nostalgia ﬁlm’. In a throwaway comment he suggests that the nostalgia ﬁlm is ‘mortgaged to music’ (). Although he doesn’t develop this idea, in this paper I try to think about how this might take place. How does ﬁlm music function in Hollywood cinema’s mobilisation and patterning of memory? Memory and music the example of Jackie Brown (US, 1997) in order to examine how musical memory is an important aesthetic There has recently been a lot of interest in questions of memory and memory work. Starting from the assumption that our access to the past is only through memorialised knowledge. Recent theorists in both history and memory studies have begun to consider processes of remembering, re-remembering and forgetting in ﬁlm(). Memory approaches to history largely argue that history is accessible only through memory work in the present. and commercial function of the compilation soundtrack (note: in a longer version published in Paul Grainge (ed.) Memory and Popular Film, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003, I also look at the ﬁlm Sleepless in Seattle). What initially attracted me to Jackie Brown is that whilst it is set in 1995, it feels like a Seventies ﬁlm. It is what 173 we might call a ‘retro’ ﬁlm, self-consciously evoking a style of the past, a Seventies ‘structure of feeling’. I want to suggest that this sense of the past and present in ﬂux demonstrates the performative potential of the pop soundtrack in ﬁlm. By ‘performative’, I refer to the relationship between audiences, text and historical contexts in the framing of meaning, rather than to some formal property of the text (as in the concept as used in performance studies). So how is this done? First, I brieﬂy want to consider the function of the pop score in narrative ﬁlm. Jeff Smith, in his well-known book, The Sounds of Commerce suggests that unlike the classical score, the pop score operates as a kind of ‘juke-box narrative’ – that is with individual songs that accompany each scene. He suggests that whilst the pop song can often be used to reinforce or comment upon a character, or their emotions in a ﬁlm narrative, the song always retains an autonomous identity and resists full narrative integration. He points out that recognition of songs by what he calls ‘informed viewers’ will then inﬂuence interpretation of narrative events. There are two ways these insights have most commonly been applied. The ﬁrst is the reading of lyrics to reinforce, contradict or ironically comment on the visual action, thereby assuming a far greater importance than they often have outside of the ﬁlm narrative. The second is the existence of so-called ‘mood music’, such as the concept of ‘blue notes’ – music that makes us feel particular emotions. This is especially evident in discussions of the leitmotif. There are some problems with both of these approaches. First, reading lyrics as a form of commentary on ﬁlm narrative often ignores the performativity of the voice itself. In Jackie Brown it is often the musical qualities of the voice (and the emotion it may arouse in audiences) rather than ‘what’ is being sung that interrelates with narrative meanings. The thrill of hearing Bobby Womack’s voice, or the falsetto vocal sound of Brothers Johnson has a musical effect - and an emotional affect - that is to do with how it is expressed. This is particularly so in soul music, which fetishises the sound of the voice. Knowing lyrics as sounds is therefore quite different to knowing them as words. On the other hand, the problem with deﬁning ‘mood music’, is that it is both culturally speciﬁc, and generic. ‘Blue notes’ rely on an inferential schema that is cultural and learnt rather than natural, yet nonetheless have emotional resonance. Studies of emotion and music date as far back as 1956 - Leonard Meyers classic study ‘Emotion and Meaning in Music’ - and have been continued by writers such as Alf Gabrielsson and John Sloboda. These are divided in understanding the ‘emotional work’ performed by music. They can be divided into arguments over whether : 174 1. emotion is induced by music or whether audiences’ appropriate music to generate emotional response (eg fear in a suspense score?) awake.’ and ‘ﬁlm music lowers the thresholds of belief….it is a catalyst in the suspension of judgment.’() Her analysis here is of the classical score, and, as others have noted, there are some problems with 2. emotion is biologically or culturally determined? 3. music ‘represents’ emotions at the same time as it creates emotions and whether it has an: applying this approach to the pop music soundtrack, where the relationship between sound and image is more layered and socially condensed. However my a. iconic relationship – formal link between music and emotional event interest is, how does the emotional memory of the soundtrack ﬁgure in this analysis? b. associative relationship – arbitrary link between music and emotion () In the rest of this paper I want to consider the possibility of pop music playing an active role in the construction of narrative. I will then go on to assess These debates point to the difﬁculty of trying to isolate the meaning of the music from its various framing contexts – not only of ﬁlm narrative, but intertextual, memorial and social. how the associational value of pop songs bring a means of periodising (or memorialising) the present’s relationship to the past. In order to do this I want to make reference to Erving Goffman’s concept of keying. Developed in sociology In contrast to Jeff Smith, Claudia Gorbman’s well-known argument is that ﬁlm music interpellates the spectator as subject. The music here reinforces the primacy of vision by subordinating music to the image. For example she comments that: rather than musicology, I think that his analysis is suggestive in understanding how the visual framing of ﬁlm narrative is transformed by the performative function of music. Goffman argues that keying is a process of transcription whereby an activity already meaningful ‘ﬁlm music renders the individual an untroublesome viewing subject: less critical, less in one interpretative frame or schema is transposed into another. The crucial point about this is that 175 audiences understand and acknowledge this change, and re-orientate their interpretation accordingly. The autonomy of the pop song can therefore be seen as a way of re-keying events onscreen for an audience, who make sense of this by understanding the conventions invoked. The ‘juke-box’ score, with the autonomous existence of pop songs, therefore cannot be read as a series of ahistorical leitmotifs – recurring musical phrases associated with a particular theme or a character – in the way that classical scores are often read. Pop songs bring with them a set of competing histories – or more accurately, competing memories - whether of a particular star, or a particular song, or a particular context. So my point is that whilst particular hooks, motifs, or even genres of music may be used to comment upon a particular character, songs in ﬁlm always exceed this use, bringing with them the memory of a performance with its own subject and object, sense of time and structure. This means that where songs do re-occur in narrative ﬁlm it is signalled as very signiﬁcant. In Jackie Brown the song ‘Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time’ by The Delfonics clearly takes on a symbolic function in establishing the relationships between characters and their nostalgia for the past. When Jackie plays the song to Max Cherry it is supposed to indicate her investment in the past – and in vinyl. His purchase of a Delfonics tape endows the song with a speciﬁc narrative function, conveying a sense of emotional connectedness between characters never made explicit in their conversation. Here the music is used internally and self-consciously – the characters comment upon the music, and it passes between them symbolically. This is an unusually self-conscious use of diegetic music as a narrative device. Jackie Brown often foregrounds the source of diegetic music to emphasis its importance – it is important that characters are seen to choose their music. For instance we see Ordell turn on his stereo, and Jackie choose her Delfonics record. The reason, however, that we can interpret the ﬁlm in this way depends on the coding of popular music in culture – we already come to the ﬁlm understanding how musical tastes can express unspoken emotion or cultural allegiance. I want now to examine a less self-conscious use of music in the ﬁlm: the opening song which operates as a kind of theme music to the ﬁlm by book-ending it. This song has no apparent diegetic source, starting right at the opening of the ﬁlm. The scene introduces us to Jackie, a ﬂight attendant, arriving at work. What is interesting about the scene is the motivating power of the music in relation to the visual narrative, and its establishment of a ‘retro’ aesthetic in the ﬁlm. 176 Including the credits, the scene lasts exactly the same length as Bobby Womack’s soul classic, Across 110th Street (itself the title song for a 1972 ﬁlm). The rhythm is tied to the structure of the song – not primarily through rhythmic editing, but through the timing of the mise-enscene and Pam Grier’s performance. In the opening shot, Jackie stands completely immobile on a moving walkway at the right of the frame. Instead the mise-en-scene seems to move in time to the music. The credits and movement of the ﬁlm title are all timed to appear in pace with the structure of the song. This nostalgically reframes the ﬁlm by selectively drawing upon Seventies iconography – the star Pam Grier, Bobby Womack’s song, the Retro font used for the titles, and the colours of the mosaic tiles behind her. into a run. Instead of appearing to lose time with the song, her change in pace is transposed through the bustle of the chorus, the rise of the singer’s voice, to the half-beats or secondary rhythm. Running, she seems to make two strides for every one previously, reconnecting her movement to the song structure. Finally arriving at the check-in desk, her exact timing is shown when she brushes back her hair in time to a ﬁnal guitar break. So what does this tell us about pop music in film and its relationship to film narrative? Firstly, that songs – rather than lyrics – can comment on the narrative, so that when Jackie shifts pace it changes our reading of her emotional state, and our reaction as an audience to her. Secondly, that songs are performative: establishing a sense of time passing Perceptual time, and the relationship between past and present are here substantially constructed through the use of music. By placing Jackie static within the frame, we can see the movement of the walkway as in time with the song. As she walks through the airport, the low camera angle emphasises the timing of her gait with the primary rhythm of the song – as if her movement is motivated by the music. (This is emphasised when she begins to swing her arm.) The apparent breakdown of this synchronicity comes when her pace begins to exceed the main beat, and – in time with the transition to the chorus – she breaks both cinematically (she seems increasingly ﬂustered) and nostalgically (the opening scene positions the ﬁlm’s connection to Seventies retro style). Examining this relationship, Simon Frith has discerned three sets of codes: Firstly, emotional codes that help to express the feelings of characters or how we should respond to them, but in ways more ‘knowing’ than as a leitmotif in a classical score. Secondly, cultural codes: establishing a sense of 177 historical period, bringing in issues of musical genre and rhythm (and here their association with race). is not concerned with representing history but with evoking the past through the deployment of selective stylistic iconography, such as period pop music.(). Thirdly, dramatic codes –– establishing the relationship between perceived time and ﬁlmic time and the distance between visual and sonic events. What I want to note here is the historical speciﬁcity of nostalgia, and the memorialised knowledge of the past that it produces. Whilst nostalgia is not in any way new to the 1990s, nostalgia for the 1970s (as seen in Jackie I would add a fourth set – performative codes: the re-keying of the above categories according to the framing established by the intertextual interplay between ﬁlm and soundtrack. This brings in the question of emotional memory – that is, the way pop songs are able to embody memorial knowledge, such as a sense of nostalgia. Brown) was unthinkable for many critics writing in the 1980s. For instance James Monaco, writing in 1984, comments: it will be impossible, twenty years hence, to revive the seventies; for they have no style of their own. (). Finally, then, I want to brieﬂy examine nostalgia as a particular emotion (and a term much more commonly employed than memory). My use here obviously has something in common with Fredric Jameson’s formulation of the ‘nostalgia ﬁlm’(). His wellknown argument is that the current historical period is experiencing a crisis in deﬁning its sense of the present and therefore its relation to the historical past – what he calls a ‘waning of historicity’. Instead Jameson famously argues that nostalgia substitutes the memory of history with a memory of the idea of history. Hence the nostalgia ﬁlm for Jameson is a form of regulating and commodifying the past. It What both these comments show is how much our sense of the past is constructed by its memorialisation and re-memorialisation in the present, And in 1980 Christopher Booker suggests that the 1970s were: Hardly a time which in years to come is likely to inspire us with an overpowering sense of nostalgia…we may, in short, remember the Seventies primarily as a long, dispiriting interlude. 178 drawing upon a selective and revised iconography of ‘past-ness’. Conclusions the present. In his article examining nostalgia, Stuart Tannock points out that it is a way of ‘periodising emotion’ (). I think that much the same can be said for the pop soundtrack. I have suggested that ‘musical memory’ is based on a (often nostalgic) reconﬁguration of the memorialised past. This memory may have nothing to do with any actual relationship to that past, but rather how a sense of past-ness is constructed by memory in the present. I have also suggested that memory and emotion are linked, and that the past is often evoked as an emotion – such as nostalgia. The soundtrack, according to work by Sloboda and others, is ideally suited to carry out this emotional work. I’ve suggested that in Jackie Brown that this past-ness is re-keyed by the ‘musical memory’ of a Seventiesness codiﬁed by black soul and funk music. This might function through what Alison Landsberg has called ‘prosthetic memory’ – memories remembered not from personal experience, but from the fusion of public memorialised knowledge with individual memory. Through ‘prosthetic memory’ we can be nostalgic about an experience we’ve never had, or a historical period that we’ve never lived through. Musical memory, then, is a particular a way of communicating emotion. It is one of the ways pop music in ﬁlm brings with it a sense of history, not of the past but how it can be continually reactivated in IASPM03 - MONTREAL Scenes Dimensions of Karaoke in the U.S. Rob Drew K araoke seems to violate all the rules of what deﬁnes an authentic live music scene. Critics Over the past decade, I’ve done ethnographic research on karaoke in three cities: Philadelphia; Albany, New York; and Tampa, Florida. In this chapter, I intend to show some of the scene-like qualities that the most vibrant karaoke events have in common. First, karaoke gains a stable position within certain venues and within the lives of people who frequent these venues. Second, karaoke breeds competence and commitment among its devotees and rewards them with status. Third, karaoke develops distinctive meanings and functions within different bars and localities, reﬂected in different song repertoires, selections, performances, and responses. In all these deﬁning ways, karaoke’s local manifestations are not very different from more familiar live music scenes. At the same time, my conclusion will conﬁrm that karaoke’s scenes are different in important ways, and that these differences reﬂect karaoke’s particular appeal in a highly mobile society fraught with complex social demands. and fans of popular music, particularly rock music, tend to value music as an organic outgrowth of a particular community. Will Straw points to a ‘musical localism’ among rock scenes that emphasizes the organic relationship between musical styles and the sites within which they’re produced and consumed.(1) Within this logic, scenes are rated by their apparent stability, coherence, and distinctiveness, and musicians are rated by their local knowledge, commitment, and status. If musicians and music scenes are judged in these terms, then karaoke may not seem to qualify as the basis for a scene, and karaoke performers hardly seem to merit the title of musician. Karaoke’s supporters cling to a conviction that “anyone can do it,” and at most karaoke bars pretty much anyone can do it. As a result, “most perceptions of karaoke … involve images of drunken businessmen wreaking havoc with a show tune, ties askew, faces red, highball glasses in hand.”(2) With its standardized song repertoires and machine-driven accompaniment, karaoke comes off as a musical practice that can happen anywhere but sounds about the same everywhere, a practice that demonstrates no competence and implies no commitment. Unless they participate in it on a regular basis, most people only encounter karaoke on special occasions or on vacations. Indeed, karaoke tends to be particularly popular in those places that are off the beaten track of people’s everyday lives, such as hotels, 180 resorts, roadside inns, and airport lounges. This sense of karaoke as isolated from everyday life is aggravated by its apparent faddishness. When it arrived Stateside in the early 1990s, karaoke was treated as another in a long line of sensational popular entertainments from bear baiting to bungee jumping. It was hyped heavily in the media and adopted by countless bars, many of which did not have the proper conditions to sustain it. After an initial phase of oversupply and vicious competition among both bars and karaoke services, many bars abandoned karaoke. In discussing my work with others, I’ve found that many people assume karaoke is no longer popular and some are unsure if it even exists anymore. In fact, karaoke has continued to thrive quietly in the interstices of U.S. nightlife. A survey of karaoke bars launched by the Jolt online karaoke forum in mid-1998 turned up over 1500 bars in ﬁfty states.(3) While fewer bars may feature karaoke than at the peak of its hype in the early 1990s, its position in the bars that continue to feature it is more stable. starts bonding together to do karaoke speciﬁcally.” As a network evolves around karaoke, the social composition of the bar begins to change in ways that signal karaoke has “taken.” “It starts weeding out the others who don’t have an interest in it. You see a change in the clientele of the club, it’s like this metamorphosis.” Performers who develop a penchant for karaoke begin to attend and form new associations that are keyed from the start toward karaoke. When asked what draws them to karaoke, performers constantly make reference to the new relationships it has spawned among them: “I’m meeting new people every week, because everyone compliments each other after they sing . . . It’s like one big team.” Regular performers become members of a talent pool that can lead to any number of associations: cliques are formed and reformed, singing partners swapped, social and musical combinations tested. Often a particular performance or song provides the wellspring for a conversation or a relationship. After a mixed-sex pair of college students performs a duet on “Reunited,” I ask how they met. The young man tells A karaoke scene can only take root in a local culture of regular performers, who have a clear sense of what makes for a good karaoke bar, some important factors being the sound system, song selection, physical space, and the technical and social skills of the host. One emcee states that a few weeks after a bar adopts karaoke, “you start seeing this different clique that me, “I realized she was a good singer and she wanted to sing so I said, ‘Hey, I’m there.’” I ask a chemist in his thirties how he met the retired laborer he’s drinking with: “He bought me a drink because he liked my take on Sinatra’s ‘High Hopes’ . . . When I got done with it, there wasn’t a very big reaction to it, and he says, ‘What are they, all idiots?’” 181 The relationships thus formed among performers are not often very intimate, but neither are the relationships formed within most live music scenes. Sara Cohen’s description of interaction between amateur rock musicians in Liverpool could as easily describe regular karaoke performers: “They joked and gossiped together; debated the merits of other bands; passed on contacts, advice, technical and musical skills, information about gigs [and] venues.”(4) Like these other musicians, karaoke performers relate to one another much in the manner of colleagues. They may know each other only by their stage pseudonyms. Although their bonds may occasionally extend beyond the bar, more often they remain spatially and temporally bound. Yet while performers’ interaction is circumscribed, it is also civil and dependable. As Ruth Finnegan notes in her study of local musicians in Milton Keynes, England, “people commonly did not know much about all their co-members in musical groups—but in the sense that mattered to them they knew enough.” No less than those of other musicians, karaoke performers’ social links are “associated with an intense and deeply valued mode of activity,” even if “not expressed through knowledge of names, ages, or social backgrounds.” Karaoke scenes thus provide their followers with known pathways through the social life of their cities and towns, “familiar and . . . taken-for-granted routes through what might otherwise [be] the impersonal wilderness of urban life.”(5) I have shown that karaoke resembles other live music scenes in the way it becomes a routine event within certain spaces as well as within the lives of devotees. A second characteristic of karaoke scenes is that they develop standards of commitment and competence, as well as status hierarchies that grow out of such standards. Karaoke’s promoters have always presented it as a form of music making that is open to all regardless of competence. Karaoke emcees and regulars are nearly unanimous in their agreement that all performers have something of value to offer and that every performer deserves attention and recognition. Yet karaoke’s “anyone can do it” ethic is more complicated than either its devotees or its detractors tend to acknowledge. It’s true that most karaoke bars will let almost anyone take the stage. However, a karaoke scene develops its own forms of competence and subcultural capital to gauge the commitment of its members and position them within its status hierarchy. Competence at karaoke is complex and multifaceted; in particular, it cannot be reduced to conventional standards of vocal skill. Karaoke performers are expected to walk onstage and sing on key to pre-recorded background music. The result is that regular karaoke performers, even if they lack traditional voice training, have an advantage over trained singers who are inexperienced at karaoke. Trained singers know how their voices are classiﬁed in objective terms (soprano, mezzo-soprano, 182 etc.), but without karaoke experience, they cannot know how their voices will jibe with karaoke’s backing tracks. Regular karaoke performers who are untrained may not know their objective range, but they build up a practical knowledge of their “range” of songs based on trial and error. Many karaoke machines include a “pitch control” function, which creates another layer of karaoke competence and insider knowledge. Regular performers can sometimes be heard whispering something like “two notches down” to the emcee as they approach the stage, meaning that the key should be brought down two microtones from the backing track’s default key. By experimenting with the same tracks at different levels week after week, singers can calibrate these tracks to their voices. Only experienced performers are aware of this feature and able to use it effectively. Perhaps the most foolproof step toward competence in karaoke, though, is acquisition of a home karaoke system and music collection. This is an important expression of commitment to karaoke, and a key form of capital among karaoke regulars. Increasingly, one ﬁnds performers attending karaoke bars carrying large, bound collections of karaoke CDs. These performers will dispense with the emcee’s repertoire, and simply sing along with music from their personal collections that they’ve already practiced at home. Out of this complex of insider knowledge and practices arises a hierarchy. Every karaoke scene produces its own standout performers. At one bar I attended, a young man named Hector Rodriguez would take the stage decked in black leather and rant his way through rock classics, often sending the small crowd into hysteria. Such performers become something like celebrities within their venues. Others will attend just to hear them sing, and they’ll receive requests to do particular songs and to stand in for duets. In the men’s room at the bar Hector attended the grafﬁti read, “HECTOR RULES, ASK FOR HIM TO SING.” Often these performers have signature tunes that they are almost obligated to perform. At yet another bar the emcee tells me, “Joe and Jack couldn’t come to Spender’s without doing ‘Sweet Emotion,’ the crowd would kill them.” A third characteristic of karaoke scenes is that they reﬂect the distinctiveness of a group and a locality. Some may doubt that a practice like karaoke can function in this way. Because it relies on backing tracks of national hits, karaoke is often viewed as a standardized form that has no local roots and bears no relation to local culture. Those who dismiss karaoke as mere consumption of national music overlook the fact that consumption itself can be a productive, identityforming activity. As Andy Bennett notes, “While the popular culture industries may provide social actors with a common stock of cultural resources, the way such 183 resources are subsequently re-worked as collective sensibilities will in every instance depend upon the conditions of locality.”(6) Karaoke bars vary widely according to the songs patrons choose to perform, the manner in which they perform these songs, and the audience’s response to performances. Such details are not random but mirror the common experience of the bar’s patrons and the region’s inhabitants. For instance, early in my research I attended a college bar called Spanky’s where the owner had recently purchased a karaoke system with a small number of discs. As a result, patrons only had a few dozen songs to choose from. Many of these songs were oldies from before the college crowd’s time, and in performing them the students would almost invariably make a joke of them. One young man did Elvis Presley’s “Burnin’ Love” and punctuated it with smart-alecky comments (“Help me, I’m ﬂamin’, must be a hundred and nine—Excuse me, but anyone who’s a hundred and nine degrees is technically dead!”). Another did Elton John’s “Your Song” in a mawkish, exaggeratedly sincere manner until ﬁnally letting go an enormous belch. Things continued in this vein until a pair of boys took the stage for Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” The record was released in the mid-1980s, around the time that Spanky’s audience was in their mid-teens and probably had ﬂocked to Purple Rain, the Prince ﬁlm that helped popularize the song. The boys faithfully reproduced the call-and-response of Prince’s original vocal, one of them punctuating the other’s singing with plaintive highlights. Spectators in the audience screamed and swayed and waved their arms in unison. A boy in the corner drummed frantically on a wall; a table of girls held up lighters in tribute. “That’s the best song to sing,” I heard one of the boys say as they descended from the stage to frenzied applause, and at this bar it certainly was. In the following weeks at Spanky’s, it became a ritual that after several desultory recitals of oldies, someone took on “When Doves Cry” and worked the crowd to a fever pitch. The song became a crowd favorite, the sort of number that could prompt a roomful of strangers to suddenly sing and move and rejoice as one. Virtually every karaoke bar has such crowd favorites. As a result of these variations in song repertoires and crowd preferences, karaoke scenes tend to distinguish themselves along lines of national music genres. There are bars and regions that lean toward country, hard rock, or rhythm and blues depending on the demographics and the clientele. I’ve discussed several ways in which karaoke manifests scene-like qualities; in conclusion, I’ll consider how karaoke differs from other music scenes. Karaoke’s ready-made accompaniment and “anyone can do it” philosophy create a context that distinguishes it from 184 other scenes. Karaoke is easier and more accessible than other contemporary forms of public music making. To do it well takes skill and to do it at all takes nerve, yet beyond this there are few formal or informal barriers to participation. While many performers are assiduous in their devotion to karaoke, others participate only casually. While many performers’ only frequent one or a few bars, others prefer a more diffuse and widespread mode of participation, and while for many performers, karaoke leads to new social and musical associations, for others it inspires little offstage social involvement. Like the traditional sing-alongs of the 1960s folk revival and early punk sensibilities two decades later, karaoke allows great latitude for different levels and kinds of participation.(7) These traits might dismay those who pine for more cohesive, committed music scenes, and who see karaoke as an invitation to dilettantism. In their model of an organic community centered on music, advocates of more traditional scenes resemble those social critics like Robert Putnam who lament the supposed decline in civic involvement.(8) Yet others have pointed out that, if older forms of civic involvement have declined, this is not the result of public apathy or disengagement but of changes in economic and social conditions. Older forms of civic involvement have become less relevant in a society of what Robert Wuthnow calls “porous institutions.”(9) Due to economic instability and declining job security, people change jobs and careers more often than in the past. Family and friendship networks have become more attenuated. These changes, along with increased mobility, permit and sometimes demand more frequent travel and relocation. As a result, people have not abandoned civic involvement but have opted for more short-term involvements with volunteer organizations, support groups, and hobby groups. Karaoke is an excellent example of this casual public participation. Particularly in small towns and local neighborhoods that lack a viable infrastructure of well-equipped venues, bands, and paying audiences, karaoke thrives. This is suggested by the fact that there are as many ads for karaoke nights in an average, twelve-page issue of the Saginaw, Michigan, weekly The Review as in an average copy of the Village Voice. The ironic upshot is that karaoke ﬁnds itself one of the more ubiquitous forms of public music making at the dawn of the new century. For all its devotees’ talk of fantasy and wish fulﬁllment, karaoke may be more enmeshed in the daily lives of more people than any other musical practice. It allows music to happen in places that can’t sustain more capital- and laborintensive live music scenes. Like “virtual scenes,” karaoke speaks to a society of asynchronous schedules, dynamic and sprawling communities, mediated and media-facilitated relationships. Even some skilled professional singers 185 ﬁnd guilty pleasure in karaoke for the simplest of reasons: it is always possible to perform. It requires no equipment, bookings, bandmates, or rehearsals. Thousands of amateurs around the world can sing what they want, how they want, and when they want. There is today no more immediate, accessible route to the gratiﬁcations of making music in public. Endnotes 1. Will Straw, “Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music,” Cultural Studies 5 (1991) 2. Kevin M. Williams, K. M. “Karaoke Cool: Sing-along Nights Find a Younger Audience,” Chicago Sun-Times, 31 July 1998. 3. “U.S.A. Sings,” Jolt Online Karaoke Forum, 27 May 1998, <http://jolt.karaoke.com/jolt?14@^131126@. ee6c9e6> (3 March 2000). 4. Sara Cohen, Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, 34. 5. Ruth Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 303-306. 6. Andy Bennett, “‘Going Down the Pub!’: The Pub Rock Scene as a Resource for the Consumption of Popular Music,” Popular Music 16 (1997): 98. 7. Neil V. Rosenberg, Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (Urbana: University of Illinois 186 Press, 1993); Dave Laing, One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press, 1985. 8. Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy, 6 (1995). 9. Robert Wuthnow, Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Reloading the Matrix: A Perceptual Geography of Zion Mark Evans T his paper continues on from an earlier article written on the ﬁrst Matrix ﬁlm (Evans), which can (166) that are involved in cinematic construction. Firstly, there is the space of the diegesis; a virtual space constructed by the ﬁlm, with no physical limits. The second cinematic space is the visible space of the screen. This is a measurable, ﬁxed space. The visual limitations of this space are obvious, yet these can be exploited well for various effects. Delineation of screen space, and movement within it, is assisted in the surroundsound environment by the use of the left, centre and right speakers. The ﬁnal space identiﬁed by Doane in the cinematic situation is the acoustical space of the cinema. Here sound is not exactly framed, but rather envelops the spectator/listener (ibid). Indeed, Doane uses “metaphor of the womb in describing ﬁlm sound, a ‘sonorous envelop’ surrounding the spectator” (Stilwell 171). If this was the case two decades ago, then the implementation of 5.1 channel surroundsound has only advanced the distinctness and comfort of the ‘womb’. Not only is the spectator enveloped by the sound, they are positioned within the soundtrack, thereby taking a more biased or privileged position within the diegesis. In all three cinema spaces outlined by Doane, the be found in the science-ﬁction sound anthology Off The Planet due for release later this year. Given that no one (bar the referees) has had the opportunity to read that article, I wish to reproduce some of the main theoretical arguments established there, before moving on to apply them to the recent international release, The Matrix Reloaded. What is particularly interesting about applying a theoretical framework over these two movies, is that in many ways they have been constructed to stimulate and alter the viewers perception of truth – given that what was taken for ﬁlmic reality in the world of The Matrix is not necessarily true in the sequel ﬁlm. Thus the trope developed for analysing the ﬁrst ﬁlm is conveniently tested by its usefulness in deconstructing the sequel. Before this analysis takes place however, it is necessary to begin with a discussion of sonic spatiality in ﬁlm sound, considering especially how this area of sound analysis has developed technologically and academically. Theorising the Spatial Film sound spatiality has often been analysed according to the three ‘spaces’ proposed by Doane soundtrack has become increasingly important in their construction. Developments in sound technology have 188 provided greater deﬁnition to these spaces, and allowed ﬁlmmakers greater licence in their visual projections of the diegetic world and the spaces encompassed by it. This paper will go on to argue however, that these technological and professional developments in soundtrack construction have also created new spaces within the cinematic experiences. These new spaces require new understandings from the audience in regards to spatial readings of texts, and they also warrant greater deconstruction from those areas of the academy devoted to sonic relationships within ﬁlm. For all their innovation these spaces are still reliant on the signifying practice of ﬁlm. As Doane noted: not only acknowledging the physical landmarks – represented by the more quantiﬁable screen and cinema spaces – but also considering the imaginary landscapes. That is, those spaces – diegetic and virtual – that are experienced within the ‘place’ of cinema, yet exist in less tangible, identiﬁable form. Perceptual Geography In acknowledging the existence of a less tangible, more conceptual space within ﬁlm soundscapes, Stilwell proposes that it extends further than the individual elements of the soundtrack, even beyond the theoretical constructions used to describe them (eg diegetic) (185fn12). She argues that such Nothing unites the three spaces [outlined above] but the signifying practice of the ﬁlm itself together with the institutionalization of the theater as a type of meta-space which binds together the three spaces, as the place where a uniﬁed cinematic discourse unfolds. (167 – emphasis original) The notion of a place where these conceptual and physical spaces meet is integral to the discussion that follows. However, Stilwell usefully deconstructs this place, arguing that the formation of a geography of sound provides a paradigm by which to map the new sonic landscape. Part of mapping this terrain involves a space is alluded to by some of the terminology employed to analyse ﬁlm sound: voiceover, underscore, background etc (ibid). Thus, in addition to Doane’s three established spaces, this paper follows Stilwell’s proposal, nominating ‘perceptual geography’ as a fourth spatial area. This fourth space is a perceptual reality, formed from our necessity to ‘hold’ all the elements of the ﬁlm ‘together’. It is conceptual in that it is a purely mental space, constructed from the various stimuli of the ﬁlm, but particularly from the sonic elements. However, it is perceptual in that it is the moment of insight, the place of understanding, the perception of how the ﬁlmic world intersects with the real world. Thus it would appear that such a ‘perceptual geography’ is a 189 key space created by the science ﬁction ﬁlm. For the science ﬁction ﬁlm asks the viewer to immerse them self within a (normally) totally foreign realm, a world made believable through the constructions of ﬁlm, yet removed from the physical realm of the cinema auditorium. Perceptual geography becomes the space where the actual world of the cinema meets the abstract world of the ﬁlm. This space is further complicated, and necessitated, in the two Matrix ﬁlms (1999 and 2003). In order to illustrate perceptual geography in The Matrix, it necessary to extend Doane’s model of diegetic space somewhat. The argument being that the ﬁlm actually constructs several separate realms in which the diegesis of the ﬁlm unfolds. These realms are discrete, and are skilfully crafted in order to destabilise the viewers’ actual spatial experience. Thus the place of perceptual geography becomes crucial in tying together the worlds of the ﬁlm, and bringing them into the physical auditorium space of the theatre. Mapping the Diegetic Worlds these realms, and the place of perceptual geography. On the overhead I have placed a brief breakdown of four of the realms created, following the schema laid out by Brophy (1992). Although time does not allow for a full discussion of these characterisations, a more comprehensive analysis can be found in the book Off The Planet, coming soon to a diegetic world near you. 1. The ﬁrst realm created is the matrix. It is an electronic city, comprised entirely of digital data. It is a simulacrum of contemporary society as we know it. This realm is controlled and regulated by machines. Being a computer program it is feasible that elements of this realm, although having the appearance of permanence (eg buildings), can in fact be altered instantaneously. Freed humans can insert themselves back into the matrix, but they remain subject to the rules of the matrix as set by the ruling machines. Communication in this world is digital, with movements and variations within the matrix reﬂected in the coding of the program. Of immediate prominence are the heightened sounds (especially foley For the sake of time I am going to assume that people have seen, or are at least vaguely familiar with the philosophies and basic narrative of the Matrix ﬁlms. What I will brieﬂy summarise is the nature of the different realms created in the ﬁrst Matrix ﬁlm, before a more detailed considered of how The Matrix Reloaded manipulates and furthers the sonic construction of elements of the soundtrack) in the matrix realm. This combined with reverb of the soundscape creates a large spatial area. In one sense this is a real soundscape, yet in another it is ‘super-real’ due to the depth, volume and clarity of sounds present. The immense depth to the matrix realm is necessary, in part, to offset the characters ability to manipulate time 190 and space. That is, they need an unnaturally vast realm to operate within lest they appear omnipotent. This is especially true for the Agents, who possess even more manipulatory power than the humans. It is the sonic spatiality of the ﬁlm that assists the creation of this vastness, as well as simultaneously contributing to its believability. with which we, as audience members, are induced to believe may one day be real. This is taught to us via the soundtrack more than any other elements. Indeed the vision of these realms is often so fantastic that the projected artiﬁciality of the matrix realms often seem far more convincing. Given the importance of these realms to today’s discussion, more analytical information is provided which, again, may be difﬁcult to understand 2. The second realm is the simulated matrix, called ‘The Construct’ – a computer program designed by humans to replicate the ‘real’ matrix (itself a simulation of reality). This realm too is entirely digital yet communication here is largely oral. This realm is where Morpheus trains Neo for ‘missions’ into the matrix. without viewings of the ﬁlm. 4. The realm designated as real-world (free) is the fourth diegetic realm created in the ﬁlm. This is the realm of the Nebuchadnezzar – the spaceship (hovercraft), or perhaps more aptly the (space)ship, where the rebels live. Despite the technology present, and relied on for 3. The third realm established has been designated as ‘in-between’, a virtual world that largely exists to connect the other realms. Most clearly heard (and to an extent seen) in the opening scenes of both Matrix ﬁlms as code blips over the screen, which, in Reloaded, the camera moves through and ‘lives’ inside for a moment. It is a world operated by freed humans, yet largely controlled by the machines. The entry and exit points to this world are telephonic. Of most concern to us here today are the realms that I have designated as human-free worlds. By that I mean they involve real, organic humanity, even though control of the realm may be machinic. They are the realms survival, this realm remains organic and oral. 5. The ﬁfth realm is the real-world (slave). This is a farm for humans where bodies are maintained in pods, and harvested by machines. This, we are told, is the actual state of the world after the war between humans and machines. It is in this realm that humans are fed – digitally – the signals that make them believe they are living in the matrix. It is a realm both fantastic and frightening, marvellous and morbid. A constant wet-slap sound (encased in echo and reverb) ﬁgures prominently in the rear speakers. It is at once mechanical and biotic. It is combined with a variety of energy sounds, ﬂashes 191 Table 1.1: Real-world realms in the Matrix films Realm Real-World (Zion) Real-World (Ship) Real-World (Slave) Control Human Human Computer Domain Underground, cavern (Space)Ship Human farm Ambience Organic and mechanical, subdued Organic throb, subdued Mechanical, electric Contact Oral, Digital to outside Oral Digital signal Mobility Walking, elevators ‘Space’ travel Denied Voice Emotive, humane, adult Frantic, expressive, emotive None Depth Large (reverb, echo) Enclosed, dry Vast (conﬁned) Music Orchestral (min production) Orchestral Orchestral Temporality Fixed, monitored, stressful Fixed, constant Fixed, constant 192 etc, as well as various electronic and machinic noises (both on and off-screen). The deep reverb employed across the soundtrack reﬂects the enormity of the farm. A ‘heavenly’ choral track enters the soundtrack as Neo, the main character and future saviour of humanity, looks out over the ﬁeld of entombed humans. This, combined with the main orchestral rhythmic motif, creates an extremely other-worldly ambience for this human apocalypse. Freed from the energy harvesting connections, Neo is released down a long slimy tube. The soundscape thins inside this delivery tube; ironically the more enclosed soundscape representing the newfound freedom attained by Neo – a similar technique us used aboard the Nebuchadnezzar. The heavenly choral motif returns has Neo is rescued, ‘saved’ from the liquid pool in order to become the saviour himself. to machines both in construction and ultimately in the grand purpose of the war. In terms of perceptual geography Zion represents an interesting juncture for the audience. It at once exhibits sonic qualities that are intrinsically organic, humane and conceivably part of the general experience of humankind. Simultaneously Zion is fantastic, distant and audibly curious. The comparison then for the viewer/listener between the relative free worlds in the Matrix ﬁlms creates further uncertainty and instability. Our ﬁrst introduction to Zion comes accompanied by epic orchestral motifs that emphasise the size, importance and achievement that is Zion. There is minimal production music used throughout the scenes of Zion, a deﬁnite difference to the heavily processed world of the matrix. This is however, concomitant with the two other human realms introduced in the ﬁlms. At once the audience is sonically positioned in a familiar, 6. One of the major developments in The Matrix Reloaded (2003) is the establishment of a further diegetic realm. The human city of Zion is a feature of the second ﬁlm; its defence and secrecy a key to the narrative of the entire trilogy. In terms of the sonic landscape of the Matrix ﬁlms, Zion represents another key moment in the formulation of a perceptual geography that viewer/listeners are forced to negotiate. Zion is part of the human (free) world, yet ironically enslaved and relatively safe realm. What is somewhat surprising about the sonic landscape in Zion is the subdued environment created. Such understatement has been a feature of the Nebuchadnezzar where the sound is somewhat ‘entombed’, yet in this vast cavern, with its intricate machinic dependencies, and quarter million inhabitants, the lack of noise is dis-settling. Background noises are restricted to low hums, with the emphasis clearly posited 193 on the human interaction between citizens. It is this human interaction, and speciﬁcally the vocality involved, which provides Zion with one of its strongest demarcations. Speech within Zion is emotive, impassioned and, at times, frantic. Scenes are dominated by the very real interaction between characters in love, in anger, in frustration and anticipation. Such emotive vocality has largely been removed from other diegetic realms within the matrix ﬁlms. Here is it privileged over and above all other (expected) noises. Soft orchestral music is utilised in the background of many of these more relationally sensitive scenes, for example Link speaking with his wife and Neo being confronted by the group of believers, yet never does it replace or overpower the emotion and prominence of the language. One of the best examples is the classic monologue provided by Morpheus to the people, on the eve of their war with the sentinels. Morpheus’s impassioned speech reﬂects not only the signiﬁcance of the moment in human history, but also demarcates the diegetic realm more than many other scenes. The speech is heavily treated with reverb, deepened in bass, and slightly echoed, in order to reﬂect the geography of the city and the gravity of the situation. This humanness has been largely absent from the sonic construction of the Matrix realms, thereby dislocating the audience and assisting them in perceiving the liminality of the matrix construct. The Matrix Reloaded forces viewer/listeners to negotiate their understanding of ‘authentic’ sonic realities with those presented. The perceptual geography creates another space for the audience to negotiate and position themselves within. The striking achievement of this is the anomaly from those realms previously established. The negotiation, or more pointedly (re)negotiation, directly confronts the audience, but more pointedly, ties in neatly with the narrative differences being created between the two ﬁlms. “The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins… Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.” (Isaiah 51:3) The end of Morpheus’s speech marks the fulﬁlment of Isaiah’s biblical prophecy for the city of Zion. Morpheus calls on the people to shake their city through their music and dancing, to let the rumble of party be heard by the machines controlling the surface of the earth. Thus begins an initially percussion-based dance music, beat out on old steel drums and other industrial waste. The music is subsequently primal, crude and organic. The highly sensualised and stylised dancing that accompanies this music reinforces its raw humanness, and while many critics have highlighted these scenes as detracting from the ﬂow and feel 194 of matrix sensibility, they nonetheless construct a diegetic realm based more perceivably on the human condition. The raw percussion-based music ﬁnally succumbs to an electronic dance music that may have been expected from the outset. The heavy kick drum provides a continual beat-based accent, suitably accompanying the visual interplay between the erotic dance scenes and the (not-so-erotic) love scene between Neo and Trinity. Selected Bibliography Brophy, Philip. ‘The Architecsonic Object: Stereo Sound, Cinema & Colors’ in Hayward, Philip (ed) Culture, Technology and Creativity, London: John Libbey & Co, 1990. Doane, Mary Ann. ‘The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space’ in Weis, Elizabeth and Belton, John (eds) (1985) Film Sound: Theory and Practice, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Part of the tension created in the Matrix ﬁlms is based on the required reconciliation of the different diegetic realms within a perceptual geography. The audience is called upon to not only establish an understanding of these realms and how they are represented, but also to relate them to their current subject positioning. These realms must necessarily interact with perceptions of reality held by the audience member, thereby constructing a new, virtual space that combines their cinematic experience of these realms with their own subjective perceptions of their world. The soundtrack becomes pivotal in constructing cues and motifs that deﬁne the separate realms of the ﬁlm and enhance the space of perceptual geography. Stilwell, Robynn. ‘Sound and Empathy: Subjectivity, Gender and the Cinematic Soundscape’ in Donnelly, K.J (ed) Film Music: Critical Approaches, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001 Evans, Mark. ‘Mapping the Matrix: Virtual Reality and the Realm of the Perceptual’ in Hayward, Philip (ed) Off The Planet, London: John Libbey and Perfect Beat Publications, 2003 IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Many Lives of Cotton Eyed Joe Holly Everett If it hadn’t been for Cotton-Eye Joe I’d been married long time ago Where did you come from, where did you go Where did you come from Cotton-Eye Joe? (Rednex 1995) Tune Variants There are three main historically-documented tune variants (3). The ﬁrst known recordings of what came to be called the southeastern (United States) version date from 1927 and 1928. It was recorded six R ednex’s 1995 hit dance mix of “Cotton Eye Joe” has been played at country dance clubs and times in the mid to late twenties alone. Often performed as a square dance tune, this variant frequently includes calls to the dancers as in this version by Dykes Magic City Trio from Virginia, the earliest known recording of “Cotton Eyed Joe” (4). The southwestern or Texas variant is perhaps the most widely known version through a series of popular recordings by groups such as Adolf Hofner and his San Antonians (1941), Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (1947), and Isaac Payton Sweat (1981). Similarly to the southeastern variants, the southwestern version is a favourite for dancing, in this case line-dancing or two-stepping. Texas variants also feature an audienceresponse chorus. At the urging of the musicians, the audience yells, “Bullshit!” (4). In fact, as a child growing up in west and central Texas, this is the only word I understood the song to have. Moreover, the emphatic hockey arenas internationally, and featured on the FOX network’s television series “Malcolm in the Middle.” In one form or another, “Cotton Eyed Joe” has circulated in the United States since the mid-1800s, and in Canada for at least 60 years. The Canadian variants are often traced back to Don Messer, who recorded and published it as sheet music (Perlman 1996). This ﬁddle favourite has also been committed to vinyl by Canadians from British Columbia to Newfoundland (1). This paper, through the presentation of several North American tune and text variants, will argue that the song’s enigmatic title character, much like Foucault’s “author” (101-120), embodies multiple, sometimes disparate meanings which may be utilized in diverse performance practices (Ake 2002; Burton 1978; Radner and Lanser 1993) (2). 196 obscene response is so dear to knowledgeable audiences that they will call it out even when not prompted to do so by the musicians (5). Finally, the Canadian “Cotton Eyed Joe,” commonly attributed to Don Messer as noted (above), has an Acadian ﬂavour (6). Performed without lyrics, it’s a standard of the ﬁddle repertoire. In fact, this is the version of “Cotton Eyed Joe” played by some American ﬁddlers living in northern states, such as North Dakota’s “Fiddling Engineer,” Joe Pancerzewski. Tune Variants (7). For example, Bob Wills sang: Don’t you remember, don’t you know Daddy worked a man they called a Cotton Eyed Joe Daddy worked a man they called a Cotton Eyed Joe. (Wills 1947) Another recurring element of the song is the statement that Joe somehow prevented the narrator’s marriage, such as in the version by Mississippi’s Carter Brothers and Son: Had not have been for the Cotton Eyed Joe I’d have been married forty years ago. (Carter Brothers and Son 1928) However, it is difﬁcult for the listener to discern whether Joe stole someone’s sweetheart, captured the heart of the narrator, or prevented the marriage in some other way. Michelle Shocked has recently theorized that Joe was indeed a hoodoo man, and thus knew herbal or other traditional methods of terminating unwanted pregnancies. In Shocked’s re-working of “Cotton Eyed Joe,” titled “Prodigal Daughter (Cotton Eyed Joe),” the avoidance of marriage is a positive outcome. Shocked’s lyrics for this counter-hegemonic rendering include the following verses (7): “Cotton Eyed Joe,” with its wide range of verses that appear in no particular order from performance to performance, falls into the lyric song category. In other words, it doesn’t narrate a story with speciﬁc details, as a ballad does, although it is certainly evocative of any number of scenarios, as I will demonstrate. Joe’s origins lie the American South. In 1925, folklorist Dorothy Scarborough wrote that Joe was “an authentic slavery-time song,” predating the Civil War (68). In the African-American versions she collected in Texas and Louisiana, Joe is a “hoodoo” man, who rolls into town with a travelling medicine show (5). In Thomas Talley’s story “Cotton-eyed Joe or the Origin of the Weeping Willow,” Joe is a domestic slave whose tragic life ends in accidental suicide (Talley 1993) (6). In many later song variants, Joe is Daddy’s ﬁeld hand 197 Had not have been for the Cotton Eyed Joe I’d have been married a long time ago Oh, I’d have been married a long time ago Out in the cornﬁeld I stubbed my toe I called for the doctor, Cotton Eyed Joe I called for the doctor, Cotton Eyed Joe (Shocked 1991) The power of Shocked’s interpretation surely derives in part from what Will Straw has described as “the tension between what is pre-given in the history of a cultural form and what is novel and original in any new performance” (200). In this case, the history may include what scholars such as Eric Lott have identiﬁed as a longstanding anxiety about, and attempts to assert control over, African-American sexuality (1995). Thus, in a number of variants, Joe suffers a painful beating for his intentional or imagined interference. The Bayou Teche Band sings: Hold my ﬁddle and hold my bow While I knock the socks off Cotton-eyed Joe. (Sherrer 1981) Still other verses cast Joe as a talented ﬁddler, which may also account for the admiration, and envy, that Joe seemed to inspire. Regarding the appellation “cotton-eyed,” it’s been speculated that Joe suffered from the chronic eye condition trachoma, which leads to blindness if untreated (Lomax 1966). Some conjecture that Joe’s eyes were simply light in colour: a pale blue or grey (Abernethy 1994; Thede 1967), or simply “gone cloudy” from cataracts or excessive drinking. Others point to the use of “cotton-eyed” in southern dialect to indicate someone with large whites of the eyes, perhaps due to hyperactivity of the thyroid gland (see Lighter 1994). Talley writes that Joe acquired the nickname because his eyes were “all walled out an’ white” (34), in the same way a person’s hair is said to suddenly turn white as a result of a traumatic experience. Finally, a poster to an online discussion board wrote that he had always Got a two pound hammer and a two dollar bill Gonna beat the heck out of Cotton Eyed Joe (Bayou Teche Band 2000) Missouri’s Wright Brothers sing a variant that includes this verse: heard that “cotton-eyed Joe” was a “Western” dialect phrase denoting an enraged bull (Ligon 1999). And indeed, in the context of the song, Joe is not always a man. In many versions, the name is invoked as a reference to the tune or dance itself. In a 1985 recording, Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray 198 Benson sings: Irish (9). Musicians may choose between at least three distinct tunes and countless verses, crafting these Down in the cotton patch down below Everybody singing the Cotton Eyed Joe Everybody doing the Cotton Eyed Joe Similarly, a verse from a Don Reno and Red Smiley rendition runs: Tune up the ﬁddle, rosin up your bow Gonna play a tune called Cotton Eyed Joe (1957) Conclusion components to suit a particular performance tradition or even a speciﬁc situation. “Cotton Eyed Joe” discourse, then, develops in the anonymity of each measure (Foucault 119). My intention here has been to provide a brief introduction to the Cotton Eyed Joe conundrum. Due to the variety of text and tune variants, of which I have presented only a very few, “Cotton Eyed Joe” has been labelled merely a “pastiche of melodies” (Bluegrass Messengers 2002). However, performances of the song or tune, no matter which version, can be particularly effective “gestures of afﬁnity and allegiance” (Straw 203), given its status as “regional vernacular anthem” (Narváez 2002). As with so many traditional tunes, it is exactly the ambiguity of the variant texts that have enabled “Cotton Eyed Joe” to go from tragic tale to dance ﬂoor favourite, and to adapt to regional musical styles from bluegrass (8), to cajun (8), to Acadian, to 199 and European beliefs with native American botanical Endnotes 1. For example, Saskatchewan’s Brian Sklar, Quebecers Ti-blanc Richard and Bill Sawyer, Ontarians Dan Penny, Gerry Seaboyer and Graham Townshend, as well as Carl Elliot and his Nova Scotians have all recorded it. Newfoundland ﬁddlers Don Randell and Ted Blanchard, and Prince Edward Island’s Louise Arsenault (of Barachois) also play it. knowledge. Adherents are both African-American and Euro-North American. Although related, hoodoo is not the same as Vodou. For historical sources see Puckett 1926, Hurston 1931, and Hyatt 1970-75 (from material collected 1936-40). More recent works include Kirkland et al, 1992. 6. Thomas Washington Talley (1870-1952) was a chemistry professor at Nashville’s Fisk University, as 2. My research into the development and performative interpretations of “Cotton Eyed Joe” is thus similar in approach to studies of the ballads “John Henry” (e.g., Green 1983; Williams 1983) and “Stagolee” (Brown 2003), although the origins and “uses” of the Cotton Eyed Joe persona appear to be more obscure and diffuse. well as an active folklorist. The child of former slaves, Talley was one of the ﬁrst folklorists to document the traditions of his own community, in the Middle Tennessee region Wolfe vii-ix). 7. In the United States, the cotton-eyed Joe of the song is commonly understood to be African-American by both musicians and audiences who wonder about Joe’s 3. For more information on commercially recorded tune variants and related tunes, see, for example, Meade 2002. identity at all. The obscurity of the lyrics, particularly those describing Joe being beaten, as well as the fact that the song was performed in minstrel shows, has prompted heated debates concerning racism in 4. Fiddlin’ John Carson recorded a similar version just six days later on March 17, 1927 (3). southern traditional music (see, for example, Mudcat discussion forum thread “Cotton-eyed Joe-true story/ composite?” available at <http://www.mudcat.org/ 5. “Hoodoo,” also called “conjure,” “conjuration,” “rootwork” or “witchcraft” is a traditional belief system originating in the American South, combining African thread.CFM?threadID=13537>). The song’s transition from oral tradition to minstrel show performance, and historical portrayals of Joe, are the current focal points 200 of my research in this area. Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. 8. The Bayou Teche Band performs a version of “Cotton Eyed Joe” in which the audience is prompted to yell the word “crawﬁsh” in place of “bullshit.” Green, Archie. “John Henry Revisited.” JEMF Quarterly 19.69 (1983): 12-31. Hurston, Zora Neale. “Hoodoo in America.” Journal of 9. The Chieftains recorded the song with popular country singer Ricky Skaggs, complete with bodran and tin whistle. Hyatt, Harry M. Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, Rootwork. 5 vols. Hannibal, MO: Western, 19701975. American Folklore 44(1931): 317-417. Selected Bibliography Abernethy, Francis Edward. Singin’ Texas. 1983. Denton, TX: U of North Texas P, 1994. Kirkland, James, et al. Herbal and Magical Medicine: Traditional Healing Today. Durham, NC: Duke UP, Ake, David. Jazz Cultures. Los Angeles: U of California P, 2002. 1992. Lighter, J.E., ed. “Cotton-Eyed.” Random House The Bluegrass Messengers. 11 Jan. 2002. <http://www. bluegrassmessengers.com/master/cottoneyedjoe1. html>. Ligon, Lon. “RE: Cotton-eyed Joe-true story/ Brown, Cecil. Stagolee Shot Billy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. composite?” Online posting. 7 Sept. 1999. Mudcat Discussion Forum. 23 June 2003. <http://www.mudcat. org/thread.CFM?threadID=13537>. Burton, Thomas. Some Ballad Folks. Johnson City, TN: East Tennessee State UP, 1978. Lomax, Alan, comp. and ed. The Penguin Book of American Folk Songs. 1964. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Books, 1966. Historical Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House, 1994. 201 Lomax, John A. and Alan Lomax. American Ballads and Folksongs. 1934. New York: Macmillan Co., 1958. and Cutlure. Ed. Bruce Horner and Thomas Swiss. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1999. Talley, Thomas. The Negro Traditions. 1933. Ed. by Charles K. Wolfe and Laura C. Jarmon. Knoxville : U Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. of Tennessee P, 1993. Thede, Marion. The Fiddle Book. New York: Oak Publications, 1967. Meade, Guthrie T., Jr. Country Music Sources: A BiblioDiscography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 2002. Williams, Brett. John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983. Narváez, Peter. “’I Think I Wrote a Folksong’: Popularity and Regional Vernacular Anthems.” Journal of American Folklore 115(2002): 269-282. Wolfe, Charles. Introduction. Thomas Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes: A New, Expanded Edition, With Music. By Thomas Talley. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1991. vii-xxvii. Puckett, Niles Newbell. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1926. Selected Disography Asleep at the Wheel. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Asleep at the Radner, Joan and Susan Lanser. “Strategies of Coding in Women’s Cultures.” Feminist Messages. Ed. Joan Radner. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1993. 1-29. Wheel. Dot/MCA, 1985. Bayou Teche Band. “Cotten Eyed Joe.” On Tour. MP3. com 2000. 7 April 2001. <http://artists.mp3s.com/ Scarborough, Dorothy. On the Trail of Negro FolkSongs. 1925. Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1963. artists/cds/57/57572.html> Carter Brothers and Son. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” 1928. Going Down the Valley: Vocal and Instrumental Styles in Straw, Will. “Authorship.” Key Terms in Popular Music Folk Music from the South. New World Records, 1977. 202 Chieftains, The. “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Chieftains 10: Cotton-Eyed Joe. Shanachie, 1981. Wright Brothers Play and Sing Old-Time Music.” Bittersweet Summer 1981: 54-64. Gimble, Johnny. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Still Fiddlin’ Around. MCA, 1988. Shocked, Michelle. “Prodigal Daugher (Cotton Eyed Joe).” Arkansas Traveler. Mercury, 1991. Hofner, Adolf and His San Antonians. “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Okeh, 1941. Sweat, Isaac Payton. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Cotton Eyed Joe. Paid, 1981. Landry, Ned. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Saturday Night Breakdown. RCA Camden, 1956. Will, Bob and His Texas Playboys. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” 1947. San Antonio Rose. Bear Family Records, 2000. Mountain Ramblers. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Blue Ridge Mountain Music. Southern Folk Heritage Series, Atlantic, 1959. Pancerzewski, Joe. “Cotton Eyed Joe.” The Fiddling Engineer. Voyager, 1972. Rednex. “Cotton Eye Joe.” Sex and Violins. Jive, 1995. --------. “Cotton Eye Joe.” Malcolm in the Middle. Restless, 2000. Reno, Don and Red Smiley. “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Bluegrass Hits. Dot, 1957. Sherrer, Dwayne, ed. “We Play a Little Music: The IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Handmaiden’s Tale: Black Women Back Up Singers in White Rock Susan Fast T he ways in which identity is constituted through or in relation to backup singers in popular music repertory) and are also part of the group or band—they are insiders--and this contributes profoundly to the particular meanings that are created. But what about instances in which this is not the case? What about songs in which the lead vocalist is a man, or the song is by a male group, and the backup singers are women (or vice versa—I can only think of Gladys Knight and the Pips!)? What if they are racially other than the lead vocalist or group? What if they are outsiders—not part of the group? Barbara Bradby has written about the presence of women singers on dance records of the early 1990’s. I’m not sure that these can necessarily be called backup singers, but what she notes about their presence on those records is relevant to what I want to talk about here. She argues that most of the time these singers’ voices are contrasted with that of a male rapper and that, on the one hand, this gendered division of vocal labor perpetuates stereotypical gender roles because rap is more closely linked to speech and language and hence to technology, while song is more tied to melody than to verbal messages, and is hence more emotive (we might want to nuance this premise, but let’s accept it for now). On the other hand, Bradby notes, crucially, that the kind of female voice most often used in these recordings is that “of black women has not been much examined. Jacqueline Warwick’s exploration of the back up singer in girl group music of the 1960s is probably the most nuanced discussion of the subject with respect to a particular repertory. She writes in her dissertation that “[b]ackup singers [in girl group music] conjure a sisterhood, lending their voices to strengthen the statements of an individual vocalist” and that “most Girl Group songs are best understood as representing a single — if often conﬂicted — subjectivity, wherein the interplay between lead singer and backing singers performs the struggle between different points of view that accompanies any individual’s choicemaking.” (Warwick, 2002) Rob Walser discusses back up singers in a speciﬁc song, Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With the Devil,” suggesting a similar kind of function for them, that is, that their presence during the chorus validates the positive aspects of the fantasy of freedom and power articulated by the singer during the verses, in fact “sweeping away [the doubts about this fantasy expressed by the singer alone in the verses].(Walser, p. 52) In both these cases the back up singers and lead singer share the same sex and race (although there may be exceptions to this in the girl group 204 soul singers...[which] evoke strength, maturity, deep emotions–typical `maternal’ qualities....They also give voice to a female sexuality that is not conﬁned within [especially white] notions of `romance.’” (Bradby, p. 172, 173). Adam Krims has also noted the increasing use of women’s voices used to sing the choruses in harder styles of male rap music, stating that “[t]he popularity of such choruses is all the more remarkable when one recalls how just a few short years [ago], singing, not to mention a substantial female presence of any sort, had been the mark of `softer’ styles. That mark, of course, had served to threaten the masculine-identiﬁed reality rap authenticity.” (Krims, p. 85-86) I’d like to build on these discussions by addressing another repertory—blues based rock music made by white men in which black women—or women who are sonically marked as black—are used as backup singers. I want to follow Warwick’s and Walser’s model of looking at particular pieces of music in order to address exactly where and how a woman’s voice is used within a particular song, because I think knowing these details is crucially important in getting at how social issues are developed in this kind of musical narrative. Speciﬁcally I want to look at two songs that use the back up singer in very different ways, The Black Crowes “Remedy”and The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” I’ve picked these examples fairly randomly as starting points for my research into this subject, although I have been intrigued by the gender and racial politics of “Gimme Shelter” for years. I should also note that this research is preliminary and I have found that because not much has been written about how back up singers are used in popular music there are a considerable number of very general issues that need to be articulated in tandem with a discussion of race and gender. The Black Crowes, “Rememdy” The Crowes “Remedy” is an example of a song that employs a group of backing vocalists during the chorus only, one of the most prominent ways in which backup singers are used, not only in rock music, but in a variety of popular music styles. In this role, back up singers sing the same small bit of music and the same lyrics repeatedly, which both restricts their creativity and independence—this is a non-developing part of the song--and also links them to the song as commodity, since the chorus is usually the hook of the song, the most memorable part and also the part intended to sell it. But this is also precisely why the chorus is an incredibly important feature. This most memorable part usually represents a moment of repose–of coming back to something familiar, comforting, something that is “known” by the listener. Technically, the women are there to reinforce the importance of the chorus, to underline the hook, making it fatter by adding more 205 voices, making it distinct from the verse by changing the vocal timbre. But adding voices at the chorus also links this familiar, comfortable moment in the song with the notion of community (as Walser suggests happens in the Van Halen song), and not only community among those doing the singing. Having a group of people sing the chorus invites the listener in; hearing a group of voices might suggest the idea of joining in, especially since back up singers are often anonymous or at least much less tied to celebrity and professionalism than a lead singer who’s identity is known. This anonymity is also problematic—as a class issue, as well as gender and race where those are applicable—since the backup singer’s vocal labor makes a substantial material contribution to the song, even though they are often given little or no recognition or credit for this1. This occurs, for example, in the Crowes’ “Remedy,” where the women backing vocalists are credited in the liner notes as “Barbara and Taj,” whereas the the other musician who contributed to the album, but who is not part of the band, the conga player (a man), is listed with both ﬁrst and last name. This way of representing the women back up singers keeps them fairly anonymous, as well as suggesting that they are not professionals— perhaps friends—or girlfriends—of guys in the band. In “Remedy,” the general ideas I just layed out about the use of backing vocalists in the chorus of a song are all operative. But meaning is also generated through the particular kind of voices that are heard: these are sonically marked as black women’s voices. The voices are stylistically aligned with blues/gospel/ r&b, and some of what Bradby suggests about the gospel/r&b inﬂected singing style of women singers on dance records applies here. The women sing in a moderate or even low range, which makes their voices sound warm and comforting—no straining; the vibrato adds to the warmth and also helps mark the style (as does the hint of a southern accent). The melodic line is rhythmically straight, creating very little physical tension and a sense that the singers are relaxed (their vocal tone also suggests this); they begin each line singing in harmony, but sing unison on the word “remedy,” giving them a small amount of individuality from one another that, in the end, collapses into sameness . The place where tension is generated is in the melody, which hinges around a blue note that is sung on the strong beats of the bar, creating a seductive pull into their music. Compare this to what Chris Robinson is doing vocally: even though the verses are pretty structured and he adheres to a set melody most of the time, he has a high degree of autonomy in the choruses and in the improvisatory section after the guitar solo. After each line of the chorus is sung by the women, he reiterates it, or part of it, improvising a new melody, new rhythms and new timbres, secure in the knowledge that they are there to carry the melody while he plays with 206 it. When he threatens to lose the words–and melody, for that matter--altogether during his improvisation after the guitar solo, dissolving his line into a scream, the backing singers slowly begin to be heard way back in the mix, under him, anchoring him, gradually coming more up front in the mix, although they never come completely to the forefront in this tune, they could never be construed as taking over the vocal. The women’s voices in this song do provide some sense of community for Robinson—they afﬁrm the lyrical message—but because they are women’s voices, we must also hear them in other ways (in other words, why not just have the guys in the band sing back up, or why not other men, white or black?) We could hear the voices as maternal, as Bradby suggests these voices sometimes are, or surely in the traditional female role, there to support the man who is experimenting, taking risks out there in the world. In fact, if we listen carefully to that section after the guitar solo, it’s not only Robinson who takes off, but all the other men in the band as well; in other words, the women are the only ones who don’t improvise; they anchor all of the male band members. But attractive as this interpretation is, it’s a bit too easy because even though the women are conﬁned to repeating the same three lines of lyric over and over while Robinson carries the much wider verbal message in the verses, it can also be argued that they are the ones with a coherent verbal message while Robinson, towards the end of the song certainly, loses or relinquishes language when, presumably, he is overcome with emotion. Here then the women singers hang on to verbal skills, to technology, while Robinson gives them up. The women’s voices are also a kind of ear candy for the singer and perhaps also for certain listeners—sensual, seductive, and because they are sonically marked as black, we might also hear them playing into white male fantasies of black female sexuality, while at the same time reafﬁrming hegemonic power structures—keeping these women in their place. But are must also be there to authenticate the performance of blues-based music by white performers, and so the question becomes how? I’d like to explore this further by turning to my second example. The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter” In the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” a single backing voice is used. Merry Clayton’s strong, virtuosic voice is contrasted with Jagger’s, who’s technical abilities by contrast are quite limited. Here, the woman is not part of a group identity that is conﬁned by and subservient to a powerful male leader; her individual subjectivity is foregrounded in this song through her singularity and her greater, if still limited, musical freedom. Clayton clearly comes out of the black gospel/ r&b tradition. Her immense vocal power and virtuosity 207 are pressed into the service of a kind of catharsis that Jagger is incapable of. Difference between the two vocalists is marked so emphatically in this song that one has to wonder this: Why relinquish such vocal power to the black woman other? Why point to the lead singer’s limited vocal abilities by juxtaposing them with such a powerful, controlled voice? It might be a strategic move musically speaking, because these voices are difﬁcult to compare: choosing a black woman to contrast with the white man’s voice almost makes comparison irrelevant. Had a black male gospel voice, or, better, another, more virtuosic white bluesbased male rocker’s voice been set against Jagger’s, the temptation to make a comparison would be greater. In contrast, choosing difference guarantees that the comparison will be minimal, assuring that the lead singer retains power, control and respect as a vocalist. But there are other very good historical reasons for relegating the cathartic moments of the song or album (as in the case of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” for example) to a woman and, especially, a black woman. Let’s consider how this works in “Gimme Shelter.” Like so many other songs in which a back up singer is used, Clayton joins the lead vocalist for the chorus. But after the ﬁrst verse, she also joins Jagger for the second half of each line of subsequent verses and she is also featured in a brief solo, so her presence in this song is substantial. Clayton’s role in this song is certainly to provide the voice of cathartic emotional release: every time she sings, she belts full out and high in her range, so she fulﬁlls this stereotypical womanly role. As one commentator writing about “Gimme Shelter” has stated, Merry Clayton’s voice is there “to add a crucial layer of warmth and power,” (Appleford, p. 87) which the men’s voices apparently are incapable of providing (and which is somehow, at least by this writer, deemed important to the song). But this is an issue not only of gender, but also of race: it is common in white culture to assign the ability to emote to blacks; choosing singers that come from the musically cathartic tradition of black gospel singing reinforces this stereotype. To relinquish the most intensely emotive moment, one of daring vocal extreme and license, of catharsis, a moment that can transport the performer and the listener, to the black woman Other, speaks to what bell hooks states is the white person’s belief in that Other’s “capacity to be more alive, as holding the secret that will allow those who venture and dare to break with the cultural anhedonia–the insensitivy to pleasure, the incapacity for experiencing happiness– and experience sensual and spiritual renewal.” (hooks, p. 428) But there is also something else at work here in terms of race (as there is in the Crowes example, where a similar black vocal tradition is drawn upon), and that is whether the the black musician might be heard as an “original” voice. Does it set into relief the 208 white simulation of black musics upon which, certainly, the Stones’ career has been built? Does it serve to authenticate the efforts of the white blues musicians to appropriate these musics? What I have been calling cathartic moments in this song can also be viewed as musically transgressive, or excessive. The ﬁrst notable thing is that Clayton exceeds the range of all other instruments and Jagger’s voice (she sings an octave above him), as well as the murky, dark texture of much of the song. Her voice escapes that texture, rising above it. In terms of form, the song has a verse/chorus structure and, if we take the ﬁrst verse and chorus as a model for the articulation of this form, it would seem that the lead singer is going to sing the verses, while the woman backing vocalist joins him on the choruses. But Clayton transgresses this norm already in the second verse when she sings the second half of each line with Jagger. She also adds a descending vocal melisma at the end of each chorus which Jagger does not sing. After the guitar solo, Clayton has a gripping solo in which she sings the music of the chorus, but with new lyrics (and so she breaks out of the conﬁnes of repeating the words of the chorus): while the lyrics of this song have, up to this point, articulated some general angst about the horrors of war (it was written as the war in Vietnam was escalating), the speciﬁc, most brutal violations–rape and murder–are left to Merry to articulate alone. Her voice is more up front in the mix during this section and more reverb is thrown onto it, making it even more powerful than previously. Further, she repeats the lyrics three times, instead of the normal two times that had been established previously for the chorus. This formal “norm” is transgressed again at the end of the song, and this time Jagger joins in the transgression; but by this point the mold has already been broken. Clayton’s prominent role in this song and the ways in which she is allowed to break out of the constricted form could certainly be celebrated. As Mary Douglas has written in her book Purity and Danger, “though we seek to create order [patterns, is what she is talking about, which we could equate with musical form], we do not simply condemn disorder. We recognize that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power.” It is in moments of mental disorder, she argues, that the most powerful ideas can come forth. (Douglas, p. 94) But we also have to remember that at least since the 19th century in the West, musical transgression or excess has been associated with madness and sexual deviance, as Susan McClary has pointed out. (McClary, pp. 80-111) While this mapping of musical excess onto madwomen is pretty clear in opera–the kind of music McClary discusses–through the libretto, in a song like “Gimme Shelter” there is a lot of ambivalence. Can Clayton be considered a madwoman, breaking out of 209 the formal constraints of the song, ranting about rape and murder? Has she been assigned this role because of her gender and her race, so that this excessive emotional outpouring and the articulation of an intense cultural burden in the song is possible without sullying Jagger, keeping him at a safe distance from it? Or, can it be argued that Clayton’s powerful presence in this song, her distinctively black, female presence, offers Jagger, the imitator of black music to have an encounter with this Other that might allow him to experience sensual and spiritual renewal more intensely. I wonder whether the physical presence of the Other, as opposed to simply imitating the Other’s style, brings that experience closer, making the desired transformation that hooks speaks of possible (she writes, also, that “the desire is not to make the Other over in one’s image but to become the Other.”p. 427) The presence of the other—the originating voice-may also have the effect of pointing to the synthetic character of the white musician’s performance2. Finally, a tangential, but I think signiﬁcant aspect of this discussion. White blues based rock bands do not necessarily use backing vocalists outside of other group members—Some bands, like Led Zeppelin never did; Jon Bon Jovi uses guitarist Ritchie Sambura to sing backup. What is at stake in letting outsiders— especially black women—into the fold, or in keeping them out? Endnotes 1. I am indebted to Jacqueline Warwick’s work on girl group music for the idea of vocal labor, especially the vocal labor of women singers, as making a substantial contribution to songs, but often being overlooked in favor of crediting producers or other male musicians for the particular sound of a recording. 2. My thanks to Phil Auslander for this idea. Selected Bibliography Appleford, Steve, 1997. The Rolling Stones: It’s Only Rock `N’ Roll: The Stories Behind Every Song (London: Carleton) Bradby, Barbara, 1993. “Sampling Sexuality: Gender, Technology and the Body in Dance Music, Popular Music 12/2, pp.155-176. Douglas, Mary, 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge) hooks, bell, 2001. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (London: Blackwell), pp. 424-438. 210 Krims, Adam, 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) McClary, Susan, 1991. “Excess and Frame: The Musical Representation of Madwomen,” Feminine Endings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 80-111. Walser, Robert, 1993. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press). Warwick, Jacqueline, 2002. I Got All My Sisters With Me: Girl Culture, Girl Identity and Girl GroupMusic (University of California, Los Angeles, dissetation) IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Practice of Popular Music at a Brazilian University: Challenges and Possibilities Heloisa Feichas they learn through other kinds of methods and through different repertoire. The most common example is the popular background in which students learn informally. They come to the university to attend the music course having already experienced the playing in pop bands, which in the case of popular music practised in Brazil means playing many musical genres and styles such as rock, reggae, soul, samba, bossa nova, and other Brazilian typical styles. In order to pass the entrance exam they seek for some training, that is a kind of a ‘crush-course’ where some fundamental formal and systematic learning is acquired through basic reading and writing skills. Introduction: the context T he Music School of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) offers two paths for students pursuing a music career: on one hand there are bachelor courses in Composition, Conducting and Performance, and on the other hand there is the Licenciatura, which is addressed to students interested in becoming music teachers. The Music School is divided in two departments: performance and theory. All instrumental courses belong to the Performance Department, whereas courses related to Music Education and Musicology as well as foundation courses such as Harmony, Counterpoint, Aural Training, Analysis and other theoretical subjects come under the Theory Department. Recently the curriculum of Music School of UFMG changed. The main change is that students have more choices through optional courses building up their programme according to their needs that are related Regarding the students’ proﬁle, there are students that have been trained traditionally, that is, where the focus is solely in classical music. There are also students with diverse background such as brass bands, rock and pop bands, different kinds of Protestant churches where they learn Gospel music and many sorts of choirs, which practise popular music. In that case, to their eventual careers. However, this depends on the availability of the lecturers, who are not always in position to offer topics that will meet everybody’s needs, resulting in not covering a broad range of subjects. These changes in the curriculum reﬂect a tendency of being more connected with real life and to open up to the demands of today’s musical world. As a 212 matter of fact, changes in a curriculum imply changing paradigms; these are much more complex since they involve different points of view and conceptions about music and teaching methods. Views about music at EMUFMG learning have been arising in that context. There are lecturers, which advocate an opening for other styles in the curriculum since they believe that music has different functions and this should be considered in the context of the Music School. Moreover the acceptance of students with informal background obviously inﬂuence the environment and probably lead some teachers to question the system since these students learn music through other means and value other types of music. In this particular case in the Music School of UFMG the predominant view is supported by the ideals of the Western classical music world. We can say that the paradigm of learning within this system is based on notated music, which simply means to read and to write in a particular form assuming a sound level of theoretical background knowledge. Teaching methods are based on the models of European conservatory tradition. Commenting the existence of students with popular music background mixed with classically trained, Kuzmich (1991) points out that generally those students who had learned informally, playing by ear and often copying recordings, playing in bands and even performing In addition, in this general view related to a Eurocentric notion of music, there is the idea that classical music is something sacred and that the role of the teacher is to transmit to the students all knowledge possible from this sacred world. Even with changes that have may occurred over the last years, the general view that permeates the mentality of people at the university has been the notion in which there is a hierarchy of styles where classical is considered ‘better’ and superior to others. This view can be detected through the syllabus of all courses and even in the programme requested for the entrance exams to all the students. Nonetheless, other prospects of music and ways of professionally have many things to contribute to the formal world: ‘obviously, we need these self-motivated, fresh musicians in our programs more than they need us.’ He believes that those students are ‘more naturally attracted to comprehensive musicianship approaches because they are not used to reading music’, but they are used to compose their own music soon after beginning some instruction (Kuzmich, 1991). Consequently there are many challenges in dealing with the scenery of students with different backgrounds and the inclusion of popular music. Let us examine some aspects of this reality. 213 The inclusion of popular music: Challenges and Possibilities have tried to incorporate popular music in the lectures, though this process is still in an early stage. One example is the course “History and Music” in which there have For several decades students were practically forbidden to play popular music at Music School of UFMG. This attitude was also common in other Brazilian institutions with the same approach where some teachers would argue that students who listened to popular music were corrupting themselves besides the fact of taking time away from listening to the works of a great composer. Another objection regarding the above was related to technique. Teachers believed that playing popular music could interfere with students’ technique. frequently been lectures about genres and styles of popular music. However, this depends on the lecturer each time and it is not totally structured yet. Other courses offered recently as optional are “Arrangement” and “Improvisation”. Both courses are possible because of the coming of a few newly appointed lecturers with experience and skills in popular music. The “Harmony” course is approached with a different methodology. For many years the focus has been the study of harmonization of four voices in the choir style. In Nowadays the scenery at Music School of UFMG is gradually changing. Over the last ﬁve years there has been an attempt to have popular music included in the music school, which has been an initiative of certain teachers. Their idea is not to separate the courses in classical and popular, but rather to combine in the curriculum as options for the students. Following the American model, one of the ﬁrst projects was the creation of Jazz Big-Bands (Nettl, 1995: 109). In addition, other ensembles have been created such as Wind Groups, Saxophone Quartets, Percussion Groups and others. this sense students were expected to learn many rules in order to work the voices. With the new curriculum all students take one year of “Functional Harmony”, which is more practical in its methodology, working with analysis and listening in an active and attentive way. As a lecturer I have been teaching “Functional Harmony” and “Aural training” trying to include repertoire and practices from popular music such as playing by ear, improvising and creating arrangements. Consequently the students have the opportunity to broaden their musical experience through making and listening to music in groups in a process of exchanging their ideas. Besides the creation of large ensembles some teachers In this case music making involves the development of 214 a diversity of musical skills, improvisation, composition and arranging, as well as an acquaintance with music technologies – all of which are fundamental components of musicianship necessary for professional life. derived from experience’ rather than ‘the teacher as the source of information’, a fact that represents new values and views for music educators (Dunbar-Hall and Wemyss, 2000). The repertoire and activities as well as ‘the use of skeletal notation of pieces of popular music require different ways of studying and thinking about music’ (Dunbar-Hall and Wemyss, 2000: 25). Also there is a requirement for several ‘new’ musical skills. In interpreting a lead sheet, for instance, a player has ‘to convert chord symbols into viable parts for a range of instruments by showing abilities with voicings, voice leading, chord types, inversions, and the musical thinking behind bass lines and inner parts’. Besides musical skills it is necessary to develop ‘ensemble skills, which involves levels of improvisation, from group collaboration to the production of foregrounded solo breaks’ and ‘skills of transcription’ that will enable the students to ‘solve problems of aural analysis and of investigating the links between music as heard object and music as visual symbol’ (Dunbar-Hall and Wemyss, 2000: 25). When working with popular music repertoire and practices, it is important to avoid ‘judging’ popular music using classical music ‘standards’ or ‘criteria’. Such comparisons should be avoided as the two styles are different. Another aspect to be avoided is the study of popular music as a route to learn other kinds of music. It should be practised for its own sake to guarantee its integrity and authenticity (Cutietta, 1991; Bjornberg, 1993). Therefore it is necessary to develop new teaching methods to be able to work with popular music. It is fundamental for music educators to remember that ‘alongside formal music education informal methods of acquiring musical skills and knowledge have always ﬂourished, leading to the production of most of the world’s popular, traditional, classical and jazz musics throughout history’ (Green, 2002: 29). Green’s recommendation for music teachers is ‘to make a serious Another important aspect to be taken into consideration, which can be a big challenge for lecturers is the fact that in dealing with popular music the students have the tendency to be the ‘manufacturers of knowledge assessment of the very different learning practices by which these “other” musics have been passed down, and to consider what light such practices might shed upon our own’ (Green, 2002: 29). 215 This should be discussed with the purpose of integrating activities concerning reproduction and creativity, notation and the development of the ear and reconciling other dichotomies in the worlds of popular and classical music (Bjornberg, 1993). Teaching methods and strategies have to develop as much as the diversity of musics we have access today and which are part of students’ life (Green, 2002: 29). The other side: conflicts classical music. As the tendency is to teach a very narrow slice of the musics heard and practiced in our multicultural societies, and to focus on the classical music, this leads to a disconnection from the real world. The problem with the gap between what is learned inside the music school and what life demands from students outside the school environment is that students do not know how to connect the formal knowledge learned in the school with their professional life. The worst consequence is related to the fact that most students The inclusion of popular music has occurred with some scepticism, conﬂicts and prejudices in the Music School of UFMG community. For some lecturers, activities involving popular music are regarded as extra and not so relevant to the kind of knowledge students should acquire in the university. Also students with popular music background bring to school a sort of knowledge that is intuitive and practical in a different way and not very systematic. This is considered inferior. Consequently this kind of learning looks ‘overwhelmingly easy, undisciplined and “low level”’ (Finnegan, 1989: 138). However, some lecturers do not have a clear idea about the complexities that are involved in such a process, which is far from being something simple. tend to teach music after ﬁnishing their degree, so they probably will pass onward the kind of knowledge received perpetuating the established model. How can these musicians work with children from slums at Rio de Janeiro, for instance, if these children have been playing and listening to “samba” since they were born, and their teachers learned about Bach, Beethoven, and how to read a score well? Another problem is that an existent valid conception of music is the one, which treats all music as an aesthetic object of contemplation according to eighteenth century standards of taste (Elliott, 1989: 14). In this sense other music functions are not valued. This is another point, which will favour the detachment from real life. The fact is that the majority of Brazilian lecturers were educated through the values and beliefs of Western Usually students from the popular music world seek to study at university to enrich their musical experiences. 216 Many students look for courses in composition where they will have the opportunity to learn counterpoint, orchestration and develop in other similar areas, which will help them towards making arrangements for example. Or they may look for instrumental teaching to improve their technique. Then they need musical literacy once they look at the possibilities to later engage in a work market that demands certain skills. In this case ‘musical literacy is important’, as for instance, composing for television and ﬁlm, which needs compositional skills’ (Mason, 2002: 27). Apparently, these may ﬁrst appear as opposed forms of training, but both can co-exist. Some musicians learn with apparent success in both modes (Finnegan, 1989). Conclusion Due to the great diversity concerning backgrounds among students there is a need to combine these worlds. From my experience teaching in higher education it seems that students want this integration: many musicians with a background in popular music look for courses at conservatoires and universities; some classical musicians look for the development of some skills and abilities from the popular world. Both sides should beneﬁt from this exchange and there is a need for teachers prepared to cross over different musical styles with interest in both the classical and the popular (Green, 2001: 40). In some cases however, some conﬂicts can occur for these involved in both kinds of learning simultaneously. One possible conﬂict with classical training, for instance, would be playing by ear (Lilliestam, 1995: 207). It is common to ﬁnd students with an extreme facility in playing by ear but when involved in harmony or aural training classes they face difﬁculties. What could be the reasons for that gap between their informal practice and what is required to do inside the class? What happens in their aural development when it is hard to do some aural exercises in a class but at the same time is so easy to copy a song exactly the way they hear it on a CD? These are conﬂicts that need to be examined and discussed. Living in today’s 21st century complex society with considerable styles of music and consequently several musical functions, it is fundamental to think about a variety of musical paths, which should be developed in music departments at universities. 217 Education, 19, 2002: 5-30. Selected Bibliography Bjornberg, Alf. “Teach you to Rock? Popular Music in the University Music Department”. Popular Music, 12, 1993: 69-77. Kuzmich, John. “Popular Music in your program”. Music Teacher, Special Focus Pop Music and Music Education, 1991: 50- 52. Cutietta, Robert A. “Popular Music An Ongoing Lilliestam, Lars. “On playing by ear”. Popular Music, 15, 1995: 195-216. Challenge”. Music Teacher, Special Focus Pop Music and Music Education, 1991: 26-29. Mason, Robert. “Hello, pop pickers”. Music Teacher, 2002: 26-27. Dunbar-Hall, Peter and Wemyss, Kathryn L. “The effects of the study of popular music on music education”. International Journal of Music Education, 36, 2000: 2334. Nettl, Bruno. Heartland Excursions. Ethnomusicological reﬂections on schools of music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Elliott, David J. “Key Concepts in Multicultural Music Education”. International Journal of Music Education, 13, 1989: 11-18. Finnegan, Ruth. The Hidden Musicians. Cambridge: University Press, 1989. Green, Lucy. How Popular Musicians Learn. London: Ashgate, 2001. -------------------. “From the Western classics to the world: secondary music teachers changing attitudes in England”, 1982 and 1998’. British Journal of Music IASPM03 - MONTREAL Deep and/or soulful?: The Politics of House Music in New York City Kai Fikentscher as television, radio and print) and a concommitant reluctance on the part of major recording companies to invest in and market house music on a scale comparable to, for example, alternative rock, hip hop, r&b, even Latin music. As a result, house music is not only characterized by a speciﬁc performance context most generally associated with the concept of club culture, with the DJ, his equipment, and his musical selections at the center, I but also with DiY modes of production, promotion, and distribution. This has put the house music producer in a rather unique situation: Most American house producers are also house DJs, and many house DJs are also house producers. Many hold part-time or full-time jobs in the dance music industry, working for independent labels, or in distribution, sales, or promotion. This circumstance enhances their position as gatekeepers in a highly competitive ﬁeld where the shelf life of a record is usually short, whereas sales ﬁgures have rarely broken the 5-digit barrier in recent years. n many contexts of popular music as practice, there tends to be a rather clear division of labor, such as between musicians, producers, sound engineers, promoters, and retail personnel. Many of these contexts are also strongly associated with, even structured around, the idea of the “star,” i.e. the recognizable and therefore easily marketable face that may be prominently displayed on the CD cover or in the video clip. In the US, few, if any, of these apply in the context of house music. Its 20-year history has been marked by a relatively consistent lack of involvement of the popular culture media (especially mass media such This essay examines the current stakes in house music production, using the case of house music in New York City to exemplify the dynamics that continue 219 to shape its identity as a marginal, underground form of contemporary popular music. The data come from participant observation-type research in the city spanning more than a decade. I rely especially on interviews with some of the currently active crop of house music producers who negotiate shared and conﬂicting interests as DJs, musicians, promoters, retailers, and independent record company owners. 1. Historical context DJ-driven music ﬁelds, such as hip hop, drum & bass, techno or house. Notice how, for example in hip hop, the DJ has been gradually pushed to the background, to the beneﬁt of the MC, the current “star” of the genre. Overall, few North American DJs have been given artist status in the music industry, even outside the context of dance music, when the turntable is used as a veritable musical instrument. For example, in the ﬁeld of turntablism, DJ Spooky, DJ Shadow, or DJ collectives such as the Invisible Scratch Pickles or the Since the days of 1970s’ disco, and more emphatically since the days of early hip hop and house music (both types of dance music directly related to disco), DJ culture has evolved around its central protagonist, in the process establishing the DJ as a new type of musical artist, a new cultural hero. Originally associated only with radio or the mobile sound system, DJs now work in primarily three settings: as turntablists (where dancing is often absent, as integral part of an ensemble (performing hip-hop, heavy metal, or jazz, with or without dancing), and as club or mix DJs (where dancing is not only indispensable, but the main point). The focus here is on one type of mix DJ, the club DJ spinning primarily house music. X-ecutioners are exceptions rather than the rule. Based on the earliest instances of the use of the term house as a reference to a type of North American urban dance music, house music is about to celebrate its 20th birthday. Yet many North Americans have never heard house music or have only a vague notion of what it might be. In a sense, house music continues to be a contender for the title as America’s most unpopular popular music. Quite a few house records address this issue directly, often through spoken lyrics. Rather than a genre or style, house is often described as “a feeling” or “a spiritual thing.” Many house records feature reﬂective During the past decade of North American DJ culture, its economics have not kept pace with the associated levels of musicianship, as demonstrated in various titles such “What is house” or “My deﬁnition of house,” or refer to each other, as shown in the following excerpts on records by Eddie Amador, Ron Carroll, and Blaze, 220 respectively. Example 1 (Eddie Amador): York was considered by some the most important of the three. House hits were produced here, they were broken here, and they often sold in the 5-digit range. On many 12-inch singles, mixes (as crafted by DJs turned producers) were named after New York (or Chicago or London), or after famed dance venues in these cities, such as Paradise Garage, Sound Factory, Shelter, Twilo (all New York). Mixes named in this fashion no longer exist, at least in New York: With the exception of Club Shelter, New York lost all of its large size dance halls “Not everyone understands house music . . . it’s a spiritual thing, a soulful thing, a body thing.” Example 2 (Ron Carroll): “Listen, children! I’m gonna tell you about this thing called house music. Like my boy Eddie told you, it’s a spiritual thing! Yes, it is!” Example 3 (Blaze): “I remember house when it was a spiritual thing. It was a spiritual thing. Do you remember house?” during two consecutive mayoral administrations led by Republican Rudy Guiliani whose campaign to combat so-called “quality of life” crimes included shutting down dance clubs located in former industrial zones that had been redeﬁned as residential. The “quality-of-life” campaign also included the reinforcement of a 1926 cabaret license law outlawing dancing in establishments that legally sell alcoholic beverages while hiring DJs to play dance music. This was aimed at lounges and bars that had become the focal points for house music after the superclubs disappeared. This is where a now higher number of DJs compete for shorter time slots and a divided patronage that may or may not be primarily Worth pointing out, because indicative of recent changes within the house scene is the use of the past tense in example 3, contrasting with the present tense used in examples 1 and 2. I will return to the idea that house is something that may be looked at with a sense of nostalgia , echoed on other recent house production as well, in my conclusion. 2. House music in New York Roughly a decade ago, New York was considered one of the three main locations for house music, alongside Chicago, its birthplace, and London, the location of its initial popularization in Europe. Because of its longterm status as a center for the national music industry, New interested in dancing. One result of this contraction of the locally embattled house scene has been a shift in programming. Whereas a decade ago, house DJs could cover a wider spectrum 221 of musical styles (incl. techno, disco, funk and DOR = dance-oriented rock, shorter DJ sets for smaller crowds have resulted in narrower programming strategies. In New York, club DJ work now has become noticeably more streamlined, in contrast with the eclecticism practiced 10, 15, or 20 years ago. As more DJs service more speciﬁc niche audiences, their repertoire has become subject to increasingly narrow labeling. 3. Deep House and Soulful House is often very similar to, indeed a secular version of, gospel house, a variant of contemporary gospel music. In soulful house, vocals are considered sine-quanon, alongside traditional elements of songwriting: Diatonic melodies, verse/refrain form, and, in contrast to deep house, a stronger presence of acoustic versus electronic instruments that are arranged and recorded in a more traditional manner. Fliers for events featuring soulful and or deep house often blur these distinctions, however. House compilations (mostly issued by Two of these labels (not recording companies!) are soulful house and deep house. Even though, or because these two are at times combined into “deep soulful house”, they are not synonymous (ﬁgs. 1 and 2). Deep House, the older designation, was coined in Chicago in the late 1980s, in part to distinguish it from the at the time more trendy acid house that was gaining much popularity in the UK at the time. In deep house, the presence of verse/refrain song form and of vocals is optional, whereas the focus is on sonorities that enhance the mood of the music, ranging from spacey to dubby to jazzy. Soulful house, on the other hand, is a 1990s’ term, highlighting the African American roots of house music and its plight at home after the considerable commercialization and commercial success of house in Europe. Essential to soulful house is the association with the intensity and spirituality of the African American church. Therefore, soulful house 222 independent labels) also reﬂect and obscure these differences. Whereas Nervous Records, a New Yorkbased indie, issued a Deep House compilation in the mid-1990s, its 2002/03 two-part compilation of recent house music is entitled “Nervous Records presents The Soulful House Experience” (Part 2 is a mix CD of gospel house tracks entitled “Gospel House Edition. “ Track 9 on the ﬁrst CD ) (ﬁg. 3). features a house cover of the Steely Dan song “Caves of Altamira,” Its vocalist, Eman (Eric Clark) is also known as a party promoter and DJ from Brooklyn. His party “Bang The Party” will celebrate its sixth anniversary with the 2003 release of “Bang The Party Vol. 1”, a mix-CD of Clark’s programming of deep house (ﬁg. 4) that is available also as an unmixed compilation (in vinyl format only). The fact that that three songs on “Bang The Party Vol. 1” feature Eman as vocalist bespeak his ability to circumvent the potential conﬂict that arise when a DJ promotes himself as a producer or label owner as well as a DJ. While as a vocalist, Eman has been able to parlay himself into the British top 40 (on Jon Cutler’s 1999 “It’s Yours”), in New York he is a still a hometown hero, with the kind of loyal following every house DJ aspires to. He assesses the house scene in New York as critical: “During eight years of Giuliani, I have seen New York go from social capital of the world to some kind of police state. . . The New York DJ scene now is not evolving. DJs no longer have a signature sound, an identity that sets each apart from the other. Deejaying is now like ﬁshing. Certain records are like bait. You have to have bait, or nobody will bite. So you have to play records like Shaun Escoffrey’s ‘Space Rider’,” a 223 soulful house record released in 2002. With other local house DJs, Eman shares the a sense at the local level. It remains to be seen to what degree strategies such the ones discussed here will pay off, in the sense that the cultural bankruptcy of 1970s’ disco won’t be repeated in the ﬁrst decade of the new millennium with the death of 12-inch vinyl and perhaps, the disappearance of house music altogether. that house music’s golden days are past, that house music in New York has as many, if not more reasons to look back as to look forward. As shown in ﬁgs. 1 and 2, advertisements for house parties often pair house with classics, a gesture toward an older target group, and so far there is little evidence that efforts of reaching a younger prospective house audience are successful. As described above, the orthodoxy of deep house and soulful house may be seen as a response to a general crisis in the house music scene, at least 224 Experience. “ Nervous Records, 2002. Selected Bibliography Fikentscher, Kai. “’You Better Work!’ Underground Dance Music in New York City.” Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Harry Romero feat. Robert Owens. “I Go Back.” Subliminal Records, 2003. “The Soulful House Experience 2: Gospel House Edition. “ Nervous Records, 2003. Selected Discography Eddie Amador. “House Music.” Yoshitoshi Records, 1997. Blaze. “Do You Remember House?” Slip & Slide Records, 2002. Ron Carroll (presents the RC Groove Project). “The Sermon.” Subliminal Records, 2000. Jon Cutler feat. E-man. “It’s Yours. “ Chez Records, 2001. “Deep House Breakdown. “ Nervous Records, 1994. Shaun Escoffrey. “Space Rider. “ Oyster Music, 2002. Cevin Fisher. “The Way We Used To.” Razor & Tie/Maxi Records, 2000. “Nervous Records presents The Soulful House IASPM03 - MONTREAL Genre Subversions in “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” by Jane Siberry France Fledderus B efore I begin, I feel that I should clarify that this paper is not so much about queering ideas of Indeed, Siberry did turn to the country idiom for the ﬁrst time on Bound by the Beauty, using an approach that set a precedent for her subsequent engagement with such genres as funk, cool jazz, and folk revival in the 1990s. Typically, Siberry evokes such genres by conforming to certain musical expectations, but then subverting other parameters, to comment upon the genre. The way in which Siberry alters musical parameters in “everthing reminds me of my dog” is also similar to k.d. lang’s approach to country; namely, cliché country signiﬁers are borrowed only to create an exteriorized version of country (4). Because Siberry’s approach to country clearly does not embrace the “rustic” or “hard core” elements of the style, as does the genre of honky-tonk for example, her approach can be thought of as what Richard Peterson calls “soft shell” or “poplike” country (Peterson 138). The country tradition gender or sexuality, as it is about bending the meanings associated with genre. Furthermore, while “everything reminds me of my dog,” the Siberry song that I will be addressing, can be conceived of as country-pop, I personally am not an expert in country music (1). Siberry also approaches country music as an outsider. Indeed she was born in Toronto in 1955 and until the 1989 release of Bound by the Beauty, the album from which that track is taken, Siberry had been known for writing songs only in the electro-pop genre (2). For example, she had a minor hit in Canada with “mimi on the beach” from her 1984 album No Borders Here (3). Siberry commented about her ﬁnal 1987 electro-pop album: After The Walking I felt I had made a deﬁnitive Jane Siberry record and anything going at all in that direction felt hard and repetitive. So I thought the next best record would be a cover of Johnny Cash tunes. So, I didn’t do that, but to me it was the perfect counterpoint after that record. And I think that that set the tone in me for the next record (Siberry 2001). has a long history of songs whose rural elements are watered down in order to cross over to the pop charts. Siberry’s country songs can therefore be considered in the “countrypolitan” (Carlin 101 - 102) or “countrypop” (White 164) genre. It is Siberry’s critique of the country idiom as a whole, however, that sets the tone of the song to be discussed. The song takes on the country tradition per se more than it provides a simple 226 generic vehicle for the narrative of the lyrics. So let us brieﬂy review some salient characteristics of the country idiom. country genres are kept quite simple. For example, the phrase lengths of country songs are divided into even four-bar phrases. The metre is usually in 4/4, with an emphasis on beats one and three. The rhythms are even Rural or “hard core” country genres are characterized by unblended harmonies and a nasal vocal timbre that is not formally trained. Rather, this timbre exhibits a southern or south-western accent and often uses glottal attacks and even yodels (5). The lyrics of hardcore country are frequently sung in the ﬁrst person, as if relating personal experiences, and use rural vocabulary and southern colloquial expressions. Although there is an inﬁnite variety of song texts—many dealing with social issues—country lyrics most often focus on relationships, candidly expressing “love’s joys and laments” (Peterson 231). The texts either uphold small-town morality or discuss the experiences of the lonesome wanderer, who is often a hard-drinking womanizer, a man either lionized or chastised by the narrator (depending upon the narrator’s gender) (6). Although the lyrical topics of home and wandering represent antagonistic worldviews, the country music industry has managed to envelop such dichotomies over its long history, particularly through the ﬁgure of Hank Williams, who convincingly personiﬁed the moral dualism of love and leaving, cheating and remorse, drinking and sobriety (Peterson 177). The musical parameters in contemporary “hardcore” as well, with little of the syncopation that characterizes most other styles of popular music. These “hardcore” lyrical and musical parameters are also found in country-pop. The instrumentation of “hardcore” country, however, is unique. In addition to the use of drum kit, electric bass, and electric guitar that are conventional to most popular music, contemporary “hardcore” country also employs such traditional country instruments as the dobro or pedal steel guitar, banjo, ﬁddle, acoustic guitar, or honky-tonk piano. I bring up these hardcore instruments because they are associated exclusively with country music in popular culture (7). As such, their presence in a song is usually a clear marker of the country idiom. In the live staging practice of “hardcore” country, wearing attire associated with Western movies (like Stetson hats, boots, bandannas, fringes, and the like) is also a clear signiﬁer of the idiom. Such “hardcore” signiﬁers are often avoided in the genre of country-pop in order to de-emphasize the rural features of the idiom. Creating a watereddown version of country is remarkably simple because the traditional instruments, western clothes, and rural mannerisms associated with “hardcore” country music 227 are all things that can be “put on” and taken off at will. In addition, by partaking of hardcore country musical and visual cues, a non-country performer can align him or herself with the idiom. Nowhere is this more evident than in the career of Canadian singer-songwriter, k. d. lang. Lang began her musical career in performance art, but when she got bored with that medium she transformed herself into a country singer. Nearly everyone who knew lang was surprised by, not only her move to engage the conservative style of country music, but also the manner in which she did so (Whiteley 154). Lang’s use of country signiﬁers was quite stylized, as if to highlight their “put on” nature. Sheila Whiteley points out: by frequently changing her stage persona. Despite the critique of country inherent in her image and performance style, however, lang became increasingly successful in that idiom. She recorded collaborations with such country legends as Roy Orbison, Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, and Brenda Lee; and in 1990 she won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Female. In many ways, lang’s approach to country was similar to that of contemporary Randy Travis, who according to Richard Carlin “is among the most successful of the new-country performers because his music at once pays homage to the country past while it often seems to be gently poking fun at its conventions” (460). After six years of touring, however, lang abruptly left country music, releasing Ingénue, an album of jazz ballads. Her sawn-off cowboy boots, her lensless, wing-shaped glasses, blouses with rhinestone buttons, and torn stockings suggest . . . that she was “making herself up”....At the same time, her performances suggest irony and camp and as such, lang’s excess of style can be interpreted as a humorous critique of country gender stereotyping (Whiteley 154). Lang highlighted the fact that her performances of country songs were an act rather than an “authentic” expression of small-town values. She distanced herself from traditional “hardcore” expressions of country Lang’s choice to discard country signiﬁers as quickly as she had taken them up indicates that, unlike Travis, she never actually embraced country as a whole but rather merely an exteriorized version of it. Her tonguein-cheek approach can be heard as pastiche (8). As Whiteley points out, “Lang’s ‘stylizing’ of country . . . focuses attention on both its formal and formulaic features, and her subversion of both the staged and vocal idiom” (153). Jane Siberry’s negotiation of the country idiom is similar to k. d. lang’s, in that she borrows only certain elements to allude to country music. While Siberry does not try to challenge gender stereotypes in the aggressive 228 manner in which lang did, the fact that Siberry uses the most cliché signiﬁers associated with the idiom (such as the pedal steel guitar, an unsyncopated bass line, and a southern accent in the vocal) suggests that she too is engaging them in a winking manner. As with lang’s songs, Siberry’s songs poke fun of the country tradition itself. In her song “everything reminds me of my dog,” Siberry creates a playful tone by borrowing country music signiﬁers in order to create a pastiche of the idiom. Because her intention is to create a humorous effect rather than evoke “hardcore” country “authenticity,” Siberry subverts the expectations of the country idiom (Peterson 209). Accordingly, “everything reminds me of my dog” has fewer elements that suggest country, than those which challenge the idiom. Nonetheless, because the country-pop genre is convincingly evoked in this song, the subverted expectations remain surprising. While Siberry’s image, instrumentation, and melodic ﬁguration all strongly suggest country conventions, these congruencies are offset by six parameters that are not characteristic of the idiom, namely, timbre, metre, phrase length, rhythm, lyrics, and form (9). For the sake of time, we will brieﬂy discuss only timbre, phrase length, metre, and the lyrics. Firstly, the vocal timbre of “everything reminds me of my dog” contradicts country expectations. For the most part, such “hardcore” country signiﬁers as a glottal attack, nasal tone colour, and yodel are avoided as would be expected in country-pop. Indeed, Siberry sounds as she always does, with one notable exception: a southern accent is heard in each statement of the B section, where male vocalists Don Freed, John Switzer, and Ken Myhr join her in the conventional country practice (Peterson 225). In each statement of this section the group sings “git along little doggie” rather than “get along” (see Figure 1). The use of an American southern dialect by Canadians is a clear indicator that the accent is “put on.” The fact that the dialect is added in only one section of the song calls attention to the artiﬁce, and emphasizes that the tradition is borrowed as pastiche. This intermittent adherence to the country convention amounts to a sly wink at the audience. Having knowledge of a tradition but then choosing to take or leave it is a point of contention with “hardcore” country fans, as lang discovered. Indeed, in “hardcore” country, it is not unprecedented for performers to put on southern accents as an indicator of “authenticity,” but they use such an accent consistently, regardless of whether they are from the South or not (10). Such artiﬁce makes the country music industry ripe for ridicule by musicians and critics working in other musical styles—particularly that of rock, which could be considered Siberry’s stylistic and aesthetic home base (Middleton 263) (11). To rock musicians, country music embraces simple 229 musical parameters in an attempt to reﬂect an idealized rural past. Country “authenticity” is very much concerned with bringing a ﬁctitiously reconstructed past into the present. Throughout its history, beginning with the image of the old-timer and through the incorporation of hillbilly and western cowboy markers, the country music industry has always utilized rural signiﬁers (associated with the past) in the present as if to make the argument that rural values have a place in today’s urban society (Peterson 6 - 7) (12). Siberry’s play with country signiﬁers in “everything reminds me of my dog” highlights this long-standing country music practice. It points out that country markers can be “put on” and “taken off” without necessarily buying into the small-town values that they evoke. In the song, the narrator transgresses the country code of hiding the contrived construction of rural signiﬁers (13). Instead, Siberry emphasizes the constructed nature of country signiﬁers by repeating the “mistake” of forgetting to use the phony rural accent in every section except for the repetitions of section B. ﬁve-bar unit of section D. Measures 58 - 60 form an irregular three-bar unit that does not even get worked out later on since the D material never returns (14). An additional exception to the square phrasing of country is found in the exactly repeated statements of the B section. Added to this normative four-bar phrase is a one bar tag in m. 21 and its repeat in m. 38, which is caused by an unconventional shift in metre. This irregular phrase length is softened somewhat by the two-bar ending added to the ﬁnal statement, in section B’ at m. 56 – 57. Rather than the usual conﬁguration of 2 + 2 + 1 measures, the B’ section consists of a more normative 2 + 2 + 1 + 2 phrase length, in which the onebar oddity is glossed over in the middle, rather than pointedly placed at the end of the phrase. The metre in “everything reminds me of my dog” is a consonant 4/4 throughout, except for the three instances when it becomes 1/4 for a measure in section B. The surprising effect of the metric hiccup in mm. 21, 38 and 55 is clearly intentional, for there is no need for this disruption to exist. The phrase from mm. 17 - 21, for example, could easily have concluded at the end of Secondly, the phrase lengths and metre of “everything reminds me of my dog” largely correspond to country expectations but do exhibit some signiﬁcant exceptions. For example, in Figure 2 you can see that most of the phrases in this song can be divided into two 2-bar units, that is, four measures of 4/4, except for the m. 20. In fact, it makes more sense lyrically. The 1/4 measure of “git a” ends as a sentence fragment. If this “git a” fragment were ﬁnished off with the word “long,” the E7 chord could resolve to the expected tonic of A major. Closure here is intentionally avoided, however, to subvert both metric and harmonic expectations until 230 m. 56 at the end of the B’ section, and even here, the resolution is to an A minor chord (that is, vi of C), rather than the tonic major. Nevertheless, this disruption of metrical regularity exempliﬁes Siberry’s desire to comment on the country idiom. On the one hand, it draws attention to the incessant regularity in the phrase length and metre of conventional country music, showing how monotonous it can sound. On the other hand, the metric dissonance may also be poking fun at country performers (such as Hank Williams) whose personal lives hardly exemplify the “family values” the country tradition holds so dear. In particular, the hiccup in the 1/4 bar evokes the stereotype of the fallen country singer who regularly comes to his gigs drunk (Peterson 179). Finally, the lyrics of “everything reminds me of my dog” may at ﬁrst glance appear consonant with country in that they talk about the narrator’s dog, a topic almost exclusively associated with that idiom in popular culture, at least since the traditional cowboy song “Git Along, Little Dogies” became a Tin Pan Alley hit for Billy Hill in the 1930s. Historically, however, the southwestern tradition of the lonely cattle rustler singing about a “little doggie” refers not to a canine accompanying the cowboy, but rather to “a little orphan calf . . . [that] often had to be carried across a saddle-pommel by their cowboy foster-fathers” (Lomax 357). In its literal discussion of a dog, therefore, this song does not accurately represent the country genre of the cowboy song (15). Furthermore, “everything reminds me of my dog” is neither a country ballad lamenting lost love, nor an homage to family life. In this respect, the lyrics are dissonant with the country tradition. With its catalog of things that remind the narrator of her dog, the song lacks a linear narrative, even though it is written as expected, in the ﬁrst person. The song instead offers a string of non-rhyming images, not unlike a Tin Pan Alley list song (for example, Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love” from 1928 or the more recently popularized “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” from REM’s platinum-selling album Document (1987) (16). List songs do not purport to be ﬁlled with deep meaning. And accordingly, the lyrics of “everything reminds me of my dog” are light and humorous (see Figure 1). The narrator uses the literary technique of personiﬁcation, creating amusing images of her dog as being human. Her dog can smile “at strangers,” “laugh,” use a phone and, by extension, talk. (The narrator asks, “do you want me to dial the number for you?” implying that her dog can answer). In addition to transferring human qualities onto her dog, the narrator also assigns canine qualities to people. The narrator wants to pat Einstein’s “ﬂuffy head.” She likens the way people dress to dogs “pissing on their favourite tree,” “golfers teeing off” to the 231 way her dog sits by her and “shifts on his paws,” and “the blank expression of a little boy with thick glasses who picks himself up from the sidewalk and stands there blinking in the sun” to the look on the face of her dog. Finally, the lyrics indulge in comic hyperbole; for example, that absolutely “everything” in the world could remind someone of their dog or that the narrator calls her obviously friendly dog “ferocious.” This latter example does not constitute a change in narrative voice from the feminist critique of how it takes “guys in bars . . . so long to choose the perfect table,” as if one identical table is inherently better than another. Rather, this scene forms a ﬂashback to a childhood memory. That section D here is the most linear and narrative section in the song, as well as the only section seven measures in length sets it apart from the others, similar to the way in which a memory is experienced linearly, unlike the multi-tasking of thoughts experienced in the present. Since the dulcimer, an instrument used in early country, is found only during this section of the song, credence is given to the argument that this section represents a temporal ﬂashback. As the dulcimer is symbolic of an older form of country music, so too is the linear narrative of section D symbolic of a past memory of the narrator (17). The fact that the dulcimer is heard in open ﬁfths with the vocal also evokes the shape-note musical tradition that is reminiscent of the past. In the context of the lyrics, this musical allusion to old-time country resonates with a past memory. To illustrate the humour created by the concept of bringing of an idealized past into the present, the narrator again gets “caught in the act”—this time of reconstructing a false past. The brief memory episode offered by the narrator not only recalls a humorous incident from childhood but also exaggerates the scene. Even while the child-narrator pretends that her dog is ﬁerce, she is forced to face the fact that the opposite is true. In the memory itself, the neighbours point out that her doggie is “goot” rather than “ferocious.” Siberry’s negotiation of country-pop thus suggests a critical view of the country idiom, implying that it is misguided for country musicians to pretend to idealize a rural past when knowing full well that it never was idyllic. Siberry parodies this country tradition through a mocking tone (18). At the same time, however, it is clear that Siberry enjoys subverting country signiﬁers as much as lang did. Her foregrounding of its “dress up” nature seems to suggest that the putting on of values that are not your own is alright, provided that you are not actually trying to fool anyone into believing that they were yours in the ﬁrst place. As long as the put-on is quite obvious, the audience will get the joke. For Siberry, then, the negotiation of country is a kind of masquerade. Like a child dressing in adult clothes, so Siberry puts on a style that is not her own. As such, Siberry’s use of country signiﬁers does not pay homage to the idiom, in 232 the manner of Randy Travis. Rather she utilizes the signiﬁers to critique the country idiom musically. Such an irreverent treatment of “hardcore” country signiﬁers not only has precedence in lang’s approach to the idiom but also seems to line up with a traditional rock view of country music as “sentimental” and “self-pitying,” an object worthy of criticism (Middleton 263). Rather than overt ridicule, however, Siberry takes a light-hearted approach to critiquing country music. Her overall tone is one of play, rather than derision. 233 Figure 1 Lyrics of “everything reminds me of my dog” from Bound by the Beauty Form Section Lyrics I Introduction A Verse 1 everything reminds me of my dog the guy in the store telephones...yoohoo taxicabs B Chorus if you remind me of my dog we’ll probably git along little doggie git along git along little doggie git a... A Verse 2 smiling at strangers (better let them know you’re friendly) the way people dress reminds me too, pissing on their favourite tree sad things cockroaches and other insects remind me too, don’t hit them A’ Verse 3 the blank expression of the little boy with thick glasses who picks himself up from the sidewalk and stands there blinking in the sun B Chorus if you remind me of my dog we’ll probably git along little doggy git along git along little doggie git a... 234 C Bridge like the man on the subway sitting across from me and every time i looked at him he smiled and by the time i got to the end of the subway line i’d given him at least...oh...25 cookies A’ Verse 3 guys in bars remind me of my dog the way it takes you so long to choose the perfect table B’ Chorus if you remind me of my dog we’ll probably git along little doggie git a long git along little doggie git along D Bridge (me and my ferocious dog we’re walking down the street and everyone we meet says “ach yer a goot doogie!...”) C Bridge except when we go for a walk to get the Sunday paper i stand there and read the headlines he reads the wind sometimes he hits a funny smell and laughs i hate it when he does that--i feel so dumb what? what? i say A Verse 4 everything reminds me of my dog beautiful things sunsets remind me of my dog—gina go to your window einstein reminds me of my dog—i want to pat his ﬂuffy head 235 A” Verse 5 this whole world reminds me of my dog my dog reminds me of this whole world do i remind you of a dog? (thump thump) i do? (faster thump) A Verse 5 skyscrapers remind me of my dog sitting in the tall grass waiting for a rabbit guy in red cameros too–it’s getting to be a habit artists remind me of my dog staking out their originality on the nearest tree A’” Verse 7 old folks remind me of my dog my dog reminds old folks of their dogs (barfy, ruffo, beanhead) gina says i remind her of my dog the way i just did that golfers teeing off remind me of my dog the way he sits by me and shifts on his from paws--what is it you want? look at it, do you want to go for a walk, want a cookie, do you want me to dial the number for you? Figure 2 Phrase Lengths of “everything reminds me of my dog” Form Intro A B A A’ B C A’ B’ D C A A” A A A A”’ length 8 8 5 8 4 5 8 4 7 5 8 8 8 8 8 8 6 mm. 1-8 9-16 17-21 22-29 30-33 34-38 39-46 47-50 51-57 58-62 63-70 71-78 79-86 87-94 95-102 103-110 111-116 236 because it could easily be confused with a genre of Endnotes 1. “Country-pop” is a genre of country music that combines both pop and country characteristics. This term has been chosen from among many because it is essentially a descriptor that does not connote a particular value judgment. This is important because in both pop and country traditions there are those who dislike the combining of country and pop, as if it were a watering down of the purity of either idiom. Most frequently country-pop is employed by “commercial country” artists, such as Shania Twain, Leann Rimes, Steve Earle, and the Dixie Chicks, who aspire to cross over from country into the pop mainstream. Accordingly, this genre is watered-down of its most rural country signiﬁers. Siberry, however, approaches country from the world of pop rather than the other way around. In doing so she follows a long tradition of rock musicians who ﬂirt with country. This tradition, sometimes referred to as “anti-country,” is one that includes the Cowboy Junkies, k.d. lang, Blue Rodeo, the Eagles, Bob Dylan, and Elvis Costello. dance music called “techno,” which White deﬁnes as “electronic dance music with heavy use of synthesizers and drum machines” (White 170). Elector-pop is a genre of pop/rock, while techno is a genre of electronica. 3. A minor hit is one that places in Billboard’s Top 100, as opposed to its Top 40 4. While “everything reminds me of my dog” is not the most country-sounding song on Bound by the Beauty, Siberry did feel that the album had an overall country feel. She explained, for example, that the song “something about trains” was “something sortof country, east-meets-west, country & eastern” (liner notes, 18). Perhaps Siberry uses so many adjectives to qualify this song because country is a tradition with a history much longer than that of pop/rock. (See Malone (1968) for a history of the ﬁrst 50 years of country music.) Country music has many genres, including mountain ballads, cowboy songs, string band music, honky tonk, rockabilly, country-pop, bluegrass, new country, etc. “Country” was not the initial term used to 2. “Electro-pop” is a British term, used by such critics as Andrew Goodwin (1990). Its American equivalent is “technopop.” I have avoided the use of the term “technopop,” which Douglas White deﬁnes as “pop music with heavy use of electronic instruments,” describe this southern rural music. The pejorative term “hillbilly” was applied to the earliest country recordings from the 1920s. These included British folk ballads, gospel, and sentimental songs by such seminal singers as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Although 237 country lyrics cover a range of topics, they can be divided into two opposing impulses represented by the aforementioned performers, respectively: those which deify home and those which glorify the wanderer (Malone “American Country Music” 5 - 6). The wanderer trope in particular was popularized in the 1930s in Hollywood cowboy ﬁlms set in the southwest. By this time country had combined 6. Whiteley points out that “In the 1980s, country music represented the extolled image of American society, where the woman was sweet and uncomplaining, respectable, white and family-oriented” (Whiteley, 168). Whiteley’s thesis is that with her excessive energy and butch persona, lang positioned herself in direct opposition to country music’s conventional espousal of so-called “family values.” musical traditions from the southeast and southwest into a hybrid known as “country and western.” The incorporation of western ﬁlm iconography into the southeastern musical tradition caused this amalgam to become quite seamless by the 1950s (Peterson, 90). Western images such as the ten-gallon hat, bandannas, boots, fringes, as well as south-western “verbal accent, vocabulary, grammar, . . . workingclass identiﬁcation” and speciﬁc performance conventions came to signify country “authenticity” (Peterson 225). The diminutive term “country” also came into use in the 1950s when such performers as Hank Williams, who had previously called himself a “folk musician,” tried to disassociate himself from socalled “communist” folksingers singled out during the McCarthy era (Peterson 198). 8. My use of this term here follows Genette’s deﬁnition of pastiche as an imitation of “a style and the thematic motifs that it involves...[as] a means of actualization-and possibly of derision” (Genette 82). Concerning 5. Although yodeling is originally of Swiss origin, after Jimmie Rodgers used this technique it became popularly associated in America with country music. its attitude toward the style, therefore, pastiche “prides itself upon paying it the least possible literal allegiance” (Genette 78). 7. The steel guitar is conceived of as a country instrument in popular culture despite the fact that it originated in Hawaii in the 1870s and was not popularized in the United States until the 1920s. The dobro was the ﬁrst steel guitar with a built-in resonator, followed in the 1930s by the electric steel guitar. The “whiny pedal steel guitar” that became popular in the mid-1950s is the ultimate country music signiﬁer--the country music icon, if you will--deﬁning the country sound despite a revival of the dobro and early electric steel guitars in the 1970s (Carlin, 352). 238 Figure 6a - Rhythmic Acceleration Before the Phrase “reminds me of my dog” syllables: 3 4 3 3 5 5 2 8 32 3 14 3 4 2 2 3 2 2 4 m. no.: 5 9 11 13 15 22 24 26 28 30 47 49 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 98 100 Figure 6b - Rhythmic Acceleration After the Phrase “reminds me of my dog” syllables: 0 0 2 0 8 7 0 3 2 0 0 0 0 7 8 0 0 3 10 8 10 0 6 7 7 m. no.: 10 12 14 16 23 25 27 29 33 48 50 71 73 75 77 79 81 83 87 89 91 95 97 99 101 9. For example, the use of rhythm in “everything reminds me of my dog” both adheres and subverts the expectations of the country idiom. The straight rhythms particularly in the bass, the emphasis on beats 1 and 3, and the syncopation found in the piano riff, which consistently emphasizes beat one, are all traditionally found in country. In addition, regardless of whether the rhythms used in the vocal of “everything reminds me of my dog” are syncopated or unsyncopated, they also emphasize beats one and three. Although there is rhythmic variation in the beginning of each phrase in section A to accommodate the new lyric (for example “everything,” “guy in the store,” “telephones,” “taxicabs,” etc.), each ending of “(re)minds me of my dog” is rhythmically identical--even when the melodic entrance is delayed (as in mm. 100 - 101). but not country. This technique appears occasionally throughout Siberry’s oeuvre. Rhythmic acceleration refers “to the increase in attack densities and greater variety of rhythmic intervals between rhyming syllables” or, in this instance, between analogous vocal phrases (Krims 52). Placing an increasing number of syllables into the same temporal and musical space heard previously in a corresponding phrase is a recurring musical joke that Siberry enjoys. It seems clear that it is a joke because the technique appears almost exclusively in humorous songs. Rhythmic acceleration can be heard most clearly in the third verse of “symmetry (the way things have to be)” in No Borders Here, (beginning at the words “even though”). This rhythmic acceleration is played out further in a formal design Siberry often uses, in which the verses all begin in the same way but become increasingly longer, similar to “The Twelve There is a signiﬁcant rhythmic dissonance in the vocal of this song. Siberry employs syncopation and changes in rhythmic density through what Adam Krims calls “rhythmic acceleration,” a technique that is typical of rap, Days of Christmas.” Examples of this formal technique are found in “the lobby” from The Walking, “See the Child” from Maria, and “Grace Hospital” on Lips as well as the poem “New Year’s Baby” on Child. 239 In “everything reminds me of my dog” rhythmic acceleration can be found in the melodic phrases that precede “reminds me of my dog.” See Figure 1 in such lines as “the guy in the store,” “telephones,” “taxicabs,” etc. For example, while “everything (reminds me of my dog)” (in m. 9) has 3 syllables, “smiling at strangers (reminds me of my dog)” in the analogous phrase (in m. 22) has ﬁve. As can be seen in Figure 6a below, the rhythm does not always accelerate. For example, after m. 11, the number of syllables decreases from four to three (in m. 13). Indeed, after a large number of syllables, such as the ﬁve heard at m. 24, there is an even greater shrinkage (for example, the two syllables heard in m. 26). The point of this technique is not that the rhythmic acceleration is ever increasing until it becomes frenetic, but rather that there is play with the number of syllables within the same space in analogous phrases of section A. both mm. 87 and 91. To outline systematically every instance of rhythmic acceleration goes against the very spirit of playing with language, rhythm, time, and space. Sufﬁce it to say that the rhythmic variety heard in analogous phrases in both of these locations in Section A represents a humorous response to the conﬁnes of the straight repetition of country. The rhythmic acceleration heard in this song is thus dissonant with country conventions. Furthermore, the form of “everything reminds me of my dog” is dissonant with country conventions. Like other types of pop music, country tends to contain structures made up of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, chorus, or some such variation. The form of “everything reminds me of my dog”, however, is more involved, following a design that reads: IABAA’BCA’B’DCA A”AAA”’. While this structure contains the requisite verse (A), chorus (B), This same technique is also evident in the space (in the rests) after the “reminds me of my dog” lyric (see Figure 6b). In verse one there is only one instance of a vocal ﬁll (the “yoohoo” in m. 14). In verse two, by contrast, the space at the end of every phrase contains vocal ﬁlls (from the 8 syllables of “better let them know you’re friendly” in m. 23 to the 3 syllables of “don’t hit them” in m. 29). The rhythmic acceleration climaxes in verse 6 (mm. 86 - 93), with 10 syllables heard in and bridge (C) material, the proportions are unusual in that the individual units are very short (see Figure 2). In addition, the A’ section preceding the ﬁrst bridge is split in half (the other half follows the bridge), creating an even shorter sectional delineation than expected. Finally, there are more statements of the verse than of the chorus. In country-pop it is the chorus that contains the hook and is therefore emphasized. This song lacks a hook (except perhaps for the 1/4 “git a” bar), therefore 240 making the chorus less enticing for the listener. This formal irregularity is complicated by repetitions of the bridge, as well as the additional material heard in section D that cannot be accounted for within traditional country forms. The few statements of the chorus along with the presence of an extra inexplicable section would create a surprising effect for the country listener who comes to the song with hitherto unchallenged formal expectations. Siberry rejects the lack of formal variety found in the country idiom by juxtaposing cliché generic signiﬁers with an unexpected formal plan. By presenting more verses (section A) and bridges (sections C and D) and fewer statements of the chorus (section B), Siberry subverts country-pop expectations. Not only is the form of this song dissonant with country expectations, its complexity also comments upon the overused formal conventions of the idiom. are donning the signiﬁers of country, they are aware that what they are constructing is as false today as it was when the marketing of country began with such “dressed up” stars as Louis “Grandpa” Jones (Peterson 66). 13. My point here is not that country music is inherently inauthentic to either its performers or its audience. Rather, that there are instances of country performers, such as Louis “Grandpa” Jones (c. 1940s), Minnie Pearl (c. 1950s), and Karon Blackwell (c. 1990s), who are not “authentically” rural in origin or orientation. In such instances, there is a tacit agreement in country music to hide one’s urban roots or signiﬁers. 14. Notice, however, that section D remains in an even 4/4. It is as if, when the lyrics form the recollection of a scene from childhood (with the child pretending her 10. Peterson cites an instance of such outright deception at a country concert he attended at which Karon Blackwell affected a Mississippi accent even though she was born in Chicago and worked mostly in California as a jingle singer (Peterson 225). 11. While Siberry is not strictly speaking a rock musician, articles about Siberry’s music are almost exclusively found in rock journalism. dog is “ferocious,” when really she is just taking him for a walk), the phrase lengths harken back to a prior era (the folk era) in which uneven phrasing was typical. 15. The lyrics of this song are about more than just a dog. When asked what she was thinking of when she wrote these lyrics, Siberry commented: I was just thinking about my dog. But after that I 12. Even while proponents such as Karon Blackwell realized that it really could have been love or so 241 many things, when you really get into something in your mind or brain, the ability to focus. Like when I am mixing a record, anywhere I go I am trying to adjust the balance of the sounds around me. At an intersection I will be bringing down the hum and raising the individual voices, that kind of thing. So everything reminds me of mixing or everything reminds me of my new lover. It is pretty much like rose-coloured glasses. Whatever you’re really in love with at the time, everything reminds you of that. Or you know, when you really have the blues, all you see around you are struggles (Siberry 2001). 16. Other Porter list songs include: “Anything Goes” from 1934 or “From Alpha to Omega” from 1938. revival), she usually indicates the new voice clearly and/or uses this technique throughout the song. 18. The resulting ambiguous relationship between country musicians and country music signiﬁers inherent in such instances is highlighted by the imprecision of the lyrics in another Siberry song, “something about trains” from Bound by the Beauty. Although this song is as much about nature as it is about the conventional country topics of lost love, loneliness, and home, the imagery evoked throughout this song (trains, ironing clothes, the line, dogs) is typical of country music lyrics. The way in which these images are employed, however, is intentionally noncommittal. The song is not about trains and love, but rather is “something about trains . . . something about love/when things go wrong.” Compared to 17. It should be added that in the mountain or hillbilly ballads the use of multiple points of view and shifting time was common. These narratives do not make sense in a linear way. It seems unlikely that Siberry would be alluding to this trait as a conceit for the entire song, however, because the dulcimer itself is not used throughout. Furthermore, Siberry comes from a more contemporary folk revival tradition that does not conventionally change points-of-view in its narrative. Finally, when Siberry herself uses multivoiced narratives in a lyric (in genres other than folk “something about trains,” “everything reminds me of my dog” goes further in its critique of the country-pop genre by explicitly ridiculing the embracing of values that have nothing to do with one’s actual world view. Here, Siberry’s larger approach to country is one of mockery. Selected Bibliography Adria, Marco. “Very Siberry.” Music of Our Times: Eight Canadian Singer-Songwriters. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company Publishers, 1990, 120 - 138. 242 Arrington, Carl. “The Astral Jane: Jane Siberry Makes Metaphysical Pop With Heart.” Rolling Stone, n 680 (21 April 1994): 18. Goodwin, Andrew. “Sample and Hold: Pop Music in the Digital Age of Reproduction.” On Record: Rock, Pop, And The Written Word. Eds. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990, Barclay, Michael, Ian A. D. Jack, and Jason Schneider. “Northern Wishes and Visionary Flounders.” Have Not Been The Same: The CanRock Renaissance. Toronto: ECW Press, 2001, 212 - 217, 246 - 251. 258 - 274. Hamm, Charles. Music in the New World. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983. Carlin, Richard. The Big Book of Country Music: A Biographical Encyclopedia. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Kelley, Linda. “Jane Siberry’s Musical Dance In and Out of Time.” Canadian Composer n. 204 (Oct. 1985): 4 - 10. Druckman, Howard. “Jane Siberry: Soaring in the Speckless Sky.” Canadian Musician 7 (December 1985): 33. Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lomax, Alan. The Folk Songs of North America. New ---. “Jane Siberry: This is my Voice.” Canadian Musician 12 (February 1990): 36 - 38. Malone, Bill C. “American Country Music: A Brief Feathering, Douglas. Some Day Soon: Essays on Canadian Songwriters. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1991. Fissinger, Laura. “Jane Siberry, Canadian Woman.” Creem 18 (October 1986): 66. ---. Country Music U.S.A.: A Fifty-year History. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1968. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Trans. Channa Norman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. ---. “Honky Tonk: The Music of the Southern Working Class.” Folk Music and Modern Sound. Jackson: History.” Classic Country Music. Washington: York: Double Day & Co. Inc., 1960. Smithsonian Institution, 1990, 3 - 21. 243 University Press of Mississippi, 1982, 119 - 128. White, Douglas. Dictionary of Popular Music Styles of the World. Lawndale: Douglas White Music Research, Menzies, Ian. “The Art of Jane Siberry.” Canadian Musician 17 (December 1995): 34 - 36. 1998. Whiteley, Sheila. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Middleton, Richard. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990. Windsheiner, Marci and Paul Mallet. No Borders Here: O’Brien, Karen. “Jane Siberry.” Hymn to Her: Women Musicians Talk. London: Virgo Press, 1995, 183 196. The Unofﬁcial Jane Siberry Web Site. 14 July 2002. 22 July 2002. <www.smoe.org/nbh>. Identity, and Subjectivity. New York: Routledge, 2000. Selected Discography Siberry, Jane, 1981. Jane Siberry, Street Records SRCD 002-2. Ouellette, Dan. “When She Was A Boy.” Piano and Keyboard 41 (Sept./Oct. 1993): 44 - 48. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: ---, 1984. No Borders Here, Duke Street Records/ Windham Hill DSBBD31006. Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press, 1997. ---, 1985. The Speckless Sky, Duke Street/Windham Siberry, Jane [Owner, Sheeba Records]. Personal Interview. Toronto, ON. 4 January 2001. ---, 1987. The Walking, Duke Street/Reprise/Warner Stern, Perry. “More than a Feeling: Jane Siberry Leads with her Heart on When I was a Boy.” Canadian Composer 4 (Fall 1993): 9. ---, 1989. Bound by the Beauty, Duke Street/Reprise/ Warner DSBBD-31058. Straessle, Carla. “Jane Siberry.” Canadian Musician 6 (March 1985): 30 - 33. ---, 1993. When I was a Boy, Reprise Records/Warner DSBBD-31040. Hill DSBBD-31019. 244 CD 26824. Peter Mettler ﬁlm). ---, 1994. A Collection: 1984 - 1989, Duke Street/ Reprise/Warner DSRMD 31093. ---, 1991. “Calling All Angels.” Until the End of the World Soundtrack (a Wim Wenders ﬁlm). Warner Brothers CD 26707. ---, 1995. Maria, Reprise CD 45915. ---, 1994. “It Can’t Rain All the Time.” The Crow ---, 1996. Teenager, Koch Records/Sheeba Records Koc-CD 7939/ SHECD001. ---, 2000. ---, 1997. A Day in the Life, Sheeba Records SHECD002. Lang, K. D., 1997. “Hain’t It Funny.” Drag. ---, 1997. Child, Sheeba Records SHECD003. Soundtrack. “Calling All Angels.” Pay It Forward Soundtrack (an Alex Proyas ﬁlm). ---, 1999. Tree, Sheeba Records SHE006. ---, 1999. Lips, Sheeba Records SHE007. ---, 2000. Hush, Sheeba Records SHE008. ---, 2001. City, Sheeba Records SHE010. ---, 2002. Love is Everything: The Jane Siberry Anthology. Rhino Records/Warner CD. Assorted Artists, 1989. “This Old Earth” [“Something About Trains”]. The Top of the World Soundtrack (a IASPM03 - MONTREAL Musical Performance and the Evolution of Television Conventions, 1948-1955 Murray Forman I want to start with a clear statement: television would simply not have succeeded had popular music not other invited onlookers. Yet even as television evolved through the 1930s and 1940s, the precise nature of presentation and performance was anything but secure and, as with most new media forms, the discourses of promise, unlimited potential, and forward progress were mobilized. In 1946, Thomas Hutchinson wrote: been a staple from the medium’s inception. As early as the 1930s when television was primarily a technical reality and research scientists or engineers, broadcast network mavens, advertisers, and cultural critics were all attempting to predict TV’s content, it was consensually agreed that popular music would be an essential facet of the medium’s future. Although some commentators advocated an emphasis on “serious” or “good” music -- which generally referred to classical music, opera, and high culture musical performances - the commercial models of the sheet music, recording, and radio broadcast sectors offered precedents, providing a sense of popular music’s likely role in TV programming. For example, NBC’s much-heralded July 7, 1936 demonstration from its research studio 3H featured a performance by the Pickens Sisters, radioproven singers who performed a version of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginee” and a parody of grand opera. Though the broadcast was hampered by poor camera ability and lighting and staging difﬁculties, the demonstration, as well as the musical segments, was deemed a success among network executives and Just what comprises a good television program is a formula that will probably be heatedly debated for many years to come. The real answer is that probably everything under the sun has its place in a television schedule if it is properly presented. (1946, 113 ) In another context (Forman, 2003), I have taken up Hutchinson’s notion of formula and its meaning in relation to evolved television genres. Here, however, I am emphasizing the idea of “proper presentation” since musical presentation and performance issues became a prominent concern in the post-war years, producing the underlying grounds for collaboration and conﬂict between musicians and TV producers as well as among musicians themselves. I should state that this paper is part of a larger project that looks at popular music on television “before 246 Elvis,” which is to say before Elvis Presley’s January 1956 television debut on the program Stage Show, hosted by eminent band leaders Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey. I isolate 1955 as my cut off point in part because television was moving out of its experimental phase into a more stabilized industrial mode but also because there seems to be so much written about music on television after Elvis’s debut, research that, in focusing on rock’s emergence, often overlooks the important formative period that precedes his galvanizing mass media breakout. An example of this quick leap into the study of rock on TV is evident in John Mundy’s Popular Music on Screen (1999) that, for all else it does well, fails to provide more than a passing glance at the character and construction of popular music programs and televised musical performances before the mid1950s. The common tendency is to address several of the top music programs of the era such as Your Hit Parade, The Dinah Shore or Perry Como Shows or various popular variety programs. The range of analysis is severely restricted, however, and is inadequate to capture such performance events as, for example, Cecil “Big Jay” McNeely’s 1954 appearance on Guide Right, a show sponsored by the U.S. Air Force that featured recruiting advertisements between appearances by military big bands and guests including Toni Arden, Tony Bennett, or the Four Aces. There has been insufﬁcient attention to performance moments such as McNeely energetically honking and wailing on his tenor saxophone, swaying seductively to the rhythm and, in an almost Houdini-esque display, removing his blazer without missing a note and then lowering himself to his knees on the stage. This image leads the speculative analyst to revisit a broader array of televised performances that informed the later styles and gestures of rock’n’roll. McNeely’s performance is all the more interesting for having been broadcast in the context of a program sponsored by the military that aired in the same historical period as Como and Shore’s television reign or within the era during which band leader Lawrence Welk rose as a television host, bringing the reserved performances of his “champagne music” to the airwaves. This raises the question: what else was happening within the turbulence of the entertainment industries in this period of transition? How did musicians make sense of the shifting conditions as television’s inﬂuence was felt and what was their sense of the transformation underway? How should they act in literal and ﬁgurative terms? While television has been accused of inﬂicting all kinds of damage on the dominant entertainment sectors of the post-war period, it was of course never the single inﬂuence. In February 1947, the music industry trade magazine Down Beat addressed the issue of musical performance, preﬁguring many of the rising concerns just prior to television’s forceful 247 emergence. Sounding an alarm of sorts in a column titled “Showmanship, New Talent Needed Now,” the magazine stated in an editorial column that dance bands “were neglecting showmanship,” suggesting that “after 10 years the public was deciding that it wanted a little more for its $1.50 than the privilege of hearing a few star side-men and a brass section blowing its lungs out” (“Showmanship, New Talent Needed Now”). Aging musicians and band leaders were, in Down Beat’s view, contributing to the massive collapse of the dance band industry and the column concludes with the idea that “there are devices possible to present magic in a less boring fashion on stage.” (Ibid.). As Down Beat and the jazz magazine Metronome illustrate, in the late 1940s the pressure to develop visual or comedic elements for incorporation into musical acts was rising from several areas unrelated to television. Ballroom managers sought orchestras with strong visual appeal and encouraged acts such as Freddy Martin, who popularized a show in which audience members were invited to the bandstand to “lead” the orchestra through musical numbers; his act, including frequent novelty spoofs, eventually led to the TV program So You Want to Lead a Band. The audiences at resorts in the Pocono or Catskill Mountains and in showrooms like the Glen Island Casino responded favorably to musical skits and humorous novelty tunes -- referred to in articles of the time as “a bit of business” -- that were integrated into the acts of established dance bands and small upstart ensembles alike with increasing frequency. In fact, as television rose as a broadcast reality and a professional option for musicians, these resort appearances became essential to musicians seeking access to New York TV stations. Musicians and band leaders began working up new comedy and music performance routines, pulling out old and time-worn vaudeville numbers and testing them on middle-class resort patrons who, it was thought, were very much like the desired TV viewership. The rationale was that an act could hone its visual shtick in front of several hundred borscht belt audience members over a week’s run prior to bringing the act into the homes of thousands, and rather quickly, millions of TV viewers. By January 1948, Down Beat was explicitly linking performance elements involving enhanced visual appeal to television, deﬁning the performance criteria for ideal small screen impact. Under the headline “Novelty Needed if Bands Want Video Contracts,” a Down Beat column distinguishes between “good listening” and “good watching,” suggesting to musicians to “get out the paper hats and props, boys. No big rush. Just keep it in mind” (“Novelty Needed if Bands Want Video Contracts”). The frequent references to “paper hats” or, more often, “funny hats” gradually evolved into a formal discourse in the music industry and it was commonly 248 associated with particular kinds of visually excessive performances prepared for television. Encompassing slapstick comedy and often marginally scripted banter, funny hats routines drew from a deep performance tradition based upon the use of stage props and dialogue afﬁliated with vaudeville and burlesque. Among musicians, Spike Jones and His City Slickers offered a successful example of the funny hats and props performances, although the facial mugging of artists including Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Armstrong also delivered desirable visual content for television broadcasts. In December, 1948, band leader Fred Nagel explained that his act had embarked on a performance replete with “straw hats, ﬁremen’s hats, all kinds of hats,” as well as fake bears and false noses, to boost his band’s proﬁle. As Down Beat commented, the trend “probably won’t be greeted by superhipsters and brow-furrowed music critics with much hat-waving -- funny or otherwise” (“Will Funny Hats Be Savior?”). As television producers more aggressively deﬁned their need for visually augmented musical performances, there emerged within the music industry a rather clearly drawn line between “serious” musicians and those whose performances included “funny hats.’ The result was an alteration of the character of hierarchical relations between musicians perceived as having integrity (the “serious artists”) and those deemed as commercial hacks that stooped so low as to wear funny hats. Popular band leaders like Ray Anthony or Guy Lombardo earned new respect among some musicians -- if not among their accountants - for initially rebufﬁng the lure of television networks, adopting a wait-and-see attitude toward television (Forman, 2002). They, too, could watch the uneven broadcasts of their musical peers on early television and they watched the encroachment of humor and parody onto the bandstand. It was their view that they might undo years of hard work and damage their positive reputations by making ill-advised performance decisions in the new and relatively unproved medium. The discourse of musical integrity was articulated in 1949 when Down Beat reported on the broadcast performance of the Ike Carpenter band that was developing a new visual act: The band, not long ago known for its sincere approach to jazz, soon will ﬁnd itself wrapped, stamped, and delivered into the funny hats class if its course isn’t drastically altered. Carpenter is a genuine guy and a good musician, but his present musical tack will carry him into watery commercialism for sure unless checked pronto. (“Ike Heading Down the Hambone Alley). The next month, however, with no explicit comment on musical integrity, it was reported that the Chubby 249 Jackson orchestra was adopting a “funny hats” routine that included “a 13-piece crew with an additional three men to work on novelties. The latter are actors who’ll hold dummy horns and work on special effects and do lines with Chubby between numbers” (“Chubby Rehearses Good Music, Plus Funny Hats…”). Though the visual component of musical performances was accentuated, not all musicians seeking work in television felt compelled to adopt the skits and jokes of the funny hat set. The situation framed within contexts of integrity, musical sincerity, and seriousness led some to other strategies of performance. If, as Tommy Dorsey once suggested, “a name band must have four different books: one for the hotel engagements, one for theaters, one for one-nighters, and one for the south,” then television constituted yet another performance context that might beneﬁt from additional arrangements and staging. Television band leaders Freddy Martin and Frank De Vol accumulated new songs and arrangements speciﬁcally for their TV appearances, with Martin explaining that they were “not dance numbers but production numbers containing story line, humor, integration, and movement” ((Niccoli, 1951: 5). In De Vol’s case, he wrote new arrangements that reorganized the orchestra’s entire sound and performance structure, emphasizing the soloists for greater personal intimacy and diluting the band’s unison playing style coordinated around the band sections. These changes were explicitly oriented toward the television cameras to provide more visual content and, ostensibly, an enhanced viewer experience. Stan Freeman voiced the defeat he felt in surrendering to the TV director’s request for something humorous to accompany his solo piano performances, stating, “even though I’m doing it myself, I don’t think it’s a good thing...as a musician, I won’t play badly. If I can play well and surround that with comedy I don’t feel that I’m compromising as a musician (Wilson, 1950: 4). A photograph of Freeman seated with a dog at his elbow, however, reveals that, for all of his desire to maintain a certain professional proﬁle as a serious musician, his act was already succumbing to the demand for humorous performance content. Within Freeman’s statement there lies a hint of the risk factor that accompanied the pressure to capitulate to television’s visual demands. He, and many musicians articulated what Simon Frith describes as “the threat of the ultimate embarrassment: the performance that doesn’t work” (1996: 214). In his statement, Freeman expresses conﬁdence in his musical talents, in his ability to execute his repertoire with skill and, perhaps, with taste. His experience among top jazz musicians, including stints in the bands of Paul Whiteman, Glenn Miller, and Tex Beneke, have prepared him as a professional musical performer. Yet his conﬁdence in his comedic talents remains shaky. He is aware that the entire performance hangs on his 250 ability to play the music ably, to get out a few gag lines, and to not embarrass himself. In many instances, the will to rise above humiliation -- at the very least -became a primary objective in the contexts of televised performances as artists took their ﬁrst steps in the new medium. Even as early as 1951, after it had suggested that more visual performance styles were needed to invigorate the music industry, Down Beat was questioning the intensiﬁed emphasis on visual performances. Under a column headline reading “Not Every Man a Comedian,” the trade magazine’s editors noted that the skits and comedy gags might deliver short-term attention and remuneration, but the accompanying potential for broadcast errors and performance missteps remained high for musicians seeking a place in the expanding TV programming schedule. As the column states, with the increasing emphasis on visual and comedic performance styles, “the audience is embarrassed by the evident embarrassment of the musician” (“Not Every Man a Comedian”). Indeed, a weak or stumbling performance in front of a nightclub or theater audience was unfortunate, but a lame, contrived, or embarrassing performance broadcast live to an unseen audience of millions was potential career suicide. This was ampliﬁed with the gradual rise of television reviews and critical commentary of the new broadcast medium printed in daily newspapers, music magazines, and TV journals, extending the damage as the word of weak performances circulated more widely. Other relevant factors further complicated the television role of musicians, especially those expected to deliver lines or partake in the short skits with the program hosts (many of whom could legitimately call themselves professional comedians). Established musical stars, for instance, were often unwilling or unable to participate in the grueling rehearsals for TV programs; some, like Frank Sinatra (who already had ﬁlm acting experience), chafed against the television production process during the medium’s live era, going on record often as an advocate of ﬁlmed television which developed more slowly. Among television producers, it was often assumed that a band or singer required little advance rehearsal for television broadcasts since they were only expected to perform in their standard idiom -- despite being unfamiliar with television production, pacing, staging, and other facets of performing for television. In screening extant footage from television’s nascent period there is ample evidence of uneven or weak musical performances, at times due to poor production and stage management (dull sound and lighting, cramped sets), as well as many cases where the musicians themselves are visibly uncertain about what to say, how to stand, where to look, and other basic performance issues. In many early instances, the musicians may have been “photogenically charming,” 251 as Variety wrote of singer Myrna Fox’s KLAC-TV appearance on the musical program Midnight Jamboree that aired in 1950 on Los Angeles station KLAC-TV, but they were also often “ﬂat and amateurish” in the critics’ eyes (“Midnight Jamboree”). More familiar with the pace and character of nightclub or theater performances or accustomed to the strenuous routines of the dreaded regional tours consisting of one-night engagements, many working musicians struggled to ﬁnd their footing in television. Some, such as Jo Stafford, were applauded for their impressive capacity to merge television performance into an already hectic agenda. Stafford maintained an active recording and concert appearance schedule while hosting a TV program, returning to the TV studio from regional engagements or local studio recording sessions for intense TV program rehearsals. Unlike Stafford, Vaughn Monroe announced in December, 1950 that he was cutting down on his club and theater performances, reducing the scale of a tour four months in the making due to “heavy preparation and the rehearsal demands of TV work” (“Vaughn Monroe Refuses Work”). These factors can be related to Simon Frith’s analytical emphasis on “stress,” when he explains that “stress is associated with fears that instruments and equipment won’t work properly, that rehearsals were inadequate, that one might be too tired or ill to keep up...the basic point is that for the musician, the highest stress factors are those that impinge directly upon the performance” (1996: 53). Navigating the variables -- such as Monroe’s decision to curtail less important, less lucrative, or more daunting aspects of his performing career -- signals a certain set of professional priorities. But the explanation given, that TV’s rehearsal and production schedule must take precedence indicates a similarly professional response to a stressful situation in which television arises as a demanding new option. By reducing other career activities, Monroe could properly focus on his broadcast performances, hopefully mastering the medium and establishing himself as a viable television performer. Musical veterans such as bandleader Fred Waring faced difﬁculties of another nature. Waring had emerged as an orchestra leader on the college circuit in the late 1920s. He was the featured musical guest on NBC’s ofﬁcial television launch at the 1939 New York World’s Fair where his sweat-drenched performance won accolades from network head David Sarnoff. By 1949, Waring was again selected as a cornerstone of the NBC program schedule. Waring is well-documented as having been a strict and demanding band leader whose control and authority stretched to virtually all areas of the band’s performances and, by most accounts, he ran an efﬁcient operation. The orchestra’s performance style and repertoire -- replete with a Glee 252 Club choir belting out college theme songs -- was the manifestation of Waring’s vision and effort. For Waring, surrendering authority to the TV program director, stage manager, and studio production crew constituted a point of crisis, and he battled against what he termed TV’s “production by committee” approach. Television’s newness and its potential risks were exacerbated by, as he put it, “Youngsters who are brought in fresh out of college with no experience and are trusted with responsibilities where they have no authority over veterans of show business... it belittles the artist” (Waring, 1997: 232). In Waring’s view, then, the social relations of TV production were a core obstacle to be overcome. Still, Waring admitted that, despite being something of a TV veteran, his inexperience with television, and that of virtually all other musicians on the new medium, showed on screen. Embarking on what he and NBC agreed was an ongoing process of experimentation, Waring eventually collaborated with the studio producers and technicians -- and his own, hand-picked director, Bob Banner -to construct a signature program that would conform to the performance and entertainment standards for which the band was known. The positive effects of the work were evident, and in a review during the show’s second season, Variety wrote “this show remains as one of the pace-setters of the video air-lanes...[it is] still hallmarked by that inventiveness in staging and attentiveness to the smallest details which has made this 60-minute presentation a standard for superlative production” (“Fred Waring Show”). Though time and space constraints won’t allow me to pursue this thread here, the Waring review with its obvious appreciation for relatively straight-ahead musical performances and minimal comedic routines offers suggestions for the next two strands of televised musical performance that I intend to follow in future research on popular music and television performance: the ﬁrst has to do with the production and labor that went into Perry Como’s ostensibly “casual” program during its ﬁrst six years on air. It is interesting to contemplate the deliberate construction of an image of effortlessness that permeated the Como program and that was the topic of much critical commentary on the man and his television performance aesthetic. In my view, the program’s intentional emphasis on a relaxed style very ably matched the crooner’s vocal delivery and public persona, achieving an impressive stylistic synthesis (Como, 1953: 3; Mabley, 1955: 46; Niccoli, 1951: 4). By more closely analyzing the production style, corporate memos, artist interviews, and media commentary, the details of the program’s manufactured affective might emerge. The other program genre of particular interest to me for future research involves the live ballroom broadcasts introduced on Los Angeles station KTLA 253 by station manager Klaus Landsberg. The broadcasts of country swing musician Spade Cooley, tropicalthemed performances of Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians, the subtle sensuality of Ina Ray Hutton and Her All Girl Band, and biggest of all, Lawrence Welk with his “Champagne Music,” presented these orchestra’s in what many considered their “natural environment” -- on stage in large theater contexts, and in Welk’s case, surrounded by a dancing crowd. KTLA’s Landsberg deﬁned his production approach as a deliberate contrast to the east coast musical programs that he believed were “distorted by production numbers” and overly prone to visual drama or narration that condescended to viewers (Landsberg, 1951). Regionally distinct television production styles that emerged in the broadcast of popular musical programs require further exposition and analysis if the evolution of broadcast performance aesthetics is to be fully assessed. The project outlined here, with its focus on musical performance in early television broadcasting, seeks to shed light on the social and industrial forces that were in tension at a very speciﬁc historical moment. The archives, libraries, and museums throughout the nation hold the video material, the journals and magazines, as well as corporate memoranda from the period, offering textual sources that communicate the terms and discourses within which the practices of telecasting music were articulated. My research involves bringing these disparate sources together in ways that address how musicians understood their new professional and performance options, and how they made music under conditions of industrial and cultural transition. 254 February 25, 1949: 3. Selected Bibliography “Chubby Rehearses Good Music, Plus Funny Hats in a ‘Return to the People’,” in Down Beat, March 11, 1949: 1. Landsberg, Klaus. 1951. “Eye Appeal and Music Go Hand in Hand on TV,” in Down Beat, September 7: 8. Mabley, Jack. 1955. “Radio and Video,” in Down Beat, December 14: 46. Como, Perry. 1953. “I’m a Lucky Guy, Admits Como,” in Down Beat, February 25: 3. “Midnight Jamboree,” in Variety, September 27, 1950: Forman, Murray. 2002. “One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount”: Musicians and Opportunity in Early Television, 1948-1955. Popular Music. Vol. 21, no. 3. pp. 249-276. Mundy, John. 1999. Popular Music on Screen: From Hollywood Musical to Music Video. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. __________2003. “Television Before Television Genre: The Case of Popular Music,” in Journal of Film and Television History. pp. 5-16. Niccoli, Ria. 1951. “”Relaxation One Clue to Success of Como Show,” in Down Beat, May 4: 4. 30. “Fred Waring Show,” in Variety, September 27, 1950: 31. __________ 1951. “Martin Finds TV Formula,” in Down Beat, July 27: 5. Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. “Not Every Man a Comedian,” in Down Beat, April 6, 1951: 10. Hutchinson, Thomas. 1946. Here Is Television: Your Window to the World. New York: Hastings. “Novelty Needed if Bands Want Video Contracts,” in Down Beat. January28, 1948: 10. “Ike Heading Down the Hambone Alley,” in Down Beat, “Showmanship, New Talent Needed Now,” in Down 255 Beat, February 26, 1947: 10. “Vaughn Monroe Refuses Work,” in Down Beat, December 15, 1950: 1. Waring, Virginia. 1997. Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. “Will Funny Hats Be Savior?”, in Down Beat, December 1, 1948: 3. Wilson, John. 1950. “Freeman’s Talents Blossom on TV, in Down Beat August 11: 4. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Crossroads: Intertextual Strategies And Economic Relations In The Age Of Digital Music Héctor Fouce T he idea of intertextuality have been a common place since postmodernity was establish as a key strong at this moment. In one way, it will help us to explain clearly to non-scholars, and sometimes to other colleagues in social science and humanities ﬁelds, why it is important to study popular music. Two kind of problems term in social and cultural studies: it was accepted that one of the principal features of that new sensibility was the breakdown of lineal narratives and the explosion of references from multiple sources in all texts. In music, this was represent by the creation of the sampler and the birth of musical cultures based in the cut and mix processes, as the hip hop or the electronic music. In this paper, I will try to create a map that will allow us to move from the characterization of intertextuality and its different types to the implications that the ﬁt of two texts have in the contemporary culture, in which the debate about intellectual property have become central. In a different work (Fouce, 2004) I have emphasized the necessity to establish continuities between text and context in order to reach a better understanding of the musical piece. If in that occasion I have used the concept of genre for reach this continuity, I will defend here that using intertextual typologies as the starting point for the discussion on intellectual property issues is a important tool to clarify ideas. Also, I am convinced that this strategy can help popular music studies to insert themselves in the debates of other academic disciplines and also in social debates that are surprisely Two different kind of problems will arose in the study of intertextuality in music: we need to make a reﬂection on how texts work to move later to the study of what kind of consequences has each kind of relation in the cultural context. In the study of texts, the ﬁrst step is related with possible typologies of musical intertextuality: we need to deﬁne how each text is related with others (covers, loops, genres…), since each kind of relation will present different problems. This work has been done by Serge Lacasse (2003): starting on the categories that Roland Genette has established, Lacasse propose a translation to musical texts and enrich the classiﬁcation with new typologies. The second moment of reﬂection can be illuminated from the work of Bajtin (1989) where he defend that the mixing of text have always an intention, where the meaning come from. From the tribute to the parody, the question now is not the technical procedures that 257 embrace two texts, but what kind of results the author of the mixed text was looking for. This is, of course, a task that can not be covered in this paper. But it will be a necessary starting point in order to move to the study of the music’s context, to the social and cultural dimension of the intertextual relation that have also implications in the legal, economic and technological ﬁelds. I will try to summarize these implications in the next pages, using some case examples. In 1999 Moby edited Play, a very popular and successful record. Honey, the ﬁrst single, becomes a very popular hit all over the world. Some years later, in a compilation of blues recordings, I heard a song that sounded very similar to Moby’s one; in the credits, I realized it was an old recording made by Alan Lomax in 1959, credited to Bessie Jones. Moby had sampled the song as the basics of his music. It is clear that my perception of Honey could not be the same with the new information: there are a complex set of relations between Jones and Moby’s song, related to comprehension, authorship and cultural appropriation, as Hesmondhalgh and Born (2000) has explained. We need to question what different incomes have reaches the original singer, the etnomusicologist, the pop star. We need to discuss what kind of ethical, economic and cultural problems are in this intertextual relation, if is right or wrongs to loop the past for free. More recently, most of Spanish newspapers gave some relevance to the prosecution of DJ Syto, a young and semiprofesional DJ who distributed in the web a cover of Franco Battiato Voglio vederti danzare, a song that was very popular in the country some years ago in his Spanish translation. If Battiato song was a celebration of different musics around the globe, from suﬁ’s to Balinese, the new cover was a racist proclamation against Romanian immigrants, with lyrics like “Shit! Those fucking Romanians, Motherfuckers Romanians, I will cut your hands, motherfuckers Romanians”. Here we are again in front of an intertextual problem (a change of meaning produced by the change of the lyrics) but it is obvious that DJ Syto is not in jail just because he was doing intertextual games. In this case, the production of a cover, the creation of new meaning, has involved a criminal procedure (and also can generate a civil one, since he probably did not have the permission of the owner of the copyright). There are thousand of possible examples to illustrate the continuity between intertextual relations and legal, economical and ethic implications. At least in Spain, some of the intertextual operations are allowed by the Intelectual Porperty Law: commentary, parody and quote are permited, although there is no clear deﬁnition of how much bars, lines, images or pages can be quoted without permission. What is clearly not allowed is the sampler, which needs the permission of the authors of 258 the copyright. Since several musical cultures, as hip hop or electronic music, base their practice in the use of samplers, it is obvious that creators are limited in their tools for creativity. The case of Danger Mouse, who mixed the Jay Z Black album with the Beatles White album to create the Grey Album is paradigmatic: since he did not receive permission for use the Beatles songs, EMI have asked the destruction of all copies of the record, although more than one millions of downloads have been done from the web. In the light of this legal regulation, musical creators are like modern Dr Frankenstein, with the technological skills and tools to invent a creature but out of law and the moral codes, not allowed to liberate their creatures out of the laboratory, to give them public life. The examples of Danger Mouse and Moby situate us in the crossroad of two important social realities: in one hand, since we are living in a capitalist society of information, the intellectual property is protected in most of western countries. But, at the same time, an increased number of voices are claiming for the defence of the public domain (Lessig, 2005) or, as others prefer to refer, the collective intelligence (Levy, 2005). Manuel Castells (1998, 119) have written that “cultural battles are the power battles in the information age… Power, as a capacity to impose conducts, is based on the nets of information exchange and manipulation of symbols that interrelated social actors, institutions and cultural movements”1. At the light of this idea, the actual system of intellectual property is confronting the public interest: what Castells have called informational capitalism is characterized by the concentration of cultural industry and media and also for the intensive use of technologies, sometimes with the aim to control the public use of products. In the digital age, that has started in music with the substitution of vinyl by compact disc in the 1980s, the big business in never more the selling of products, but the market of property rights associated with these. In other words, we are moving from buying a record in a store to buy the permission to download a song from the web. In this package of property rights we must include all possible uses, from the inclusion of a song in a movie soundtrack, the sampler, the cover, etc… At the end, the capacity to manipulate our symbolic world is in the hands of each time less institutions, most of them private agents out of the democratic control. We need to look at this situation in parallel with the corporative concentration and the increased use of technologies, which conﬁgures a process of privatization of culture. Something that can be analyzed in the light of the next idea of Castells (1998, 114): “informational capitalism… is a tougher form of capitalism on aims and values, but incomparably more ﬂexible that any other predecessor on its means”. 259 Voices and opinions - are still selling well, and companies like EMI are concerned about their income streams once these recordings start to go out of copyright from 2010. Any change in copyright term would be a matter for EU law, so all relevant Government interests, as well as our EU partners, would need to be convinced that change is justiﬁed and in the best interests of UK stakeholders generally. As we can see, the logic of the relation between intellectual property rights and the public domain is ruled by the interest of the music industry, without any reference to the proﬁt that public culture can receive when the Beatles or Rolling Stones music will enter the public domain. At least, this document do not show the disdain about all actors out of the industry that another letter shows: in this occasion, it is a letter that many Spanish organizations sent to the Ministery of Industry celebrating the proposal of the LSSI, the law that will regulate both the services on the information society and electronic commerce (ACAM, 2005). These organizations are not the main actors in the Spanish music business, This is the structural situation at this moment: every moment a new creation, music, ideas, are emerging, using previous musical material in different ways, but the intellectual property regulation is limiting the possibilities for creators. But in the last years a strong discussion on the situation has taken place not only in the music ﬁeld, but also in the software one and, in a less obvious one, in the world of genetic engineering (but, at the end, a genetic patent is no more than a set of codiﬁed information). Let move now to examine who are the actors in this debate, what kind of arguments are handling and which voices are absent in the terrain. Since not all actors are in parallel positions of power and public control, the voices and interest of the corporate musical industries are guiding most of the discussions: we can see that point in the letter that the Minister of Creative Industries and Tourism to an academic who have asked about the terms of copyright law in United Kingdom (Purnell, 2005) The music industry is keen to see an extension of the copyright term for sound recordings, which is currently set at 50 years. Many UK recordings dating from the early 1960s - such as those by The Beatles and the Rolling Stones but represent most of the small and medium-sized composers, editors and record companies. Digital commerce of cultural contents has been working without control, with high damage for 260 our economies, free commerce and the own Culture…. We can’t conceive the idea that some organizations, in theory representatives of… retailers and consumers, that have been developing acts that are out of legality, can ask to intervene in the redaction of future laws. In this case, the opinions and interest of the public are explicitly denied. Since the public interest is a diffuse concept, with the involved actors quite undetermined, (there is no organization of music listeners in Spain, at least with some public visibility, as there is in the case of TV spectators), the debate can not take place in term of equity: since these organizations are representing well identiﬁed persons and companies, with a clear role in the process of music production, the other part of the debate will always lack capacity of representation. Despite of it, several voices have claimed against this way to understand music and culture, some of them with the legitimation of coming from a national newspaper, as the commentary of José Cervera (2005) in El Mundo: Rethinking music property For many artist, public valuation is based on commercial decisions: as many buyers of the record, most popular the artist is. (Frith, 1978) This is, of course, a very liberal position: democratic choice is seeing as equal to commercial choice, but I am not going to discuss this idea now. The question is what exactly means to be popular; from my point of view, in popular music this concept implies two elements. The ﬁrst one is about proﬁt, but the second one is much more interesting for this discussion: to be popular means to be incorporated to the collective intelligence. Why are we more concerned, as academics, with Madonna or Michael Jackson or The Beatles as, for instance, Gov’t’mule, the band that is sounding in the background while I’m writing this pages? Popularity is about the music we listen to, the songs we talk about, the artists we write about (as journalists or academics); popularity is about to give cultural value to some music, incorporate it to our world of references, experiences and ideas. In this way, we are shareholders of the popularity of Madonna or The Beatles, but a very strange kind of “We also want to be considered. Culture is about dialogue: without discussion, we only have market and imposition. If they do not give us voice, we will need to shout to be heard. And it’s going to be nasty”. shareholders, with nearly no rights on our company, but the one to buy or not the products. The musical industry need the involvement of the listeners in the career of a musician, but, as we have read some lines before, this same industry deny the public the possibility to have any 261 kind of control about music; in the extreme affair we saw before in the letter to the Spanish Minister of Industry, the music business even deny the capacity to defend the people’s own interest. From this point of view, it seems necessary to include more voices in the debate about intellectual property, a discussion in which the industry have a very strong voice but the voice of listeners, and, more surprisingly, musicians, is quite low. Also, a democratic debate on culture in the digital age must discuss the concentration of power in a few hands and the dynamics that are behind this power. For instance, we need to rethink about the author’s control on transformational processes: at least under the Spanish law, the sampling, the cover and most of the operations that musicians need to do in order to produce music, specially in some cultures as hip hop and electronic, are under control of the rights owner. At the same time, there is no regulation at all about what a musician or a producer can do with traditional music, a ﬁeld in which we have seen how Western musician have used and transform original materials without any reference to the origin and without any ethical reﬂection on the results of this work, as Feld (2000) have illustrated. Conclusions: opening a pathway give a very brief review of the lines that connect different problems, a map that just outline some pathways to walk by from now on. I have try to establish connections between concepts that came from different ﬁelds: my starting point was to show that intertextuality is not just a matter of textual analysis, but have cultural, legal and economic implications. I think that we need to start from a clear typology of how musical texts are related one with another in order to illuminate a debate that, most of the times, is mixing concepts and realities with no clear relation between them. In doing that, we can afford to show the importance of popular music studies in the society of knowledge and information. It will be too pretentious to establish conclusions in a work with these characteristics: I have just tried to 262 Frith, S: Sociology of rock. London: Constable, 1978 Endnotes 1. All translations from works referenced in Spanish are mine Hesmondhalgh, David and Born, Georgina, eds. Western music and its others. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 Selected Bibliography http://media-cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/gems/ion/ ACAM et al. Letter to the Minister of Industry. March 15th 2005 http://navegante2.elmundo.es/navegante/2005/03/17/ Bajtin, Mijail. Teoría y estética de la novela. Madrid: Taurus, 1989 http://www.acam.es/acam/imagenes/ Cartaministrodeindustria.pdf weblog/1111020247.html Culturalibre.pdf Castells, Manuel: “Entender nuestro mundo” en Revista de Occidente, 205,1998.113-145 Cervera, José: La cultura es cosa (solo) del vendedor. March 18th 2005. El Mundo.es. Lacasse, Serge. “Intertextuality as a tool for the analysis of popular music: Gerard Genette and the recorded palimpsest”. Paper readed in the 12th conference of Feld, Steven. “The poetics and politics of pygmy pop” in Hesmondhalgh, David and Born, Georgina, eds. Western music and its others. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 IASPM, Montreal, 2003 Lessig, Lawrence: Cultura libre. June 2005. Levy, Pierre: “El anillo de oro. Inteligencia colectiva y Fouce, Héctor. “Los chicos malos no escuchan jazz. Géneros musicales, experiencia social y mundos de sentido”, in Martí y Martínez, eds: Voces e imágenes en la etnomusicología actual. Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura, 2004 Purnell, James: Letter to David Lepper MP. Posted to IASPM mailing list by Sansom, Matthew. July 16th 2005. propiedad intelectual”, en Multitudes, 5, may 2001. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Broken Bottles and Barbed Wire: Performative Violence and the Boundaries of Fiction in Extreme Rock Michael Free “P erforming the Energy.” The title of our session refers to something Rock music possesses the boundaries between the fantasy of the show and the ‘real’ lives of its participants. To begin with, I should like to characterize the Performative Violent Act more fully. Consider a brief excerpt from the Black Metal band Cradle of Filth. Their video Heavy, Left-Handed and Candid is a taping of a live performance at Nottingham’s Rock City in 2001. This group has a reputation for its stage shows, which focus on themes and images central to goth/metal subculture(s). in abundance, and upon which we have already touched — Energy. From its earliest days, many of the elements that combine to create Rock’s energy have been described as excessive. As “excessive” is of course a relative term, it understandable how subsequent generations of Rock were bound to up the ante; artists who make their excesses a central focus of their act are dubbed, to use the parlance of our times, “extreme.” There are limits to excess in performances though, of course, both practical and legal: skill and equipment can only take you so far; and in terms of the extra-musical content of performances, while theatrics may manifest the doctrine of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll” any number of ways, they must— however excessive they may at times seem— remain theatrics. Or must they? During the course of this paper, I will examine performers who, through various methods, break through the barrier of portrayal quite literally, by cutting their skin during performances. Such acts are one type of what I generally refer to as Performative Violent Acts, acts whose inclusion in performance blurs Video Example 1: Heavy, Left-Handed and Candid. (54th minute) [Synopsis: Here the lead singer, Dani, is restrained by a man and a woman, forced to his knees and has his throat ‘slit’ from behind by a third person. The scene is interspersed with shots of a very enthusiastic crowd, which urges the action onward.] The present clip is the postlude to the last song of the evening, preceding the encore, the culmination of the show. The violent act in question here is the slitting of 264 lead singer Dani’s throat. Now this is obviously a violent act: First, I take it as understood that I am using ‘act’ in the usual sense; and as for it being violent, it certainly conforms to any normative deﬁnition, insofar as it is an “actual use of [physical] force intended to harm an animate being“ (Wilson et al, 1997, 41), [1]. What is equally obvious though, is that the act is a portrayal. Were it a performative violent act, Dani would have had to really be cut: the act would have to do what it portrays. This performativity is what distinguishes my subsequent examples from these more traditional shock tactics. Video Example 2: Badd Blood, Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Kevin Nash. [Synopsis: Outside the ring, but inside the steel cage, Helmsley, whose body blocks the camera, hits Nash over the head with hammer. He then moves back into the ring and argues with the referee while Nash remains out of sight. When Nash ﬁnally does reappear, he is quite bloodied from a laceration on the scalp/upper forehead. Upon his trying to get back into the ring, Helmsley grabs him and proceeds to pound a closed ﬁst into the area of his head where the laceration is located.] Cutting, in and of itself, has a long history (see, for example, Levenkron, 1998). With respect to cutting as a Performative Violent Act, while it is relatively new to Music, only appearing in any substantial way in the very late 80s/early 90s, is commonplace in another arena of “excessive spectacle,” to borrow Roland Barthes characterization, that of professional wrestling (Barthes, 1973). In wrestling parlance the practice of cutting open the skin to draw blood is referred to as ‘blading,’ and the result is that the wrestler has ‘got colour’ (see Mazer, 1998). We can see how this works from a brief excerpt from World Wrestling Entertainment’s latest pay-per-view event Badd Blood: Whether or not the appearance of blading in Extreme This is a stereotypical example of blading: the taller of the two wrestlers, Kevin Nash, appears to receive a crushing blow to the head with a hammer. He then disappears from view while the other, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, argues with the referee. As is usually the case, we do not see the wrestler blade himself, in order to maintain, however superﬁcially, some semblance of ‘reality’ [2]. Furthermore, Helmsley’s pounding ﬁsts are meant less to hurt Nash than to ensure that the cut is widened open as much as possible. 265 Rock has its origins in wrestling, which seems to me a distinct possibility, the techniques used are similar enough that I feel comfortable borrowing the terms. Now, violent acts in rock are legion, and there are even examples, albeit relatively isolated ones, of performative violent acts that crop up now and again (I think here, of Iggy Pop, particularly). But as for the practice of musicians cutting themselves as a regular part of a show, perhaps the ﬁrst to do it with any regularity was Marilyn Manson (Baddely, 1998) [3]. His proclivity to lacerate his torso dates from the late 80s, and was fully incorporated into in his Dead to the World tour, which supported the album Antichrist Superstar in 1995. There are two instances of selfcutting included Marilyn Manson’s Dead to the World video. The ﬁrst takes place during his cover of The Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams: Helmsley’s pounding on Nash’s head, Manson pounds his own chest, resulting in a considerable amount of ‘colour.’ One can see in the following tune, Apple of Sodom, that the theatrical effect of the blood is more than evident, especially emphasized by the gently falling snow, and white light. Video Example 3.2: Dead to the World (29th minute) [Synopsis: Under a white spotlight and gently falling ‘snow,’ Manson foregrounds the now considerable amount of colour his chest pounding has produced.] My next example is also performed by a lead singer, Maniac, of the band Mayhem. The European Legions video was recorded live at a single concert in Marseille in 2001. In Maniac’s case, he Video Example 3.1: Dead to the World (24th minute). [Synopsis: Just prior to the chorus Manson uses a broken bottle to slowly slice into his chest, just under the left breast.] [4] In Sweet Dreams, Manson’s blading underscores his grotesque, ironic delivery of the line: ‘Sweet dreams are made of these.’ During the course of the remainder of the song, and the one that follows, similar to does not use a bottle or a razor, but barbed wire wrapped around his mic stand. During Symbols of Bloodswords we get a close-up of the damage he inflicts, as well as seeing how he emphasizes the closing line of the song (part of an ostensibly Latin phrase) [5]. Video Example 4: European Legions (Songs/ Chapter 7/27th minute) [Maniac has one forearm entangled in barbed 266 wire, at ﬁrst slowly gouging it into his arm by rocking slowly back and forth (he has been doing this occasionally throughout the performance, but the instance provides a clear close-up). He eventually lifts the stand off the stage, making the forearm take its weight, thereby making the wire dig into his ﬂesh even deeper.] The results here are perhaps less dramatic than Manson’s, as Maniac makes no concerted effort to display the results of his self-abuse to the audience. As it turns out, Maniac’s aim was, according to him, not the dramatic effect of bloodletting, but the feeling involved: to be cut by Maniac on the tour bus, which is addressed below.] The previous two examples demonstrate how this type of Performative Violent Act is used by lead singers, although they seem, at least on a superﬁcial level, to have different reasons for including it. Now we move, albeit perhaps not entirely, from on-stage to off-stage, and from the artists to the fans. I’ll let Marilyn Manson introduce you to two of his most devoted followers “The Slashers:” Video Example 6: Dead to the World (41’50”) [Manson seems at ﬁrst befuddled, describing “The Slashers,” a pair of teenage girls the band met on their ﬁrst tour, as having “put us off because they were very off their head because they were so into what we were doing.” He is actually just setting himself up as being more excessive, as he ﬁnishes: “not that it was any more extravagant than the things that I do,” a comment followed by footage of him using a bottle to lacerate his torso (both chest and abdominal area) rather severely. The Slashers have shallow cuts/scratches mainly along the forearms and upper chest. One has “no salvation” scratched into one arm.] Now, in this instance, while don’t actually see these Video Example 5: European Legions (Extra Features/Maniac/1’20”) [In this interview segment, Maniac displays the results of his abuses to the camera. In response to the question “Can you show your arm,” he begins with the comment that “barbed wire is nice for your body.” The interviewer then asks: “What is leading you to do this…is it just Marilyn Manson-like, or is it something deeper than just entertaining?” Maniac’s response is quite emphatic: “It keeps me alive, it brings me closer to life…if I didn’t do it, if I didn’t feel all the pain, I would have been dead from many years ago.” The interviewer also asks about a fan who asked 267 young women blade themselves, the majority of the images are consistent with descriptions and pictures of mild self-mutilation (again see Levenkron) [6]. For his part, Manson seems less concerned about what they were doing that in keeping himself on the top of the heap — as being more extreme. It is interesting in this regard, when we jump to Manson’s own “impromptu” cutting as part of an extended “rampage” sequence, is evident that he is using tape from an earlier show [7]. Just as the reasons why the artists use Performative Violent Acts vary, there are several possibilities for why fans would want to cut themselves or be cut by the band members. The most likely of these is cutting that would be classiﬁed as “experimentation/imitation,” emulation taken to an extreme to get attention of the band (or friends, or parents). Disquieting, perhaps, but something that is, as I understand it, most often a phase of psychological development that is passed through without any substantial, negative effect. In the case of In the interview with Maniac that we’ve already seen, you will recall that the interviewer mentioned “a fan” who actually asked to be cut, and Mayhem includes it on their DVD as an extra feature: the anonymous Mayhem fan, she may have even really been asking for an “autograph” of a sort [8]. Before we can begin to consider that on a deeper level, though, and thereby resurrect some old questions about Video Example 7: European Legions (Backstage footage/Special Features/Backstage Footage) [Synopsis: This is the only non-interview segment of the Special Features. Here we see a female fan getting her left upper forearm sliced open three times with a knife. This is done, judging from the comments of observers (all variants of ‘he’s a Maniac’), by the lead singer, although he is not seen. The cuts clearly break the skin, although nothing is done to encourage the wounds to bleed. The segment concludes with the bassist’s comment: “and on the top of everything, we cut beautiful women…”] violence in Rock music, we should ask if the “fans” presented here are “real” fans at all. Both examples are taken from the artist’s products, not from independent sources. While the marks on the Slashers are consistent with mild self-cutting, and that the Mayhem fan was obviously cut, there still remains a lack of veracity — not of the acts themselves but with the status of those involved. If those who were cut are not real fans, and they’re just cinematic extras, than what we have is the performers using Performative Violent Acts to create a connection with their audience by playing on sub-cultural tropes familiar to members of extreme subculture: They use them to blur reality and fantasy, vis a vis purportedly 268 off-stage, “real” fan behaviour. Or perhaps they are real fans, who by virtue of their walk-on roles have been blended into a combination of fan and performer (although not musician). Either way, off-stage in terms of the concert is really still on-stage in terms of the video. Fantasy and reality blurred by the Performative Violent Act in combination with an apparent reversal of the two. The blurring of the Person and Artist is nothing new; there will always be those willing to push the envelope for the sake of fame, and occasionally those that actually enjoy, in an unusual sense, the acts involved in doing so [9]. But when the distinction between fantasy and reality are blurred in this manner for members of the audience, the artists seem to be ﬂirting with disaster. Previous arguments about the violence of rock music were dismantled rather easily, because purported ‘dangers’ were more chimerical than actual. But here there is something more tangible than vague, if violent, suggestions. The latter examples could, legitimately I think, be seen as an invitation for such behaviour on the parts of the real fans. And if they were real fans, then we’ve already reached a point where the artists are literally ‘abusing’ them (and the issue of consent wouldn’t do much, depending on the country or state, to avoid legal consequences). manifestation of rock’s “dangers.” Is the effect of this the 90s/Y2K equivalent of Elvis’ shaking hips, Gene Simmon’s tongue waggling, or Cannibal Corpse’s grotesque imagery, such as that in their song Fucked by a Knife? Is it fair to say that, once again, such things, while they manifest themselves in the actions of the artists, are ultimately only part of our cultures apparent ever increasing appetite for violent entertainment that we’ve had for centuries (Bok, 1998)? Or, because they cross a line, are they justiﬁed cause for a call for policing along the lines Kahn-Harris suggests (KahnHarris, in Cloonan and Garofalo, 2003)? Any deﬁnitive conclusions with respect to cutting as a subcultural activity, of course, would have to be drawn from an extended formal study of the matter. In terms of the title of our session, if I may use it as a ﬁnal analogy, any such conclusions would show whether blading, and other Performative Violent Acts take the energy of Rock to a higher level, or if they change its very nature. Perhaps we need to temper such thoughts with a reality check of sorts, and ask ourselves if this is just a new 269 ‘Latin’ phrase, if my deciphering of the calligraphy on Endnotes 1. Wilson et. al, in their part of a national study on television violence, deﬁned it as “Any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to harm an animate being or group of beings. Violence also includes certain depictions of physically harmful consequences against an animate being or group that occur as a result of unseen violent means…. This deﬁnition insures that depictions classiﬁed as violent represent actual physical aggression directed against living beings. Such physical violence lies at the heart of any conception of violence….” the album is correct, “Tanto magis iryra se cecidit // Quanto magis secontra gloriam // Sui conditoris erexit” is not Latin at all. 6. It is generally agreed that this type of self-injury centers on female adolescents. See, for example, www. focusas.com/SelfInjury.html. There may also not be any underlying psychological problem at all (i.e., cutting is done as subcultural practice, body modiﬁcation in the same vein as piercing and tattooing, and endorphin release may also be alternatives). What the case may be with respect to any or all of those in my the present examples would depend on the psychological makeup of those involved, which is of course unknown. 2. You will, on occasion, see it happen. Wrestlers are also often cut beforehand, both for the sake of caution and to ensure good ‘ﬂow.’ 7. The size of the stage especially, but also the costuming, obscuring of the identity of the guitarist (either Zsa Zsa Speck or Daisy Berkowitz, depending 3. Baddely, in his discussion, mentions not only Manson, but also another band who appeared slightly later with a propensity for Performative Violence, the fetish-oriented Genitorturers. 8. It is interesting to note that it is always females being cut (either by a man or themselves). Research 4. The positioning of this cut is in keeping with Manson’s religious ﬁxation. indicates that self-cutting (similar to anorexia and bulimia) is an activity which is engaged in far more frequently by females than males (whose reckless 5. According to the translator I was in contact with, the behaviour manifests itself more often in other ways). on the speciﬁc show the footage is taken from), make this obvious. 270 9. I don’t necessarily mean that these people are masochists (which they very well may be), only that they enjoy the results in one way or another. Study Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1997. Selected Videography Cradle of Filth. Heavy, Left-Handed & Candid. AbraCadaver/Snapper Music 2001. Selected Bibliography Baddely, Gavin. Dissecting Marilyn Manson. England: Plexus, 2000. Marilyn Manson. Dead to the World. Interscope, 1998. Barthes, Roland. “The World of Wrestling,” in Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. Mayhem. European Legions: Live in Marseille 2000. Season of Mist, 2001. Bok, Sissela. Mayhem: Violence as Public World Wrestling Entertainment. Badd Blood. WWE Inc., 2003. Entertainment. Reading, MA: Perseus, 1998. Cloonan, Martin and Reebee Garofalo, eds. Policing Pop. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003. Kahn-Harris, Keith. “Death Metal and the Limits of Musical Expression,” in Cloonan and Garofalo, op. cit., 81-99. Levenkron, Steven. Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Mazer, Sharon. Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. Wilson, Barbara J. et als. National Television Violence IASPM03 - MONTREAL Popular Songs as a Form of Knowledge and Gathering for People Jorge Frozzini traditional ones for the study of popular songs where not suitable for me. The ﬁrst part of this presentation focus on the way I conceave the popular songs. I would like to specify that I will concentrate on the songs and not on the music in general, because the lyrics are the principal object of my analysis. Introduction T oday, I’ll talk about the « popular Songs as a Form of Knowledge and Gathering», the subject of my M.A. thesis. I got interested on this subject because when I lived in Chile, a groupe of musicians (a band) seemed to defy the dictatorship. The group was called Los Prisioneros, The Prisonners. Their songs never questioned directly the dictatorship, but did critic the society and that wasn’t normaly being accepted. A considerable part of the population seemed to identify themselves to their creations. I had the intuition that, Los Prisioneros, with their songs, allowed a form of gathering for the people, a way for them to be in a framework that aparently was not political. The second part of the presentation will expose the analysis of one of the songs of the group Los Prisioneros. This case study rest on a methodology inspired by the hermeneutic. Lets begin : the theoretical framework My hypothesis is that the song is a form of knowledge. Indeed, it is an «œuvre d’art», in the sens that Gadamer understands it. Gadamer is a German The following question is the one I’ve asked myself and the one I will try to answer today : how do the songs from the Chilean group Los Prisioneros were able to contribute to a popular gathering against the dictatorship? philosopher who published his most important texts during the 60’s. He considers that an œuvre d’art is a form of knowledge, a way to know. For him, the œuvre d’art opens new ways of understanding the world and ourselves. I beleave that we can consider the songs as In order to answer this question, in the ﬁrst place I had to build a theoretical framework, because the œuvres d’art that can lead to a new form of knowledge. In the case of the songs, this form of knowledge and 272 of understanding lean on the language and the music. Obviously, every experience of our world doesn’t necessarely need to be accomplish through the language. However, experience is not only an affair of senses, that’s to say the use of our senses (hearing, touching, etc.). Like Gadamer and Bakhtine thought, the experience is co-conditioned by the spoken language and it is by the spoken language that our perceptions work. Moreover, according to Bakhtine, the language is what allow us to establish a relation with the other and to deﬁne ourselves in relation to the others (1). The language is inscribed into the discursif context, that is to say into the different discourses present in a certain era or period of time. In that sens, the song reﬂects the world because of its inscription into the context of an era. However the song cannot be reduced to this only characteristic, because it is also the «product of a creative process». This creative process is what I call «the discursif imaginary», that is to say the continuous creative processes of creation that come from language and the existing discourses. In that sens, the song can participate to the construction of a new meaning. Thus, once the song is introduced into the discursif imaginary of a group, it is interpreeted and invested of a particular meaning, thanks to the continuous dialogue between the individuals. Then, we can say that the song is not aside of contextual inﬂuences. Indeed, within the culture and the mediatic system, the song is the object of a social legitimation by the group. Thus, the interpretations of it are the resultant of a dialogue, but the latter is dependent on the social events that inﬂuence the imaginary of the group. To sum up, I think that the popular song, like every cultural product, participates to the construction of meaning. Then, the popular song can be conceaved as a form of knowledge that participates to the construction of meaning, thanks to the dialogue that is allowed by it and its interlocutors, which never end, because it is reinterpreted and reused according to the imaginary of the persons listening. However, one question remains : how can the song allow the questioning of the social relations and contribute to political changes? For some people like Adorno, the products of industrial production, like the popular songs, cannot question our existing economic and social system. Nevertheless, other authors, like Garofalo and Ullestad, conceived the song as an international political tool. They show as an exemple, the analysis of mega musical concerts and albuns widely diffused. Peter Wicke and Pablo Vila demonstrate how the song allows a gathering of individuals, a gathering arround a precise subject, in that case the critic and the battle against authoritarian regims, like those of East Germany and Videla’s in Argentina (1976-1982). The use of the songs as a tool for popular 273 Diagram of symbolic interactions between a group and its interlocutors Cont ext Reco gnition/Infl uence Musical Gr oup Media Syst em Identification Interlo cutors Identification Cont ext Influ ence /Recogniti on This diagram descri bes the i nters ubjectivity of indiv iduals with a s eries of This diagram describes influences. We have co nstructe d a series of interdependences inte rdependence s and the intersubjectivity of individuals with this diagram for a bett er and illustrat ion of th e dynamics of the em otional bon d whi ch is i n itself a spiral, a double inﬂuences. infl uence. We have constructed this diagram for a better illustration of the dynamics of the emotional bond which is in itself a spiral, a double inﬂuence. demands is relatively evident, as we saw. What is less evident, is the acceptation by the locutors of a discourse different from the one proposed by the society or the government. I think that it is possible because of an emotional bond that is established between the artists and its interlocutors. This emotional bond in itself is granted by the challenging character of the existential content, and the context in which they are inscribed. The emotional bond rest on the image and the identiﬁcation to a personality (2), on the need of recognition and the willingness to inﬂuence others. Thus, while the groups receive a certain recognition from their fans, the latters inﬂuence the former by formulating demands and encouraging them to create something close to their reality. Afterwards, while trying to inﬂuence their fans, the musical groups will allow them a certain recognition. Sometimes, the groups would then be the only ones to recognize their existence. We are then facing a phenomenon of double recognition and double inﬂuence. The inﬂuence of the songs comes from, amongst other things, its content, which makes it fundamental. According to some scholars, the use of popular language and familiar symbols in songs, allows a better understanding of the ideas or propositions that the composers want to communicate to the population. Furthermore, according to the sociologist Alberto Melucci, the new social movements often introduce existential contents, since it seems impossible for the system to reduce or manipulate them (3). That 274 observation permits the understanding of the marginal connotation given to some of the contemporary regime of Mr. Augusto Pinochet and the transition, that is to say the handover of power from the army to the democratically elected civilians in 1989. According to Thompson (5), a good analysis should have three levels: a socio-historical analysis, a discursive analysis and their interpretation. The levels of analysis demonstrations. According to Melucci, the need to transform life is express through the refusing of norms, the mystic runaway, the search for expressions, and the efforts for building non-merchant interpersonal relations (4). To sum up, in the ﬁrst part of my presentation, we agree that a song is a form of knowlegde that could bear a social critic, depending on its content, the context and the meaning given by the individuals. In the next part of this presentation, we will see the methodology which takes into account those characteristics. Second part: a hermeneutic methodology The social-historical analysis is employed because every symbolic production is produced and interpreted in speciﬁc historical and social situations. It is important to re-construct in our imaginary the political and social context of production, circulation and understanding of the popular songs, in order to be able to examine the conventions and the social relations of that era. Moreover, The theoritical framework that I have presented in the ﬁrst part is inscribed in the hermeneutic tradition of problems of the meaning and understanding. Heidegger and Gadamer, two major ﬁgures of this tradition, were more interested on the philosophical implications of their thought than to the pratical applications of it. That is why, I turn myself to John Thompson who proposes a methodology inspired by the hermeneutic. Once I’ll brieﬂy explain the main elements of this methodology, I will give an example of its application to the study of the songs of the Chilean group Los Prisioneros produced from 1980 to 1993. As we will notice, those years coincide with the second period of the dictatorial the discursive analysis of the songs is necessary, in order to analyse the complex symbolic constructions through which things are said and represented. Indeed, phrases and expressions are combined in a certain way in order to formulate a unity of meaning that goes beyond the simple phrases. Finaly, the last phase is the interpretation, where the researcher suggest a certain construction of meaning for an interpretative explanation of what is said and represented. The latter is different from the discursive analysis that proposes a deconstruction of terms that works in a discursive way. The interpretation, conversely, makes a synthesis with the help of the socio-historical and the discursive 275 Diagram of the Methodological Framework M ethodo log ical fram ework of depth hermeneutics 1 : Soc ial-historical analysis 2 : Dis cur sive analysis Soc ial cont ext Cont ext of the mu sical group Th em es Symbo ls / Im ages Categor ies of acto rs / Rela tion s 3 : Interpr etation Source : Adaptation of the diagram proposed by John by Thompson. homp son. IdModern Culture. Source : Adaptati on of the d iagra m propos ed B. John B. T Ideology and e ology and London, Stanford University Press, 1990, Chapter 6, p. 281. M ode rn C ulture . L ondon, Stanf ord U niversity Press, 1990, Chapter 6, p. 281. analysis in order to reconstruct a meaning that could be possible (6). The analysis of a song (7) ). Afterwards, I will expose the interpretation of the song selected and the one of all the songs analysed from this group. The social-historical analysis Synthesis of the general historical context I have choosen as an example for todays’ conference, the song «El baile de los que sobran», « the dance I’ll present some important events of the contemporary chilean history. I’ll start from the 1970’s because this will help us to have a better understanding of the historical references and the imaginary of the songs. The UP (Popular Union) regim allowed the nationalization of several national key industries and the reinforcement of the idea of social justice. Unfortunately, the hope was destroyed by the coup of the excluded », written in 1986 by the group Los Prisoneros. I will present the socio-historical analysis of the second period of Pinochet’s regime in Chile. Also, I’ll present the political transition and the history of the musical group. The discursive analysis will be presented through different categories of analysis (themes, symbols/images and categories of actors/relations 276 d’État of september 11th 1973, orchestrated by the army. The image of the chief of that action is associated to Pinochet. The dictatorial regime of Pinochet covers the period from 1973 to 1990. During those years, I can separate the repression into two periods. The ﬁrst one from 1973 to 1977 which is the most represive. The other one from 1978 to 1990 was still represive, but in a lower intensity. It is during the second period that the demonstrations were more evident. During the whole dictatorship, the technocrats of the regime concentrated themselves on the setting of a liberal economic system. Indeed, they privatized several industries, made the labor ﬂexible, cut on the public expenditures, etc. They reformed the economic institutions of the government with the help of new legislations from the recently written Constitution of 1980. The consequences of all those mesures where the deterioration of the services given to the population like the education and health. Moreover, these reforms ended up increasing the low income population as well as the concentration of the country’s richness in the hands of the country’s oligarchy. The economic crisis of 1980-1983, contributed to the development of the movements. The members of the group Los prisioneros lived those changes and participated in the questioning of the regime. The new Constitution allowed the reforms of the regime and its durability after the transition (1989 – 1990). Today, Chile lives on that Constitutional framework in spite of the recent initiatives to change it. The discursif analysis of the song «El baile de los que sobran» I shall remind you, that in this section, I’ll present three types of analysis : themes and sub-themes; the images and symbols used in the song; and ﬁnally, the categories of actors and their relations. Continued Over Page 277 The song «El baile de los que sobran» Jorge Gonzáles 1986, (The dance of the excluded) (Audio example) Es otra noche más de caminar es otro ﬁn de mes sin novedad Tus amigos se quedaron igual que tú este año se les acabaron los juegos...los 12 juegos It is another night of walking another end of the month without novelties Your friends endedup like you This year ended the games… the 12 games Unanse al baile de los que sobran nadie nos va a echar de más nadie nos quizo ayudar de verdad Join the dance of the excluded no one will impose upon us other people Nobody really wanted to help us Nos dijeron cuando chicos jueguen a estudiar los hombres son hermanos y juntos deben trabajar Oían los consejos los ojos en el profesor Había tanto sol sobre las cabezas y no fué tan verdad porque esos juegos al ﬁnal terminaron para otros con laureles y futuros y dejaron a mis amigos pateando piedras They tell us when we were young « play to study humans are brothers and together they have to work » listen to the advice the eyes set on the teacher There was so much sun on their heads but it wasn’t the truth because those games where for others with honour and a future and left my friends on the street [ « kicking rocks » ] Unanse al baile de los que sobran Join the dance of the excluded 278 Nadie nos va a echar de más nadie nos quizo ayudar de verdad no one will impose upon us other people Nobody really wanted to help us Hey conozco unos cuentos sobre el futuro Hey el tiempo en que los aprendi fue más seguro. Hey, I know some histories about the future Hey, the time I learned them Was safer Bajo los zapatos barro más cemento el futuro no es ninguno de los prometidos en los 12 juegos A otros enseñaron secretos que a ti no a otros dieron de verdad esa cosa llamada educación Ellos pedían esfuerzo ellos pedían dedicación ¿y para qué? para terminar bailando y pateano piedras Under the shoes mud and cement there is no future like the one promise by the 12 games They learn to others’ secrets and not to you to others, they really gave this thing named education they ask for efforts they ask for devotion And for what ? To ﬁnished dancing and on the street (« kicking rocks ») Unete al baile de los que sobran Nadie nos va a echar de más Nadie nos quizo ayudar de verdad. Join the dance of the excluded no one will impose upon us other people Nobody really wanted to help us Hey conozco unos cuentos sobre el futuro Hey el tiempo en que los aprendí fue más seguro Hey, I know some histories about the future Hey, the time I learned them was safer 279 The theme of the song Images and symbols of the song The main theme of the song El baile de los que sobran is the disenchantment, the disillusion of the young facing a future which has little to offer or uncertain perspectives. The lyrics of the song are ﬁlled with many indications showing that there is a homogenous group formed by youngsters (Your friends ended up like you) who feel excluded (No one really wanted to help us). Even in the title of the song (The dance of the excluded), we notice the desire of those socially excluded individuals to gather. Different secundary themes tackled in «El baile de los que sobran» reinforce the general theme. Amongst those themes, we ﬁnd the unemployed (It is another night of walking / another end of the month without news ) and their insecurity to face the present and the future, while the past seemed safer (« Hey, the time I learned them / was sasfer »). The lying is also a secundary theme of the song (« But it wasn’t the truth »). That idea is connected to the discourse repeated to the kids while they were attending school. The last secundary theme raised in that song is the chilian education system : the public system is considered to be of a very poor quality (« To others they really gave / this thing called education » ) while the private system is presented as the only one really able to open the doors for those who attended it. One of the ﬁrst symbol of the song El baile de los que sobran is the dance (« el baile »). That very activity is a corporal mean to express ourselves and to create a feeling of belonging. Trough the symbolism of dancing, the authors create a proper way to belong to a group – in that case, a group of young people. That kind of solidarity is one of a group of people sharing the exclusion feeling (No one will impose upon us other people). Another symbol which we encounter in the song is that of the tale (cuento) of the history. A tale is an imagined structured event, which doesnt necessarily reﬂects the reality. In the song, that theme is used as a symbol in order to show that what was told to the kids didn’t represent the reality, it wasn’t more then an ephemeral illusion. The tale is then associated to the teachers idealistic discourse regarding the future of their pupils. Amongst the strong images emerging from the text, we can pinpoint that of the twelve games (los 12 juegos), refering to the twelve years required by the chilean primary and secundary education system. Those years of learning are associated to a foolish kids game, to good time which ends up when the youth is over, because we’ve got to start working. Many images are illustrating the difﬁculties then lived by the adults. Those representations refere to the 280 complexity of ﬁnding a job (« Another end of the month witout novelties ») and to the precarious economic conditions of that era. So one of the images is that of the association between walking and job hunting (« under the shoes / mud and cement»). Another one is that of a person «kicking rocks» while walking. That image can be associated to a person upset by all its preocupations, but also to a person which has very little to hope for. Actors categories and their relations maintaining unfair relations with the other one. The opportunity is given to the well-off groups while the popular classes are left out. While the song was broadcast (1986) The social context was difﬁcult : the unemployment rate was high, there were precarious social conditions and the government didn’t invest enough in certain ministries, like education, in order to improve the existing services. Indeed, the investments in education didn’t stop to decrease during the military regime. In that context, the dissatisfaction of the population rose and gave birth to «El baile de los que sobran» has three categories of actors. There is the narrator relating its own story shared by many young people of its generation. He is using the ﬁsrt person of the singular while talking — « I » — and sometimes ﬁrst of the plural — « We » —. This second actor is formed by the group telling their collective experiences and whose education was deﬁcient. It comes into conﬂict with the third actor, those who received a good education (« were for others »). Indeed, there is a bipolar relation between the second and the third actor which rest on false basis (« Hey, I know some histories ») and the lack of goodwill from a social class toward another (« Nobody really wanted to help us »). The interpretation of the song the questioning of the ofﬁcial discourse. «El baile de los que sobran» establish a comparison between the discourse given to the youngsters during their years in school and the reality once those years are over. This gap reinforce a subversive discourse as well as the feeling of belonging to the same group of persons who absorb the repercussions of the social and economic problems. The discursive imaginary of those who disapprove with the ofﬁcial discourse (scientiﬁc and efﬁcient) is fed with the idea that the public school provides a poor education which doesn’t give the tools to compete with those who have received a good instruction. The song serves as a vehicle for the idea that the excluded are the remains of the society which have no future. «El baile de los que sobran» show two categories of actors where one of them is accused of This bitterness against the society can also be explained by the long lasting rancorous feeling in a 281 country divided by the political opinions and especially by the gap between rich and poor that has tremendously increase during the years of the dictatorship. General interpretation of the songs social crisis that left its traces on the collective memory. However, that economic crisis was not as deep and with the same scope as the one of the 1980’s (lost of jobs, but mainly the lack of resources). Among the inequalities highlighted, one that comes up regularly in the songs is the quality of the education received, depending on the social class you belonged. The poor receive a bad quality education with scarce resources while the riches get a good quality education with all the resources they need. This inequality existed de facto at that time with the lack of ﬁnancing of the public schools. They had to do a lot with nothing. For example, the public expenditures on education never stopped decreasing during that period of time. That decrease has a tremendous impact on the educational establishment not only at the level of teaching (hire new teachers) but also on school materials (for example, school rooms without windows and bad heated during the winter). Another common feature of the songs is the denunciation of the maintaining of the status quo, of the established order, with the help of tales, and more often, by the presence of lies in the ofﬁcial discourse. This characteristic is always present in the Chilean discursive imaginary, that do not trust the saying and promises of the authority, particularly during the dictatorial regime. With the upholding of the ofﬁcial discourse and the reproduction of an unfair system (made possible by The analysis of the selected songs shows a series of similarities. The ﬁrst one and the most evident is the symbolic division of the society. Indeed, those songs have a bipolar vision of the society, which is composed of two groups of actors: «We», the majority of the population, and the «others», which are the oligarchy and the army who still were in power. Notice that this division is present in the social imaginary of the Chilean society from the birth of the country (8). In the lyrics, the social division is at the root of the confrontations, just as the inequalities regarding the living conditions and the access to power. The texts also frequently make a reference to the economic context of the country. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1980’s, a serious economic crisis in Chile led to the shutting down of several industries and the lay-off of thousand of people. It is a period of misery that left a profound impression on the population and especially on its imaginary. The songs were able to express that impression (for example when describing the difﬁculties to ﬁnd a job or simply when describing the misery). Notice that during the period of the Popular Union, from 1970 to 1973, there also was an economic and 282 the transforming strategy of the Pinochet dictatorial regime), we assisted to the development of a feeling of helplessness among the population and the generalization of a fatalist thought that affects all lower social classes. The fatalism is evident, particularly at the end of the massive demonstrations of 1986 and during the acceptation of the ongoing political and economic changes introduced under Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1973. The selected songs well describe that fatalism, but they try to question the dominant discourse in order to counter that fatalist thinking and give to the majority of the population a certain liberty of action and words and ﬁnally, the possibility of a gathering against the supporters of the dictatorship. Conclusion escape from the predetermined theoretical schemes in order to improve our understanding of the world. In that essay, we tried to answer the following question: How do the songs from the Chilean group Los Prisioneros were able to contribute to a popular gathering against the dictatorship? In order to answer that question, we ﬁrst had to construct our own conception of what is a song. We concluded that the song could be considered like a form of knowledge – a way of knowing – which participates to the construction of a meaning, because of the dialogue it is creating between its interlocutors. That dialogue never ends since it is always reinterpreted and reused by the people, depending on their discursive imaginary. That characteristic allows us to conclude that a song has the capacity to diffuse a social critic, depending on its content, on the socio-historical context, and on the The investigation that we carried on and from which we have presented the main results in these few pages, is the fruit of two passions: the music and the investigation. Since the subject has to be bounded, we decided to concentrate on a single group and only few of their songs. Regarding the theoretical and methodological parts of the thesis we chose the hermeneutic philosophy, as used by Gadamer, as well as the Cultural Studies. These selections have been guided by a leitmotiv from Henry Miller: “What goes wrong is not the world, it is our way of looking at it.” In other words, we shall try to interpretation given to it by the people. After that, we tried to understand how do a song could provoke the questioning of the established social relations and even some political changes. In order to succeed, we’ve ask ourselves the following question : How could a song allow a certain comprehension of the world and ourselves that would be contrary to that of the hegemonic discourse? According to us, that phenomenon is possible because of the emotional link that exists between the artists and their fans, but also because of the claiming character of the existentialist 283 content of the songs, depending on the context during which they have been written. Once the theoretical framework was established, we looked for a methodology that would suit it. We decided to go for that of John Thompson, inspired by a form of hermeneutics he calls «depth hermeneutics». According to Thompson, we shall use three levels of analysis in order to understand a cultural product. These are a socio-historical analysis, a discursive analysis and the interpretation that allows a creative synthesis of these two analysis. We then adapted and applied that methodology to ﬁve songs composed by the Chilean group Los Prisioneros between 1980 and 1993. Today we only presented one of these analysis. In fact, we have described the Chilean socio-political context from 1969 to 1993 in order to allow a global view of the main political, social and economic events that punctuated the contemporary Chilean history. The analysis of Los Prisioneros’s songs let us deduce that they have contributed to a particular understanding of the context, which is contrary to the dominant discourse held during Pinochet’s dictatorship (the high efﬁciency of the system implanted by the regime). Three particular characteristics of these songs make the critical comprehension of the context possible : the critics formulated toward social inequities, the use of images and symbols present in the discursive imaginary that allows the understanding of that critic and ﬁnally, the way it is creating an opposition between two social groups. Amongst the critics regarding social inequalities we could give as an example, the difference between the quality of education being given in public schools – of bad quality- and that of the private schools – of good quality. Another inequality treated in the songs is the gap between the quality of life and power’s accessibility of the rich compare to that of the poor. In most of the songs, there is a confrontation between two groups: the riches – or the national oligarchy – and the poor – or the majority of the population. That opposition is often treated in terms of dominant / dominated which allows the creation of a feeling of belonging amid a large section of the population. Furthermore, poor people and the values we associate with them are valorized. That valorization allows the strengthening of that feeling of belonging amid songs interlocutors that generally come from the lower or mid-lower class. Another characteristic that facilitate the interlocutor’s identiﬁcation with the presented situations, is the identiﬁcation of the narrator with the people. Once the social context changes, that confrontation moves on to a more individual level. Also, we noticed the ironic questionning of the relations between women and men. Inequalities and social groups described in the songs lean on many images and symbols. Amongst the symbols, we shall note the cars and the travels that, in 284 the discursive imaginary, have long been considered like a symbol of a high social status. Amid the images, poverty and misery are pinpointed. For example, they are mentioned in the description of an unsuccessful job hunting or in the remembering of lamentations during the period when people loose their job massively. One of the main features of the Chilean society being reproduce in the songs is a kind of fatalism in their vision of the world, and that, even with the presence of a harsh critic of certain social relation’s aspects. These results allow us to conclude that, because they are diffusing an understanding of that era’s context contrary to the ofﬁcial discourse, (through the usage of elements from the discursive imaginary), the songs studied encourages a popular get-together against the national oligarchy and Pinochet’s dictatorship. In fact, the songs are referring to a past time economically and socially better. We can suppose that they refer to the era of the Popular Unity with its social ambitions of equality and its economic conditions that allowed the population’s subsistence. Of course, there were provisioning problems during that time as Chile was being boycotted by countries like the United States. Nonetheless, it is the memory of a time more socially fair that persist in the song. The discourse of the songs goes against the dominating discourse that deﬁnes the system as able to solve every problem. Within these songs, we ﬁnd the description of a completely different reality, among which, the communication of a vision that is contrary to the ofﬁcial discourse. We are then able to understand differently the socio-historical context while encouraging the exchange of many points of view. On top of that, we can suppose, even if that wasn’t treated in this thesis, that the censorship that affected the group as well as their participation to demonstrations against the regime also contributed to this popular get-together. On the other hand, the censorship might have impeded the group from formulating a critic against the “political elite of the time,” as harsh as they really wanted. Those three last points would deserve to be further investigated. In order to demonstrate a little bit more those ideas (censorship, participation to popular demonstration and harsh critics), it would be necessary to realise many interviews with the people who actually listened to those songs at the time, that is mostly young people (that style of rock music was mostly listen by young people), but also with the very authors of the songs. That new investigation path would allow to deepen the present study. Following the same logic, another interesting path would be the analysis of the concerts as a communion ritual, but also as a tool being used to control society (the show allows the creation of a controlled space within which the drives are expressed). In fact, we only mention its communion aspect, without discussing the social control aspect of the song. 285 Another interesting path would be the analysis of the very music from the songs. We shall recall that we do not possess the expertise required for such an analysis. Nevertheless, we think that the analysis of the music would allow a better understanding of the mechanism of the songs, like the usage of our senses and of sounds that stimulate our imaginary. For example, «El baile de Endnotes 1. Mikhail Bakhtine. Le marxisme et la philosophie du langage : essai d’application de la méthode sociologique en linguistique. Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit. 1977. p.124. los que sobran», starts with the barking of dogs. In the collective imaginary, that sound is associated with the town’s poor quarter where we ﬁnd a lots of itinerant dogs. Examples like this one are found in many songs and deserve a particular attention that could be given to them within the bounds of another investigation. At the theoretical level, an investigation path that could have deep methodological and theoretical incidence would be the integration of some concepts from a German sociologist - who has produced very interesting analysis of our modern societies - Niklas Luhmann, such as the differentiation and autopoiesis. Its contributions to the ﬁled of communications shall not be neglected. Furthermore, a theory of cultural products that would include its philosophy, as well as Gadamer’s philosophy represents a challenge that could be undertaken. 2. The identiﬁcation to a leader (process of identiﬁcation), or a star, because of its charisma, is according to a weberian analysis, a response to the need of the self stabilization. Through that identiﬁcation, the group members (the locutors) would fulﬁll the deﬁciency of their self. In this way, people who didn’t manage to make their dreams come true, in their everyday lives, could live the dream or experience a success through those stars (Melucci and Enriquez). 3. From Alberto Melucci. op. cit. p. 59. 4. Alberto Melucci. op. cit. 5. John B. Thompson. Ideology and Modern Culture. London, Stanford University Press, 1990, Chapter 6, p. 272-327. 6. From John B. Thompson. op. cit. 7. By theme, I understand the global message (or 286 content) of the song, the main idea that emanate from it. By symbol, I understand something that makes present something that is not and that serve as a vehicle for a certain conception of the represented thing. By image, I understand something that doesn’t send back to enything that is not present in itself (this can be a word or a phrase). Finaly, by actors/relations, I understand the characters represented (groups or individuals) in the texts (words) of the songs, as well as the interactions that the latter keep alive through the events described. For more insights see the chapter III of my M.A., thesis. des philosophes. Paris : Armand Colin, 2000. p.127. Benjamin, Walter. Le concept de critique esthétique dans le romantisme allemand. Paris : Flammarion, 1986. Bloom, Allan. “La musique.” L’âme désarmée : essai sur le déclin de la culture générale. Québec : Guérin, 1987. p. 74-89. Castoriadis, Cornelius. L’institution imaginaire de la société. Paris : Éditions du Seuil, 1975. Chénier, Jean-François. 2002. «Le complot 8. To know about that idea, consult Salazar, Gabriel et Pinto, Julio. Historia contemporánea de Chile tome I et II . Santiago : LOM. 1999. herméneutique : passion et cognition dans l’œuvre de Pierre Klossowski». M.A., thesis, Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 111p. Selected Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. “ On Popular Music.“ On Record Del Pozo, José. Le Chili Contemporain. Montréal : Éditions Nota bene, 2000. : Rock, Pop, and The Written Word. Eds. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin. London : Routledge, 1994. p. 301-314. Bakhtine, Mikhail. Le marxisme et la philosophie du Encyclopédie Britannique. 1993. El Mercurio. Breve Historia de la Unidad Popular. Santiago: Lord Cochran, 1974. langage : essai d’application de la méthode sociologique en linguistique. Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit, 1977. Frith, Simon and Street, John. “Rock Against Racism Baraquin, Noëlla and Lafﬁtte, Jacqueline. Dictionnaire and Red Wedge: From Music to Politics, from Politics 287 to Music.” Rockin, the Boat : Mass Music & Mass Guzman, Patricio. 1997. Chili : la mémoire obstinée. Film, coul., 58 min 32s.Montréal : ONF. 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Kofman, Sarah. “La mélancolie de l’art.” Philosopher Garofalo, Reebee. “Nelson Mandela, the Concerts: Mass Culture as Contested Terrain.” Rockin, the Boat : 1 : Les interrogations contemporaines. Matériaux pour un enseignement. Eds. Delacampagne, Christian and Maggiori, Robert. Paris : Fayard, 2000. p. 405-417. Mass Music & Mass Movements. Ed. Garofalo, Reebee. Boston : South End Press, 1992. p. 55-65. Lull, James. “Listeners’ Communicative Uses of Popular —. “Understanding Mega-Events : If we are the World, Then how do we change it ?” Rockin, the Boat : Mass Music.” Popular Music and Communication. Ed. Lull, James. Newbury Park: Sage, 1987. p. 140-174. Music & Mass Movements. Ed. Garofalo, Reebee. Boston : South End Press, 1992. p. 15-35. Mattelart, Armand and Michèle. Histoire des théories 288 de la communication. Paris: La découverte, 1999. Melucci, Alberto. “L’azzione Ribelle : Formazione e Struttura dei Movimenti Sociali.” Movimenti di Rivolta. Ed. Melucci, Alberto. 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Los Prisioneros web site, January 2004 <http://www.losprisioneros.cl/losprisioneros2/index/ fsentrada.html> IASPM03 - MONTREAL You Gotta Work Your Jelly Cynthia Fuchs F or a minute in June-into-July 2003, the release of Beyoncé Knowles’ debut solo album, Dangerously Questions of co-optation and integrity are audible to those who listen attentively for sounds of political independence from state inﬂuence. The din can be confusing given that conﬂictual allegiances abound in American politics and culture. --Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, 1999 In Love, dominated U.S. mass media consciousness. This before news about the 16 words, Kobe Bryant, and Jessica Lynch’s West Virginia homecoming, and before Ashanti’s album dropped (though Beyoncé’s single still tops the charts). The girl was everywhere, from Today to Carson Daly, Letterman to the instantly notorious dance on Grant’s Tomb for the Fourth of July. Like all successful pop stars these days, she has many faces, displaying ﬂexibility and good humor amid continuous pressures. On the cover of Today’s Black Woman, she’s golden and self-assured; on Seventeen, perky and pink; on Essence, respectably seductive; on Jet, admirably big-sisterly, to Solange; and for Blender, straight-up bodacious. When she appeared on The View, she instructed Star Jones and Meredith Vieira on the ﬁner points of the “butt roll,” and on TRL, she took fan phone calls, assuring them all that she appreciated their love -- all of it. Despite an implied intention to be a virgin on her wedding night, Beyoncé is said to have enjoyed a liaison with Eminem and her latest escort, Jay-Z, is a former drug dealer, on probation for stabbing a record executive. --Tanith Carey, The Mirror, 8 July 2003 It can drive you crazy and mess with your head. You have to be super-strong Time magazine’s Josh Tryangiel describes Beyoncé Knowles as “a Star Search contestant at age 10, [who] has rehearsed for fame her entire life,” yet still nervous concerning her ﬁrst solo album. The 21ish because people say things about you. As I get older, I care less about that. --Beyoncé Knowles, NME News, 9 July 2002 291 superstar’s appeal, he continues, “lies in her ability to be both pious and real; as a devout Methodist who has been linked with Jay-Z (she denies they’re anything more than friends, then notes that she wants to keep this one thing “private”), she is too cool not to talk about sex, but she’s too serious not to wink about it” (30 June 2003). I wanted people to know that I’m strong, but I can fall in love, I can get hurt, I can feel like I need someone, and everything every other woman goes through” (AP 1 July 2003). Whatever else you might think about her, Beyoncé is not much like “every other woman.” Still, Beyoncé -- with and without Destiny’s Child -- manages various tensions, speaking to her This doubled construction -- Beyoncé is this fans in ways that seem subjective and objective, private and public, embodied and ethereally abstract. And in each manifestation, she keeps control. As the New York Times’ Caryn James observed regarding a similar self-performance by Beyoncé on a 2001 MTV Diary (“We’re real people”), this is the “mantra of celebrities everywhere.” Even in the most mundane instances, as when she refuses to discuss the rumored Jay-Z romance, extols being managed by her father Matthew and dressed by her mom Tina, or praises her bandmates’ (lesser) successes, Beyoncé evinces a keen awareness (whether she has it or not) of herself as a surface onto which consumers might project their desires. and also that -- demonstrates a common approach to writing about the breakout star of Destiny’s Child, the best-selling girl group of all time. Currently pitching product for L’Oreal, Ford, and Pepsi (having superceded Britney on this last account), as well as promoting Dangerously In Love, Beyoncé Knowles is famously focused, conﬁdent, and diligent -- and also congenial and disarming. Allison Samuels writes that Beyoncé “has been accused of having a Diana Ross complex. When she appeared on The View, she instructed Star Jones and Meredith Vieira on the ﬁner points of the “butt roll,” Knowles’ ostensibly ostentatious range -- of talents, interests, and performances -- have granted her multiplying commercial horizons. Indeed, the new album reportedly offers still another angle on this hit machine: “human.” As Knowles tells Nekesa Mumbi Moody, “All of the songs I wrote for Destiny’s Child were usually so strong -- and that’s a good thing -- but sometimes people lose touch with you being a human. In this, she surely reﬂects her personal history, though she’s so available to diverse interpretive claims. The difﬁcult yet strangely propitious background of Destiny’s Child is well known. Groomed from childhood to be pop stars, Knowles and Kelly Rowland (the only 292 original members left) have overcome numerous crises to arrive at the current, multi-platinum-selling formation, with Knowles, Rowland and Michelle Williams (reportedly renamed by Matthew because her original name, Tenetira, was “too ethnic”), with Solange “rumored” to be joining next year (when a TRL host ﬂoated the notion at the behest of Matthew Knowles, the audience woo-hooed on cue, as if to reconﬁrm daddy’s marketing acumen). conﬁdence, say, or success), as well as a dynamic basis for identity. “Independent Women,” as the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack song has it, buy their own watches, houses, and cars, but more importantly, they earn their money; in the video for this song, the girls of Destiny’s Child head up a board meeting, take down a wire-working ninja, then ride their motorcycles into a sort of digital sunset. This particular performance, hyper-artiﬁcial and almost painfully vivacious, posits the girls as aggressively sovereign as well as a mutually What’s more (and in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 18 months), Beyoncé -- like all post-Will-Smith kid superstars -- has ventured into movies (the desirous and restless Carmen in an MTV hiphopera, “whole lotta woman” Foxxy Cleopatra in Goldmember, and a single mother and Cuba Gooding Jr.’s romantic interest in the upcoming Fighting Temptations). Given the legendary brutality of pop stardom, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Beyoncé and DC’s image is that it is so emphatically premised on female “independence,” as this is framed by generational, gendered, and raced expectations. supportive, Angels-like team. This combination -- of seeming self-absorption and utter devotion to one another -- has made Destiny’s Child remarkably potent performers, as businesswomen as well as artists. Most groups who split off to undertake individual projects -- ‘NSync comes to mind, as well as the Supremes and the Wu Tang Clan -- don’t recover. While it remains to be seen whether DC can survive Beyoncé’s sure-to-be-platinum enormity, so far they’ve worked hard (that word again) to maintain their crucial and consummate groupness. For Beyoncé’s pay-perview, Ford-pimping show in Detroit, the ﬁnale comprised Most striking is Beyoncé’s repeated emphasis on work, as concept, ethic, and self-making practice. As everyone knows by now, it takes some effort to be Destiny’s Child. Primary lyricist Knowles frequently refers to work as a means to a customary end (self- a DC “reunion,” and they’ve been talking about another album, scheduled for the studio in September. Perhaps most compelling, about the group as well as the individuals, is their seeming endless capacity 293 to present themselves as a community, despite rumors of exclusivity and actual breakups and lawsuits (most recent ex-DC member Farrah Franklin tells Vibe’s Lola Ogunnaike that the Knowleses are “kinda like a cult. They don’t have friends who aren’t in the Destiny’s Child clique” (February 2001). Still, the three girls present a united front, and the truth or untruth of that front is less signiﬁcant than its presentation. Destiny’s Child is the complete performance package, with Tina’s color-matched-up costumes and the girls’ shared affection for junk food joining them in delirious exhibits of commercial-savvy camaraderie. Such a politics -- amorphous and shifting -- irks some consumers, of course (Mark Anthony Neal, in his wonderful new book Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation, dismisses Destiny’s Child as “budding theoretical feminists” in the course of his discussion of “grown-ass women performers [28]), but their reach is irrefutable; my focus here is their visible efforts to speak to an audience they comprehend. The very complicatedness and ambiguity of their politics and practice make Destiny’s Child and Beyoncé especially useful for examining relations between popular acts and cultural contexts. Beyoncé’s latest incarnation exempliﬁes intersections between self-expression and performance, art and commerce. Her tremendous “crossover” success -- across markets of diverse race, gender, generation, and sexual orientation -- demonstrates the effects of an ongoing hybridization of music and image styles; indeed, it would be difﬁcult to pin down Beyoncé’s performance, as she draws from pop, r&b, hiphop, soul, and dance conventions. That is, her celebrity exempliﬁes a practice of popular music in relation to a popular politics, of pleasure, certainly, but also strangely expansive and even occasionally “progressive,” within the obvious (and frequently disparaged) limits of mainstream commercialism and sexual objectiﬁcation. On the release of Survivor, the ﬁrst album featuring the group as it has been sustained since 2001, Ann Powers argued that the “overwhelming appeal of Destiny’s Child is based on seriousness, not charm” (“In Tune with the New Feminism,” New York Times, 29 April 2001). In the midst of much-publicized personnel changes (LaToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson were dropped from or quit the group, claiming that Matthew Knowles was too “controlling”), Powers noted that then 19-year-old Knowles “emerged as an unusually authoritative teenage star,” co-producing and cowriting every song on the album. Noting the album’s unevenness as well as its admirable “competitiveness” and “relevance,” Powers adds, “Some might say that Destiny’s Child’s attempt to be everything at once is 294 hypocritical,” but, “in the gap between the ﬂawlessness sought by ultimate women like Destiny’s Child and the ambition and fear that drives them toward it, femininity changes. And that’s where real women live.” positive things, / I’ll gain posterity”) ands her always evident industry in her dance steps. Her diligence on the road and in interviews is well known; you might even argue that her recent afﬁliation with an accredited “streets” representative like Jay-Z is work (and he’s put As a last line in an article on “new feminism,” Powers’ appeal to “real women” is at once dramatic and apt. Beyoncé’s occasional age-appropriate awkwardness, as much as her ever-lucrative combination of poise and excess, make her both reﬂection and exemplar: savvy entrepreneur, bootylicious babe, respectful daughter, loyal best friend, and, now, with the chart-topping solo album, a maturing artist and tireless self-promoter. Her performance focuses attention on her body, her psyche, and the processes that constrain and compel them, underlining the exertion that goes into it. As Simon Frith asserts in his Performing Rites (1996), “Far from wanting the means of production to be concealed, the popular audience wants to see how much has gone into its entertainment. Performance as labor is a necessary part of the popular aesthetic” (207). in his own work, appearing to rap his little bit at many of her live performances of the new single, “Crazy in Love,” from the BET Awards to Saturday Night Live to June’s pay-per-view extravaganza in Detroit. In all instances, Beyoncé’s body is an emblem of effort, as underlined in her interview with Katie Couric when she performed on Today (27 June 2003). Couric runs down the recent “really, really busy” promotional schedule -- the VH1 Diva Duets, the BET Awards, the Essence Awards -- then professes surprise (“And you’ve been on so many magazine covers!”), before wondering just how she does it. “They have me working,” confesses Beyoncé, smiling nicely. Katie keeps on, discussing the new diet and the new, slightly less bootylicious look: “And we’ve been hearing about how you’re keeping in shape. You’re eating a lot of sugar-free Jell-O and not a lot of Popeye’s Chicken anymore.” Being Beyoncé is Beyoncé’s labor takes several forms, including her lyrical labors (notably, the crowding of words and strange combinations of images have become something of a signature, as in this line from “Survivor,” usually performed by Michelle: “If I surround myself with indeed a job of work. While this is obvious in the pop tracks, even in ballads, Beyoncé distinctly uses her body as an extension of her voice and vice versa to display emotion (as in the 295 group’s cover of the Bee Gees’ “Emotion”). Of course, bodily gestures and responses can be faked, and this has been a frequent criticism of Destiny’s Child and Beyoncé especially, that her performances are overtly false, because she seems inexpert (her turn as Foxxy Cleopatra was praised more for her verve than skills), awkward, and plainly exerts herself. As Tom Moon writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Beyoncé isn’t the most athletic dancer or a devastatingly emotional singer -- at times, her ad-libs sound far from spontaneous. But she’s as resourceful and multifaceted as anyone in pop: She cowrote much of Dangerously, is listed as a producer on every track, and was involved in the choreography and conceptualization of the video” (3 July 2003). Like the ever-assiduous Madonna, Beyoncé might best be admired for her effort, if not the product, exactly. Consider the images that make up Beyoncé’s newly empowered wake, as these constitute a collection of bodies at work. As one instance, recall the video for “Say My Name.” Here, LaToya and LaTavia say, they ﬁrst learned of their dismissal, as the track included their vocals (as on all of the breakout album, The Writing’s On the Wall), but their bodies are missing, as the video was shot without them. The girls who are there strike freeze-frame-ish poses while the décor and costumes change colors, and the ﬂoor moves à la Jamiroquai. Beyoncé’s power-trilling is made visible in frequent close-ups of her as she sings, calling “my ladies” to arms against betrayal: “Say my name, say my name, you actin’ kinda shady, / Ain’t callin’ me baby. / Why the sudden change?” At the end of the video, the pastelly room gives way to a garage full of shiny black rides, where the girls look downright daunting, booty-shaking Still, for Beyoncé Knowles and company, dance is less an endpoint than a robust declaration of process, a relationship between self and other, a working through of similarity and difference. As their dancing is a form of role-playing, it is also self-expression. Subjective and objective, private and public, Destiny’s Child’s performances represent authenticity alongside artiﬁce, innovation and repetition, resistance and assimilation, all enacted in bodies clothed and posed to sell products as well as ideas, which is not to say that these are entirely opposite concepts. with (as) a vengeance. Think also of “Survivor,” the song written post-breakup, into litigations, and as a response to someone’s description of participation in the group as like being on Survivor, for which Beyoncé wrote the notoriously stunning lines, “I’m not gonna compromise my Christianity / (I’m better than that) / You know I’m not gonna dis you on the internet / (‘Cause my mama taught me better than that).” The imagery in the video emphasizes, again, the jungle of the industry, the 296 struggle of being in Destiny’s Child: they run along the beach, leap over obstacles, wear camouﬂage and Raquel Welchy outﬁts, and most vigorously, perform on-stage calisthenics. a performer. Not to mention a sensation with a hulahoop. The newest video, for “Crazy in Love” and directed by Jake Nava, begins with a hailing by Jay: The videos for “Bootylicious” (both the bright pink and blue original version and the slightly slower, much funkier Rockwilder remix) appear at ﬁrst to present the girls as objects, making available their “jelly.” But the lyrics and performances make clear that the girls are checking out potential partners. “You gotta work your jelly, / If you gon’ / Dance with me tonight,” goes the chorus, “By the looks I got you / Shook up and scared of me. / Hook up your seatbelt, / It’s time for takeoff.” How can you ever work hard enough to be ready? “History in the making.” Again, the process comes into focus, and again, Beyoncé’s body becomes its undeniable emblem. Tom Moon remarks the way that “Beyoncé Knowles shakes every inch of her famously photogenic goddess frame” (Philadelphia Inquirer 3 July 2003). Indeed -- the ﬁrst image has her walking, on a street, to the camera, in short shorts and red heels, her arm swaying, her face set, her body all business. From here, she appears in various guises -- on a photo shoot (recalling the same routine J. Lo ran in the video for “Jenny From the Block,” with hot lights, scary makeup, and lots of leg); in baseball cap and blowing And again, the video for “Work It Out,” the track that marked Beyoncé’s transition to solo artist, in the context of the Goldmember soundtrack and her character in the ﬁlm, Foxxy Cleopatra. The video offers up a standard-seeming series of body parts -- eye, navel, huge hair -- but at the same time emphasizes Beyoncé’s frankly awesome power, recalling Aretha and especially Tina Turner as she snuggles up to the mic stand, her ferocious thighs revealed beneath a sequined miniskirt. In her ﬁrst solo effort, Beyoncé declares herself a singular personality, a body, and blue bubblegum, as she and her girls introduce that stop-the-presses “uh-oh” move; ﬂipping her chinchilla at Jay-Z; kicking the ﬁre hydrant so she can douse herself in water and ravishing blue light. Mark Anthony Neal has described the B-Jay partnership as a smart marketing scheme, akin to the mutually beneﬁcial Whitney-Bobby pairing (while noting the girl’s stripper routine). But other observers see trouble (“real” or otherwise). Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Precious Williams worries that Beyoncé 297 is “smitten” with Jay-Z: “His inﬂuence on the video is disturbingly clear. Beyoncé has been transformed into an almost comically raunchy stereotype of a rapper’s girlfriend. The choreographed dance routines of Destiny’s Child have been replaced by overtly sexual writhings. Knowles slithers along the ground in an animal-print thong swimsuit and then dances under a stream of water. In one scene, Jay-Z sets a car on ﬁre and the two cavort by the blazing vehicle” (“Destiny’s Wild,” 29 June 2003). Writhings the best of me, / And baby, you’re making a fool of me, / You got me sprung and I don’t care who sees.” Really, though, she does care who sees. The visuals make clear that this moment is all about a speciﬁc, considered relationship between labor and payoff. She knows exactly what she’s doing. And Beyoncé is hardly shy about engaging such contradiction. Take, as one example, her repeated choice to sing during her live performances, solo and with the group. The backing track for a stage performance typically includes her vocals, but she also sings over it, underlining overtly However you read these spectacles -- and frankly, up against her vocal acrobatics and that incredible hornsection sample from “Are You My Woman,” the blazing car looks almost tame -- the effect is electrifying. As to the song, Allison Stewart states outright, “With its horns, harmonies, samples and Jay-Z guest rap, ‘Crazy in Love’ has more going on in its ﬁrst two minutes than most albums do in their entirety” (Washington Post 25 June 2003). No doubt. And in Beyoncé’s many performances of this song (in hot orange and pink for the video, in scant clothing for the BET Awards, in demure skirt for Today), she makes sure you know this -- her moves are precise, her vocals gymnastic. This while she articulates a lack of control in the lyrics: “I’m not myself, lately I’m foolish, I don’t do this, / I’ve been playing myself, baby, I don’t care / ‘Cuz your love’s got thrilling aspects. In part, this practice is a function of what more than one listener has termed her distinctive melismatic vocal stylings. But it’s also a function of the work -- the need to show it, the desire to see it, the refusal to ignore it. Unlike other stars, whose ease and smoothness make them magniﬁcent, Beyoncé marks and reafﬁrms her effort -potent, joyous, and self-possessed. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Sneaking Into the Boys Club”: Gender and the Independent Record Shop Lee Ann Fullington T he popular music industry is essentially a maledominated world. It is unusual to ﬁnd a woman in of staff at the Princeton Record Exchange, NJ, USA also underpins my research. a highly regarded decision-making position. More often than not, women are in administrative and support roles—‘handmaidens’ to the male A & R staff (Negus 115). Music journalists and their readers are more often male as well (Negus 116). Mavis Bayton points out that “the lack of women guitarists in rock’s hall of fame is partly a result of the way in which women get written out of history and their contribution undervalued, but mainly a reﬂection of the fact that so few women get a foot on even the bottom rung of the rock career ladder” (37). In terms of the rock world, then, women are apparently more marginalized; for Bayton then comments, “women performers have been more prominent in commercial ‘pop’ and ‘folk’ than in rock” (37). Independent record shops, especially those that stock second hand vinyl, tend to reﬂect this male domination in rock culture. The owners of such shops are more often males, who tend to employ mostly males, and the customers are predominantly male as well, as I have found through my ethnographic research on independent record shops in Greater Manchester, UK and the Philadelphia area, USA, as well as wider via the surveys conducted over the internet. My experience as a full time member Independent record shops are important hubs within popular music culture. Not only do they stock the recordings, but also they are also rife with information about gigs, musicians, and scene-related happenings and such. These shops are often run by an enthusiast, rather than a corporation, as is the case with HMV or Virgin (Negus 128). Thus, the stock tends to reﬂect Through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and surveys conducted with owners, staff, and customers, I have been investigating the culture that surrounds independent record shops. The issue of gender is a key theme emerging from my research. Women do own, staff, and shop in these record shops, however; as I will highlight in this paper, their experiences differ from those of the men involved. In particular, the women I talked to expressed concerns about the devaluation of women’s tastes by male staff and customers, issues of personal safety for women in a male space, accessibility of the shop and the rock world it often represents, and insecurity regarding musical knowledge. 299 the owner’s and locality’s tastes, rather than the mass marketed, chart oriented music that prominently graces the shelves of the chains. Therefore, the more specialist nature of the shop will draw customers with a more specialized taste in music, and if the shop deals with second hand vinyl, it will draw the record collectors, who tend to be men, as well (Straw 4). Shopping in independent record shops may imply that the customer will have at least some specialized musical knowledge, as the shops do not tend to stock chart albums that are currently popular. Ferreting out older or collectible rock and jazz albums tends to be a male activity, according to Will Straw (10). Therefore, as the customers, owners and staff tend to be male, the independent record shop becomes a male space, and there are certain strategies these men may consciously or unconsciously employ to render the shop a ‘boys club’. they’ll draw on them, on the CDs. How on earth do you expect to have people who are interested in it to feel comfortable enough to come up to the counter and buy it? It just blows my mind!’ As Pet Shop Boys and various other ‘pop’ artists stereotypically appeal to gays and women, these men are trying to signal that this taste, and therefore these customers, do not belong in the shop (1). By devaluing this sort of music they are implicitly elevating rock as the preferred taste in the shop, reinforcing the notion that rock is men’s music. At the Record Collector (Morrisville, PA, USA) (2) the owner and a male employee enjoy needling Susan, another employee, for her love of the Carpenters, Sister Sledge, and pop and love songs from the 1970s and 1980s—‘crap’ in their words. Male shop owners and staff may try to assert their masculinity by devaluing music that from their viewpoint stereotypically appeals to women and gays. Kimber (owner, Stinkweeds Records, Phoenix, AZ, USA) talks of another independent shop in the Phoenix area that: Susan (member of staff, Record Collector, Morrisville, PA, USA): I ﬁnd that they tend to play their music and it takes a lot for me to say, “Hey! Let’s play something that I want to hear.” They’ll say, “You’re not putting anything on. You’re just gonna put girlie music on.” And I say, “Yeah, exactly. Love songs!” So although Susan is into ‘her’ music, as it does not ‘...is unbelievable. I mean, they will go so far as to draw moustaches on the people right on the CD. Like out in the store, if its anything like Pet Shop Boys or Dead or Alive or anything else, 300 ﬁt in the acceptable male canon of music, for Sister Sledge, The Carpenters, and Neil Diamond fall well outside of it. Therefore, she is not taken seriously and she represents the stereotype of women having an inferior or less discerning taste in music to which male members of staff often subscribe. They feel they should not be subjected to hearing such music in ‘their’ shop. of ‘drummer’ in bands that have female drummers (Gaar 350). Their reaction to her entering the shop is possibly a subconscious or pointed attempt to make her uncomfortable and to get her to leave the boys club to the boys. To extend this notion of the record shop being a boys club), Les (member of staff, Kaleidoscope Records, Some female customers suggested that male staff also may use body language and facial expressions to let a woman know she is not necessarily welcome in the shop. Merseyside, UK), says of an indie record shop that it is: ‘a bloke-ist conspiracy, you know, these blokes come in poke around, ask you “What do you think of this?”…I don’t want to overplay it, but I don’t want to underplay it. I really think that it’s a masculine thing, predominantly…most of the time its blokes talking to blokes about blokes. And most of the records we sell are not by women. Most of the records we sell are by blokes.’ This highlights again how certain music falls outside of the collectible, male, rock canon, and how it is reﬂected in the stock at an independent record shop. Diana (record shopper, Germany): When you, as a woman, walk into a new shop where you have never been in before, the men there are looking like very unfriendly so as they would say, “Oh god, a woman—what is she doing here, couldn’t she go buy clothes?” or sometimes they have a little smile on their faces like they would say, “Hey, babe. You are in the wrong store. Go buying shoes!” So, though this woman is a customer, the status of ‘woman’ supersedes the status of ‘customer’, for the staff members assume she must not have the knowledge required to shop in such a shop. This is much like the status of ‘woman’ superseding the status Music by women, as well as ‘pop’, often don’t get much space within the conﬁnes of such shops. As most music performed by women falls outside of the canon of (male) rock, the shops that cater to rock tend not to bother with music by women. This may alienate 301 women customers, and some male customers as well, who may be interested in or looking for this music. The triangulated relationship of male customer asking a male staff member about music made by men tends to exclude women, unless the woman is into the same music as the owner and staff of the shop. her knowledge of the music. She found she could be treated as an equal by demonstrating her knowledge of metal, that she was a serious fan of the music. However, more often, women may be treated as if they were not capable of knowing much about music. The stereotype of women in record shops is that they Having highlighted just some of the many ways in which the maleness of independent record shops is constructed and maintained, I will now consider some of the strategies that women involved with these shops adopt in order to deal with this situation. will come in with their husbands or boyfriends, often against their will, ‘hufﬁn’ and pufﬁn’’, as Colin, (owner, Vinyl Revival, Manchester, UK) put it, and complaining that they want to leave. The men customers that come in with women will often ‘brush them off while they are looking at the records,” says Paul (owner, Static Deena (record shopper, USA): Conversations were constantly and easily struck up between myself and others going through the [heavy] metal [racks of records]. I often initiated them, but not always. The others were always males. Invariably they were lovely, helpful, interested and I had dozens and dozens of long, involved [heavy] metal related conversation with these people…all I had to do was show I was knowledgeable and interested in metal to get treated as an equal. Of course, I dressed as they did, in a T-shirt and jeans… In order to be accepted in this environment, Deena knew how to ﬁt in, by dressing in a similar way and conveying Records, Wigan, UK). Furthermore, Kimber laments: ‘This is depressing to me, don’t think that I support this at all—but what I ﬁnd is very, very few individual women come into my store and follow music…There are probably fewer than 12. I know them all. Otherwise, they come in groups with their friends and they chat and they don’t really buy anything or maybe one of them will buy something or they come in with a male and they follow him around or lean on whatever it is that he’s into.’ Women, for the most part, are viewed by many staff and owners therefore as not as involved in buying 302 music at independent record shops. According to some independent record shop staff, where the boyfriend may buy collectible vinyl, she may pick up a CD. The LP is valued more than the CD for various reasons; ﬁrstly that LPs are more rare than their CD counterparts. The man is on a hunt; the woman is just along for the ride, so maybe she will buy herself something more on impulse. This and similar comments and views have cropped up numerous times in the interviews I have conducted. very nice about assisting me because gallantry is at play. The downside to this is that men often assume women are stupid and ignorant, even “enlightened” men who aren’t aware of their inner sexism. But mostly, it’s about the individual clerks’ attitude. If I asked for the new Kristen Hersh album and the clerk responded down their nose: “Are you familiar with Throwing Muses?” I might be like, “What kind of idiot do you think I am?” a different clerk asking the same question in a friendly tone of voice I’d interpret as an informed music-lover making sure I had context for my purchase. Thus, males within the independent record shop may be interested in helping women out in order to show off their knowledge and accrued cultural capital, as well as potentially ‘picking up’ the woman. Therefore, he Conversely, some women may try to appear unknowledgeable to play up to male sensibilities of leading the female to good music. Women, too, can of course be quite savvy and passionate about music, but may use the stereotype of being uninvolved to their advantage. Tiffany (record shopper, Portland, OR, USA): I am sometimes given less obnoxious treatment because our culture allows females to seem ignorant, ask for help, and ask direct questions. It’s one of our rare advantages over men. I’ve seen a male clerk treat a guy rudely for being ignorant and asking questions, then be super-nice to me over a similarly stupid question, walking me around to the bins personally and sharing tidbits of wisdom. I sometimes think men are can still assert his worth and power over her seeming inferior body of knowledge, which keeps his masculinity intact—especially if he is successful in ‘chatting her up.” This potential for a date is another facet of gender in the record shop that I will not have time to go into here. Furthermore, in this displaying of knowledge, if the woman is on the other side of the counter, she may be faced with a hostile customer who will not take her 303 seriously, as she, as a woman, must not know anything about such male preserves as rock, jazz, or certain strains of dance music. so I know EXACTLY what we’ve got and I go “Ooh, I’ve not seen that one yet. I think that’s out in a few weeks.” And they go, “Oh, well HE knows.” It’s like they do that all the time. But within the shop staff, no, you don’t get that at all. Women may have different reactions to the perceived value of knowledge in independent record shops. Martha, though quite competent, felt intimidated because she thought the men behind the counter would try to ﬁnd a weakness of hers to expose, which would allow them to retain their elevated status of men being experts on music made by men. Catherine and Philippa had similar experiences as male customers Martha (regular punk vinyl customer, Princeton Record Exchange, NJ, USA) [The male staff] were intimidating because they seemed like they knew everything and I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m gonna talk to these people and maybe they’ll ﬁnd out that I don’t really know that much.” I think that is more of a woman thing than a guy thing, that sort of, “Oh, you know maybe I’m really, I don’t know this record or that record and I don’t really know or collect obscure ‘70s bootleg things… Catherine (member of staff, Record Collector, Shefﬁeld, UK): I found a lot of male customers… [who] want to show off their knowledge and sort of say, “I know more about it than you,” sort of thing. “How can you know anything about this? Philippa (partner, Piccadilly Records, Manchester, UK): It’s like, especially the sort of areas of music that I do within the shop, which is drum n’ bass, breakbeat, reggae, they’re all quite sort of male areas. And so, you’ll get a lad coming up to the counter going, “Oh, have you got this drum n’ bass record?” And I process all the drum n’ bass tried to ‘put them back in their places’ as uninformed women, even if only symbolically, by deferring to a fellow man for information, as apparently there is no loss of masculinity or cultural capital if the information comes from a male. It solidiﬁes the bond of the boys club and alienates the female member of staff from the interaction and exchange of information, therefore relegating her back to the status of ‘woman’ rather than ‘knowledgeable member of staff’ which is often bound up in the status of ‘man’ in the record shop. From the opposite perspective, though, some male shop owners and members of staff are aware that in 304 general independent record shops may not appeal to women customers because of the stereotype that these shops are hostile bastions of music knowledge that can only be freely accessed by males. John, (owner, Buffalo Records, Santa Barbara, CA, USA) is aware of the reputation of such shops and he has set out speciﬁcally to make his shop comfortable and welcoming for ALL music fans. When I asked John about the idea of record shops as male spaces and if he felt his shop fell into that category he told me: artists, which in turn excludes female and male fans of such artists. This devaluation of taste also leads to the male perception that music made by women is not worthy of a place in the indie record shop, and this reﬂects on the position of a woman in the record shop. Women are seen as not proactive in the indie record shop experience, either hanging onto men, or not knowledgeable enough to actually serve them properly, or women become an object of pity and possibly desire, as men may want to show women the ‘right’ music to listen to, and have her validate his taste by accepting …hopefully not. I mean, we tried it…from the plants that you see around here, you know, to the lamp and light in the corner, to just the colour, I think, on the walls…we try to make it no so ‘macho’ around here. There’s a lot, a lot of our clientele is younger women, which helps, too. One of the members of staff at Buffalo Records, Colin, added: ‘It’s a real friendly environment. A lot of exchange of information goes on here, its like a course in music education!’ his knowledge. Thus, this (conscious or unconscious) assumption by both men and women is based on the residual sexism of the music industry; that musical knowledge is something that men have, that they may decide to enlighten women with, should they show any interest, but more likely she will just continue to ‘huff and puff’, whether out of exasperation at being dragged into the shop, or at not being taken seriously. Like the record industry itself, the independent record shop may well be ‘one of the last bastions of male chauvinism’ (Negus 115) (3). However, numerous people involved behind the counter in record shops are consciously Within the conﬁnes of the independent record shop, we can see this world as a reﬂection of the gender imbalances in rock music culture. Masculinity may be conﬂated with knowledge about, and a speciﬁc taste in, music, and this music often excludes female taking steps to debunk this myth of the record shop as a male preserve. 305 Endnotes 1. This shop specializes in louder rock, like GBH, Megadeth, and GG Allin. However, sometimes people will trade in unwanted CDs from other genres. 2. There are two unrelated shops that I did interviews with called the Record Collector. One is in Morrisville, PA, USA and the other is in Shefﬁeld, UK. 3. Negus, p 115, as quoted from Moss, C. ‘All Men Are Created Equal—But What About The Women?’ Studio. November, pp 10-13. 1990. Selected Bibliography Bayton, Mavis. “Women and the Electric Guitar.” Sexing the Groove. Ed. Sheila Whiteley. London: Routledge, 1997. Gaar, Gillian. She’s A Rebel. Seattle: Seal Press, 1992. Negus, Keith. Producing Pop. London: Arnold, 1992. Straw, Will. “Sizing Up Record Collections.” Sexing the Groove. Ed. Sheila Whiteley. London: Routledge, 1997. Walser, Robert. Running With The Devil. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. 1993. IASPM03 - MONTREAL ‘Unbearable Intimacy’ and Jeff Buckley’s Transgendered Vocality Shana Goldin-Perschbacher J eff Buckley was a provocative rock singer and guitarist in the 1990’s. He had an unusual vocal chanteuse” or “a chanteuse with a penis.” Such identiﬁcation and widely-ranged gendered expression suggests a kind of transgendered vocality. He used this vocality in his own songs, moving freely between traditionally masculine and feminine voices within a song. Buckley used his transgendered voice uninhibitedly as part of his musical aesthetic of raw, spontaneous expression. His song “Mojo Pin” sounds like vulnerable longing for a lover. In the beginning of the song his voice sounds vulnerable, as he enters imperceptibly from within the intricate, delicate guitar movement. His lyrics are vulnerable – “I’m lying in my bed/ The blanket is warm/ This body will never be safe from harm.” Vulnerability also exudes from this record’s unusual level of audible consonants and extraneous sound-forming declamation. Buckley range which he used ﬂuidly in a wide variety of gender and sexuality performances. Covering at least four octaves, Buckley’s voice was capable of a coordinated head voice into the falsetto range (in addition to a true falsetto), chest alto voice, and full lower tenor range. Not only his vocal range, but also his persona and performance style were based on multiple and changing gender identiﬁcations. Because of his wide vocal range, it was possible for him to cover songs for both male and female singers. He sang songs made famous by Nina Simone, Judy Garland, and Edith Piaf, and sang them in the female performer’s vocal ranges. Even more, most of the time he did not change gendered pronouns, singing “The Man that Got Away,” “I Loves You Porgy,” a mistress’s role in “The Other Woman,” and Queen “Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. Identiﬁcation with the gendered personae of the songs was important to his performance aesthetic. He chose to cover certain songs that he said “I really respected, and all the experiences within them that I really admired, and identiﬁed with them.” (1) Buckley’s identiﬁcation with a wide range of gender roles went so far as calling himself, in all seriousness, a “male refused to clean up the recording with a “de-esser” – thus the presence of tongue and mouth sounds makes him appear to be very close (close to the microphone and thus to the listener) and reveals the source of the words and sounds emerging from his body. (Listening example: Jeff Buckley, Grace, “Mojo Pin,” Columbia Records 1994. Play 0-1:13.) This song begins his ﬁrst full-length album – an unusual introduction for a ‘90’s 307 alternative rock record. The beginning is gentle, in a high register for a male singer. When he ﬁnally uses lyrics he immediately calls into question his own safety – a decidedly untraditional introduction for a male rock singer. Later in the song he sings about being submissive to a sexual partner, “The welts of your scorn, my love, give me more. Send whips of opinion down my back, give me more.” In all performances “Mojo Pin” is a mix of quiet vulnerability about sex and loud, wailing worries about it. But the more aggressive musical sections always transform into the vulnerable again. His vulnerability in “Mojo Pin,” illustrates the appealing but risky relationship between desired intimacy and the danger of vulnerability, which is a crucial aspect of his performance aesthetic, and one that fans are particularly drawn to. Jeff Buckley’s songs are often about intimacy with another person, but also intended to create intimacy between listeners and himself. He said realize that you went out the night before, got high, and told some stranger all the most intimate details of your life. It’s kind of embarrassing. (4) Buckley suggests a loss of control in performance, one in which he reveals too much. Years later, he realized that his commitment to spontaneous, intimate, and widely ranged gendered expression would always leave him feeling vulnerable. He explained this tension over what an interviewer called his “exposing style,” saying, It’s not really exposing. I mean it is, but … more accurately, for me, it’s more like just speaking your heart... just things you’ve never admitted before and it feels great… I… never get used to the feeling of having revealed some of myself, but I just get used to not getting used to it. (5) Such extremes of intimacy and vulnerability suggest Buckley was not aiming for a traditional masculine identiﬁcation. He seemed to value ‘tender’ and ‘intimate’ communication (which are often seen as feminine) over self control (which is often seen as masculine). Combined with his transgendered vocality, Buckley seems to exude an alternative masculinity (to “tender communication is so alien in our culture, except in performance.” (2) However, for Buckley, intimacy in a performance meant it was ﬂeeting and could feel one-sided. (3) In 1994, the year he released Grace, he remarked: I’m still not comfortable with what I do. Every time I get home after a show, I feel really strange – like when you wake up in the morning and you many 1990’s rock singers), a masculinity more free about gendered identiﬁcation and expression, more open to musically expressed sensual vulnerability, 308 and a masculinity in which he sought an intimacy with his audience which always teetered on the brink of vulnerability for both him and his listeners. (6) Critic Greg Kot writes: fear here – Buckley’s voice is expressive to the point of sounding feminine and sensually lovesick. Because Buckley seems to know this and enjoy it, he’s risking too much self-identiﬁcation and sensual pleasure over his own performance. To a fearful straight male mind, There’s a ﬁne line between drama and melodrama, and Jeff and his musician father Tim Buckley both crossed that line more than a few times. I saw Jeff perform several times, and it was almost unbearably intimate at times. You either were pulled in or you brushed it off as self-indulgence. But there was no in-between... (7) Kot suggests that you must either allow Jeff to pull you in or reject the whole performance. Though it may seem passive, one chooses to allow the music to pull one in. To feel passive towards a performer who unapologetically, vulnerably performed such a wide range of gender identiﬁcations might have seemed a risk to some listeners’ heterosexual, masculine identities. To maintain their traditional masculine identities, these listeners try to assure themselves that Buckley’s transgendered, vulnerable performances are simply ‘self-indulgence,’ a common criticism. Critic John Harris calls Buckley “masturbatory” because he thinks Buckley knows that his voice is “like a lovesick nightingale.” Perhaps Harris spells out the anxious straight man’s perhaps this seems ‘gay.’ Transgendered identiﬁcation is often incorrectly conﬂated with homosexuality. Intriguingly, because of this (masturbatory quality) Harris describes Buckley’s recordings as “unbearable.” But fans say that they desire and return this intimacy and musical experience of sensuality, even at the cost of, or perhaps purposely because the intimacy can become unbearable. This is how I became a fan of Jeff Buckley. At the time, someone close to me cut himself off emotionally. Suddenly I was left alone and vulnerable. I was hurt but couldn’t discuss any of it with him. I fell deeply into the sonic world created by the late Jeff Buckley’s recordings. I related to the sense of vibrant, exposed sensuality, love, and pain in vulnerability I heard in Jeff’s music. His music seemed to re-enact the ﬂeeting nature of intimacy, the constant dangers to it, but the exquisite joy it brings. His continued intimacy even at the risk of such vulnerability was a lesson to me to continue to be intimate, in spite of the painful risks. I’ve learned that many fans share my feelings. For the past 2 years I’ve participated in a web-based bulletin board community of over 100 worldwide Buckley 309 fans. This community has shown to be a safe place to share publicly about Buckley’s intimacy and how it relates to listeners’ lives. The following is an excerpt from a discussion between two fans: One female fan, a young American mother, posts: Jeff, I would have revealed all. Because when I listen to his music, especially certain songs, I analyze myself. Some things people can’t face about themselves so they stock it away hoping it will never resurface. Jeff’s music brings up all that stuff for me. Makes me face my own reality and deal with it somehow. Either make it alright or make it a part of who I am. (8) Unbearable intimacy seems to arise not only because Jeff is so intimate that he exposes his vulnerability, but also because this intimacy encourages an empathetic response in listeners, one which encourages listeners That version of “I Woke Up In A Strange Place” is the most intense music I’ve heard in a long time. The ﬁrst time I heard it I was almost ashamed to listen because he reavealed [sic] so much…. It’s one of my most favorite Jeff songs - a peak [sic] into his raw soul. (8) This fan feels ashamed to listen to such extreme intimacy, but the song is her favorite precisely because of it. Another fan, a Scottish writer, musician, and mother, responds, “I know exactly what you mean... That feeling that you’re eavesdropping, playing Peeping Tom. But you’re not, you know....he’s giving himself freely.” (8) To fans, it appears that Buckley intended to be intimate, so it feels ok to engage with that intimacy, to be intimate in return, as the ﬁrst fan then explains: to search their own souls, sometimes to feel painfully vulnerable themselves. While fans choose to listen to his music, they ﬁnd themselves losing control of their emotional state, to the point that it draws up extreme hidden feelings that must be dealt with. Sometimes fans take a break from listening because it’s so intense. One female fan explains: putting Grace on after a break is like diving into deep sea water. It is such a sensory overload, familiar and all-encompassing. It is a little bit scary in the emotions it can elicit from deep within me, I know they lurk there, like shadows our of the corner of my eye, just waiting to show themselves. There are such moments of Through his music and other mediums, I know more about… how he felt about his life than I do about people close to me... I don’t want to know things about people that I don’t want to reveal of myself. But I suspect that if I ever would have met 310 intense joy and sadness there…(9) For those who listen often, the feeling of diving into his music, being surrounded by it, even taken over by it, can be both scary and also joyful. One fan, Nessa, writes, “It’s a bit of a love/hate relationship that I have over those overwhelming moments...I hate how deeply they affect me but then I love that it can touch me so much.”(10) Buckley’s performances of Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do” overwhelm some listeners because he spontaneously pushes himself to extremes. Compared to Van Morrison’s short open up like the beginning of ‘Mojo Pin,’ but instead he holds on, tightening. (Listen to Jeff Buckley, Live at Sin-é, Columbia Records 1993, re-released 2003, “The Way Young Lovers Do,” 0:49-1:50.) But, for fans, the exquisite revelation is realizing these vocal irregularities are more than nerves – through spontaneity and vulnerability he seems to be singing as if he were the fragile young lover himself and this expression is almost too much to bear. (Listen to same recording as above, 5:11-5:36). This impression feels more assured when he steps back from the intense wailing at the end and moves inward, adding his own gasping, yearning verse before the frenzied end. (Listen to same song as above, 8:46-0:04). One female fan explains why this kind of performance draws her: and straight-forward verse and chorus performance in a traditionally masculine lower register, Buckley improvises for 10 minutes, sprinkling his performance with bits of Morrison’s song. His goal is spontaneous expression, risking everything, even the performance almost falling apart, for a vulnerability to the moment. He pushes his voice in extreme directions: he exerts extra control by vibrating in a tight, purposely ugly way. He lets his voice go past its normal boundaries, shuddering as it goes down low, and reaching up high, either soft and trembling, or, in a rare moment, pushing right out of his normally high register into the super register. His delicate trembling and shuddering ﬁrst seem like nervousness – this live performance was recorded in 1993 for his ﬁrst short album, Live at Sin-é. He his voice builds as if he were going to I love that he was such a risk taker vocally. Even at the cost of making a total ass of himself. I love how he pushed and explored forﬁtting [sic] his ego...you know singing from a woman’s point of view… I love that there were times where he would just take it completely over the top... sometimes his voice wouldn’t quite make it where he wanted to go or he’d slip unintentionally out of key. No matter, you know he was giving it his all. Then there are times where he just goes off... out there...and no one seems to know just where 311 he’s going and then he pulls it back into place and it just fucking stuns you. (11) She enjoys Buckley’s risk taking even when or perhaps because it brings him to vocally uncontrollable places and places where he forfeits traditional masculinity for a wider range of expression. But part of the thrill is that while he seems to lose control, going in unknown directions, he can “pull it back into place” again. And while listeners also surrender to these moments, feeling intensely, having hidden feelings drawn from them, they can also pull themselves back together after. His performance aesthetic seemed to favor a sense of risk and being out of control. Buckley said: that perhaps seemed less controlled, more feminine compared to the structured, controllable masculine words. Roland Barthes, in his famous essay, “The Grain of the Voice,” makes a similar distinction between vocal performance that not only enunciates words but also captures the embodiment of voice and language (as opposed to more ‘clean’ singing which would try to cut out the ‘extraneous’ bodily sounds). Barthes suggests that the singing he enjoys offers its listeners ‘jouissance,’ a kind of musical orgasm, if you will. Buckley himself describes the feeling of singing as very similar to orgasm in that you must lose control in the moment: I try to make my music joyful – it makes me Words are really beautiful, but they’re limited. Words are very male, very structured. But the voice is the netherworld, the darkness, where there’s nothing to hang on to. The voice comes from a part of you that just knows and expresses and is. I need to inhabit every bit of a lyric, or else I can’t bring the song to you – or else it’s just words. (12) He describes a gendered opposition between words and embodied voice. He opposes masculine, joyful – to feel that music soar through the body. t changes your posture, you raise your chin, throw back your shoulders, walk with a swagger. When I sing, my face changes shape. It feels like my skull changes shape…the bones bend. “Grace” and “Eternal Life” are about the joy that music gives – the, probably illusory, feeling of being able to do anything. Sex is like that. You become utterly consumed by the moment. Apparently orgasm is the only point where your mind becomes completely empty – you think of nothing for that second. That’s why it’s so compelling – it’s a tiny taste of death. Your mind structured words to voice, which comes from a place in his body “where there’s nothing to hang on to,” a place 312 is void – you have nothing in your head save white light. Nothing save white light and “Yes!” – which is fantastic. Just knowing “Yes.”(13) when alls said and done that’s all that’s going to matter, isn’t it?(14) One of the most famous actors in the world is drawn Buckley describes a musical and sexual gendered identity here that identiﬁes partly as traditionally masculine and partly feminine. Singing makes to Buckley’s sensually expressive but vulnerable masculinity, so much so that he questions his own (traditional) tough guy mentality in relation to Buckley’s. Pitt has even been vocal about playing Buckley in a biographical ﬁlm. Mike Webb, a musician and critic, gives an interesting example of the discomforting appeal that straight male fans might encounter with Jeff Buckley. He says of his ﬁrst Buckley concert: him feel as though he’s walking masculinely with a swagger. He feels powerful, as though he can do anything. But the only way to feel this power is also to give up control, to be “consumed by the moment,” which makes him both vulnerable and orgasmically joyful. If this vulnerability makes Buckley’s relationship with masculinity precarious but enjoyable for him, how do male listeners relate? In a BBC documentary about Buckley, Brad Pitt, a huge fan, offers: He was awe-inspiring. I described it as Ella Fitzgerald meets Jimmy Page, and I actually (if not accidentally) went up to him after the show and hugged him. I’d never met him, and didn’t really mean to, but it was a very moving gig, and he was kind of drained, and we just did that manly “right on B” kinda hug.(15) While Webb gives exalting praise to the performance, he seems uncomfortable with the hug. He’s not sure if he did it on purpose (or “accidentally”). AFTER telling of the hug he tries to save masculine face by explaining that the performance was “moving,” Jeff seemed “drained,” sort of vulnerable, and that really, For me… the thing that distinguishes him the most is that he was about love. He had… no shame with addressing… the subject of love. I wouldn’t think it was brave for him, I think it was something he was lead to do. But… you look around and most of us are trying to be tough guys, trying to be de Niros, and here was a guy that went the complete opposite direction, in the middle of the ‘90s. I have a lot of respect for that ‘cause I have this feeling at the end of the day 313 the hug was “manly.” To prevent any thoughts of ‘unmanly’ intimacy from entering his readers’ minds, he uses the (black) slang “right on B” (short for “right on, Brother”). However anxious Webb seems about his risked masculinity, it is important to remember that he chose to write about this in an article because the performance was so moving for him. And some fans ﬁnd Buckley’s intimate and widely gendered performances inspiring to their own identities. One male listener writes: musicality. Fans’ resounding response to Buckley’s work is an enjoyable mix of pleasure and pain and a welcome vulnerability to an artist who courageously blurred the boundaries of gender, artist and audience, and musicking and sexuality. As one of his ﬁnal songs suggests, his goal was to be “not with you but of you,” (17) a happily ambivalent and inclusive ﬁgure in world often conceived in binaries. As a musician I am inspired beyond words with his openness and emotional range...his fearless expression of his feminine side. Growing up the typical Southern California youth where your ‘manliness’ was a measure of your social status and being into bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica typiﬁed this way of thinking, discovering Jeff opened a whole new world for me...one that allowed me to dig deep into myself and ﬁnd the full range of who I am. (16) Clearly Buckley challenges his audience’s assumptions about gender. And unlike other male rock singer’s transgendered performances, Buckley’s transgendered singing is not misogynistic. It can be very explicitly sexual, but in a way that questions traditional roles and celebrates the connections between sexuality and 314 interviews/buzz.html Endnotes (1) Kylie Buddin, “Jeff Buckley,” You Could Do Worse Zine #3 (chronologically listed between 1994-1995 with no speciﬁc date) found at http://www.jeffbuckley.com/ rfuller/buckley/words/. He later explained of this period that “In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge. I became a human jukebox, learning all those songs I had always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing. When is it that the voice becomes an elixir? It’s during ﬂirting, courtship, sex. Music’s all that.” (6) Lauren Berlant writes that “intimacy…involves an aspiration for something shared” but “the inwardness of the intimate is met by a corresponding publicness” (in Berlant, Intimacy, 1). (5) Interview with Steve Harris in Japan, transcribed by fan and posted in category “Jeff Buckley” thread “Another Jeff interview transcription!!!!” (8/12/02 9:58:59 am), available at http://pub104.ezboard.com/ fjeffbuckleyboardfrm1.showMessage?topicID=715. topic. (2) Dimitri Ehrlich, Inside the Music: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians about Spirituality, Creativity, and Consciousness, (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 155. (7) Greg Kot, Revolver, May/June 2001, 120. (8) 2 anonymous members of the Jeff Buckley Board from 8/13/02, thread “New Lover” at www.ezboard.com (3) Lauren Berlant writes “[intimacy’s] potential failure to stabilize closeness always haunts its persistent activity, making the very attachments deemed to buttress ‘a life’ seem in a state of constant if latent vulnerability” (Lauren Berlant, ed. Intimacy, a special edition of Critical Inquiry, 2). (10) “MySpiritGenocide,” 7/10/02, thread “one of those nights when it sounds sooo good...” from A Jeff Buckley Board at www.ezboard.com (4) Paul Young, “Talking Music: Confessing to Strangers,” Buzz Magazine, 1994, available at http://www.jeffbuckley.com/rfuller/buckley/words/ (11) “Jewelbox,” 6/13/02, thread “The Voice” from A Jeff Buckley Board at www.ezboard.com (9) “Shafm,” 3/19/03, thread “Grace revisited” on the Jeff Buckley Board at www.ezboard.com 315 (12) Interview by Ray Rogers, “Heir Apparent to…,” Interview Magazine, 2/94, available at http://www. jeffbuckley.com/rfuller/buckley/words/interviews/ interviewmag0294.html 2Walls Webzine, www.2walls.com/MUSIC/music_jeff_ buckley.asp (16) anonymous, 4/17/03 thread “How Do You Connect With Jeff?” from A Jeff Buckley Board at www.ezboard. (13) “Orgasm Addict: There is no name for the places he or his voice can’t go,” B-side Magazine. Drummer Matt Johnson explains that in his “audition” “there was a moment when we were playing and Jeff came up in front of the drum kit and closed his eyes and threw back his head and almost smiled. It was as if he had made a realization within himself that it felt right, like he was getting the okay from his intuition. After we were done, he said ‘I want to play with you’” (David Browne, Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley, New York: Harper Entertainment, 2001, 203). The statement suggests a bonding almost sexual in nature – in fact Jeff once noted the similarities of his body position, head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open, between his singing and his love-making. com (17) Jeff Buckley, “I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be),” Sketches From My Sweetheart the Drunk, Columbia Records, 1998. (14) An excerpt from the interview with Brad Pitt ﬁlmed for the BBC Four documentary about Jeff Buckley, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/jeff_ buckley.shtml (15) Mike Webb, “When I met Jeff Buckley,” Nov. 2000, IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Boy Racer”: Morrissey at the Intersection of Nationality and Gender Nicholas Greco S teven Patrick Morrissey, the enigmatic singer for the 1980s British band the Smiths and solo artist These terms have been placed on Morrissey due to his public dissatisfaction with traditional categories of gender, suggesting that they are simply limiting. Nadine Hubbs provides some clariﬁcation of the notion of the fourth gender by stating what it is not, and clarifying other categories of gender. In her article about Morrissey, Hubbs states: since their breakup in 1987, has often been written about in terms of gender and sexuality. Commonly known as Morrissey, the singer has been a constant object of discussion regarding his own appropriation of gender roles and sexual orientation. This paper will serve to brieﬂy discuss Morrissey’s complexity of gender, focusing in particular upon his persona in the music video for “Boy Racer,” released in 1995. In addition, the notion of celebrity and gender will be brieﬂy discussed in terms of visible injury in the video. While some writers have suggested that Morrissey displays a “fourth gender,” it will be argued that the singer is not a member of a gender category which consists of a mix of all other categories, but rather exhibits a paradox of gender. He is what might be, perhaps clumsily, called an ambiguous masculine ﬁgure. Morrissey has often been linked to what is commonly termed (in discourses around Morrissey) asexuality, or perhaps being without a particular gender, although the term, to my knowledge, has never been properly deﬁned. Another term which has often come up in discussions and popular writings about Morrissey is “fourth gender,” seemingly synonymous with asexuality. Elsewhere, Morrissey has proclaimed himself “a prophet for the fourth gender.” Thus he evidently passes on not only the ﬁrst and second, but skirts the “third gender” as well, what the nineteenthcentury sexoligists’ category of the gender invert—a female soul in a male body, or vice versa (269). Hubbs suggests that the fourth gender embodies a kind of gender ambiguity; the problem with using such a label on Morrissey is that the singer is not generally ambiguous with his gender role at any one time. As is clear with the video for “Boy Racer,” his gender performance is often one which embodies masculinity. This masculinity does present some difﬁculties, though. This video presents Morrissey as, most 317 obviously, a man, engaged in singing rock music, with a rock band behind him, complete with Marshall ampliﬁer stacks and strobe lighting, perhaps evoking a sense of a rock concert. Morrissey is featured in an untucked white button-up shirt—with some buttons undone, of course—in contrast to the band who are primarily dressed in black and aggressively playing their instruments. He seems to have lost some of his sullen features that he possessed in the 1980s and he is noticeably more rugged. His face has ﬁlled out and his body seems to be fuller and more substantial. This is probably due to simple aging, but it does give Morrissey a sense of fuller masculinity (perhaps this could be thought of as a kind of “hypermasculinity”). The lyrics deal with anger and jealousy toward the “boy racer,” but also admiration: “He’s just too good-natured and he’s got too much money, and he’s got too many girlfriends (I’m jealous, that’s all)—but have you seen him go, though?” The “boy racer” continues to drive around while the band continues to perform. Then, there is a scene during which two male police ofﬁcers pull over a vehicle, presumably for speeding, from which Morrissey emerges. The lyrics continue as follows: “he thinks he owns this city, he over-speeds and he never gets pulled over.” Unfortunately, when Morrissey speeds, he does in fact get pulled over. The “boy racer” is a masculine ﬁgure who perhaps embodies an ideal performance of masculinity; Morrissey even suggests an expression of male sexual pride with the lyric, “He thinks he’s got the whole world in his hands, stood at the urinal.” Morrissey’s ability to drive a vehicle is made impossible by the police ofﬁcers, which in turn disables him from having girlfriends, and perhaps sexual pride as well. The car can be read as a symbol of mobility and action, and Morrissey’s inability to drive relegates him to inactivity and immobility. In terms of gender constructions of celebrity, the video presents an interesting case: Morrissey as injured, and as object of the gaze. Carol Vernallis, in her article “The Kindest Cut, Functions and Meanings of Music Video Editing,” places much emphasis on the closeup and its effectiveness in visual culture. She suggests that the closeup serves to ground the music video in a single image, much like a hook or riff (Vernallis 42). Furthermore, the closeup which features the pop star can serve as a high point in the video, a moment of unprecedented emotional weight. Vernallis comments: As I watch a video and follow the song, I casually study the performer’s body, just as I do when I look at models in magazines. I admire the lines of the jaw, the look in the eye, the light. Suddenly the performer’s head turns towards me, the eyes gaze into mine, the singing voice demands my attention, and I am struck. Music can transgress 318 both physical space and the borders of the body, changing our sense of time and of these boundaries themselves. At this moment, the performer crosses the limits of the screen and addresses me as a person, and I can no longer view this face and body as an object. Just as quickly, the head turns, the rhythm changes, the soul has gone, and again I am simply watching a blank human form (43). She is suggesting that the ﬁgure in the closeup becomes the subject of much scrutiny. Her suggestion might seem obvious; the performer in the video becomes the object of the viewer’s gaze, in a particularly striking manner. The viewer is able to see physical properties which might not have been overly apparent in the performer’s face in other media. For instance, one might notice irregularities or particularities in facial features that might have been hidden in promotional or album artwork. While the closeup might provide a kind of grounding within the often confusing and non-narrative string of images and cuts which make up music videos, such revelations regarding new or unnoticed physical features can serve to be just as jarring as some edits. Throughout the video, particularly in the performance portions, Morrissey’s face is seen in extreme closeup, which reveals to the viewer certain features he or she may not have noticed. The singer’s face bears marks of a ﬁght or accident: he has scratches and bruises across his cheek and nose. While the injury might ﬁt into the implied narrative in some way, perhaps in an unseen brutality on the part of the police ofﬁcer or an accident, his injuries are unexplained. The fact that the viewer is drawn to the closeup makes sense; the image in closeup is of the performer, the star of which the video is a showcase. But the nature of the subject of the closeup is interesting since the image is not necessarily an attractive one. While Morrissey is certainly not injured to an extent as to completely convulse a viewer, the extent of the injuries are noticeable and jarring. They seem to derail the notion of the closeup as providing a kind of grounding effect for the video. The focus on the injuries act as another element to move the viewer to the next image. Vernallis considers the construction of the images in music video and its similarity to sonic properties. She states: All gestures in music video—the ﬂick of a wrist, the ﬂickering of light, or the ﬂuttering of fabric— become like dance. We use sound to register the interiority of objects, whether hollow or dense. The way that the camera in music video hovers over the ﬁgures, slowly taking in their bodies, may look pornographic, but it might also be a way to register the sounds emanating from 319 these bodily sources. If we think of a singer’s voice as reﬂecting the rhythms of her body, and the instruments as extending the voice, then the camera can be thought of as creating a fantasy of what lies inside the body--the spring of the muscles, the heartbeat, the ﬂow of blood (Vernallis 39-40). If one is to accept Vernallis’s reading of the function of the roaming camera to create a sense of the vitality of the artist, the closeup and revelation of personal injury shows such vitality directly. The viewer is able to see with her own eyes the blood and muscle which lies inside the body. The vitality of the performer is heightened in this view, but also exposed in a potentially damaging way. The performer, in an injured state, is shown as vulnerable, and perhaps in danger. The exposure of Morrissey to the camera exposes him also to further danger, but also displays him as a kind of hero in terms of deﬁance and bravery. He puts himself on display, although injured, to make a stand for something, and to show that he is not afraid to show his weaknesses, in the form of injury. Morrissey’s weakness is also evident in the fact that he is unable to drive a car. The only moment the viewer sees him in the driver’s seat is the moment in which he is asked to leave it. Morrissey is relegated to performing with injury. His agency to transport himself is removed, and his jealousy and animosity toward “The Boy Racer” is revealed, although the singer is relegated to the performance space, and removed from the city streets. With his display of injury as well as his special displacement, Morrissey is of no danger to anyone, even if the words he sings suggest his intent to murder. Another interesting element in the video is the apparent attractiveness of the performer as compared to the antagonist ﬁgure of the driver. Morrissey is displayed as physically bigger than the “Boy Racer,” and although not driving, seems comfortable and particularly capable of performing. The singer is poised in a stance which suggests conﬁdence, and is unmoved by the further thrusts of the music toward the end of the video; his seriousness and strength is showcased in his stillness. Ultimately, the video presents an aggressive and masculine Morrissey, who is refused admittance into the masculine world of mobility and vitality through his inability to drive an automobile. Perhaps his inability to be like the “boy racer” signiﬁes that he can never achieve this notion of ideal masculinity, or that British society, in the guise of police ofﬁcers, won’t allow him. This leads to a ﬁnal brief mention of the links between gender and nationality, thoughts which might ultimately fuel further academic work. 320 Many writers on Morrissey link the singer to a sense of Britishness. Michael Bracewell states: he seems to celebrate; and the war in Northern Ireland looms large (if offstage) as an English singer of Irish-Catholic descent wraps himself in the Union Jack (18). Morrissey is seen as an ambassador of Britishness. Interestingly, he moved to Los Angeles in 1997, and has more recently seemingly broken ties with England while reaching out to a large latino fan base in the United States. While the main focus of this paper has not been Morrissey’s nationality, there is an interesting parallel in Morrissey’s England was recognizable within the vision of early Auden and late Larkin . . . and he shared with them an ambivalence towards the English landscape which seemed always to be mourning something lost. . . . [He is] the pop cultural embodiment of a century or more of English sensibility (222-23). This conception of Morrissey’s Englishness is contested, in a way, by Nabeel Zuberi, who suggests that, “Morrissey’s brand of Little Englandism is not simply conservative, but both regressive and progressive in its conﬂicted representations of femininity, masculinity, class, race, ethnicity, and region in relation to what becomes identiﬁably ‘national’ geography and history” (19). Zuberi illustrates these conﬂicts in more detail, while describing an early 1990s version of Morrissey: the way that his nationality has, like his gender, also been performed in an ambiguous way. He has problematised what has been written about him in the past and continues to provide difﬁculties for his categorization, both in terms of gender and nationality. For instance, Hubbs points out Morrissey’s use of perfect English diction in his singing, preserving this element of the language; against such a practice, the singer has chosen to speak at times with an American accent during his concert tour of the western United States last fall (Hubbs 270). He has decided to a pop star in London [Morrissey] tells his audience that local language and culture are dead at the hands of American cultural imperialism while he spectacularly sells out a concert in Los Angeles; a performer known for his androgyny and Oscar Wilde obsession is abused by the macho, determinedly hetero English skins [skinheads] leave the “police ofﬁcers” of Britain behind for the cops in the United States, and we have yet to see if he gets pulled over. Morrissey is an ambiguous ﬁgure, and is a difﬁcult case to ﬁt into previous models of celebrity and masculinity. This ambiguity is constant in other areas of his persona, including the sense of nationality he evokes. 321 Selected Bibliography Bracewell, Michael. England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. Hubbs, Nadine. “Music of the ‘Fourth Gender’: Morrissey and the Sexual Politics of Melodic Contour.” Bodies of Writing, Bodies in Performance. Ed. T. Foster, C. Siegel & E. Berry. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 266-96. Vernallis, Carol. “The Kindest Cut: Functions and Meanings of Music Video Editing.” Screen 42.1 (Spring 2001): 21-48. Zuberi, Nabeel. Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. IASPM03 - MONTREAL From rock in France to French rock: Towards the formation of an autonomous expression (1) Gérôme Guibert T his presentation will analyze how French bands have integrated Afro-American musical styles and trademark until the late 80’s. Until then, the few bands that had gained either the public’s or the critics’ recognition were among those who had made the trip to London or New York to record their music. especially rock’n’roll in their music, and the creation process of an original French style out of those foreign styles once copied. First, I will point out some important dates in the evolution of perception of Anglo-Saxon popular music by the French public and how French artists took them over. Then, I will illustrate this phenomenon with two examples of French bands: Les Négresses Vertes and the Little Rabbits. R’n’r had contributed to create a new market segment in popular music: music intended especially for young people with bands like Les Chaussettes Noires or Les Chats Sauvages. Nonetheless, it was soon replaced by yé-yé style, with less subversive lyrics and less aggressive music. Most specialists agree to say that the change took place in 1963 (Looseley, 2003). When rock’n’roll ﬁrst arrived in France in the second half of the 50’s with such artists as Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets or even the Platters, it was seen by the music industry as “Music Hall for youth” (2). As it was done with American music hall hits, the best selling rock’n’roll songs were translated, and French versions were recorded with the musical background adapted to the public’s taste. Various testimonies show that producers and impresarios could replace some of the bands’ members or refuse sound effects to stick to the then pop music standards, which often frustrated the artists. The “cheap” sound remained a typical French rock’n’roll 1963 is an important landmark to us because of the split of “youth music” in two subcategories: variété française and Anglo-Saxon rock music (3). This split lasted until the late 80’s. Those two categories did not leave room for a speciﬁc French rock or r’n’b. The Rock (4) bands were only supposed to copy AngloSaxon songs. Therefore, they were interesting neither for the media nor for the labels. For that reason, the new musical press that started mentioning Rock, Blues, Soul and Folk music in 1966 did not consider seriously French bands like Triangle, Variations or Martin Circus. 323 In the early 70’s, Rock’n’Folk magazine, that appreciated Bob Dylan, considered that French folk would be George Brassens’ music rather than the new progressive folk bands like Melusine or Malicorne (Vassal, 1971). At that time, major record companies were using this lack of French rock to sell Anglo-Saxon records. After EMI , RCA (future BMG), and Philips (Polygram future Universal), CBS opened a subsidiary in France in 1963 and Warner in 1971 through an alliance with Filipacchi Media. were punks, they did not always stick to the guitar, bass, drums standard. Among this last category, Bérurier Noir, Ludwig Von 88 and les VRP on Bondage Records and les Garçons Bouchers, Pigalle and Los Carayos on Boucherie were the most popular bands. Some members from those bands, willing to include various musical inﬂuences in their music such as instruments used so far in ethnic music, soon created a new generation of bands. On the label Boucherie, Manu Chao, former member of the Hot Pants and Los After 1977, the burst of a punk wave and then the new wave and heavy metal, mostly in the Paris area, gave birth to a lot of bands singing in French (Téléphone, Trust, Starshooter, Metal Urbain, Taxi Girl…). Some labels then started to recruit such bands but the hype did not last long, and music critics pointed out that French citizenship and rock did not go along together. Carayos founded La Mano Negra, Helno from Bérurier Noir created les Négresses Vertes and Bruno from Ludwig Von 88 became the leader of Sergent Garcia. Bondage started distributing Massilia Sound System and the ﬁrst tape of the rap band IAM. The use of broken French language to sing comic or more politically conscious songs was common to the two generations of groups. For both the public and the music industry, opinions started changing during the second half of the 80’s, when rock alternatif came up. Some of those bands, disregarded by major labels and mainstream professionals, set up alternative ways to be heard. Among them, some sang in English and their style compares to garage or English pop (i.e. labels Closer and New Rose) and remained underground while others got some credit singing in French. Although they This transformation of the musical background was made possible partly thanks to the birth of the world music category in the major labels, which helped to promote them. World music (then called “sono mondiale” in French) was promoted in France since the early 80’s by the Actuel magazine. African artists such as Ray Lema, Salif Keita, Geoffrey Oryema, Youssou’n’Dour recorded this music in Parisian studios. Simultaneously, 324 in Great Britain, Peter Gabriel, his label Real World and Woomad festival also promoted world music. At the same time, the liberalization of FM band radio and the birth of the “Free” radio stations (5) also greatly helped spreading both rock alternatif and sono mondiale music, for example Radio Nova, linked to Actuel. World music had a critical role because it made bands take an interest in other cultures, and at the same time look for their own roots. government actions. The Bureau Export, funded by the music industry and the Culture Ministry is dedicated to organizing tours abroad, which helps boosting record sales. In 1994, the law on French music quotas on the radio was passed. Since its implementation in 1996, all radios have to air at least 40% music sung with French lyrics. First criticized as a threat to liberty of expression, it is now accepted and defended by all parties. It helped French rap rise and questioned all ampliﬁed music For example, while at the beginning of the 70’s accordion was completely out of fashion among progressive bands because it seemed too conventional, such bands as les Endimanchés, Pigalle and les Négresses Vertes gave it new credit. In a way, French post-alternative music gained a new, original stamp, and became a “truly French” style. In the year 2001, David Byrne’s world music label Laika Bop produced a compilation of French popular music titled Cuisine Non Stop featuring such bands as les Têtes Raides, Mickey 3D and Lo’Jo Triban. professionals. A strong debate has existed between people saying that no rock is possible if it is not in English, and those who think that a French band can only be of some interest if singing in French but the former seems to have lost and dropped out. In 1995, only 51.3% of records sold in France were French music. It is now 62%, which is the highest rate in Europe for local music (Année du disque, 2001, p. 135). All the structural changes mentioned plus others, like the artists getting older in average (which allow them to be inspired by more different styles and assume their French groups now understand that in a global music market, they must have a speciﬁc identity different from Anglo-Saxon rock, punk or pop if they want to be able to compete with major international bands. maternal language for creation) were important for the construction of an original French style. The examples of the French bands les Négresses vertes and the Little Rabbits will help illustrate the This trend is somehow speeded up by some changes I have been talking about. 325 First ,Les Négresses Vertes is a good example of an original expression between punk and chanson réaliste (a kind of French world music). The band was created in 1987, the peak in the rock alternatif wave. Some musicians were former members of the cold wave band Les Maîtres whereas lead singer Helno had been playing in the punk groups Lucrate Milk and Bérurier Noir. The band became famous thanks to the song “Zobi la Mouche” which was played on Radio Nova and published on a Bondage compilation. Les Négresses Vertes had about ten members, like Bérurier Noir’s La Raïa and La Souris Déglinguée inspired by the Sex Pistol’s Bromley Contingent. They say about their music (6): “Helno: There’s a Parisian axis Helno-Cavanese, a Mediterranean axis Mellino and also Paulus represents rock and soul. When it gets more like valse, accordion, it’s Cavanese and when it sounds rumba it’s Mellino. We do a little bit of everything, and it’s good ! Mellino: Paulus is great at playing funky guitar. I try to play rock’n’roll with my accordion. Helno sings in a traditional French way. We inﬂuence each other. But when you play our music, you know it’s us. Cavanese: Our own World Music, it’s Parisian folklore. And we grew up with Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Polish people… we are from various origins ourselves. “Chanson Françise [imitating Arab accent] rules”, but, I mean, England and America are ﬁne, too. “( Inrockuptibles, “(Les 1992, p. 52) The second example is quite different. The Little Rabbits mix a “swinging London” pop sound, parts of the French culture of the 60’s like Nouvelle Vague movies and singers like Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc or Brigitte Fontaine. The band was created in Nantes in 1989. The ﬁrst two albums were sung in English, in a very English indiepop style. They didn’t expect such a success for their ﬁrst album: (7) “We were not a live band, we used to buy a pack of beer and play every weekend.” they said (Les Inrockuptibles, 1998, p. 30) . At that time, they were about 20 years old and did not really focus on lyrics. They used to record their demo tapes in “yogurt” (meaningless fake English). After going through troubles and changing label, a deep change occurred while recording their third album in Tucson, Arizona with Jim Waters (engineer for John Spencer Blues Explosion). As Gaëtan (bass player) explains (8): “In France, for the two ﬁrst albums, we were always considered as sub-something. In Tucson, nobody would talk about that, and people would notice our difference. Even when we were singing in English, people thought there was a special French feeling in our songs, we were quite proud about it.” ( ” (Les Inrockuptibles, 2001, p. 33) They then decided to use French, but not in a 326 conventional way. Refusing chanson française and French classical literature, their picked-up various inﬂuences from underground and pop culture. As said Frederico, the singer (9): “Everything we are interested in and we want to include Everything in our songs was already featured in Nouvelle Vague movies: very deep dialogues that seem improvised, casual songs like France Gall’s, nature noises, happiness hiding a disillusion. On our record, we wanted all that, plus a Russ Meyer touch, this more American style. That symbiosis of two cultures strongly tied one to the other was, after all, quite similar to our own story. Both for lyrics and music, we try to create our own range. “ ( Les Inrockuptibles, 2001, p. 34) If we can pinpoint something singular in the French music, it could be the weight of the legitimate traditional culture, especially the French language. Most of the bands refuse its connotation and history and though ﬁnd a way to assert their national identity. We can see here how acculturation helped the Little Rabbits to ﬁnd out their own culture. A process that les Négresses Vertes made in France but with immigrant musicians and world music. The way rock music was used by French artists as a real mode of expression is a process well known by ethnomusicologists. They ﬁrst copy and imitate (a model), then take in local elements until they create original modes of expression, recognized as genuine by the public (Mortaigne, 1995, p. 38). It seems that independent labels support theses new sounds, before they become overground. 327 Espagnols, des Algériens, des Polonais, et on est Endnotes (1) I would like to acknowledge the advice of Samuel Etienne, Line Grenier, Lorraine Kolendowicz and Gaétan Guibert nous mêmes de toutes origines « c’est génial la chanson françise » (avec l’accent arabe). Mais attention, l’Angleterre et l’Amérique c’est bien aussi.» (2) “Music-hall des jeunes” (7) “On n’était qu’un groupe de répétition, on achetait un pack de bières et on jouait tous les week-ends.» (3) French chanson is considered a music for adults (8) “En France, avec les deux premiers albums, on (4) From the mid 60’s to the late 70’s, rock was referred to as “pop music” in French pop ” était toujours considéré comme des sous-quelque chose. A Tucson, personne ne nous parlait de ça et on mettait au contraire l’accent sur notre singularité. (5) “Les radios libres” Même lorsqu’on chantait en anglais les gens trouvaient qu’il y avait une rare sensibilité française (6) “Helno : Il y a un axe parigot Helno/Cavanese et un axe méditerranéen Mellino et aussi un axe Paulus qui est plutôt rock-soul. Dès que c’est un peu valse/ accordéon c’est Cavanese et quand c’est plutôt rumba c’est Mellino. On fait un peu de tout. Et c’est bien ! Mellino : Paulus joue suber bien de la guitare funky. Moi j’essaie de jouer du rock’n’roll à l’accordéon, Mellino chante dans la tradition française. On s’inﬂuence les uns les autres. Mais quand tu joues notre musique tu sais que c’est nous. Cavanese : nous, notre world music, c’est le folklore parigot. Et puis, on a grandi avec des Italiens, des (9) “Dans la Nouvelle Vague, il y a déjà tout ce qui nous intéresse et qu’on cherche à intégrer dans nos morceaux : des dialogues très écrits qui paraissent improvisés, des chansons légères à la France Gall, des bruits naturels, une joie de vivre qui masque en fait une désillusion. Sur le disque, on voulait retrouver ce climat en y apportant une touche plus Russ Meyer, ce côté beaucoup plus Américain. Cette mise en parallèle de deux cultures, l’une étant de toute façon intimement liée à l’autre correspondait ﬁnalement assez bien à notre propre histoire.” dans nos chansons, on était assez ﬁers de ça” 328 Selected Bibliography Looseley, David L. Popular Music in Contemporary France. Oxford: Berg, 2003 Mortaigne, Véronique. “Musiques modernes, musiques métisses.” Internationale de l’Imaginaire 11 (1995) : 37-44 Vassal, Jacques. Folksong. Paris: Albin Michel, 1971 Année du disque 2000. Paris: MBC, 2001 «La belle équipe.» Les Inrockuptibles jan. 1992: 46-52 «Dix ans de vacances.» Les Inrockuptibles avril 1998: 30-33 «La nouvelle vague rose. « Les Inrockuptibles jan. 2001: 31-35 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Performing Musical Chronicles in Mexico Eduardo Guízar T he recognition of the existence of a genre that may be called musical chronicle helps to prove events, emotions and feelings. This leads to a memory that becomes a legacy for the generations to come. Song is different from other texts in its capacity to be transmitted not only through the mass media, but in ﬁlms, cantinas, restaurants, rodeos, cafes, nightclubs, family get-togethers, ﬁestas, festivals, or simply when a song comes to mind unexpectedly. Furthermore, people tend to know a song more than they might know a poem or a short story. Thus, the song is associated with the moment when it is sung or heard, but it transcends through generations. that the limits of the literary chronicle and testimonial literature do not necessarily end in the written text. On the contrary, they transcend the boundaries of the printed cultural industry when one rethinks the value that has been given to the written word as a more lasting means in time and space to maintain a memory that keeps alive cultural history. Discussions on the chronicle as a cultural activity have centered around the disciplines of journalism and literature, testimony and ﬁction, with less attention given to music, cinema and radio. These cultural texts may begin with a written text, but the completed product is meant to be consumed through viewing and hearing it. Moreover, these texts usually reach a larger audience through the mass media. However, the misconception may afﬁrm that their nature is ephemeral, because, once the message is heard or seen, it may seem to be erased from memory. This paper suggests that the cronica genre needs to be understood not only in the literary context, but also in that of musical texts when the song narrates the events, emotions, preoccupations or situations in the life of another person or community with which the composer has come into contact. It the songs of Chava Flores it illustrates the existence of a genre that may be called the crónica musical or “musical chronicle”. Chava Flores, Salvador Flores Rivera (1920-1987), wrote In a constant dialog between the musical text and its audience, the text not only transcends space and time, but it also gives pleasure to the ear. Beyond the pleasure principle, the song uses a language that communicates most of his songs in the 1940s and 1950s, a period of intense processes of industrialization in Mexico and a golden age of cinema and radio productions. This active cultural life begins in the post-revolutionary 330 years, the 1930s, when there was a nationalist fervor and various processes consolidating the Mexican State into what would become a one-party state throughout the twentieth century. The songs composed by Chava Flores are frequently heard in the popular ﬁlms of the beloved Mexican ﬁlm star Pedro Infante, and they were to become cult songs in the voice of Mexican singers of the following decades and up to the present day (Oscar Chavez, Amparo Ochoa, Eugenia Leon, etc.). XEW, “la voz de América Latina desde México” (the voice of Latin America from Mexico), was the most important station of these years and it promoted his songs. The general public did their part by popularizing his songs, which became instant hits. often includes criminals, bandits, and lovers, but there are also bricklayers and maids, who become heroes through narrative and poetic strategies such as an emphasis on oral production, parody, satire, everyday life, gossiping, humor and the albur, a kind of pun based on double meanings. The architecture of the vecindad, however, is what allows many of these elements in the songs to exist, for its structures with many doors and windows provide an excellent position from which one might look out with interest at the life of a neighbor. Thus, the narrative capacity of the song is found in the private sphere, one in which the position of the narrator is always that of the lens of a camera that sees with interest what is going on in the lives of others. The songs of Chava Flores depict scenes of life in the “vecindades” or tenement house dwellings for poor people, an architectural form that was often used in the melodramatic ﬁlm. His songs are testimonial, for they narrate the experiences that the composer lived in his childhood as he traveled from one vecindad to the next. In his autobiography, Relatos de mi barrio (Tales of My Neighborhood 1972), Chava Flores relates his nomadic life in a large number of poor areas of Mexico City, brought about because his father did not have the means to pay the rent. This journey through the city put him in contact with those who would become the characters in his songs. The gallery of these characters There is also another life that is narrated, which is parallel to those political ﬁgures who constructed historic Revolutions or events of national importance. There are heroes that are not necessarily the head of the State or famous revolutionary ﬁgures like Pancho Villa or Zapata. These minor heroes participate also in the construction of a nation, but they do so through their acts in everyday life. We arrive, then, at another history, a local history of constant participatory acts. This epic of the private life includes modes of dressing, eating, acting, greeting others or simply walking, as Michel de Certeau has described it in his Practice of Everyday Life. This epic is valuable as a form of communal memory 331 in which private acts may be elevated to the level of a political action. The songs of Chava Flores are a legacy of other musical genres such as the cancion rancera, bolero, corrido and folk music, but what characterizes it is a happy musical tone and the picturesque characters that are mocked through exaggeration and humor. His songs never abandon their comic tone even when depicting a tragic event. If in the bolero and the corrido one hears the everyday life of the characters, in the songs of Chava Flores the everyday life actions may sometimes seem trivial, such as the simple act of having one’s picture taken or the baptism of a newborn child. His songs include a language that is not only narrative, but also include the dialogues between the characters. The song describes the scene, and then introduces the complications that will ﬁnally be resolved either positively or negatively. Other songs may narrate something as simple as the inauguration of a pulquería (Los pulques de Apan). of the author himself and that of the characters. The portrait of the character who lives in the vecindad is always ﬁltered through the vision of the composer. In the chronicle, as Monsivais has noted, the narrative game consists of using a ﬁrst narrative voice discretely or of narrating in the third person from the position of the subjectivity of another (13). In this process, another’s subjectivity often becomes one with that of the composer, creating an illusion for the listener or reader. In effect, testimonial literature and the literary chronicle have attested to this double voicedness. In a chronicle, the composer/writer is a kind of witness to the event, either because she or he is present when the story takes place or because he was told about the event from a ﬁrst-hand participant. She or he then transmits the information to others, and, since this participation is limited, the narrator serves as an informant who is obliged to tell the story of another person or community at times using ﬁrst person narration Chava Flores himself is but one more of the characters in his songs. His life is no less surreal than that of those presented in his music. He was forced to carry out a wide variety of jobs, such as mending and ironing ties, sewing labels on shirts, working as an accountant’s assistant, and even becoming the owner of a business whose failure led to his being failed. In the songs of Chava Flores, one always ﬁnds several voices, that and other times third person. It should be noted that when the narrator is usurping the narrative “I” of the hero, she or he attends to what is called testimonial literature or testimony in literature, in which there are two voices acting as an “I”, one being the character who lived the experience and the other the writer who listens, records and then narrates a ﬁctional account of the story. 332 In the crónica, however, there is a distinction between two narrative voices in the song, that of the composer who heard or witnessed the event and that of the character who tells the story from a ﬁrst hand experience. The crónica tells the events that took place often in a communal experience in which the narrator participates as the observer of the event, but is not necessarily a protagonist. In both literary genres, there is a distance between the participant actor and the participant narrator-author. Similarly in music, the lyrics of the song narrate an event in which there is often a distance between the narrator-composer and the characters whose lives and experiences are narrated. What brings about an analogy between the literary and the musical chronicles is that they relate stories that are ﬁctionalized but which in the ﬁnal analysis are not completely ﬁctional . That is to say, there is an overt recognition that the event took place, giving speciﬁc dates and places that testify its historicity. It is in the overt recognition of historicity in which one does not try to deny the authenticity of the characters as historical ﬁgures that a song may be called a “crónica musical”. person. In contrast, the crónica musical relates events of which the public needs to be informed. Thus, the song covers the material that one would commonly ﬁnd in other media, such as the newspaper, books, ﬁlms, soap operas, news broadcasts and other TV or radio programs. Other genres may be included here, such as the corrido, the narcocorrido, etc., in which there is the need to tell the story of another character with whom the composer came into contact. In these stories, the cantautor (singer-composer) Chava Flores narrates events that depict the Mexico City of the 1940s such as the celebration of a newborn baby in the vecindad, when it is soon discovered through gossip that there is a situation of questionable paternity because the child resembles more the compadre who is present than the father himself, as the narrative voice mocks the darker color of the child’s skin, which he attributes to the fact that in their state of poverty, the parents have not been able to pay for the electricity bill. Another song that contains a very similar humor, sharp and dark, is “El gato viudo” (The Widow Cat) in which the cat is a man whose nickname is based on the fact that The lyrics in a crónica musical vary from other musical forms in the content of the themes and issues presented. In the bolero, for example, the song often expresses emotions and feelings. A ﬁrst person voice speaks of love or disillusionment while addressing a second he is dating a servant. “Gata” is the nickname attributed to servants or maids in Mexico, as people denigrate the socioeconomic status of these women who many times come from indigenous communities in rural Mexico. This man is called “viudo” (widower), not because his 333 wife has died, but because his relationship with this woman has ended. She was a source of income for him, because he does not have a job, and does not seem to want one. And although she had to “borrow” from the money she received from her patrona to buy the groceries, so that he could go to the movies and have an ice cream, those golden years are now gone, and the gato viudo is simply crying over his misfortune. This new difﬁcult life, which he had not know previously, has made him an unhappy man, and those are the meows of pain that people hear at night when there is a full moon. The music of these songs contrasts with their narrative, for the music is almost that of a carnival or circus, a kind of happy music that might be heard in a comedy, a music that is very attractive for children who sing about a cat, without knowing many times that it is a story of sadness, the story of a man without a job who has lost the source of his income. correct point of view, but which are meant to provoke the laughter of the audience. The process of hiding Manuela’s ugliness does not require plastic surgery, but is simply achieved through a photograph that lies to Fidel, and with which he attempts to hide the truth from everyone else. Although the song suggests that he fools himself into not seeing Manuela’s ugliness when he is with her, he looks even more ridiculous when he tries to fool others. At the expense of lacking melodrama to achieve the exaggerated humor desired, a happy ending is achieved through a photograph that lies to Fidel, the only character who needs to be certain of Manuela’s beauty, which he ﬁnds in the photograph. Humor increases in the song when it becomes impossible to name the lower parts of the body, as Bakhtin has mentioned, but here, there is a circumlocution that allows reference to the part of the body without directly naming it. This strategy is called el albur in Mexico, where it is an everyday practice of Another song tells the fantasies of a servant, Manuela, and the tricks she played to get married to Fidel, the bricklayer. Manuela’s ugliness is highlighted in the narrative together with the way in which this ugliness was hidden through the magic of a photograph that is taken during the narrative of the song. The dialogue between the photographer and Manuela is combined with the narrative voice that mocks Manuela through descriptions that sound offensive from a politically the language. The taboo language, then, is substituted by another word that begins with the same phoneme. When Manuela mentions that the photograph is for the eyes of Fidel and the “original” is for him, she is alluding to the body. There are two phrases that were said by people Chava Flores actually knew in his childhood. One is Manuela’s phrase that indicates that the original is for her boyfriend, and the other is the one his own mother enunciated when she saw the picture: “she 334 looks like a doll”, as he explains in his autobiography. Appendix Chava Flores has incorporated the details of everday life in his songs. He does narrate the events of everyday life with humor, creating a parody of life itself, of the people he met by making them into characters with exaggerated personalities and physical characteristics. Such portrayal does not allow for a paternalistic tone. Life is celebrated for its capacity to recreate itself in the acts of the possible. So, in order to write his songs, Chava Flores attends to memories of his childhood as he was growing up in the vecindades of Mexico City. In this way, his songs are remembrances of things past, of characters the composer actually met. Chava Flores, then, becomes a musical chronicler of the life of the vecindad. El bautizo de Cheto (The baptism of Cheto) Chava Flores Translation by Eduardo Guizar Cheto, the son of Camila, came to this world The stork sent him with food and clothes His father was Quirino and also a gentleman who was there He offered himself to be his godfather with his wife Mimi Cheto made quite a racket the night he was born It was the night of the earthquake when the Statue of the angel fell -Get a coat and go out that his brain is trembling if it trembles it is because there is an earthquake Ouch, the wall is breaking That is why I am getting wet, might it be the kid or is it me? What a beautiful boy! The journalists who went to see him said He has the face of a bug, and they took photographs with his dad and mom What a beautiful boy! Said those criticizers who all they do is to gossip 335 He looks just like Utimio I mean, he looks just like you don Quirino, no doubt about it I saw the baptism of Cheto, the son of Camila the Gandul Wrinkled, big mouthed and dark skinned and dressed in blue Panuncio gave money with such big medallion he wears ”But behind he printed a comercial of the restaurant “The Glories of Colombus” It is the “bolo” (money given by the godfather at a baptism), don Cristeto, ask one from Sebastian El retrato de Manuela (Manuela’s Portrait) Salvador Chava Flores Rivera Translation by Eduardo Guizar Manuela was required a portrait by her boyfriend Fidel Elegantly dressed, she went to have her portrait taken She painted three moles, she took off her apron and cap She had three photos from front and three from side They had Cheto on the baptism fountain With the water he became loud -please uncover his chest -Oh, no sir, poor little thing, he may catch a cold! -uncover him, because once baptized if he gets wet it was God’s will, simply air him under the sun Oh, how dark is this kid! It doesn’t matter if he is dark skinned, he still deserves a toast I think he is so dark Because about a year ago our electricity was cut off She thought about a phrase for Fidel the bricklayer ¡Click, click, click! The photo has been taken ¡Click, click, click! Lady, you moved ¡Click, click, click! We will try it again But sharpen your sight so it does not turn sideways And please do not show your hangs, you seem Lucifer Don’t move, say cheese Perfect! A copy for Max Factor! Manuela’s portrait was not recognized by any The face marks erase, her resemblance was lost She looked more like a princess, like a cake doll Her red bun on the head and her hand on the waist And a look saying: “Can you see me? These, my looks! How cute is Cheto! I did not get any money as Juan did It is not called “money” ¡Click, click, click! The portrait came out ¡Click, click, click! The artist did it! ¡Click, click, click! Let’s eliminate the side portrait 336 because it shows the zit on the nose And you look very pointed like a quail Dedication: “For you, my dear! “The portrait is for your eyes and the original for you! said the dedicatory for Fidel the bricklayer And he received it with love and passion, And he placed it in the wallet he keeps in his pants In a rear packet, very close to the… heart. ¡Click, click, click! The portrait came out ¡Click, click, click! He showed off to his friends ¡Click, click, click! Today Fidel gets married Manuela’s portrait was the cause of such an end ”The portrait is for your eyes and the original for you!” ¡Click, click, click! http://www.atame.org/c/chava_flores/ http://oscarchavez.cantonuevo.org/Discos/cdchavaf. html Selected Bibliography Flores, Chava (Salvador Flores Rivera). Relatos de mi barrio. México: Ageleste, 1994 (1972). ---. El cancionero de Chava Flores. México: Ageleste, 1988. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkely: U of California P, 1988. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Vision Versus Sound: Media Competence as a Touchstone in the Tango Singing Contest at the Seinäjoki Tango Festival Yrjö Heinonen T he tango arrived in Finland as early as in 1913 but it took some 30 years until a genuine Finnish witnessed the coronation of the new Tango Queen and Tango King in a live TV broadcasting (to put this into a perspective, there are only slightly more than 5 million inhabitants in Finland…). tango was born. This took place during and after World War II, when the combination of musical melancholy (owing much to Finnish folk music and Russian romances) and lyrics touchingly talking about parting and loss stroke a common chord in people who had just encountered similar situations in their real lives (Gronow). The Golden Era of the Finnish tango lasted from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, after which the popularity of the tango began to decrease. The Seinäjoki Tango Festival was founded in the mid1980s, after which the popularity and appreciation of the tango has risen again. The Tango Singing Contest at the Seinäjoki Tango Festival Because of the large amount of candidates, the qualifying procedure is extremely complex. It consists of three main stages – qualifying trials, semiﬁnals, and ﬁnals –, each of which are further divided into subordinate stages. Some 1000 or more candidates take part in the qualifying trials yearly. The trials take place in various locations around Finland (some of them also in Sweden and at car ferries traveling between Finland and Sweden) during late winter and early spring. Some 150 candidates pass the qualifying trials and participate in the semiﬁnals. These take place in Raisio, a town in Southwestern Finland close to Turku, late in May. The The Tango Singing Contest is the main event of the Seinäjoki Tango Festival, one of the biggest annual festivals in Finland with an audience of more than one hundred thousand people yearly. The Tango Singing Contest is also a massive media event: for example, in 2002, more than nine hundred thousand spectators semiﬁnals are themselves divided into two stages: the trials and the ﬁnal of the semiﬁnals. In the trials the number of competitors is restricted to 10 female and 10 male singers. In the ﬁnal of the semiﬁnals, which is a live TV broadcasting, six female and six male singers are chosen to participate the ﬁnals, taking place in 338 Seinäjoki in mid-July. Meanwhile the audience can drop one female and one male candidate in a public voting (using either the Internet or a cell phone). So there are ﬁve female and ﬁve male candidates left. The ﬁnals are, again, divided into two stages: the trial and the ﬁnal of the ﬁnals, both being live TV broadcastings. In the trial of the ﬁnals, two female and two male candidates are dropped and the remaining six pass through to the ﬁnal of the ﬁnals. in particular) compared to radio and records. According to Simon Frith, performance art “is a form of rhetoric, a rhetoric of gestures in which, by and large, bodily movements and signs (including the use of the voice) dominate other forms of communicative signs, such as language and iconography” (205). The organizers of the Tango Singing Contest have maintained that, in addition to good singing, the performers must be good in expression and storytelling. Storytelling means, according to Frith, that the performer identiﬁes her- or Paula Jaakkola has claimed that up to the Raisio semiﬁnals, the candidates are evaluated primarily according to their singing abilities and stylistically correct performance. Media then seeks personalities from this “mass of ﬁnalists” according to characteristics other than musical. (Jaakkola.) Recently the jury seems to have applied this kind of double criteria as well: the ﬁnalists are chosen according to their singing abilities while the winners are chosen according to their “media competence.” The aim of this presentation is to illustrate that media competence indeed works as an important touchstone (criterion of judgement) in the Tango Singing Contest. Media Competence himself with “the character presented as the protagonist of the song, its singer and narrator, the implied person controlling the plot, with an attitude and tone of voice” (198). Frith further maintains that “the performance artist depends on an audience which can interpret her work through its own experience of performance, its own understanding of seduction and pose, gesture and body language; an audience which understands, however ‘instinctively’ (without theorizing), the constant dialogue of inner and outer projected by the body in movement” (205-206). In the following, I will compare the performances of the By the term ‘media competence’ I refer to such aspects of the singer and her/his voice that are critical with respect to live performances in audiovisual media (TV two winners to those of the two main “losers” of the Tango Singing Contest 2001. The performances to be compared come from the ﬁnal of the semiﬁnals, broadcast 339 live from Raisio on 25 May, 2001 by MTV3 (the biggest commercial TV channel in Finland). The winners were Mira Sunnari and Erkki Räsänen (Tango Queen and Tango King 2001, respectively), whereas the “losers” were Johanna Pakonen and Dimitri Sjöberg (Tango Princess and ﬁnalist 2001, respectively). Pakonen and Sjöberg are called “the two main losers” since, before the ﬁnals, media treated them as potential winners but eventually they failed to win. The aspects on which the comparison will be based include body language (facial expressions, hand movements, and other movements), mode and appearance, and the interaction with the audience. The comparison has been carried out within the limits the performances can be “read” from a video recording of the live TV broadcasting. Finally, a brief analysis of public comments given by the competitors, reporters, and the Chair of the Jury will shed more light to the issue. Performances Mira Sunnari (female winner) emotions after a broken love affair. As for the rhetoric of gestures, her facial expressions included smiling, a lively glance, closing of eyes, knitting of eyebrows, and wrinkling up of the forehead. The microphone was in the right hand all the time, the free hand (left) making “expressive” curves and reaching towards the audience. Sunnari stood in place all the time but her body movements accompanied strongly the musical expression. There was no straining, Sunnari seemed to feel herself completely comfortable onstage. In the Finnish cultural context, her appearance might be characterized as warm, sensual, and womanly (honeycolored hair, golden jewelry, orange-golden dress). The interaction with the audience was immediate and intense; it is not exaggeration to say that in this performance Sunnari gave herself to the audience. Johanna Pakonen (female “loser”) Johanna Pakonen’s song in Raisio was ‘Muistojen polku’ (‘Caminito’), an Argentinean tango classic from the 1920s. With respect to musical performance, her phrasing and articulation was a combination of The song Mira Sunnari performed in the ﬁnal of the semiﬁnals was ‘Soi maininki hiljainen,’ a relatively new Finnish tango from the 1980s. From the musical point of view, her phrasing and articulation showed traces from the American torch singing tradition, which is well in line with the self-reﬂective lyrics talking about mixed traditional Finnish and American popular singing, with traces from classical singing. As for the rhetoric of gestures, her face was quite expressive: during the verses there was a somewhat “anxious” or “desperate” glance and much knitting of the eyebrows and wrinkling up of the forehead; during the choruses there was 340 smile. The microphone was in the right hand all the time while the free hand (left) moved several times from the side of the body onto the abdomen and back again. Between the verses and choruses, as well as during the interludes, the right hand (holding the microphone) moved onto the left, which was resting on the abdomen. Pakonen stood in place all the time. She was straining, particularly during the verses, and concentrating on singing. In the Finnish cultural context, her appearance might be characterized as cool and ladylike (platinum hair, silvery jewelry, blue dress). There was little or no interaction with the audience. Erkki Räsänen (male winner) place. Body movements accompanied the storytelling. Räsänen strained in the beginning but then got more relaxed. In the Finnish cultural context, his appearance might be characterized as elegant although slightly snobbish (black suit, silvery waistcoat, white shirt, silvery tie); he was manly in a waggish way (a kind of jolly fellow). There was quite much interaction with the audience: Räsänen actively sought contact to and ﬂirted with the audience; he also took an eye contact to the TV spectators by looking straight at the camera. Dimitri Sjöberg (male “loser”) Dimitri Sjöberg’s semiﬁnal song was Hurmio (Tango Ecstasy), originally a famous British tango classic from The song Erkki Räsänen sung in the ﬁnal of the semiﬁnals was ‘Kun yö on valoton’ (‘A Media Luz’), another Argentinean tango classic from the 1920s. Regarding the musical performance, his phrasing and articulation came quite close to traditional Finnish tango singing; yet there were some traces from the American crooning tradition as well as that of the Argentinean tango cancion. With respect to the rhetoric of gestures, his facial expressions included smiling, a lively glance, closing of eyes, knitting of eyebrows, and wrinkling up of the forehead. The microphone was in the right hand all the time, the free hand making “expressive” curves and reaching towards the audience. He took a few steps forward during the performance but otherwise stood in the 1950s. Musically, Sjöberg’s phrasing and articulation was close to those of some of the most famous Finnish tango singers (e.g. Olavi Virta), although there were slight traces from American popular singers (particularly crooners). As for the rhetoric of gestures, Sjöberg’s face was inexpressive all the time (a slight exception to this was that he closed his eyes a couple of time). He changed the microphone several times from one hand to the other, the free hand just hanging on the side of the body. As for other movements, he changed the weight of the body several times from one foot to the other and took a few steps forward and backward during the performance. He was calm all the time, there was no apparent straining, and he was completely 341 concentrated on singing. In the Finnish cultural context, his appearance might be characterized as cool (blue coat, black trousers, white shirt, blue tie) and manly in a Finnish Romany way – in other words, he was very serious. There was no interaction with the audience. The inexpressive performance was in sharp contradiction with the highly passionate and ecstatic lyrics. Public Comments “Nowadays I know that it’s important to meet the eyes of the people in the audience, and a smile doesn’t hurt either.” (qtd. in Väre, 46.) Obviously it didn’t. Reporter Leena Ylimutka from Iltalehti analyzed Pakonen’s appearance in Seinäjoki in the following words: “Johanna Pakonen is almost the opposite of Mira. While Mira is a nature child, Johanna is a diamond cut to the utmost – from artiﬁcial nails to shoes decorated with strasses; she’s not in short of conﬁdence regarding performance.” (A38.) Pakonen herself said that she did everything she could to win but it was not enough. A year later, after being crowned as the Tango Queen 2002, she analyzed her The following public comments were given during and slightly (a few days) after the ﬁnals in mid-July, 2001. Although they all concern the ﬁnals – not the semiﬁnals – they are well in line with the previous comparison based on the semiﬁnal performances. Reporter Anna Väre from Iltalehti analyzed the reasons for Mira Sunnari’s success in the Seinäjoki ﬁnals in the following words: performance in 2001 as follows: “I didn’t ﬁnd the golden middle of the road. For the Tango Festival of Summer 2001 I was even too concentrated on the outer appearance, I sought for my style almost by forcing. Subconsciously I thought that I’m superior if only I look good enough. I forgot the interpretation, which is the most important starting point in performing the tango.” (Qtd. in Nyman, 211.) As for the males, reporter Raija Vesala wrote in Ilta- “In Mira you’ll ﬁrst notice har smile. Mira has an astonishingly beautiful smile and before the camera she’s got talent that obviously comes natural to her: [she’s] unfeigned and charming. So it’s easy to understand how she managed to charm both the audience and the jury of the Tango Festival with her charisma.” (46.) In the same interview Sunnari herself admitted: Sanomat about Räsänen in the eve of the ﬁnals: “Last 342 year Erkki, who comes from Liperi, was yet claimed to be a little reserved but this year it’ll be an easy-going joker who enters the stage, ready to blow it up.” (Vesala 2001a, A36.) In the same article, Räsänen himself proclaimed: “If the feeling doesn’t otherwise rise, I’ll just jump on the table. It’s got to be free and easy and if you want some rough edges, you’ll get ‘em.” (Ibid.) Good for him, the feeling rose without having to jump on the table… storytelling had developed since last year. Dimitri just hadn’t charisma enough.” (Qtd. in Penttilä, 30.) To put it in other words, Sjöberg was dropped from the ﬁnal of the ﬁnals since the jury did not consider him to have media competence enough. Conclusion It is safe to argue that the winners of the Tango Singing Contest 2001 succeeded in expressing the Dimitri Sjöberg, in turn, described the aesthetics behind his stage performance in the following words: “It would be really difﬁcult for me to jam onstage. It would be like cheating the audience. My way of interpreting the tango is quite serious. I don’t try anything. I’ll just do what feels good.” (Vesala 2001b, A36.) In the same interview he added: “If being myself is not enough, then let it be.” Päiviö Pyysalo, the Chair of the Jury, explained the dropping of Sjöberg by comparing his performance to that of Räsänen’s: tangos through body language (facial expressions, hand movements, other movements) better than their co-competitors. Moreover, their body language was supported by “suitable” mode and appearance, and the “package” was ﬁnished by taking the audience into account. The “losers” failed in these aspects as well. This was particularly clear in the semiﬁnals. The public comments given by the competitors, by the Chair of the Jury, and by reporters support this interpretation. Media competence, in the sense deﬁned in the beginning of this paper, apparently works as an important touchstone “He [Dimitri] is excellent as far as singing is concerned, so he deserved a ﬁnal place in Seinäjoki. We hoped he would have analyzed his performance after the semiﬁnals in Raisio but this never happened. We sought for a ﬁnished package, a whole. Dimitri’s performance wasn’t expressive enough, whereas Erkki Räsänen’s expression and (criterion of judgement) in the Seinäjoki Tango Singing Contest. 343 Japaniin” [“When I was young, I wanted to become a Selected Bibliography Frith, Simon. Performing Rites. Evaluating Popular Music. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press (1998). rock star in Japan”]. Iltalehti July 20, 2001: 46-47. Ylimutka, Leena. “Kenen tango soi parhaiten?” [“Whose tango sounds the best?”]. Iltalehti July 14, 2001: A3839. Gronow, Pekka. “The last refuge of the tango.” Finnish Music Quarterly (1987, 3-4): 26-31. Jaakkola, Paula. “Tangolaulukilpailujen julkisuuskuva ja tähteys.” Musiikin suunta (1999, 4). Nyman, Marja. Tangokuninkaalliset – ja heidän tarinansa. Jyväskylä: Revontuli (2002). Penttilä, Pia. “Dimitrin karisma ei riittänyt” [“Dimitri’s charisma wasn’t enough”]. Ilta-Sanomat 19 July, 2001, p. 30. Vesala, Raija. “Dimitri pettyi jälleen” [“Dimitri disappointed again”]. Ilta-Sanomat 14-15 July 2001(b): A36. Vesala, Raija. “Kruunataanko Erkistä ja Johannasta tangon uudet kuninkaalliset?” [“Will Erkki and Johanna be crowned as the new tango royals?”] Ilta-Sanomat 1415 July, 2001(a): A36. Väre, Anna 2001. “Nuorena halusin rokkistaraksi IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Case of New Fascist Rock Music in Germany: An Attempt to Distinguish Scalar and Vectorial Sign Components Jan Hemming T he idea behind this paper dates back to an experience at a 1998 musicologist’s conference to a certain degree to untrained ears (like those of musicologists for this case) the according political implications of these various styles differ widely (Barber-Kersovan 2003). Still, they are being clearly recognised and separated by the young audiences they are made for. A right extremist German Skinhead would hardly declare “Anarchy in the UK” his anthem just as any Punk would strongly reject right Skinhead music and vice versa. Still, the speaker I’m referring to basically adopted the overall account in this volume which stresses the musical similarities and not the subtle differences in sound of the examples given. He then went on to analyse the ‘evil’ piece and compared it to the ‘good’ piece. The ﬁrst one is characterised as follows: at the University in Halle (Saale), Germany, where I’m working nowadays. Up until then, musicologists had hardly ever addressed right wing or fascist rock music at all. On the one hand, they were turned away at the ﬁrst glimpse by its repellent sound and appearance, and on the other hand, they wouldn’t know how to treat it methodologically. So I appreciated it a great deal someone attempted not only to give a bit of an overview but also to offer musical analyses. The speaker set out by comparing two songs, one from a well known right wing rock band called “Störkraft” (“Disturbing Force”) and the other song by a band called “Normahl” which was involved in the German “Rock against Right” movement. These examples were taken from a compilation a German State government put out in 1993 for educational usage in public schools (Bähr, Göbler 1993). In this volume, right wing rock music is but one style among others on a list which also contains punk music by the Sex Pistols, hard rock by AC/DC, heavy metal by Motörhead or Slayer and so on. While all of this music might sound similar “At best, the musicians take up those signs that are required so that the music can be identiﬁed as rock music. The potentially fascist lyrics can thus be presented in a musical context that is at least partly accepted by society. “(Heidenreich 2000, p. 289) 345 or else: “The more primitive and monotonous the according musical language is designed, the better the fascist messages get through” (p. 290) On the other hand, the ‘good’ musical example is characterised as follows: Ex. 1: Oi-Dramz: Oi Dramz (1992) German original Oi Dramz ist wieder groß im kommen Oi Dramz spielt wieder neuen Sound “As opposed to the dumb sounds of right extremist rock music, this piece contains a solistic middle part […] designed in a skilful and artistic fashion so that several acoustical layers are being presented.” (p. 291-292) I was not the only one in the audience who was struck by this simple and one-dimensional argumentation which could also be summarised as follows: ‘Everything is going to be alright as long as we move back towards art music’.What the speaker didn’t take into account, however, is the fact that the ‘good’ band is not as inoffensive as it is characterised in the volume he refers to. Instead, this band has a left extremist background and composed songs like “Pﬂasterstein ﬂieg’ (Cobblestone ﬂy)” (Normahl 1985) - the ‘classical’ way of attacking the police at demonstrations in Germany. The common way a cultural studies person Oi Dramz spielt für die Nationalen Oi Dramz spielt für den Weißen an der Front English translation Oi Dramz is coming back big Oi Dramz is playing new sound Oi Dramz plays for nationalists Oi Dramz plays for the white man at the front or a popular music scholar would react is in hinting at the arbitrary relationship between musical sound and its implied meaning or signiﬁcation. In a way, this has always been the core wisdom of the semiotics of music: there is no direct or immediate link between sound and meaning. But let us now turn to a ﬁrst musical example of our own. Listening to this example, one immediately recognises that the drummer plays quite out of beat and also, the other musicians are not really ‘masters of their 346 instruments’ – something typical for an amateur band. Although the band has existed three years at the time of the recording of this song (and still does today), they can’t do any better. This hints at the fact that the hard rock sound – as one might characterise it here - was not chosen by the musicians because it already contains the intended political message; instead, this genre is simply the best match of their cultural capital. It is very likely that they are unable to access many other forms of musical or cultural expression. I’m not saying this to play down the problem and even less to raise sympathy for the musicians. But one does have to take a closer look if we were to understand the way this music operates in right extremist contexts. Denn wir sind die Arier-Klasse Steht euren Mann, wir sind die Macht Deutschland muss siegen in jeder Schlacht English translation Dr. Martens – short hair No doubt this is Aryan Down with the mixed up blood That’s no good for fatherland Keep the German Race pure Since we are the Aryan class Every man stand up we‘ve got the force Germany must win a victory in every battle My next example is a video of a similar, but more famous band named “Endstufe” (“Final Stage”). I’m using it here in the ﬁrst place to illustrate the preferred modes of reception by the mostly male audience: pogo dancing. Ex. 2: Endstufe: Deutsche Rasse Anyone who’s ever played in a band will have recognised the very basic elements of hard rock that are employed German original Dr. Martens – kurze Haare Das ist arisch, keine Frage Nieder mit dem Mischmasch-Blut Denn das tut dem Vaterland nicht gut Haltet rein die deutsche Rasse by both bands. This hints at another aspect which should not be surprising after what has been said above – that musical elements and sounds from a primarily angloAmerican tradition are taken up by German fascist bands to eventually signify questionable and rather old-fashioned German nationalist ideas. 347 Encircled by enemies our country has resisted for 2000 years, since the people stood united despite the danger The new world view was created and even taken beyond by a group of poets and thinkers Ex. 3: Frank Rennicke: Ich bin stolz… that had never been brought forth in the world. Germany has always been in favour of art and German original Ich bin stolz, dass ich ein Deutscher bin, deutsch ist mein Fühlen, deutsch ist mein Sinn. 2000 Jahre unser Land hielt einem Ring von Feinden stand, weil immerdar, ein eing’ Volk trotz der Gefahr. Das neue Weltbild ward’ erschaut in Deutschland und noch ausgebaut durch eine Dichter-, Denkerschar, wie sie die Welt noch nie gebar. Stets stand in Gunst in Deutschland Wissenschaft und Kunst. So viel schuf nie ein Volk der Erd’ an irdischem und ew’gen Wert: zu höhen anderer Länder Glück, zu weihen mit himmlischer Musik. science. No other people of the world ever created the same amount of earthly and eternal value. To the beneﬁt of other countries, to be praised with heavenly music. I’ll now play a completely different example by the inﬂuential, right nationalist German singer-songwriter Frank Rennicke. Please also put an eye on the reaction of the audience as he starts singing. Frank Rennicke used to be a member of an illegal youth organisation of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). He frequently played to older audiences as seen in the video and his overall rhetoric is characterised by two elements. First, he often refers to both world wars and glosses over the things that happened somewhat English translation I’m proud to be German, German is my feeling and my understanding. concluding ‘we were not this bad’. Second, this serves as a basis for a rather ridiculous ‘new German pride’ as illustrated through this song. I believe that this is Rennicke’s 348 main political impact. It is somewhat a counter-reaction to the over-responsible way people like myself were brought up: at least until 1989, it was not politically correct to say ‘I’m proud to be German’ – something that dramatically changed with the German reuniﬁcation. In addition, Rennicke has the usual qualities of a singer-songwriter like a passionate voice, skilful alignment of music and lyrics etc. He might thus be compared to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez or whoever we might want to think of – just that his political orientation leads him and his audience on a completely different terrain. […] Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler Und jetzt den Jesus Christus And jetzt den Mussolini Und jetzt den Kommunismus Und jetzt den Adolf Hitler English translation Go down on your knees And clap your hands I would now like to turn to third kind of musical style which can perhaps be characterised as electronic body music or as somewhat basic techno music. Please note that I maintain Move your hips And dance the Mussolini […] And now the Adolf Hitler And now the Adolf Hitler And now the Jesus Christ And now the Mussolini And now the Communism And now the Adolf Hitler Ex.4: Deutsch-Amerikanische-Freundschaft (DAF): Der Mussolini (1981) the next example is not a right extremist one. However, it frequently gets mentioned in these contexts since its lyrics contain offensive keywords like “Mussolini” or “Adolf Hitler”. German original Geh‘ in die Knie Und klatsch in die Hände Beweg‘ deine Hüften Und tanz‘ den Mussolini These excerpts from the lyrics should be sufﬁcient to illustrate that other questionable keywords like “Kommunismus” or “Jesus Christus” are employed as 349 well. The two-man band performing this music in 1981 gave itself the ironical name “Deutsch-AmerikanischeFreundschaft” (“German-American Friendship”) at a time when Ronald Reagan started to think about the possibilities of limiting a nuclear war just to Europe. Apart from the lyrics, the musical structure is very much reduced to a synthesizer bass groove, a few acoustical ﬁlls in the back and a monotonous drum accompaniment which appears mechanical but which is actually manually played. What’s so striking about this music is that it seems to get its grips on you – through the mechanical rhythm one is almost forced to move or dance. The lyrics play on that very same effect – permanently issuing commands one just has to obey like “down to you knees, clap your hands, dance the Adolf Hitler” or else “dance the communism”. One could argue that taking someone’s personal freedom of choice away in this fashion is at least potentially fascist – however, many listeners won’t be affected neither by the music nor by the lyrics in the way I just described it. Whatever we make of it, this song is frequently being played at right extremist meetings and events. This may be one reason why one comes across similar kinds of music in these contexts nowadays. (Böhm et al. 1997, p. 44). However, different band The next example is basically an amateur techno track with very offensive lyrics. It is attributed the band “Endsieg” names appear in connection with this song so that it is most commonly simply referred to as the “KanakenEnglish translation Send them to prison or in a concentration camp, send them to the desert, I don‘t care as long as they ﬁnally go away. Kill their children and rape their women, exterminate their race and teach them horror. Turk, Turk, what did you do? Turk, Turk, why are you bugging me? German original Steckt sie in den Kerker oder schickt sie ins KZ, von mir aus in die Wüste, aber schickt sie endlich weg. Tötet ihre Kinder, schändet ihre Frauen, vernichtet ihre Rasse und lehrt ihnen das Grauen. Türke, Türke, was hast du getan? Türke, Türke, warum machen du mich an? Ex. 5: “Kanaken-Song“ 350 Song“. In effect, it is a rather boring overall 8-minutetrack. 2. This music could be said to contain elements that act on out bodies in immediate ways, such as strongly articulated drum rhythms and electric guitars at an ear- Having listened to all these examples we can clearly identify three groups. One would the ‘hard ‘n’ heavy’-style which is most frequently used for right wing or fascist music, the next one would be the singer-songwriter style and the last one would be the electronic body music/ techno-related style. This variety should be sufﬁcient to illustrate the before-mentioned arbitrary relationship between signifying sound and the signiﬁed (political) meaning. However, what about new-age music or middle of the road pop music? Could those be chosen as well to convey the same kind of political meanings and / or physical implications? While we might have to admit that exceptions are always possible, this seems rather unlikely. So I would argue that the relationship between signiﬁer and signiﬁed is not completely arbitrary here – in other words, it is no coincidence that the bands and musicians I mentioned prefer music with the rather energetic or moving characteristics. Two general modes of explanation can be thought of here: battering volume. However, how could this serve to explain the clearly observable emotional and physical reactions of Frank Rennicke’s audience? I would assume that quite a few of his listeners experience ‘shivers down their spine’ etc. I think we should be very careful with this thread of thought which would open up the door for the conservative point of view that at least rock sounds are ‘evil’ in itself and should thus be condemned (cp. Hemming 2003). Let’s better get back to the ﬁrst mode I mentioned. Classical semiotics is well prepared to explain why right extremist musicians do prefer certain sounds instead of others. For example, this case could be paralleled with Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of the “motivated symbol” which he deﬁnes as “sign which is not completely arbitrary” (1931, p. 80). Or else, we might want to refer to Charles Sanders Peirce and the three kinds of signobject relationships he introduced: the icon, the index and the symbol - of which only the latter refers to complete 1. Based on cultural constructions, these sounds act as mediums to create a sense of energy, body movement, aggression or emotion in general without yet implying a direction or a political orientation, be it anarchist or fascist or whatever else we might want to think of. arbitrariness or convention-based connection between signiﬁer and signiﬁed. The ﬁrst case of the icon requires a clear similarity between sign and object such as the call of a cuckoo being imitated by musical instruments. The second concept of the index refers to a sign that is related 351 to an object through co-occurrence in actual experience. The most common example is smoke serving as an index of ﬁre – in music, we could say that a V-I progression signiﬁes ‘closure’ in many popular and / or classical tunes (Turino 1999, p. 226-229). Now, the fact that a sign itself is usually symbolised through a pointed arrow has made me think back of my maths and physics classes in school where we learned about vector analysis. A physical category such as ‘speed’ is divided into the two components ‘how high is the speed?’ and ‘which way will it take us?’ The former is to be considered the scalar and the latter the vectorial component of the ‘speed’ entity. physical or emotional arousal (e.g. Juslin, Sloboda 2001). Still, we should always be taking into account that all these effects are not universal or immediate, but can only be applied and identiﬁed in speciﬁed cultural contexts. Also, the monotonous sound the above-mentioned speaker identiﬁed to be potentially fascist clearly belongs to the scalar sign component and does thus not yet imply a political meaning. It’s as simple as it is: there is no sound that is ‘evil’ in itself. When it comes to the vectorial components we have to ask ‘How do these sounds get their (political) orientation?’ The ﬁrst aspect to consider here is the lyrics: of course, a right extremist song will most likely contain elements of and What I would like to suggest is to add the distinction between vectorial and scalar components to the treatment of musical signs. I think this could be of some help in deﬁning our tasks for and clarifying the results of the analytical process. allusions to the well known repertoire of fascist attitudes. At the same time, as I just said, it is certainly unbearable to assert music of being fascist without containing the appropriate and offensive lyrics. However, it is not the lyrics alone. Let’s get back to the subtle differences in sound I mentioned in the beginning. For example, one could When it comes to the scalar components we could be thinking of the attempt to identify those signs which actually do refer to physical involvement, shivers down the spine etc. in a given culture. These elements could now contain a techno-style combination of bass-grove and drums just as well as the slightly shaking voice of a singer-songwriter. Also, we might want to consider the quite highly developed approaches from music psychology to assert levels of argue that a kind of a ‘grunting’ singing style could be a constituent of right extremist music – as opposed to the yelling style typical for the Sex Pistols and other anarchist Punk bands. And the quite obvious amateur sound and feel one comes across in many of the often ‘homemade’ right extremist recordings might serve as a sign of authenticity in these scenes and help to distinguish this music from the average hard ‘n’ heavy music which is mostly produced by 352 professionals. This is the point where we get to play with hypothetical substitutions and interobjective comparisons well known from Philip Taggs model of analysing popular music (Tagg 1982). In other words, apart from the compulsory extremist lyrics, the vectorial component of a right fascist song is largely dependent on the appropriate intertextual relationships – the fact that it does not sound like the Sex Pistols or like Bon Jovi. BARBER-KERSOVAN, Alenka (2003): German Nazi I ﬁnd it inspiring to apply the distinction of scalar and vectorial sign components to various kinds of music. Some music with large scalar but little or no vectorial signifying potential could be compared to the roaring engine of a sports car without having put in a gear yet – the music of the German Band Rammstein could serve as an example here. The opposite case would be music attempting political statements without necessarily involving high levels of physical or emotional arousal. Eventually, any kind of political music would depend of a skilful combination of both scalar and vectorial components ‘so the message gets through’. However, up until now, this distinction is nothing but an idea and I’m not sure if it will prove to be useful. HEIDENREICH, Achim (2000): Eine Überdosis Deutschland. Zum Problem rechtsradikaler BÖHM, Alexander; HELMRICH, Herbert; KRAUS, Josef; KRAUSE, Fred; SCHMIDT, Ralf; SCHWARTE, Johannes; SCHWINDT, Hans-Dieter (1997): Bands. Between provocation and repression. In: Cloonan, Martin; Garofalo, Reebee (eds.): Policing Pop. Philadelphia (Temple University Press), p. 186204. Selected Bibliography BÄHR, Johannes; GÖBLER, Dorothee (1993): Rockmusik und Rechtsradikalismus. Materialien zu verschienen Aspekten des Rechts-Rock. Frankfurt. a.M. (Staatliche Landesbildstelle Hessen). Includes tape with music examples. Jugendkriminalität - Herausforderung für Staat und Gesellschaft. St. Augustin (Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Referat für Publikationen). Rockmusik. In: EBERL, Kathrin; RUF, Wolfgang (eds.): Musikkonzepte - Konzepte der Musikwissenschaft. Bericht über den internationalen Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Halle (Saale) 1998, Band 1. Kassel (Bärenreiter), p. 286-292. 353 HEMMING, Jan (2003): Hard rock, heavy metal and punk: Comparing psychological ﬁndings with cultural studies accounts. In: KOPIEZ, Reinhard; LEHMANN, Andreas C.; WOLTHER, Irving; WOLF, Christian (eds.): Proceedings of the 5th triennial conference of the European society for the cognitive sciences of music (ESCOM). Hanover (CD-ROM) p. 42-43. NORMAHL: Harte Nächte. Side B, Track 6: “Pﬂasterstein ﬂieg” Berlin, Holzgerlingen (A.M. Music (LC 8605)) 1985. LP-Record. Selected Videography KÄFER, Karl-Heinz (1994): Lieder der Verführung. ARTE Deutschland. TV-Documentary 45 min. JUSLIN, Patrik; SLOBODA, John (eds.) (2001): Music and emotion: theory and research. Oxford, UK (Oxford University Press). (Further music and video references are not given on purpose. All translations were carried out by the author and are to be considered provisional) SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de: Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin (de Gruyter) 1931. TURINO, Thomas (1999): Signs of imagination, identity and experience. A Peircian semiotic theory for music. In: Ethnomusicology, 43(2), p. 221-255. TAGG, Philip (1982): Analysing popular music: theory, method and practice. In: Popular Music, 2, p. 37-67. Selected Discography DEUTSCH-AMERIKANISCHE-FREUNDSCHAFT (DAF) (1981): Alles ist gut. Side A, Track 2: Der Mussolini. London, UK (The Grey Area of MUTE). LPRecord. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Talking About Good and Bad Music David Hesmondhalgh and Simkus 1992, etc). They tell us only about which people like what, but not about how and why. 1. Two lacks in empirical research on music I n this paper, I want to address two curious lacks in research on music, media and culture.1 The ﬁrst Questions of pleasure and value have been explored in media studies, but only to a limited extent. One particular tradition, uses and gratiﬁcations research, has attempted to delineate empirically the pleasures that people ﬁnd in media texts, including popular music. But many writers have found uses and gratiﬁcations work to lack methodological validity. By providing lists of possible pleasures, uses and gratiﬁcations researchers run the risk of determining responses in advance (see Roe 1996 and Schroder 1999 for discussion of these issues).2 is that after years of popular music ‘ethnography’, various debates about fans, subcultures, scenes and so on, and decades of speculative writing about responses to popular music, we still know surprisingly little about how and why people value music, or why they value particular musical texts. Of course, one of the most important research projects in music studies has been Simon Frith’s work on value in popular music (culminating in Performing Rites, 1996) but this is a theoretical project, and it rarely draws on empirical studies. By contrast, Tia DeNora’s groundbreaking study of Music in Everyday Life (2000) is thoroughly empirical, but with its (functionalist) focus on how people ‘use’ music, it has very little to say about value. There is no sense in DeNora’s work that people disagree over what makes a great record, or even about how loudly to play music. There have been many empirical studies of musical taste, in the wake of Pierre Bourdieu’s book Distinction (1984) but these have mostly been largescale, quantitative studies (e.g., Bryson 1996, Peterson Meanwhile, some key work in critical media studies has explored indirectly why people value particular texts, such as Ien Ang’s work on Dallas, which elicited letters from women about what they enjoyed in the programme, Janice Radway’s work on women romance readers and Jackie Stacey’s study of fans of ﬁlm stars. This tradition of feminist work has been extremely important in opening up the study of ways in which audiences talk about what they value in popular culture. But there has been very little effort in work on music to develop 355 such work on ordinary evaluation. The main exception, aside from Crafts et al.’s My Music (which makes no attempt to analyse the interviews it presents) is Daniel Cavicchi’s work on fans of Bruce Springsteen. This is a very interesting piece of work, but in my view it suffers from the limitations of the interactionist approach. It offers a celebration of fandom, and there is little insight into the potential problems of these forms of attachment. self. The highly optimistic and dubious assumption underlying DeNora’s work is that everyone is free to shape their feelings. 2. The Music and Dance in Everyday Culture project: interpreting interviews This paper reports on research carried out by myself and a group of other researchers, funded by the National Everyday Cultures Programme at the Open University in Great Britain. This project is just now A second and even stranger lack in research on music concerns the emotional aspects of people’s involvements with music and media.3 For many years, research on media audiences has been mainly hermeneutic in orientation. In the wake of research by David Morley, Sonia Livingstone and others into how audiences decode television programmes, interpretation and meaning have been central to media studies. Pleasure was often theorised, but rarely explored empirically. In academic studies of popular music, by contrast, the emphasis has been on questions of pleasure and affective investment rather than on meaning, 4 but work in this area has, again, been mainly theoretical rather than empirical (most notably in the work of Lawrence Grossberg, which I ﬁnd extremely abstract). Again, DeNora’s work offers some important progress here, but like Frith, DeNora is ultimately reliant on an interactionist notion of the coming to completion. It involves 40 semi-structured, fairly intensive qualitative interviews with people about their ordinary musical practices, habits, tastes and values. Four objectives informed our recruitment of interviewees. First, we aimed to cover a full range of ages from the late teens to people in their 70s, to counter what in my view is an excessive focus on young people in studies of popular music. Like Crafts et al, in their book My Music, we were determined not to follow the view, implicit in a great deal of popular music research, that young people are the only ones whose opinions about music are worth hearing. Second, we aimed at a balance between men and women. Third, we aimed to recruit at least ﬁve of our forty interviewees from ethnic minorities (nine per cent of the UK population are from ethnic minorities, according to the 2001 census data) in order to over-represent the non-white population slightly. Fourth, we aimed to cover as wide a range of 356 social classes as possible. the latter. Yet for all the strengths of discourse analysis, particularly in terms of its attempt to bridge individual In some recent studies of music use and consumption, researchers have claimed to be carrying out ‘ethnography’. Often, these studies are essentially a mix of focus group and individual interviews, with some limited participant observation. Our chosen method was intensive interviews, because we wanted to gain in-depth information on the interviewee’s ‘feelings, experiences and perceptions’ (Schutt 2001: 265). 5 Interviewers were asked to follow a schedule of questions, but were encouraged to use prompts to explore issues, and to depart from the schedule if they felt that a departure would cast light on the principal issues underlying the research: musical practices, values, meanings and emotions.6 talk with social repertoires of language, I ﬁnd myself dis-satisﬁed with the caution of this latter approach. It often seems to imply that we can say nothing about anything beyond language itself. So in this paper, I focus on how people talk, what their conversational moves say about the pleasures and difﬁculties of talking about music, and what categories of value they draw on, and construct, in speaking. But I’d also like to think about what kinds of unconscious work might underlie people’s conceptions of value. For reasons of time and space, I’ll conﬁne myself to discussion of just two ways in which interviewees talked about value in music, and will begin to outline what kinds of emotional and associative work might lie The great methodological debate in interview studies hinges on whether to treat interview talk as a resource, or as a topic (see Wetherell, Taylor and Yates 2002). Do interviews provide knowledge about people and their practices and values, or are the only valid claims which can be made about interviews those concerning how people talk, such as what interpretative repertoires individuals draw upon? Psychoanalytical approaches would favour the former view, though of course with huge qualiﬁcations about what can be known, especially from brief interviews. Discourse analysis would favour ‘beneath’ – or beyond - their words. 3. Good music: expressiveness One of the most common ways in which our interviewees talked about the music that they liked was in terms of its expressiveness, its ability to externalise, or reﬂect, emotions. Here is Jackie, 54 years old, a teaching assistant in a primary school in the north of England. One of the pieces of music that Jackie put aside to play in the interview was ‘Train’ by an English singer, Sally Barker. The message of the song is clear from the lyrics: 357 ‘You’re saying you lost your chance, that fate brought you defeat, you look so sad, you’ve been listening to those who say you’ve lost your chance. There’s another train, there always is, maybe the next one’s yours, get up and climb aboard another train’. The interviewer and Jackie listened to the song together for a few lines, and then Jackie began to speak about why she liked the song: a quality in the song itself, the disjuncture between the song’s apparent sadness and the message of hope. She qualiﬁes her statement that the lyrics are important, by identifying other qualities of the song which appeal to her. Part of this involves the privileging of the voice in the arrangement (‘the a capella feel’) but also the crescendo feel (a generic feature of so many records that offer themselves as an intensely personal comment on a set of Jackie: This music had a really deep impact on me. When you ﬁrst hear it I think you think it’s a sad song but it isn’t, it’s a song about hope, that no matter what trials and tribulations we have, you can always climb above it and you always have another chance to get things right, so it’s the lyrics that are important. I also like the a cappella feel about it and then the music comes in and builds it up. [a pause here as Jackie listens to a section which says ‘we all crawl in the dark sometimes’] I just think it’s something that we’ve all experienced without maybe knowing it, but when you feel [hesitates] when you look back over your own experiences, you know that it’s absolutely right. Jackie’s tone of voice is quite ﬁrm in saying ‘This music had a really deep impact on me’. She then shifts away from the song’s effects on her, to describe experiences). Then, perhaps struck, as so many of our interviewees were, by the difﬁculties of talking about how and why music works, Jackie returns to the song and hears the line about ‘crawling in the dark sometimes’. Something here seems to strike her and she shifts back from describing the song’s objective qualities to describing its impact on herself. Here she emphasises two things. One is the way that the song allows her to make sense of an aspect of her emotional life which is buried, or at most only intermittently apparent to her. The line seems to bring to mind something painful, perhaps a memory of a speciﬁc incident or phase in Jackie’s life. Jackie’s reﬂections on ‘Train’ suggest that, for at least some of the time, she uses music as a form of emotional self-management, and in this respect she echoes many of Tia DeNora’s female interviewees in Music and Everyday Life. But I would differ in my 358 analysis of such moments from DeNora. In particular I think we need to look at such dynamics using at least some of the tools of psychoanalysis, even if the research interview shouldn’t be confused with the kinds of insight into the self that might emerge in therapy. Jackie is reﬂecting on her capacity to endure and survive. Her discussion of ‘Train’ demonstrates narcissism, but I don’t mean this term negatively in this particular context. In post-Freudian psychoanalysis, the term is used to refer to self-love, but this can have both healthy and unhealthy dimensions. But there is a strong intersubjective dimension here too. For the second aspect of the value of the song that Jackie emphasises here is the way that the song captures a particular emotion in a way which is ‘absolutely right’. This involves the lyrics, but it also involves the performance. Earlier in the interview, in response to a question about what music gives her most pleasure, Jackie had said, ‘Something [pause] that’s going to have an emotional impact. Something where I feel the singer has lived through it and is singing about what he or she knows…. I always get more pleasure out of something that I think that person knows and understands and is delivering’. seems to be connected to this view of the value of sincerity in music. Here of course we are in the realm of romantic aesthetics. Sincerity is an aesthetic value which cultural analysis of many different kinds would tend to look upon with suspicion. But as expressed here, what Jackie seems to be valuing highly is that someone else has really understood what that mixture of sadness, perhaps even despair (‘crawling in the dark’) and hope feels like.7 So Jackie is not just valuing her own resilience, she is also valuing the fact that such feelings are being enacted and codiﬁed with skill and sensitivity by another person. Here we encounter one of the most intensely personal ways in which music is used to shore up the self. Anxiety is controlled, or at least monitored, by ﬁnding empathetic others.8 This interplay between care of the self and valuing the empathy of others was expressed in a number of interviews, and with reference to a range of genres. Here is Olle, a 41 year old social worker from London, of Nigerian background. I am not particularly religious but I think that the second piece of music which I bought, classical as it was, was Handel’s Messiah, and I have played that ad inﬁnitum until someone nicked it from the house, and now I have to wait until Easter, but when they sing about the trials and The feeling that the song is ‘absolutely right,’ that it expresses emotions in a ﬁtting and revealing way, 359 tribulations of Jesus at the time, you can really hear it in their voices, they are really mourning their loss and I just ﬁnd it beautiful and I can’t imagine how somebody could take the time to construct a piece of music like that, I think it all the way through the whole thing. The fact that Olle is valuing expressiveness is apparent in her praise of the way a particular emotion can really be heard in the voices. The emphasis again is on the skilful externalisation of what is felt to be on the inside. I’m not interested here in the degree to which such implied notions can be deconstructed. My concern is more with the different ways in which this notion can be put into operation, and what it might tell us about people’s musical practices and tastes. This is a very different notion of expressiveness from that valued by Jackie, and a very different genre. Whereas Jackie used the expressiveness and sincerity of the Sally Barker track as a way of reﬂecting on her life, and of reminding herself of her own inner resources, Olle is involved in projecting herself into the situation of people very different from herself. Even though she isn’t ‘particularly religious’, she gets pleasure from the way that the singers’ sadness at the death of Jesus is made apparent in their performance. And there is even perhaps an imaginative projection into what it is to be Handel – ‘I can’t imagine how somebody could take the time to construct a piece of music like that’ – though this could refer to the singers too. Expressiveness, then, isn’t always bound up with narcissism, healthy or otherwise. Here it is connected to thinking about what other lives might be like. This projection into other lives can take complex forms. Maria, a 58 year old retired teacher from Birmingham, born and raised in Greece, and whose ﬁrst language is Greek not English, talked about expressiveness in the following way: Maria: I mean people use music to express various things, beauty, oppression, love, so I love for example Shostakovich and when I hear his music is when I would feel enraged by, say, injustice in the world or whatever. Instead of talking politics, say, with you […] I would just put this and listen and I could hear the harshness of the regime, the oppression people felt, it is all in his music. I: Does it make you angry? Maria: If he was to express anger, it is very least of that because a human being was able to take all those and give it to you and so you relieve some of your anger if you like because it’s becoming acknowledged and you have the medium to get it through your system. You also 360 identify with that person and you say ‘yes I know about that’, or ‘there is so much experience a human being can have’, so I could feel very enraged about say an injustice but say if I hadn’t lived myself in that system I could only know from books and I could have my views but not the direct experience, but when I play the CD for example and listen to that, you just feel I have some kind of direct experience of what it meant to be under that regime. Maria seems initially to be saying that political anger can be assuaged through playing Shostakovich. But also apparent here is the view that music is able to express experience in a more direct and immediate way than other forms of expression. The CD gives her direct experience of the Soviet regime in a way a book can’t. So there is relief of unbearable feelings of anger, but there is also acknowledgement of that anger. 4. Bad music: commercialism interview segments I have quoted might be seen as supporting a picture of music as an important resource not only for shoring up the self against anxiety and isolation, but also for solidarity and empathy. But now I want to look at some other aspects of people’s relationships to music that might represent more uncomfortable and less pleasant psychic territory: exclusion or simpliﬁcation of the experiences of others, and ambivalence about music itself. One of the terms that people used to discuss value in music more negatively was commercialism.9 Here, for example, is Dorne, a 58 year old aromatherapist and reﬂexologist from South Wales, answering a question about whether music today is better than 5, 10, 20 or 30 years ago. I am sure this is a terribly biased opinion but no I don’t think music is as good nowadays as it was then. I think it is marketed. I think it is all too commercial and I think the creativity now is too manufactured and I go back to the Beatles really when it came from the heart, and it was [hesitates] I don’t think it was simpler but it is done through computers now and they can be very clever with technology and I don’t think the youngsters necessarily need the raw talent that they had and I think the pop stars are So far I have concentrated on what I think most people would see as very positive aspects of the way that people value the expressiveness of music. In the eyes and ears of music scholars versed in critical and post-structuralist theory, there might be signs of naïve romanticism in some of the views expressed, but the 361 manufactured and produced to order. So I tend to be a bit cynical about it. The opposition of creativity and talent to commerce and technology is familiar territory in popular music studies, and has been relentlessly deconstructed. Interviewers on the project were asked to challenge such doxa, to give interviewees the opportunity to reﬂect on their views. her dislike of the kind of music that her children enjoyed – in her words, heavy metal (which is a category many interviewees used to mean ‘loud guitar music’). Just as signiﬁcant as these ambivalences about the music of younger people is a sense that emerges from the interview of a strong indifference towards, even dislike of music as a whole, except when played as a means of relaxing clients. We asked interviewees to play us some favourite records, and the records which I But hasn’t music always relied on machines Dorne pulled out were, she admitted, ones that she hardly ever played. In fact it emerged that Dorne rarely plays any music at all, except to relax her clients. And and technology to an extent? D I think so. I think perhaps when you are in fact, although it would be easy, on a brief reading of the interview transcript, to think that Dorne was averse only to ‘commercial’ music, it transpires that highly expressive music was just as much a problem as the music of younger people: younger you just take it in your stride and as you get older you are just aware of what is going on, you become a little more dismissive and it is … I’m sure it is an age thing because it probably wasn’t terribly different when I was younger. It’s just that it doesn’t have the same impact so I’m not as interested in listening to it anyway now. Dorne, it seems, feels excluded from the music of younger people. It’s signiﬁcant that this excerpt followed a section of the interview in which Dorne had said that she was tolerant of the music of her children (who were in their late teens at the time of the interview). And yet shortly after that, she talked about I also don’t like music that I associate with funerals and I ﬁnd a lot of classical music morbid and depressing and I have an awful association with some of that music with funerals and I have to switch it off. In my view, this is an extremely important area that has, as far as I know, been neglected.10 Dorne is one of millions of people who essentially don’t like music 362 much. Of course, this is no crime. But some interesting questions ﬂow from this, which might cast light on people’s negative evaluations of particular genres. Why don’t some people like music? What does it do? What uncomfortable associations does it provoke? For older people, could some of the discomfort associated with hearing music liked by younger people be based around uncomfortable feelings of envy, inexpressible in an interview context, or perhaps anywhere? There’s no time here to comment fully on this. This may seem very dismissive of the ‘population’, of the masses, but to read Ashley’s comment in this way misses the tremendous anxiety involved in such statements. This might involve a failure of imagination – that people might gain relatively innocent pleasures from such music – but an important factor is that it’s an anxiety felt on behalf of others. There is also anger here, and it’s unclear whether that anger is directed at the ‘population’, with their ﬁckleness, or those who Views of music as overly commercial aren’t conﬁned to the elderly though. Ashley, a 19 year old student, felt that music was, in general, ‘going in the right direction’, with the exception of pop acts such as Britney Spears and the Pop Idol phenomenon. ‘design’ what presumably, in Ashley’s view, should be a more spontaneous experience. 5. Closing thoughts I want to close by making some very brief observations on the implications of the approach to musical value I just, I don’t really like the way it’s designed, in the way that Big Brother was designed as well, so that the population will like it. I don’t like the way that they can assume the population will buy it and that they do. I think it’s sad that everybody is so ﬁckle really and I mean… I’m not… I think that people who were in Pop Idol they all obviously very talented and I’m not saying that they weren’t, but 1) it’s not my type of music and 2) I just don’t like the way it’s all so set up. You know, ‘this is the road to glory’. ‘Here we are, here’s your ticket’. I’ve been outlining here. This is very different from that of Bourdieu’s work on taste. For Bourdieu, expressions of taste by the middle class and the lower middle class are forms of social competition. For Simon Frith, inﬂuenced by symbolic interactionism, evaluation is altogether more democratic, and indeed it seems to be part of a great cultural conversation. For Bourdieu, music is the ultimate marker of social distinction and division, for Frith it seems to be the ultimate form of cultural connection, even if such connections take place primarily at the level of fantasy. Both these views have real insights to offer, and considerable limitations. I’ve 363 tried to open up other ways in which we might think about statements of value about music, by attempting to trace the kinds of socio-psychological investment that may lie beneath seemingly banal judgements of various kinds of music. Endnotes 1. My thanks to Jason Toynbee for his comments on a draft of this paper in advance of the Montreal conference, and to Teresa Gowan for her help with the project. The other researchers on the project were Lorna Ashcroft, Surinder Guru, Jackie Malone, Ian Robinson and, during the pilot stage, Dave Merrick. 2. Instead, our research provided a mix of open and closed questions, and used critical probes. Some of the interviewers were of course more skilled in doing this than were others. 3. The essays in Juslin and Sloboda 2002 represent various efforts to address this lack, from the perspective of cognitive psychology. As will become apparent, my approach is more psychoanalytical in orientation. 4. The reason for the sparseness of empirical research on meaning in music may be that it is so difﬁcult for nonspecialists to explore issues of meaning in speciﬁcally musical terms, rather than in terms of lyrics, or associated visual texts. 5. Qualitative studies such as ours make no claims for high degrees of generalisability, and we wanted at least to begin to map the way the responses we received 364 relate to the social groups that the different interviewees belonged to. However, in a qualitative study, the main aim is to generally either to explore subjectivities, or at least to investigate the way in which people express themselves. See the following remarks on debates about how to analyse interviews. that we used in the interviews. By asking the interviewees to bring out music which particularly gives them pleasure, we were actually privileging the extraordinary. Other aspects of the interview dealt with more mundane aspects of musical practice. 9. As well as asking whether there were types of music 6. The interview was structured into four parts: information about the person, their background and their current life, including the very general question of ‘how important is music to you?’; questions about their musical practices (when they hear music, whether they play any music themselves, what kinds of equipment they have); questions about their musical tastes, initiated by asking them to play, during the interview, three pieces of music which are signiﬁcant to them in some way; and ﬁnally more general questions about their attitudes to music, including which types of music they like and don’t like, and why. 10. For some years now, I’ve had a fantasy of writing a book which serves as an answer to the romanticism of the presentation of the interview transcripts in Crafts et al’s My Music, called Their Music, about people who are reluctant or indifferent consumers of music. which the interviewees didn’t like, we also asked questions about whether music had got better or worse over time. Selected Bibliography Ang, Ien (1985). Watching Dallas. Methuen. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction, Routledge. 7. It is surely not insigniﬁcant that the performance here is by a woman. Bryson, Bethany (1996) ‘”Anything but heavy metal”: symbolic exclusion and musical dislikes’, American 8. However, I suspect that this isn’t a literally everyday experience. The interviewer didn’t ask how often Jackie listens to this piece, but it may well be a musical experience which Jackie will ration carefully. Here we encounter a problem with the method of eliciting discussion of value Crafts, Susan, Daniel Cavicchi and Charles Keil (1993) Cavicchi, Daniel (1998) Tramps Like Us. OUP. Sociological Review 61: 884-99. 365 My Music. Wesleyan University Press. paradigms’, in P. Alasuutari (ed.), Rethinking the Media Audience, Sage. DeNora, Tia (2000) Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge UP. Schutt, Russell K. (2001) Investigating the Social World, 3rd edn. Pine Forge Press. Frith, Simon (1996) Performing Rites. OUP. Stacey, Jackie (1994) Star Gazing. Routledge. Juslin, Patrick and John Sloboda (eds) (2002) Music and Emotion. OUP. Wetherell, Margaret, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon Yates (eds.) (2001) Discourse as Data. Sage/The Open Livingstone, Sonia (1995) Making Sense of Television, 2nd edn. Butterworth-Heinemann. University. Morley, David (1986) Family Television. Comedia. Peterson, Richard and Albert Simkus (1992) ‘How musical tastes mark occupational status groups’, in M. Lamont and M. Fournier (eds), Cultivating Differences. University of Chicago Press. Radway, Janice (1987) Reading the Romance. Verso. Roe, Keith (1996) ‘The uses and gratiﬁcations approach: a review of some methodological issues’, Journal of Behavioral and Social Sciences 1: 81-96 Schroder, Kim Christian (1999) ‘The best of both worlds? Media audience research between rival IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Got to Deconstruct”: The Theory and the Practice of Henry Cow’s “Bittern Storm over Ulm” Kevin Holm-Hudson I n his book Listening to the Future, Bill Martin contends that “ideas play an important role” in progressive rock, enemy, and…before European Rock musicians could develop the expressive potential of the new instruments now at their disposal, they had ﬁrst to break away from US and UK domination—both in the commercial and in the cultural spheres” (132). Accordingly, attendees at the initial concert of the RIO bands at the New London Theater on March 12, 1978, were given a program that read like a manifesto for the musical movement: and “the quality of the music depends in a signiﬁcant way, on the quality of the ideas involved” (119). Rock in Opposition (RIO), a short-lived “performers’ collective” that coalesced among ﬁve bands (Henry Cow, Stormy Six, Samla Mammas Manna, Univers Zero, and Etron Fou Leloublan) in 1977, foregrounded its theory more explicitly than many of its peers. Among RIO’s selfproclaimed criteria were “musical excellence,” “working actively outside the establishment of music business,” and “having a social commitment to Rock” (Zampino). Best known among the original RIO groups was Henry Cow. The group’s blend of angular chamber rock and Brechtian lyrics established the foundations for Rock in Opposition. Although Henry Cow disbanded in 1978, and Rock in Opposition was no more by 1980, the RIO name survives as a progressive-rock subgenre encompassing groups inﬂuenced by the original RIO bands. According to Henry Cow’s drummer Chris Cutler, RIO was a response to “how deeply ingrained British and American chauvinism was in the structure of Rock Music…. [F]or most progressive young musicians in Europe, British and American hegemony was the ﬁrst Record companies put out an endless belch of commercial drivel. They are interested solely in cash, and show enthusiasm only when they can trick ‘the punters’ into parting with their wages for a lot of meaningless insults. To control the market means to control ‘taste’ and this is not so difﬁcult. It’s done through advertising; getting their product into the air, onto the telly, the music press, supermarkets, airports, etc. ad NAUSEUM, and by stiﬂing anything they don’t own. (Cutler 1978) This aesthetic stance is reminiscent of the sustained critique of the “culture industry” advanced by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. For Adorno, 367 one manifestation of the culture industry’s hegemony over popular music tastes was what he called “pseudoindividuation.” In Adorno’s view: therefore instructive to inquire how Henry Cow’s musical practice may be regarded as a sonic embodiment of Adorno’s theory. Adorno’s model for “pseudo-individuation” …pop melodies and lyrics must stick to an unmercifully rigid pattern while the composer of serious songs is permitted free, autonomous creation. . . . it is the metric and harmonic cornerstones of any pop song, the beginning and the end of its several parts, that must follow the standard schema. It conﬁrms the simplest fundamental structures, whatever deviations may occur in between. . . . Nothing really new is allowed to intrude, nothing but calculated effects that add some spice to the ever-sameness without imperiling it. (“Popular Music” 25-26) was the type of pop song promoted in the 1940s by the composers and publishers associated with the American “Tin Pan Alley” songwriting industry. Such songs were generally thirty-two bars in length, with an AABA form. Much of 1950s rock and roll was instead derived from African-American blues; the twelve-bar blues form contributed to the well-documented negative reception of rock by the musical establishment as a “primitive” and “debased” form of music. For many musicians and listeners, however, the “freshness” of the twelve-bar-blues pattern—as an African-American alternative to Tin Pan Alley conventions—was itself a badge of generational rebellion. This is perhaps best Cutler (1978) similarly describes most popular music as a “tray of commodities rammed down [consumers’] throats by the music industry.” It is Example 1. The twelve-bar-blues paradigm. articulated in some of Chuck Berry’s songs such as “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Rock and Roll Music,” both of which employ the twelve-bar blues progression. / / / X Y Z / / X Y / / X X X / / / X X X / / / / Z (or Y) / 368 Ironically, however, the twelve-bar blues quickly became a formal paradigm as pervasive for rock musicians as the AABA song form was for Tin Pan Alley. By the early 1970s, the twelve-bar blues had become an overcoded musical form. Some bands—such as Cream—sought to expand beyond the form by using it as a vehicle for group improvisation (this is best heard in their live version of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” where the vocal sections are more constrained by the form than the solo sections). Others drew upon the twelve-bar blues to signify a nostalgia for rock’s “golden age”—examples here include Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” (“been a long time since I rock-androlled”). Less commonly, the twelve-bar blues became a target for playful parody (Loggins and Messina’s “Your Mama Don’t Dance”; Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Are You Ready Eddy”). Only rarely were there twelvebar blues songs that subverted its conventions. King Crimson’s “Red” (1974) substituted chords in the blues progression with chords that ﬁt guitarist Robert Fripp’s idiosyncratic harmonic language, owing more to Bartòk than to Howling Wolf (Example 2). The song’s title, given that red is a complementary color to blue, even invites the interpretation that this song is a kind of “antiblues.” As these examples demonstrate, by the 1970s the twelve-bar blues form as text became a site of struggle, within which these aforementioned examples function as readings with various modalities. This interpretation is consistent with the assertion of Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress that all semiotic acts and processes are social acts and processes (122), as well as Russian cultural theorist Vladimir N. Voloshinov’s earlier argument for the ideological nature of sign systems: “Without signs there is no ideology…. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value” (910). According to Hodge and Kress, semiosis is characterized by “social processes of struggle Example 2. King Crimson’s “Red” (excerpt), in the model of the twelve-bar-blues paradigm. / (4/4) E / / F# / E F# / / E E / / E E / / [: / (7/8) Bb / Bb / (4/4) E / E / :] [:---------------------------------2x------------------------------------:] 369 and negotiation, incorporation and resistance” (164). One way in which struggle and resistance are played out in a text is through modality, described by Hodge and Kress as “one of the crucial indicators of political struggle” (123). Their use of the term modality echoes Voloshinov’s earlier concept of a text’s “accent,” by which he referred to “a particular inﬂection which gives a different social meaning to an apparently common set of signs, just as happens with various accents of speech which mark class and regional identity” (19). For Voloshinov, sign systems were multiaccentual, with “a seemingly common code refracted by different class or group positions” (19). It was this “intersecting of accents” that enabled a sign to maintain its “vitality and dynamism and the capacity for further development” (23). Ideologies are therefore inevitably brought into play in interpreting a text’s modality. As Umberto Eco puts it, “…the reader approaches a text from a personal ideological perspective, even when he [sic] is not aware of this…. [A] given ideological background can help one to discover or to ignore textual ideological structures” (22). Although Eco refers here to literary texts, the statement certainly applies to sonic texts as well. One way to analyze Henry Cow’s “Bittern Storm over Ulm,” then, is to reconstruct the ideology behind the arrangement. “Bittern Storm over Ulm,” released on Henry Cow’s second album Unrest in 1974, is based on the Yardbirds’ 1965 recording “Got to Hurry.” My analysis of “Bittern Storm” focuses on how it deconstructs the Yardbirds blues, critiquing the original in terms of Adorno’s theory. I do this even as I acknowledge, with Eco, that “ideological biases can also work as code-switchers, leading one to read a given text in the light of ‘aberrant’ codes (where ‘aberrant’ means only different from the ones envisaged by the sender)” (22). Such code-switching occurs “in spite of the explicit ideological commitment of the author” (22). Nonetheless, the choice of “Got to Hurry” as a formal model—as opposed to, say, “Little Red Rooster”—is signiﬁcant, for “Got to Hurry” epitomizes the “pseudoindividuation” of which Adorno warned. Considered in this way, “Bittern Storm” emerges as a kind of protoplunderphonics, appropriating an existing musical text and manipulating it to make an ideological point about the original. “Got to Hurry” was recorded in November 1964; it originally appeared as the B-side of the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” single, released in March 1965. The Yardbirds’ manager and producer Giorgio Gomelsky latter recollected: It was recorded towards the end of the session at Olympic Sounds, when there wasn’t much time and that’s how it got its title... we spent quite a while experimenting with various effects... by sheer accident we ended up with some really 370 good sounds on Eric [Clapton]’s guitar. We had about 20 minutes left and nobody had any ideas as to what to tape. It was left to yours truly to remember some ancient blues riff, shout it, slightly panicked, through the studio intercom and hope Eric would pick it up. He did. (Meekings) It is well known that “For Your Love,” recorded a month after “Got to Hurry,” was the song that precipitated Eric Clapton’s departure from the band in protest over the group’s commercial-pop direction. Gomelsky later recalled, “During the recording of ‘For Your Love’ I remember poor Eric lying on his back staring at the ceiling somewhat dispirited” (Meekings). As a kind of valedictory to Clapton, “Got to Hurry” was used for the B-side, with the song’s alleged composer, “O. Rasputin,” a pseudonym for Gomelsky. “For Your Love” was the Yardbirds’ breakthrough hit, reaching number 3 in the UK and number 6 in the US. From a musical standpoint, the single is a curious pairing. Clapton’s playing on the bridge of “For Your Love” is predictably uninspired, given his feelings about the song, but “Got to Hurry” offers the opposite situation; Clapton’s ﬁery blues leads are given an unusually leaden and predictable accompaniment by the band. The riff does not vary apart from the chord changes; this is true for the ﬁrst three choruses of the song (one an instrumental, two featuring Clapton’s lead). The next two choruses offer a brief respite involving familiar stop-time punctuations in the ﬁrst four bars, only to retreat back to the predictable pattern. Two additional choruses, identical to the ﬁrst two with Clapton’s lead, ﬁnish the song. Only drummer Jim McCarty’s understated ﬁlls provide any deviation in this cookie-cutter blues accompaniment. It is the explicit repetition in “Got to Hurry” that situates this text as an excellent example of pseudoindividuation. In his 1938 essay “On the FetishCharacter in Music and the Regression of Listening,” Adorno described popular music as “a sort of musical children’s language” prepared for the listener; “it differs from the real thing in that its vocabulary consists exclusively of fragments and distortions of the artistic language of music” (“Fetish-Character in Music” 307). Adorno describes popular music’s harmony as conﬁned to the “three major tonic chords,” excluding any “meaningful harmonic progression” (“FetishCharacter in Music” 307). Elsewhere Adorno asserted that repetition in popular music is characteristic not only of its promotion in the media but is inherent within the music itself: “Recognition becomes an end instead of a means. The recognition of the mechanically familiar in a hit tune leaves nothing which can be grasped as new by a linking of the various elements” (“On Popular Music” 453). The result is a music that is intended for a frame of listening characterized by “distraction and 371 inattention. Listeners are distracted from the demands of reality by entertainment which does not demand attention either” (“On Popular Music” 458). Certainly, in listening to “Got to Hurry” we are not likely to notice the plodding accompaniment; we might even forgive the repetition of the song as we focus exclusively on Clapton’s playing. In focusing on Clapton’s technique and tone, we might even forgive him the repetitions of blues formulae in his playing. Most of Henry Cow’s music, in contrast, avoids pop-music repetition; in fact, as Bradley Smith describes it, “after you’ve listened to them, you try to recall what the hell it was you just heard” (104). In Cutler’s words, “Henry Cow was a band interested in extremes. For instance, I would say that our compositions were probably more complex than anybody else’s, with the exception perhaps of Frank Zappa’s, while, improvisationally, we followed the Coltrane/Ra/Coleman school. No prearrangements, no tonal or chordal centre, no rules” (qtd. in Stump 143). In analyzing Henry Cow’s music, it is helpful to remember that when the group was founded in 1968 it was conceived as a “blues-based six-piece group with a Dadaist sense of humour” (Legend liner notes). Their inﬂuences included the Mothers of Invention, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and Captain Beefheart, as well as European composers such as Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Kurt Weill. The group signed to Virgin Records in 1974, but they were quite different from the other “hippie-progressive” artists on the label at the time (Gong, Mike Oldﬁeld, Tangerine Dream, and so on), and relations with the label quickly became strained. Cutler describes it this way: “[A]s we came up against the concrete problems of working outside the monopoly of the music industry, of actually getting out to play for people, we were forced to ask deeper questions and to become increasingly conscious and radical in our work. This was, and is still, for all musicians in our position, primarily a question of survival. A group either confronts basic problems, or struggles blindly for a while and then disbands, or becomes cynical and, if it can, takes the commercial road. Henry Cow chose confrontation” (130). The RIO coalition’s ﬂyers advertising “the rock shows the record companies don’t want you to hear” (Zampino) was only the most visible sign of a confrontational strategy that was already long manifested in Henry Cow’s music. Henry Cow’s work was “a critique, taking the practical form of trying to develop an alternative” (129). In short, Cutler writes, “this we were sure of: the form itself had a deep content—and it was this content that underlay the success of a superﬁcial (commercial) exploitation of the Form. We aimed to discover this deep core and to liberate it” (129). Looking at the structure of “Bittern Storm over Ulm,” the bass line of which is shown in Example 3, one can see how the metric and harmonic/formal 372 constraints of “Got to Hurry” have been “liberated.” The shufﬂing blues triplets are transformed to eighthnotes that cascade across the metric grid. Brackets on the musical example show the “Got to Hurry” riff in its various guises; at times the patterns nest into each other (like the beginnings and endings of twelve-tone rows in the music of Anton Webern). The metric patterns are also continuously varied. Two bars of 4/4 are followed by a bar of either 2/4 or 5/8, alternating, ﬁve times; the sixth time a single 4/4 bar is followed by a metric “turnaround” of one 2/4 bar and two 3/4 bars. A twelve-bar blues? Not exactly, but this intricate progression of meters does recur, in vamp-like fashion; changes in the horn arrangement signify new “choruses” in the form. The horn chords that begin at the third chorus also appear to be based on “Got to Hurry,” as an excessively mannered interpretation of Clapton’s signature motive. This motive is an example of what Allan Moore (50) describes as the “downward sweep, repeated for each of the three lines of a verse”; Moore notes that this is a “very prominent, indeed dominant, pattern [developing] from the blues.” Clapton’s motive, and the Henry Cow version, are shown for comparison in Example 4. become a tabula rasa. The form gave rise not only to “obvious” blues such as Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick” and the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” but also songs derived from the progression, however indirectly—such as Neil Young’s “Pocohantas” and King Crimson’s “Red.” Even in the 1980s, songs such as U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and the Mekons’ “Flitcraft” (a 12-bar waltz!) were derived from the pattern. Today, the ongoing dialectic between the tradition of the blues, and progressing beyond the blues, continues in the work of the White Stripes, among other bands. The diversity of modalities encompassed within the blues form illustrates what Voloshinov calls the “inner dialectic quality of the sign,” asserting that “…[E]ach living ideological sign has two faces, like Janus. Any current curse word can become a word of praise, any current truth must inevitably sound to many other people as the greatest lie” (23). The blues became something to be confronted as well as absorbed. Allan Moore has argued that “it is the mode adopted by the listener that determines what the music will yield” (25). I would argue that ﬁrst the end product—that which is heard by the listener in the ﬁrst place—depends on the mode adopted by the artist. Conclusion Artists are the ﬁrst listeners. Chris Cutler has said of Henry Cow, “We had a great faith in the power of music By the 1970s, with rock fragmented into numerous subgenres from Southern rock to British glam, the blues had to clarify, to educate, to criticise. We believed that it should aestheticise perception” (130). All of these 373 qualities are found in their treatment of an obscure Yardbirds tune, carrying with it a critique of the entire blues-rock tradition. Selected Bibliography Adorno, Theodor. “On the Fetish-Character of Music and the Regression of Listening.” Essays on Music. Ed. Richard Leppert. Trans. Susan Gillespie. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 288-317. ---------. “Popular Music.” Introduction to the Sociology of Music. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum, 1989. 21-38. ---------, and George Simpson. “On Popular Music.” Essays on Music. Ed. Richard Leppert. Trans. Susan Gillespie. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 437-469. Cutler, Chris. File Under Popular: Theoretical and Critical Writings on Music. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1993. Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Henry Cow, Legend (liner notes). Virgin V2005, 1973. Hodge, Robert, and Kress, Gunther. Social Semiotics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. Martin, Bill. Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978. Chicago: Open Court 374 Press, 1998. Meekings, John. “Eric Clapton: Britain’s Greatest Blues Guitarist, Musician, Superstar.” 13 February, 2003 <http://www.john-meekings.co.uk/epclap.html>. Moore, Allan. Rock, The Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of Rock. Burlington: Ashgate, 2001. Roberty, Marc. Eric Clapton: The Complete Recording Sessions, 1963-1995. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. “Rock in Opposition” concert program notes, New London Theater, March 12, 1978. Smith, Bradley. The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music. New York: Billboard Books, 1997. Stump, Paul. The Music’s All That Matters: A History of Progressive Rock. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Voloshinov, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press, 1973. Zampino, Phil. “Rock in Opposition.” 21 May, 2000 <http://www.squidco.com/rer/rio.facts.html>. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Killing the Music – Whodunnit? I: The Crime Shane Homan I n an Australian music industry dominated by multinational recording companies and media, live Musicians’ Union study found that 67% of musicians surveyed had experienced a decline in live music work. There was clearly a need to obtain more explicit details about the state of live work in terms of hard data about venues, music genres, employment landscapes, other entertainment within venues etc. rock, blues and jazz has played an important discursive function in terms of cultural nationalism and an historic sense of self. The live music venue (such as the pub, bush dance hall, jazz restaurant or outdoor festival) remains the place where audiences and performers can engage with each other, with skills tested, and tastes conﬁrmed or broadened, and reputations earned. At their best, a local pub rock gig or club jazz dance can become central rituals in the formation of communities, with obvious commercial and social beneﬁts. The mythological status of the ‘Oz Rock’ pub gig – the harsh judgments meted out to bands deemed ‘boring’ or ‘soft’ – reveals the importance the local ‘punter’ attaches to bands and venues to escape broader social pressures. Bruce Johnson and I obtained funding from the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry of Arts in 2001, based on an undertaking from the NSW Premier’s Department that the live sector required examination. The report was designed to begin broader industry discussion about both commercial and regulatory issues that affected a venue’s viability. Through the report, we sought to make the government understand a basic cultural studies principle: that local pop culture markets and aesthetics are not neutral instruments, but the consequence of particular commercial and The iconic place accorded to live music is in fact under threat on several fronts, and for several inter-related reasons. Our study, Vanishing Acts: an Inquiry into the State of Live Popular Music Opportunities in NSW complements others completed in South Australia and Queensland, with Victoria to follow, underlining the national scope of the problems and debates. A 1999 governmental arrangements. Project Methodology Pilot interviews were conducted with 6 venue managers. An advisory committee was formed with representatives from state and national hotel & club bodies, band 376 management organizations, local government & the Musicians’ Union. A survey was then mailed to 3584 venues across NSW: approximately 1500 clubs and 2000 pubs. We had 444 surveys returned, equivalent to 10% of hotels & 12% of clubs responding. The range of venues spanned golf clubs, lawn bowling clubs, pubs, bars, nightclubs, returned servicemen’s clubs, and large football clubs. Based upon survey results, a further 12 interviews were conducted, allowing venue managers to expand on key responses identiﬁed in the survey. The full survey results and interviews were discussed with the advisory committee prior to the drafting of the ﬁnal report in mid- 2002. legislation. This presented an interesting question for a centre-left State Labor government that had recently ended the clubs’ poker machine monopoly: should the live music heritage of the city be recognised, and how active should governments be in its maintenance? I’ll now brieﬂy present a ‘snapshot’ of some key report ﬁndings, and discuss their relevance to wider debates. Kinds of Entertainment In the survey, bands accounted for one-third of venue entertainment in both pubs and clubs, with jukeboxes more popular in hotels. Associated problems with hiring bands (see below) may account for the high level of One of the strengths of the study was our ability to get the key stakeholders – the Australian Hotels Association (AHA), Clubs NSW, the Musicians’ Union, the Local Government Association and the Music Managers’ Forum – at the same table, and on civil terms with each other. The AHA and Clubs NSW in particular were deeply concerned that the study would emerge as a blunt critique of hotels and clubs as uncaring businesses willing to dump their live music traditions in favor of more lucrative gaming options. We were aware of similar concerns within the State government – that the study would lay the blame for live music’s decline with the rapid expansion of poker (slot) machine numbers within clubs and pubs, aided by favorable gaming jukebox entertainment, which require a minimal level of engagement with regulatory processes. Poker Machines The survey conﬁrmed the extent of gambling within the pub/club networks. The State Labor government ended the clubs’ poker machine monopoly, granting poker machines to pubs in April 1997. This ended the historic divide between sites and proﬁts; hotels have long argued that clubs have enjoyed superior entertainment, dining and drinking environments, heavily subsidized by gambling revenue. With NSW accounting for 40% of the nation’s pub gaming machines and 74% of the nation’s poker machines in its clubs (Australian 377 Bureau of Statistics 1996), debates about the effects of gambling on live music have been strongest there. In our study we found instances of both displacement – former live music areas overtaken by poker machines – and entertainment growth, with gambling proﬁts an effective form of subsidy for music activity. One venue manager we interviewed told us that ‘we have to be careful of music levels near poker machines, we don’t the players to leave’. Over the period of our report research, we did not hear this sentiment expressed in reverse, indicating the extent of the shift in proﬁt sources and clientele. Hotels experienced a 38.6% rise in proﬁts in their ﬁrst year of poker machine trading (NSW Gaming and Racing Annual Report, 2001). Musical Content conﬁrms perceptions of Australia as a market leader in the tribute/cover band phenomenon (see Homan, 2002). This raises long term questions about where emerging songwriters can perform new material; the ubiquitous ‘hits and memories’ radio formatting also plays a role here. Live Entertainment Costs Venues (87% of those surveyed) overwhelming believed that the costs associated with providing live music had increased in the past 5 years; only 13% thought otherwise. For both clubs and pubs, ‘increases in band fees’ was cited most often contributing to higher costs. While it might be observed that venues have a long and proud global history of complaints about performers’ wages, our report detected another factor We were interested in providing data about the number of venues prepared to hire bands that played their own compositions. Across the State, ‘original’ bands represented only 34% of acts in the survey; the ﬁgure for ‘cover’ bands – acts that perform a range of others’ material – was 46%. The venues surveyed reported that 20% of their hired acts were ‘tribute’ bands, acts that perform one band/performer exclusively (for example, the ABBA band Bjorn Again). Combining both the tribute and cover band data, for the 444 venues surveyed, 66% of their live entertainment consisted of bands not playing original material – a statistic that at play here. The inﬂuence of various third parties – venue consultancy and agents’ commissions – may be a signiﬁcant cause of fee rises. The survey responses also did not correspond with Musicians’ Union advice that bands continue to be hired at well below award wages. Considerations Making Live Music Difficult Noise complaints emerged as the dominant concern for venues in decisions about whether live music was appropriate for their venue. In many cases, complaints 378 from residents stem not from increased music activity, but from changes to the immediate locale: gentriﬁcation of inner city areas leads to greater efforts to silence the jazz/rock pub. A related factor was the need for more security staff on duty during band performance times. Many local councils now stipulate extra security outside venues as a condition of increased trading/entertainment applications. People leaving after performances, not the noise of bands in (mostly) soundproofed venues were seen as an important problem in both surveys and interviews. right to treat the wee small hours as their own personal playground of noise. (Sydney Morning Herald, Letters 9/1/02). Increasing Live Music Given the adverse media coverage that some venue owners received by increasing their gambling activity on their premises, the survey included a simple question: would venue owners like to increase the amount of live music? 70% of hotel and 65% of clubs stated that they would like to increase the frequency of live music. Interviews revealed that music often played an important The live music venue is one activity related to wider problems facing suburbs and cities that attempt to create later trading hours for cinemas, shops and pubs. The ‘24 hour’ city promised by Sydney City Council in 1994 (Sydney City Council, 1994) and accompanying increases in cultural activity have to be reconciled with large increases in inner city populations. In some cases in Melbourne & Sydney, one complainant has possessed the ability to change venue operations. Music is seen in these contexts as ‘noise’, a by-product of the live industry, rather than its essential product: part in the social fabric of the venue; and assisted other activities within the venue. Here, concepts of community, tradition and heritage remained in currency among both musicians and the venue owners. Older industry arguments, like the beneﬁts of unmediated contact between performer and audience, the learning of stage skills and so on, also surfaced in interviews. The binaries of commerce and culture were certainly evident, most notably in ongoing decisions about the feasibility of the weekly band, and whether to substitute it for a few more poker machines. Related Factors For the 99 per cent of Sydney who work hard during the day and rely on sleeping undisturbed at night, it’s a nightmare to live with the 1 per cent of people who strongly believe it their The health of live music in Australia is often perceived through sepia-tinted glasses. There is common industry agreement that the ‘golden era’ of bands, proﬁts and Oz 379 Rock mythology was from approximately 1978 to 1988. Contemporary judgments about performance styles, proﬁts and export potential are consistently (and unfairly) ﬁltered through this period. For example, the mythology and proﬁts of the ‘70s and ‘80s were predicated upon unchecked drinking cultures. A range of council, state and federal government laws have reigned in the ‘hard drinking’ ethos evident in earlier periods, with adverse consequences for bar proﬁts (Homan, 2003). Certainly, the shifts in youth subcultures away from commercial venues, and towards the festival and dance party experience, reﬂect generational changes in drinking practices and perceptions. volume, song choices to the venue and audience. Others appealed to performers to consider the manner in which they deal with venue managers, and contemporary meanings of stagecraft. Overall, the report conﬁrmed existing anecdotal evidence of the decline in live music activity, and its perceived reasons. It also attempted to balance arguments about the social and economic beneﬁts of the live industry, shared by audiences and performers, with the realistic commercial decisions venues are forced to make within existing legislative landscapes. The decline in excessive drinking cultures has led to other venue changes. The internal gentriﬁcation of pubs (evident in more expensive ‘ﬁne’ dining, drinking and entertainment environments) serve their purpose in attracting young urban professionals with little interest in live performance. Catering speciﬁcally to this leisure demographic assists venues in their problems about security and noise, as a group that require less policing, enjoying a set of activities that are easily contained ‘inhouse’. In interviews with venues owners and managers, we found a surprisingly high level of criticism of bands; many believed that bands lack the ability to tailor band 380 Law and Order in Sydney. Sydney: Local Consumption Endnotes The report, Vanishing Acts: An inquiry into the state of live popular music opportunities in New South Wales, was written by Associate Professor Bruce Johnson (University of New South Wales) and Dr. Shane Homan (University of Newcastle). It is available online from the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts websites: www.ozco.gov.au; www.arts.nsw. gov.au. Publications. 2003. Johnson, B. and Homan, S. Vanishing Acts: an inquiry into the state of live popular music opportunities in New South Wales, Sydney: Australia Council and the NSW Ministry of Arts. 2003. NSW Department of Gaming and Racing Annual Report, Sydney: NSW Government Printer. 2001. *See Bruce Johnson’s paper in the proceedings for a discussion of Vanishing Acts’ conclusions and recommendations. Sydney City Council Living City: Sydney City Council’s Blueprint for Sydney, Sydney: Sydney City Council. 1994. Selected Bibliography Australian Bureau of Statistics Clubs, pubs, taverns and bars: Australia 1994-95, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. 1996. Homan, S. ‘Access All Eras: careers, creativity and the Australian tribute band’, Evans, M. & Hayward, P. (eds.) Perfect Beat: the paciﬁc journal of research into contemporary music and popular culture, v.5 n.4, January, (2002): 45-60. Homan, S. The Mayor’s A Square: Live Music and IASPM03 - MONTREAL New Folk Music in Chinese Pop Music Yang Hong F olk music in China includes folk song, song and dance music, narrative song, traditional opera I. Evolution of NFM and folk instrumental music. However, since the 1990s, a new trend called “the New Folk Music” (NFM) the ” began to arise in the Chinese pop music forum with an intention to make creative innovations on traditional folk music. By revising, composing, exploring from certain sources, re-combination, ﬁlling new ideas and ertain rtain modern performance styles, the NFM involves folk singing, folk instruments, folk opera, and local music. In addition, it also includes all the music incorporated with the Chinese folk tradition created with an attention of exploration, or embodying modern ideas. Strictly speaking, the NFM is neither a music genre, nor a music style. As a matter of fact, both the denotation and the connotation of NFM are obscure. It might be more appropriate to state that the term of NFM refers to the special musical and cultural phenomenon evolved from a particular background. This essay contains a general description of the evolution of NFM, a report on interviews with some new folk musicians and some members and an analysis on the role of the mass media, followed by a conclusion on the reasons for the existence and development of such a cultural phenomenon. The ﬁrst wave of NFM was characterized by its innovation in composition. Elements of western music tion. were incorporated with traditional Chinese music. The Research Institute on Music Universality, established in 1919 in an effort to realize the universality of Chinese and Western music, reformed the traditional instrumental music and recomposed a series of ancient music pieces. Mr. Liu Tianhua, the ﬁrst musician whose instrumental pieces combined the skills of western music composition and Chinese folk music, exerted profound inﬂuence on the development of Chinese folk music with his many solos and ensembles of “silk and bamboo”. After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, many popular folk music pieces were composed following the routes initiated by the predecessors, the most outstanding being the works by the noted composer Liu Wenjin. The second wave of NFM was characterized by its new ways of performance. For example, in the 1990s, when some performing groups were formed to play traditional music, they gained popularity through music concerts and publicity from the mass media. The majority of the 382 group members were female, such as the Female Silk String Quintet Group formed in 1996, Central Nationality Ensemble Sextet Group in 1997 and Group of Elegant Chinese Music in 1997. The popularity of such groups brought vigor to Chinese pop music and exempliﬁed the modern gender culture. The third wave of NFM was characterized by its new ideas. Since 2000, some musicians began to merge into the social and cultural market by their unique performances. They composed, performed and played musical instruments while at the same time making full use of the mass media for promotion of images and ideas. Such musicians included Feng Xiaoquan, Zeng GeGe, Bian Liunian, Troupe of 12 Females, Group of Winds, Troupe of Waving Feather and Combination of Mountain Eagles. II. Social background for the rejuvenation of NFM well received by listeners and performers. When the general public began to admire their traditional national culture and appreciate their own folk music again, a tremendous market came into being. In the mid- and late 1990s, more and more folk songs were re-composed and re-performed while there were more instrumental pieces employing traditional musical instruments. One such outstanding music piece was Yang Guan Xing by Mr. Feng Xiaoquan. Secondly, modernity environment activated the rebirth of NFM. In an interview, Mr. Zhang Shurong, CEO of Beijing Culture and Arts Radio Station, said that their listeners expanded from people over 45 to include people as young as 33. This showed that NFM was more and more popular among young people. Many composers and performers realized that “folk music should be popular, too.” Therefore they began to attract younger generation by combining folk music with As the theories of Cultural Anthropology suggest, a culture stems from needs. No culture style came to existence by chance. Instead, they were based on the survival needs of human beings. The vitalization of NFM was due to various social factors. Firstly, economic development was accompanied by a rising interest in traditional Chinese values. In the past decade, with the rapid growth of China’s economy, more and more folk music elements like musical instruments were used in popular music composition and were electric sound music, Jazz music and pop music. Thirdly, the consumption of NFM was supported by the market economy. For every performance, the National Symposium Troupe, with so many performers, could only got RMB100,000 (US$12,500), the Central Nationality Ensemble RMB70,000 (US$8,750) whereas each member of the Troupe of 12 Females could get RMB50,000 (US$6,250) for a single performance. The striking difference in payment signiﬁes market and business opportunities in this ﬁeld. Meanwhile, thanks 383 to the publicity by the media, NFM has begun to be trendy and popular and consequently there are more and more fans for NFM. When Mr. Feng Xiaoquan was being interviewed, many primary school students queued up for his signature. III. The development of NFM benefits from Mediations IV. Characteristics of NFM The NFM has three major characteristics. Firstly, the source materials of NFM are national and regional. Such national source materials include familiar folk songs, instrumental pieces for traditional musical instruments or music from traditional dramas. From the birth and development of NFM to its acceptance by the general public, the media played a signiﬁcant role. TV was the major medium for the broadcasting of NFM. In 2000, there were 324 million Chinese households which possess a TV. The total TV audience in China amounted to 1.17 billion. Besides, the widespread popularity of VCD’s and cassette tapes also helped to increase the inﬂuence of NFM. It soon became the favorite music consumed by many people. As it turned out, folk music could bring considerable proﬁts in the Chinese pop music market. Meanwhile, NFM also became proﬁtable thanks to a social environment suitable for the existence and evolution of NFM and to a healthy production, distribution, and consumption network. Furthermore, the public media provided a sound platform for the publicity and promotion of NFM. While the media became more and more powerful and inﬂuential in people’s social life, the production and consumption of NFM was reinforced. With these source materials, NFM utilizes lighting effects, dances, Montage editing, new combination of musical instrument and other “packaging” techniques so as to make NFM trendy and popular. Some typical NFM include the“newly packaged” traditional folk song “Lily Flower”, “Love Song at Kang Ding”, and a new version of the traditional Cantonese music piece “Bu Bu Gao” performed by the Group of Winds. Secondly, modern concepts and techniques are employed in packaging, re-compiling and composing NFM, including the use of western composing approaches, western musical instruments, western performing formats and MIDI techniques, and multimedia techniques, as well as modern marketing and promotion, image promotion and brand management. However, many new folk musicians believe that the only important thing for NFM is not technique, nor performing format, but ‘the thought’. One such instrumental piece was “Society in Paradise” by Mr. Feng Xiaoquan.and Zeng GeGe. In this music piece, employing ﬂutes and 384 suona as well as performances wearing traditional dress but performing in modern popular style, Mr. Feng tried to break the distinction between vocal music and instrumental music. Thridly, a new folk musician is also a composer, an instrumentalist, a singer and a performer. This feature coincides with traditional Chinese narrative singing music where the performer is both a singer and an instrumentalist. Some NFM pieces broke the rules for performances in order to be unique. For example, “Heart Fire”, composed and performed by Bian Liunian, broke the performing methods for erhu ﬁddle and added hi-tech stage techniques. V. Conclusion popularity, whereas when compared with traditional folk music NFM enjoys more commerciality. Finally, it should be noted that, NFM differs from the mainstream pop music because NFM to a certain extent assimilates and spreads the music of different Chinese nationalities and music from various regions so that NFM becomes a Chinese music genre with more universality. NFM is in fact a tag originating in media culture. At the core of its cultural identities are its popularity and commerciality. The newness of NFM is originally intended to distinguish itself from traditional folk music, but the actual motive is to catch attention and expose itself to more viewers and listeners. As a matter of fact, NFM can be regarded as traditional folk music’s new way of existence under the market economy. In this sense, it is more appropriate to put NFM into the category of pop music. To sum up, instead of a new form of folk music, NFM should be treated as one category under pop music. Obviously, compared with art music, NFM has more 385 Yang Hong Selected Bibliography Guilbault, Jocelyn 1993 Zouk: World Music in the West Indies. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 2001 “Variations in the old and new traditions of Chinese Music: the development of folk music instruments.” Beijing: People’s Music Press. Zeng Suijin 1997 Music Sociology: Study on operations of the music production system in modern societies. Beijing: Arts and Culture Press. He Xiaobing 2000 Introduction to MTV. Beijing: China Broadcasting and Television Press. Manuel, Peter 1993 Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Zhang Hongmo (Translation) 1994 “Economy and Media: deﬁnition and basic elements of folk music, art music and pop music.” Beijing: People’s Music, Issues No. 5, 6, 7. Selected Discography Negus, Keith. 1996. Popular Music in Theory. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press. Society in Paradise. Zeng Gege, Feng Xiaoquan Shanghai Audio-visual Press, 2001. Turino, Thomas 2000 Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Waterman, Christopher Alan 1990 JÙJÚ: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Atomic Primitivism: Akira Ifukube’s Sound Design for Godzilla1 Shuhei Hosokawa an adaptation of the Daigo Fukuryûmaru accident, a ﬁshing boat exposed to radioactivity radiated from the American H-bomb experiment in South Paciﬁc (February 1954). In September, a man aboard died (the ﬁlm was premiered on November 3). In the midst of Godzilla raid, the Tokyo citizen recalls the bombardment, evacuation, Nagasaki, and the dead. It is by far important that the name of Godzilla stems from a local legend of the monster in the deep sea, orally transmitted in the Odoshima Island, Godzilla’s ﬁrst landing spot. Godzilla embodies the folkloric primitivism in the nuclear age. In the ﬁrst pages of his ﬁrst book Introduction to Music (1951), Akira Ifukube (1914- ) insists that the “auditory sense is probably the most primitive among the senses serving for arts” (p. 7, my emphasis) and that music is the most intuitive, immediate and “primitive” expression of human senses. By claiming the priority of rhythm over melody and harmony, the pursuit for the primordial, the intuitive and the instinctive in music, the composer ostensibly manifests his primitivist aesthetic. What characterizes Ifukube’s composition is the complexity of modal melodies, asymmetric rhythm and ostinato, non-conventional instrumentation and performing technique, and dynamic orchestration. Introduction This paper aims at examining the soundtrack of the ﬁrst Godzilla (1954) in order to uncover the musical unity that endorses the narrative one, the meaning of magnetic recording technology, and the composer Akira Ifukube’s compositional technique. Without the aural triptych (music, stomping and roaring sounds), Godzilla could not have become an outstanding icon in ﬁlm history. It is my purpose here to understand how this sonic portrait of the creature was produced and composed in the framework of primitivism. Primitivism is a quest for the primal/primordial life-force attributed to the Other desired and feared by the artists and their public. Godzilla is “primitivist” in sense that he is a link between archaic past and emergent present, nature and civilization, myth and science, and fantasy and reality. Godzilla’s trajectory from an abyss to the limit of Japanese territory to metropolis symbolizes the path from the nature to civilization, from the peaceful world to the tainted one. Unlike the sequels, the ﬁrst Godzilla has evident references to the reality. The opening episode of a ﬁshing boat destructed by the strange white beam is 387 These compositional techniques are constitutive of his primitivism-nationalism. For the composer, UrJapanese (“Eurasian”) music is structured not on the folk pentatonic scales but on the “mi mode” (mi-fa-lasi-(do)-re-mi) and the “si mode” (si-do-mi-fa-(sol)-la-si). They have strong afﬁnity with Phrygian mode (mi-fasol-la-si-do-re-mi) and are basic to the Godzilla score. The Magnetic Tape Revolution: The Sound Effects of Godzilla and the High-tech Primitivism processed them. Thus Godzilla’s voice came out. This quote explains well how a musical instrument can become an imaginative and creative sound maker if it is used in a non-conventional way in cooperation with magnetic recording technology. It also shows how Minawa and his staff, in collaboration with Ifukube, patiently experimented with the reel-to-reel tape recorders to obtain the sound ﬁtting for representing The ambivalence of science and technology is constitutive of the life and death of Godzilla. Godzilla did not only narrate the scientiﬁc experiment but also experimented itself the new sound technology of the magnetic recording system. The ﬁrst sound -- before the title credit “Godzilla” appears -- is the strange sounds of something stomping and roaring. The sound engineer Ichirô Minawa remembers how to create those imaginary sounds: a fantastic reptile. It is also known that the loosened strings of contrabass were pulled with a resin-coated leather glove. The idea of stomping sound of Godzilla occurred to Ifukube’s mind when he stumbled over a wood box in the studio and heard a strange sound from the speaker. It turned out an over-echoed crashing noise. It was a eureka moment for him to understand the creativity of microphone and noise. The stomping sound was then synthesized from the sound samples of Japanese We decided to use music instruments and we played the bass. But in order to efface the instrument-like sound, we loosened all the strings and played various parts of them. So the original sounds were very ugly. We tried to record hundreds of such sounds and selected the usable ones. Then, we changed the speed of tape and added echo, and synthesized and ﬁghters, ﬁrearms, bombs and others. Godzilla’s sound effects were a pioneering experiment in the history of tape recording in Japan. The ﬁrst tape recorder known in Japan was set around 1948 in the occupation headquarter located at the NHK (Japan Broadcast Association). In 1949, a small electricity company experimented the ﬁrst domestic tape recorder and the following year saw the release of the ﬁrst 388 recorder. The company, later renamed Sony, invented in 1951 a portable type. Sony’s tape recorders entered in ﬁlm studios in 1953. The magnetic tape became indispensable both for avantgarde concert music and ﬁlm soundtrack. In the former context, Yasushi Akutagawa’s Music for Microphone (1952), and Toshirô Mayuzumi’s X.Y.Z. A Work of Musique Concrète (1953) are among the earliest works. In ﬁlm studio, for example, Fumio Hayasaka used the reverse tape operation in the nightmare sequence in Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel (1948). The Road from The Rites of Spring to Godzilla neither 4/4, as the ﬁrst bar makes the audience expect, nor 9/4, as the reiterated A cells would tell it. Therefore this part is not a symmetric A-B-A form. The B cell that follows (ﬁve 4/4 bars) sounds metrically more stable yet the asymmetrical accents (6+2+4+8) prevent the smooth ﬂow. To sum up, the intermittent 5/4 bars and asymmetrical accents break the metric regularity. The audience does not feel the stable beat progressing. The metric complexity is compensated by the harmonic simplicity. The A is put to F major tonic, whereas the A’ to G major tonic. The B is structured on the throbbing succession of E major tonic. This harmonic succession is of course non-functional. The phrase ending with After the strange stomping and roaring sounds, the audience of Godzilla hears the music starting with the credit of its composer. It has unmistakable rhythmic and melodic patterns. It consists in the two contrasting cells: the melody-centered A and the chord-centered B. The A has a sequential and repetitive melody of dosi-la, while its variation A’ moves to one upper tone: re-do-si. Both melodic lines are analogous -- simple ups and downs of sequential four notes – and are so plain as easily memorized. There are no counter lines against the ostinato. However, the piece is far from being monotonous. The trick is in its metric complexity. The A is based on the alternation of 4/4 and 5/4 (2+2+2+1+2), while the A’ develops the similar yet not the same pattern: 4/4, 5/4, 4/4 and 4/4. The piece is do-si produces a Phrygian feel as mentioned above. These intense accents are redolent of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky-like rhythmic and timbral treatment is clearer in the scene of the self-sacriﬁcing broadcasters. Ifukube indeed recollects the Stravinsky shock as follows: I got an electric shock when I listened to The Rites of Spring and Petrushka [in high school period]. Instinctively I felt that his musical vision was not European but close to ours. My afterthought was that this was because of the aesthetic sympathy coming from the [shared] blood. The quote shows his clear sense of belonging to Russian 389 music. In his dubiously racialized understanding, Russians are miscegeneous of Occidental and Oriental races so that their aesthetic is virtually in the middle of West-European and Japanese aesthetics. An Oriental other for Parisians is an Oriental self for him. He inverts the Western Orientalism to the Eastern self-Orientalism. What is at stake is not the geographical distance from Japan but the epistemological distance from metropolis, peripheral position in the musical empire of Europe. He calls the periphery of Europe “Eurasian.” The Folkloric the Odoshima exorcising ritual signiﬁes “our” ancestral legacy for Japanese audience. Instead of arranging or using the authentic religious kagura, Ifukube recycles a motif from the second movement (subtitled “Matsuri” or “Folk Festival”) of Japanese Rhapsody. The phrase consists in the simple repetition of two different motives in whole-tone scale (si-re-mi-fa♯) – the ﬁrst draws to folk tetrachord while the second to kagura tone structure -- so that the Japanese audience can sense familiarity or even nostalgia. Different from the Hollywood monsters expelled as “complete Other” (Chon Noriega) from the human society, the original Godzilla is for many Japanese viewers an internal alien, a reminder of the far past and near past of “our” history. He is ﬁguratively a noble savage, a compound trope of the irrational barbarian and the sublime innocence, the violence and the vitality, the pristine and the pure, the pagan and the passionate. The Voluminous To calm down the spirit of supernatural being, the Odoshima islanders perform a folkloric mask dance and music. Though the scene lasts only one minute, it does anchor the folk-mythical subtext of the monster that has been downplayed in the sequels. The sense of awe and reverence, not of horror and terror, speciﬁc to this original characterization of Godzilla, in part stems from his relationship with folk legend. The ritual scene, from narrative point of view, resembles to the “Aboriginal Sacriﬁce Dance” scene in King Kong (1933). The two giants receive respect by the islanders. King Kong is yielded to human (American) trap and military technology. The victory of human over nature, the civilized over the primitive, is obvious. There is scarce moment to be sympathetic with the homeless, wounded and dead gorilla. In Godzilla, on the contrary, Ifukube believes that scoring monster ﬁlms is worth doing because the plot is simple enough to maintain the autonomy of music. In other words, music can lead the image and express itself without depending too much on the narrative. He expects that the audience can clearly understand the relationship the music has with characters and story. The music magniﬁes the 390 unbeatable vital force and massive volume of Godzilla more with the low register and ‘heavy’ timbre than with the physical tone volume (fortissimo). In many cultures, slow tempo is synaesthesically associated with the grave, the solemn, and the heavy. The raid music, portraying the slow stomping of the monster, is understandably much slower than Allegro Marciale and the title music. Sound perception depends not only on loudness but also on register, tempo, and timbre, as Ifukube examines in his textbook on orchestration. The ﬁlm’s raid music is illustrative of this theory. The theme of the ﬁrst landing has an introduction of half-tone descendent motif performed by a double bass. Its extremely low range gives an ominous effect. With Godzilla invading the city, the music goes to the second part, an ascendant ﬁgure. To represent the volume and weight of the monster, it features brass instruments and emphasises the bass sound (trombones, tubas). A piano tone cluster ampliﬁes the shock effect. In a subsequent scene, the monster is accompanied by a dodecaphonic motif with many semitone intervals. While Ifukube rejects Schönbergian technique in his concert music he uses it to represent the otherworldly creature (and this motif is so evocative that has been reused in several sequels and Symphonic Fantasias No.1 and No. 2). To amplify the emotive quality, this angular motif is performed by the brass section and timpani in unison. Music for Godzilla’s withdrawal is characterised by a counterpoint of two voices, one in 4/4 (bass), the other in 7/4 (melody)(Example 7). Both are structured by semitones, diminished fourth and augmented ﬁfth and their combination suggests a fugue. The cell of bass voices consists in two open ﬁfths with a semitone difference (II-V, VIII-IV) and evokes both anxiety and stability, a mixed emotion ﬁtting for the scene. This emotion is reinforced by the slow tempo, the bassoons (no brass instruments), and the descendent ﬁgure, in contrast to the ascendant one used in the music for Godzilla’s slow walk. In this way the overwhelming, unhurried and heavy presence of Godzilla in Tokyo is choreographed with a variety of vibrant low range and variegated sounds. Requiem for Godzilla While the raid music underlines the aggressive aspect of Godzilla, the music for the ruins and desperate hospital evokes a state of stupor and sadness by means of extremely slow tempo, strings-centered instrumentation, and the modest melody based on the simple alteration of C minor and B♭ major with additional move to E♭ major. This harmonic simplicity makes the piece lucid. The principal melodic tones are put on the third of these three chords (mi♭ to C minor, re to B♭ major, sol to E♭ major) and move almost in a parallel way. 391 Interestingly, the same score is repeated in the scene of Godzilla’s last moment. The music subtly associates his atrocity on land with his being victim of human aggression to marine ecology. This double face is crucial for the story and the music functions as a hinge to connect one with the other. The other solemn piece is also used twice to illustrate aurally the double face -- violence and vulnerability –- of Godzilla. This static melody is again based on E Phrygian and rudimentary harmonization, and lacks in the teleological structure. It ﬁrst appears in the scene in which Serizawa, Emiko and Ogata quarreled over the use of Oxygen Destroyer. It comes from the special nationwide program on television to grieve the victims by Godzilla raid. The schoolgirls’ celestial choir sings: “Oh peace, oh light!/ Ye shall return/We pray for you from Heart/Ye shall return for the sake of our pitiful song”. It is a decisive moment for Serizawa to use his super invention for the world peace. The same piece accompanies the mournful scene after Serizawa’s self-sacriﬁce and Godzilla’s decomposition. This music obviously associates the human victims with the monster that attacked them. Godzilla is as much an aggressive life as a victim of the nuclear experiment. The reprise may refer to the inseparability of the doomed couple of Serizawa and Godzilla. If Godzilla is Moby Dick with respect for the sublime and transcendent, the destructive and gigantic, the oneeyed Serizawa obviously incarnates the one-legged Ahab. In the same way as the white whale and the captain, Serizawa and Godzilla are bound with each other to make a fatal couple. Unlike the battle-oriented sequels, the death of Godzilla here does not automatically mean the triumph of human being and the end of tragedy. It is no happy ending. Such an ambiguous ending makes Godzilla unique in the monster ﬁlm genre. Ifukube’s score is greatly responsible for this empathetic characterization of monster and psychological complexity of Serizawa. Conclusion The musical unity is one of the issues the ﬁlm composers have always in mind and the ﬁlm music scholars have often dealt with. In Godzilla’s case, a limited number of themes are repeated twice to make the storyline clearer. They are not leitmotivs in the strict sense but contribute to create the consistent mood throughout the ﬁlm. Another technique to ensure the unity is the general use of Phrygian mode that can articulate “Eurasian” primitivism. As Godzilla movie is serialized, the focus has shifted from the atomic reference and primitivism to the spectacular battles and extravagant creatures. The change is audible especially when we hear the tonal, John Williams-like, music by younger composers. 392 It sounds closer to David Arnold’s score for TriStar’s Godzilla (1998) than Ifukube’s. To my ears, the tonal scoring lacks in the voluminous and the sublime as the original Godzilla conveyed. The tonally depicted monsters, no matter how they may be ultra-magniﬁed and infuriated, look/sound like beasts tamed by the Hollywood language. Probably the cycle of the primitivist Godzilla closed with Godzilla vs. Destroyer (1995), Ifukube’s last ﬁlm score. 1. This article is a “trailer” version of my forthcoming contribution to Philip Hayward, ed. Off the Planet: Music and Sound Design in Science Fiction Cinema. For this reason, I omit the credit role (bibliographical references). Endnotes IASPM03 - MONTREAL ‘Revives’: Old Gold in Reggae Hasse Huss I n recent years, the Internet, and particularly the eBay auction site, has become a formidable market place seller, you don’t need to be a member to see which items are being auctioned or learn what prices they are fetching (or have fetched). I think, perhaps, I would have been slightly less interested in this information had I not in some cases been able to back the ﬁgures with some ethnography. That is, some of the sellers and some of the buyers that regularly ﬁgure in reggae-related auctions on eBay are people that I have met and interviewed, in Jamaica, Japan and the UK, as part of my larger study on the globalisation of reggae. The seller under discussion here is one whose shop in Kingston I have visited on many occasions. Likewise, one of the buyers (in all likelihood this particular seller’s best customer) is a young man whom I have met a couple of times, both in clubs and record shops as well as in his home in Japan. The seller, whom we shall call ‘Edward’, has a shop in a shopping centre in central Kingston. It is not an ‘uptown’ shop with an uptown clientele, i.e., the kind of crowd that prefers CDs to 45s (or Mary J. Blige to Lady Saw), nor is it a typically ‘downtown’ one like, say, Randy’s on North Parade or Techniques or nearby Orange Street. Rather – as implied by the names of the locations it lies near, Crossroads and Half Way Tree for second-hand vinyl records – whether collectors’ items or not. On Sunday, June 29th, 2003, there were 171,884 gramophone records at auction on eBay. Of these, 24.2 per cent, or 41,262 items, were seveninch, vinyl singles (or ‘45s’). Most of them (just over 40 per cent) were classiﬁed as ‘rock’. Other categories of ‘gramophone records’ were ‘other 45s’, ‘r&b’, ‘country’, and, as the ﬁfth largest category (3.8 per cent), ‘reggae and ska’. Yet other categories, such as ‘blues’, ‘children’, ‘classical’, ‘comedy’ and ‘jazz’ trailed far behind. Not quite four per cent may not sound like much – on this day it stood for 1,596 items – but when you think about it, it is quite a daunting ﬁgure; another good example of the extraordinary impact that the popular music of the tiny, post-colonial nation of Jamaica has had on metropolitan music cultures. For an idea of the kind of items that are being sold on eBay, and the kind of prices that these items may obtain, this paper will offer a small study of one seller and his trade on eBay during the month of June, 2003. These statistics are available to anyone – in other words, although you do need to be an eBay member to participate in an auction or to communicate with the 394 – it is a place where people from most walks of life in Jamaica are likely to, at some point, appear. The shop does sell the latest dancehall releases on 45s (including the shopkeeper’s own productions), as well as current albums, but its speciality is old records and it is in this capacity that the shop attracts a fair number of collectors from abroad (to which fact a hand-written sign in Japanese on the wall clearly testiﬁes). In auctions lasting for seven days, closing between June 1st and June 24th, 2003 – an average month sales wise, from what I can gather – ‘Edward’ listed 228 singles (all of them, curiously enough, wrongly categorised, as ‘albums’ rather than ‘singles’). He sold 115 of them, for a staggering total of US $10,362.20 – on average, $79.70 per item. The cheapest one was a 1968 recording by Phyllis Dillon, which sold for the starting price of $30.00; the most expensive one, an original copy of Bob Marley & The Wailers performing ‘Chances Are’, a rare circa 1968 self-production on the Wail n Soul m label, sold for $760.00. (For this title, no less than six different bidders each offered more than $500.00.) At this point in the presentation, ‘Chances Are’ by Bob Marley & The Wailers was played. a contributing factor to his lasting impact (along with the marketability of his dreadlocks and gorgeous melodies, of course). It is a nice record, and a song that might have become a classic had it been given wider distribution (and perhaps a different arrangement). Still, it is perhaps not unfair to say that the major reason it fetches such a high price is its scarceness. There were altogether 37 bidders who won the 115 items – obviously some of them won more than one record – and many of the bidders were returning customers (rough proﬁles of eBay’s sellers and buyers may be established by checking the feedback record of each participant). Their respective countries of origin, which – apart from the date of becoming a member and the occasionally revealing feedback given by other eBayers – are among the few ‘hard facts’ available about eBay’s members on the site, will, I think, give a good idea of where there is a collectors’ market for reggae vinyl. Of the 37, fourteen (or 38 per cent) came from Japan; seven from the UK, two each from France and Germany (arguably bigger markets for reggae than the UK in the early 2000s, certainly for current Jamaican music); two from the US; and one each from Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Australia. The lyrics, which may be hard to pick up on ﬁrst listening, are typically evocative and highly ambiguous, a characteristic of much of Marley’s work, and, I think, As for the kind of reggae (here used as a generic term for Jamaican popular music in general) being sold, the usual suspects stand out – there were rare items by Bob 395 Marley; some rare ska and rocksteady; scarce items by legendary producers such as Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster and Lee Perry; and various rare items on labels such as Treasure Isle and Studio One. Almost without exception the records were from the years 1964-1974. All these facts and ﬁgures may prove quite meaningless unless we try to understand what the practice of collecting reggae may be an instance of. If, as Russell Belk (1995), has suggested, collecting is ‘consumption writ large’, then what we are looking at here is surely a very large version of the consumption of Jamaican cultural products, i.e., of consuming the Caribbean more generally. And this is where we enter contested terrain. In what follows, I will try to offer a few contrasting views of what this may be all about. On the one hand, we may look at these practices through the eyes of British sociologist Les Back (2000). In a fascinating article in Black Music Research Journal, he suggests – it is a cautious argument, he points out – that the embrace of black music in white worlds can possess a ‘latent and transgressive dowry’ (146). ‘As the white vinyl archaeologists scrutinize record labels for scraps of information about production or songwriting credits, they are reaching into a world where black people lived not as colo[u]ristic effect but as complicated human beings’. He quotes Tim Ashibende, a black soul fan (and a well known DJ and collector) from Stoke, who holds that ‘[p]utting the sounds and the people back together may disrupt racism’s objectifying caricatures and stereotypes’ (147). According to Back, fans’ encounters with black music may lead to an understanding of the historic social forces embodied in their favourite records; black music can play the role of engendering critical thinking in the space of everyday life. This is not automatic, Back writes, but the potential is there because ‘history and meaning are enshrined – both explicitly and implicitly in the music itself’ (147). And we might want to recall Paul Gilroy’s warning words: ‘consumption is a vague word that that trips far too easily off the dismissive tongue’ (1993: 256). Discussing Bob Marley in particular, Gilroy points out that, ‘captured into commodities, his music travel[l]ed and found new audiences’ (2000: 131). And, on a more general level: ‘the guidance, solace and pleasures which that commodity may impart cannot be understood as merely an adjunct to the sometimes solitary act of purchasing it’ (1993: 256). We may ask ourselves – is this but pie in the sky? Are these the romantic ramblings of scholars, who beneath the thin veneer of the academy turn out to be nothing more than rabid record collectors? A different way to look at things may be found in Mimi Sheller’s Consuming the Caribbean (2003). Sheller ﬁnds Gilroy’s reading of ‘some modicum of redemption within commodity culture’ tempting, but , she asks, ‘in getting closer to Caribbean cultures, in 396 “becoming Creole”, does metropolitan culture in fact again reproduce its domination, reconstitute its centres or knowledge and power, and erase the (neo)colonial relations of violence that enabled this proximity in the ﬁrst place?’ (181). Just as we may have a problem with Back’s and Gilroy’s arguments – that they verge on the romantic and utopian, for one thing – we may ﬁnd that Sheller, to some extent at least, rather downplays the agency of the Caribbean cultural producer. It is, surely, not just a matter of metropolitan culture, as it were, ‘moving in’, but also one of Caribbean culture ‘moving out’. Another way to approach this issue, one that I feel will grant those who are being consumed a measure of agency, and one that will better illustrate that it’s not just a matter of the North consuming the South (or the ‘haves’ the ‘have-nots’), but that there are, in fact, other centres of gravity – here we may invoke the seminal work of Koichi Iwabuchi (2002) and his useful notion of ‘recentering globalisation’ – may be found in Lise Waxer’s wonderful The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves and Popular Culture in Cali, Columbia (2002), perhaps the ﬁrst full-length ethnography of record collecting. She writes: ‘Dancing, listening to, collecting records of, and performing salsa have emerged as quotidian but signiﬁcant acts through which Caleños [the people of Cali] remember how they ﬁrst experienced and made sense of the city’s transformation into a major urban and industrial center’. (We may, of course, substitute ‘reggae’ for ‘salsa’ in Waxer’s quote.) Thus, to put it simply, record collecting may entail making sense of the world. In addition, as Keith Negus (1999: 149) has noted (also with regard to Salsa), ‘the circulation of recordings among fans, DJs and musicians may lead to small scale CD-production and the commercial distribution of recordings which have been neglected by the major record companies. This is the construction of an audience, which is more than simply a market, and involves a ‘different set of cultural activities and degree of emotional investment’. ‘Emotional investment’ is perhaps the key term here, one that takes us back to the arguments of Back and Gilroy. Negus talks about an ‘alternative logic’, one that may even ‘take away a few of the bricks in the walls that divide us’ (151). ‘Tommy’, one of the collectors that I met in Japan, and with whom I have stayed in contact off and on for a couple of years, is a young man in his twenties, working as a bar and club DJ (a ‘selector’ in the Jamaican idiom), as well as for the Drum & Bass record shopcum-record label in Osaka. During the month of June 2003, ‘Tommy’ bought Jamaican music on eBay alone, mostly from sellers based in Jamaica, for just over US $1,900 (again, not an unusual monthly outlay, as it would appear). Certainly the acquisition of these recordings lends him not just a certain ‘cultural capital’ 397 (in Bourdieu’s sense), but also grants him somewhat more tangible means of making a living by playing records and making mix-tapes (and mix-CDs). Recently, ‘Tommy’ has, together with the owner of Drum & Bass, Hayashi Masaya, compiled one in a series of seven CDs (and one DVD) of rare productions by Prince Buster for the Japanese market. One of the albums in this series (on Hayashi’s Rock-A-Shacka label) is a live recording featuring the legendary Jamaican artist, now in his late sixties, backed by the Determinations, an Osaka-based ska revival band. These recordings were made in March, 2003, during a Japanese tour set up by Hayashi. Alongside a list of available albums and their track listings, the Rock-AShacka website features an interview with Buster (in both English and Japanese). Here Buster candidly discusses his musical inﬂuences – American singer Billy Eckstine being one of them – as well as the history of his various labels. In the last two, three years, Hayashi Masaya has recorded a handful of legendary Jamaican artists, including Lord Creator, Johnny ‘Dizzy’ Moore and Alton Ellis. (The latter’s ‘Lovely Place’ is particularly worthy of attention.) All in all, these practices would appear to be a good example of the kind of ‘alternative cultural logic’ of which Keith Negus speaks. Compiling albums, editing fanzines and websites, arranging tours and concerts relating to artists that for various reasons are not likely to set the charts on ﬁre are cultural activities at some remove from the general logic of the multinational record companies. That these practices often have a metropolitan collector or two behind them should not stop us from looking beyond the easy dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and continue to be wary of the negative connotations of the term ‘consumption’. The reproduction of metropolitan domination and the reconstitution of its knowledge and power are surely not all that is going on here. At least for this writer, ‘putting the sounds and the people back together’ (during ﬁeldwork in Jamaica) has had a profound and lasting impact. For instance, and to conclude, meeting Jackie Bernard – one the greatest voices that Jamaica has known (but currently an artist of no commercial consequence whatsoever) – I certainly walked away with more than an interview and a few snapshots. I learned that he has never left the island (unusual for a Jamaican musician), nor ever received any remuneration for his work (not so unusual, but particularly sad as his recordings as the lead singer of the Kingstonians in the late 1960’s are scarce collectors’ items and these days reach right around the world, not least via eBay). I also left with an impression of a songwriter of a unique and unswerving vision – in spite of great adversity – as may be gathered from songs such as ‘Love Is The Greatest Science’, ‘Why Wipe The Smile From Your Face’, ‘Years Come And Years Go’, 398 ‘Crime Don’t Pay’, ‘Singer Man’, ‘Musical Explosion’ and ‘Sufferer’, to name only a handful. Hopefully, I will be able to play some small part in compiling his long unavailable songs for an international release. At this point in the presentation, ‘Love Is The Greatest Science’ by The Kingstonians was played. Selected Bibliography Back, Les. 2000. ‘Voices of Hate, Sounds of Hybridity: Black Music and the Complexities of Racism’. Black Music Research Journal 20:2, pp. 127-149. Belk, Russell. 1995. Collecting in a Consumer Society. London: Routledge. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures. London: Serpent’s Tail. –––––. 2000. Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Negus, Keith. 1999. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. London & New York: Routledge. Sheller, Mimi. 2003.. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. London: Routledge. Waxer, Lise. 2002. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia. 399 Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Selected Discography Ellis, Alton. ‘Lovely Place’. Drum Weed ISCH 5003. 2001. Kingstonians. ‘Love Is The Greatest Science’. Caltone. 1970. Marley, Bob, and The Wailers. ‘Chances Are’. Wail N Soul M. 1968. Prince Buster with Determinations. Prince of Peace. Rock-A-Shacka UPCH 1234. 2003. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Lithuanian Audiences, Diasporic Texts Bjorn Ingvoldstad T his paper is part of a larger dissertation project on Lithuanian media and media audiences, based on ethnographic ﬁeldwork in the central Lithuanian town of Šeduva in 2000-2001 and 2002. In the dissertation, I look at a number of case studies to investigate the multi-leveled and simultaneous political, economic and cultural post-socialist transformations taking place in this particular part of Europe. In previous IASPM conferences, I have discussed several Lithuanian pop singers, but here I will focus on the reception of non-Lithuanian pop by Lithuanian audiences. In attempting to brieﬂy offer a sense of the complicated global, regional, and local ﬂows of music on offer, I will focus here on the issue of language. I will highlight the interplay not only between Lithuanian and Englishlanguage music, but also Russian and Spanish. Šeduva is a town of 2500 residents 40km equidistant from Šiauliai and Panevėẑys in northern Lithuania. Map from the University of Texas at Austin’s online library, http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ cia03/lithuania_sm03.gif domination by American and/or other English-language acts, a closer analysis reveals a more complicated Those subscribing to the “cultural imperialism” thesis might expect to ﬁnd local artists struggling in their own language, and turning to English-language performance. They would expect Western production values and stylistic markers to dominate the market. Certainly, to a point, this is happening. But only to a point: this scenario is only one layer of the onion that is Lithuanian popular music. Rather than one-sided musicscape, in which notions of center and periphery are confounded. Linguistic tensions certainly exist— much of the popular music in Lithuania is in English, including a marked increase of music produced within Lithuania. For the most part, however, we are talking about popular music from abroad: not only from America or the UK, but also a signiﬁcant amount of pan-continental Europop (anchored with a 4/4 techno 401 beat and uncomplicated English lyrics) that does not travel well to North American markets. In my ﬁeldwork in Lithuania, I experienced several shocks in terms of the circulation and consumption of popular music there. First was the shock of the known. In the same way my heart would sink a little upon coming across yet another McDonald’s abroad (or, for that matter, another Irish pub), there would also be a momentary repulsion/fascination in the fact that Britney Spears and Eminem are as ubiquitous in Šeduva as in Tucson. I wanted Lithuania to be different, and became disheartened to realize it’s not. Or wasn’t it? As time passed, I began to recognize that everyone at parties, discos, or road trips (except me) singing along to a band that sounds favorably similar to early Erasure, with occasional Bee Gee-esque falsettos. The band was Modern Talking, a German act singing in English. Though extremely popular in Lithuania, they are unknown in the USA. With further investigation and closer listening, a list of bands starts to pile up: Captain Jack, ATB, Scooter, Aqua, Eiffel 65, etc.. These Europop acts may not have massive staying power, but they do have presence; and while they are perched precariously on the periphery of American popular music, they are a part of the very core of European pop. For American critics, Europop can dissolve into invisibility for both aesthetic and geographic reasons. As the name inplies, Europop circulates primarily in the European continent, and bands that are quite popular within this genre may not even have a record contract in America. To a native English speaker, Europop lyrics can often appear simplistic, if not downright nonsensical. The Britpop scene of the mid-1990s (e.g., Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass) can be understood as a re-deﬁnition of “Britishness” as opposed to Americanness or European (Union)-ness”; no coincidence that Tony Blair sought out, for instance, Oasis’ Gallagher brothers during his campaign election, yielding the phrase “Cool Britania” in the popular press. Europop’s very popularity, ironically, can also deﬂect critical scrutiny. Much work in popular music studies continues to focus on subcultures, fan cultures, and politically resonant acts or styles. By contrast, Europop, on the other hand, forms part of what might be termed “invisible mainstream culture.” People in Seduva may not be able to rattle off a biography of ATB the way they might for the members of N*Sync (the stars have a short shelf-life), yet nearly everyone can join along in singing the chorus of ATB’s “You’re Not Alone.” One way to understand Europop would be that it is a manifestation of cultural imperialism, using a simpliﬁed ‘global English’ often produced in and for “non-English speaking countries”. Such an understanding would then pit pop and rock music produced in local languages as “resistant.” However, the way Europop seems to work with audiences is more complicated. Its popularity 402 is concurrent with the rise of English as a/the global language. Generally speaking, people who speak no English whatsoever are relatively oblivious to it, while those who know some English are able to pick out some words, or even learn some new ones. As we’ve already seen, English is the international language, the language of bands who want to perform internationally. Swedish bands like ABBA or Roxette perform in English, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for locallanguage music. Indeed there is, but non-Swedish critics are hardly ever exposed to Swedish-language pop. So the globalization of English has enabled an easier and quicker circulation of English texts, but it has ghetto-ized non-English-language popular music that does not have signiﬁcant secondary circulation (e.g., French or Italian). Given the almost half-century of Soviet occupation, as well as the previous incorporation into the czarist Russian empire (1795-1918), Russian-language music remains vital in Lithuania. Lithuanian exiles (and their descendents), who understand the Russian language as one of the colonizing forces of empire, can be shocked at its continued popularity and presence. Certainly, in preparing for my initial visit to Lithuania, I assumed that, given the history of Russian conquest over the past centuries, that Russian culture would be rejected for either a more local or global culture. However, while Lithuania’s position vis-à-vis Russia has certainly changed in the past dozen years, the response to Russian culture is certainly much more nuanced than I’d imagined. As one man I talked with quite often in Šeduva asserted to me (in English): “Russian people— good people. Russian politics—[making a face] ch, fukkit.” Russian was the “lingua franca” of the USSR, the common tongue used by a diverse set of ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. Children grew up learning Russian from the ﬁrst grade, if not in preschool. Yet, a number of respondents noted how their daily conversational Russian was limited. Though a required subject in school, the paucity of ethnic non-Lithuanians meant that its conversational utility was minimal, though bureaucratic interactions and trips to larger towns and cities might certainly necessitate it. Two key areas of interaction with the Russian language, then, were the school and the media. Radio and television programming, especially all-union programming, was in Russian. Thus, while daily human interaction was nearly always in Lithuanian, a considerable amount of the leisure media—and certainly the all-Soviet media—was in Russian. This, in part, helps to explain the continued endearment with Russian-language television, ﬁlm, and popular music from this period. Not only is there is a notable and clear delineation made between Russian politics and the Russian people, but there is also a distinction made between Soviet 403 politics and Soviet-era culture (which again is different from [ofﬁcial] Soviet culture). While those I’ve spoken to are hardly interested in fully returning to “Soviet Union times,” there is a marked continuing interest in Soviet/Russian culture, past and present. Rather than dismiss those times out of hand, Lithuanians were apt to utter phrases like “We were able to take monthlong vacations,” or “Everyone could afford what they wanted,” or “At least we were all equally poor.” This cannot be understood as some kind of masochistic nostalgia for “Soviet Union times” or Russian-language hegemony. Perhaps precisely because people Russian pop star Vitas was a phenomenon in Lithuania as well. Photo from an unofﬁcial Vitas fan site: http://www.angelfire.com/music3/vitas/links.html astounding vocal track—one in which the male singer soared several octaves. This teaser campaign carried over into print media, then into friendly conversation. For several weeks, Vitas was on everyone’s lips, and when the singer ﬁnally arrived in Vilnius, the interest was overwhelming. Though a household name in Russia, as well as Lithuania, and other parts of the former Soviet Union, he remains an unknown in Western Europe and the United States. In addition to Russian, there is another foreign language whose music is receiving signiﬁcant attention, though it In the winter of 2000, television ads began to run on Lithuanian television with the question: Who is Vitas? An urban landscape was on display, but no person, and certainly no Vitas. However, there was a rather has nothing to do with language acquisition in school. It has to do with migrant labor and the emerging patterns of people from Šeduva leaving to work in Spain in signiﬁcant numbers. Indeed, a signiﬁcant number of in Šeduva learned Russian ﬂuently as a second language (without the ethnic tensions you might ﬁnd in Latvia and Estonia, with Lithuania’s titular population easily the highest in the Baltics) Lithuanians are relatively comfortable with Russian as a language of entertainment material. In addition, while the careers of many of the English-language bands performing in Lithuania were on the wane (e.g., A-Ha, Sting), a number of the Russian artists appearing were new, fresh, vibrant and now, including the brief phenomenon surrounding the Russian singer Vitas. 404 Lithuanians have taken seasonal or quasi-permanent migrant labor jobs in the European Union. A number of subjects I interviewed, or their family members, have worked in England, Denmark, and Germany. However, an eye-opening number of people have found work as farm laborers in Spain. One of the primary concerns of Lithuania, its neighbors, and the European Union generally, has been migration—the shift of population throughout Europe. Economic migration has become a signiﬁcant factor in Lithuania. Some ethnic Russians moved east after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lithuanians have moved West, either temporarily or permanently. And people from other former Soviet republics have moved to Lithuania in search of a better life than they left behind. This movement of people has resulted in greater movement of media as well. This is perhaps best seen with the growing popularity of Spanish music in Šeduva. Spanish has never been taught in Lithuanian schools, and so Lithuanians are learning the language there as they work—perhaps. (Often there is such a large Lithuanian contingency that it becomes easy to not learn any but the most basic of Spanish vocabulary.) Of course, they are also being introduced to aspects of Spanish culture ﬁrst-hand. As has happened Enrique Inglasias, and Shakira. Indeed, Ricky Martin was achieving radio and club success in Lithuania in 1997 with his Spanish-language Eurochart-topping single “Maria.” However, in addition to these worldwide pop stars, an increasing number of speciﬁcally Spanish performers have gained something of an “underground” following in Lithuania. A number of Šeduvans have been doing farm labor in Spain, and they are bringing back cassettes, CDs, and DVDs. It’s Summer 2002, and Aivaras is back from Spain for a month. He’s brought his Sony PlayStation 2 back with him, along with a powerful speaker/ampliﬁer setup. Aivaras lost most of his hearing as a baby, but can still distinguish sounds, and can have conversations in Lithuanian, though he also knows sign language. He listens to music quite loudly in order to be able to hear it at all, and particularly enjoying music with a strong bass, because he can feel it as well as just hearing it. In addition to the videogames and DVDs he’s brought back to Lithuania, he also has several DVDs of Spanish music videos, marketed as part of multi-disc compilations. Frankly, the Spanish embassy could not ask for a better marketing device than these clips, whose iconography and production values are far removed from what is produced locally in Lithuania. In addition, they are markedly different from what is offered on video clips from US or UK acts in their emphasis on Latin dance styles. throughout the world, Lithuania has embraced global Latino/a stars such as Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, 405 In particular, the band capturing the most attention is a trio of perky sisters calling themselves Las Ketchup, whose video “Aseryje” is offered in three versions on the disc: Music video, karaoke version with vocal track, and karaoke instrumental. The rapid-ﬁre lyrics in a language none of them knows or understands presents an interesting challenge—the chorus is nonsensical even in Spanish, based roughly on “Rapper’s Delight.” But what really captures the attention of Šeduva viewers/listeners is the group’s dance—a “Macarena”esque hand jive and shimmy maneuver they study, practice, and study some more. The practice pays off at his sister’s birthday party (an all-night summer party on her boyfriend’s farm property), when someone plays the CD single. The girls are ready. Onlookers who have never heard the song before watch befuddled as the girls sing/yell the bridge, then rip into the chorus, dancing together with abandon. As “Aserje” reached #1 on the US Latin charts, several writers considered the possibility of a Los Del Riolike global conquest. While this has not in fact taken place, we can see here how a conscious attempt by the record label at promotion met a fascinated audience who created their own isolated dance craze. Here, we could also bring in notions of identity and representation, with the speciﬁcally female audience zoning in on this trio, and working to dance like them, as well as the production values, and the notion of Las Ketchup scored international success with “Aserje” (released in English-speaking territories as “The Ketchup Song”). Photo from the band’s ofﬁcial Columbia/Sony website http://www.theketchupsong.com, that also has links to the promotional video clip. Spanish other-ness. We could also talk about the struggle for regulation of the market encouraging producers to offer DVDs, and that both the hardware and the software were bought in Spain, the fruit of (illegal) migrant labor for the Spanish farmers. From my ﬁeldwork in Lithuania (as well as recent follow-up work in Spain) the pattern that appears to be emerging is not one of imperialism from either east or west, not a center-periphery relationship, but rather a sense of a complex network of centers. The “center” is New York, London, and Moscow. And Helsinki. And Vilnius. And the Lithuanian resort town of Palanga. And even Šeduva itself. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Human Nature? Madonna’s queer(ing) identities Freya L Jarman-Ivens M adonna’s repeated changes of style are undoubtedly the aspect of her work for which she has become most famous, and throughout those transformations her relationship with the idea of the ‘queer’ has most often been analyzed in the context of her gay male audience. It is easy enough, then, to review creative themes in her work which have been argued as relevant to this subcultural group. Madonna’s interaction with gay male politics and iconography seems to function at every level of her work: song lyrics; dance styles; stage acts; video images; ﬁnancial support for AIDS charities; and personal relationships. Alongside these themes, the speciﬁc idea of drag has pervaded much of Madonna’s visual representation. She repeatedly invokes the Victor/Victoria trope, as a ‘woman playing a man playing a woman,’ in her use of standard drag ﬁgures from Marilyn Monroe to Mae West, and more generally she often fetishizes her hair, hips and bust in a drag-style parody of the female form. Also in the context of queer sexuality, Madonna has persistently engaged with a wide variety of lesbian themes. The best-documented of these was probably found in the fervent media speculation in the early 90s over whether or not her relationship with comedienne Sandra Bernhard Dita Parlo, The Girlie Show tour (1993) Sex (1992) 407 was sexual [1]. During the same period Madonna released the album Erotica – in which she ﬁrst cast herself as kinky bisexual dominatrix Dita Parlo – and the book Sex, which contained a number of sexually queer pictures, including Madonna with two shaven-headed women in what was clearly intended to be a lesbian group-sex scenario. Since that time, she has continued to connect with lesbian subcultural themes, although analysis of this has been comparatively limited [2]. One enduring idea in her work is the history of male impersonation or drag king culture, a famous example of which can be seen in the ‘Express Yourself’ video of 1989 (dir. David Fincher), in which she wears a man’s pinstriped suit and monocle. The monocle is a key signiﬁer here of the speciﬁc historical era to which Madonna has primarily made reference with her crossdressing: as Marjorie Garber argues with reference to the 1920s, “the tuxedo, the cigarette, the cropped haircut, and the monocle are the most recognisable and readable signs of the lesbian culture” (153). This period was arguably something of a ‘golden age’ for female crossdressing: male impersonators were remarkably popular in English vaudeville entertainment; and, as Laura Doan observes, “in England in the 1920s, fashion-conscious women of all sexual persuasions were obliged to ‘crossdress’ by donning boyish or mannish attire and by cutting their hair short” (667). Madonna has continued to use conventionally male clothing and gestures in her work, referencing lesbian subcultural discourses. In a recent photo session for Vanity Fair (Daly), she foregrounded her penchant for tweed, part of her adoption of English aristocratic signiﬁers. Tweed itself is no unequivocal signiﬁer of lesbianism, of course, but located alongside breeches, shooting cap, and upper-class affectations, we might sense the invocation of such ﬁgures as Radclyffe Hall, or her lover Una Troubridge (interestingly, also famous for her monocle [3]). ‘Express Yourself’ (Fincher, 1989) Vanity Fair (October, 2003) Lady Una Troubridge 408 ‘Miss [Radclyffe] Hall affects a mannish mode of dress, and has what many people consider the best shingle in London. Her hair is of gold, and cropped as closely as a man’s, a natural ripple in it being the only break in its sleek perfection’, quoted in Laura Doan (1998), ‘Passing fashions: reading female masculinities in the 1920s’, Feminist Studies, 24 (3), 685. Some of these sexually queer identities, in terms of their culturally-contextualized interpretive possibilities, also suggest the other sense of the word ‘queer,’ not as an adjective but as a verb – to challenge, or render unstable: much of Madonna’s work in the early 90s suggested an opposition to traditional constructions of women as sexually passive, and this itself might be located on a continuum of sexual queerness, in its challenge to conservative sexual conventions. Her consistently multiplicitous representation of sexualities means that Madonna has become a particularly productive site for the queering of sexual boundaries in popular culture. The intensity of Madonna’s visual transformations has been thoroughly documented, and various All-female audience at Parisian cabaret c. 1930 interpretations have been offered of speciﬁc images used by Madonna, especially in terms of their signiﬁcance to particular subcultural groups [4]. Yet the Other examples of lesbian themes in Madonna’s recent work have been less ambiguous (although problematic), and have been most visible in her acting career: in the play Up For Grabs, she played an art dealer seduced (or rather, nearly seduced) by a female client; in Die Another Day, her cameo part as James Bond’s fencing instructor is understood to be a lesbian character; in a guest appearance on American sitcom Will and Grace (NBC, 24 April 2003), she gropes the breasts of her character’s female roommate. analysis of the very process of change also suggests a particular, highly productive network of discourses – psychoanalytic theories pertaining to subjective development – which help us access contemporary debates relating to subjectivity, a notion rendered problematic in Madonna’s constant mutability. In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the ego emerges from the subject’s infantile identiﬁcation with its mirror image, fuelled by the perception of its own self as divided and 409 fragmented. In the subject’s misidentiﬁcation with his mirror image, which he perceives as uniﬁed and whole, he is alienated from himself. The mirror stage is, for Lacan, “a permanent structure of subjectivity” (Evans 115), and the necessarily alteritous formation of the ego is a persistent paradigm: as Rosemarie Tong describes, for Lacan, “the self is always ﬁnding itself through reﬂections in the Other” (qtd. in Brinich and Shelley 18). What this points towards is the sense in which every self is fundamentally fragmented at a basic psychic level, split from itself by misidentiﬁcation with a superior image. In this context, we might understand Madonna’s transformative identity as exposing a reality of subjectivity: that it is always dependent on a level of fragmentation. This idea of fragmentation as both healthy and necessary is expressed in the idea of ‘subpersonalities’ analyzed by John Rowan, who compares Freud’s ego, id and super-ego, with Jung’s complexes and archetypes, with Goffman’s multiple selﬁng, and others, as examples of ‘subpersonality’ constructions. Rowan’s own deﬁnition of this is “a semi-permanent and semiautonomous region of the personality capable of acting as a person” (8). From this foundation, he describes a ‘dissociative continuum,’ at one end of which he positions mood changes, fundamentally transient states of emotion. Also in the ‘normal’ range of the continuum, but further dissociated, he describes “the roles and ego states and subpersonalities within which individuals perform state-speciﬁc tasks and life activities” (9), contextually determined personalities played out by an essentially cohesive subject. At the other end of the continuum are extreme states such as Dissociative Identity Disorder, characterized by amnesia and complete dissociation between a number of personalities in the same person. In no way do I mean to suggest that Madonna suffers from a severe dissociative psychiatric condition: rather, I believe that the value of these kinds of discourse is located in the ways they suggest of understanding her relentless transformations. Here, in a sense, she foregrounds the putative reality of our fragmented identities: where we might strive for a forced and bogus unity, Madonna arguably lives out her own disjointed state. For Jung, the self “appears to act as something like a magnet to the disparate elements of the personality and the processes of the unconscious,” something which “unites all the opposing elements in man and woman” (Fordham 62), and this is a common characterization of the idea of ‘self.’ In Frank Johnson’s words, it is “a unitary phenomenon […] used to refer to a particular, individual person […] and not to […] an aggregate of factors which ‘add up’ to a person” (93, his emphasis). Perhaps Madonna exposes the ‘aggregate of factors’ of which Johnson writes, and her continual playing out of fragmentation may therefore, in some senses, be 410 outside of the range of ‘normal’ experience described by Rowan. In psychiatry, despite some acknowledgement of the fragmented nature of the ‘self,’ the idea of the uniﬁed ‘ego’ also emerges as an important and recurring paradigm. A number of signiﬁcant psychiatric conditions have come to be deﬁned in relation to an ideal of uniﬁcation, and these disorders tend to be culturally most visible: the term ‘schizophrenia’ derives etymologically from the Greek ‘schizein’ (split) and ‘phrenos’ (diaphragm, and later mind); bipolar disorder is a ﬂuctuation between two extreme mental states, ideologically suggesting a fundamental psychic fragmentation, especially in rapid cycle bipolar, in which the subject may experience twenty or thirty cycles a day; Dissociative Identity Disorder is an extreme example of identity splitting as the locus of psychiatric disorder. To map this kind of discourse onto Madonna’s work is easy enough: rather than simplistically trying to diagnose her with a mental illness, however, the point I am trying to make here is that Madonna’s constant changes of external image represent a challenge to the hegemonic uniﬁed ego championed by psychiatric discourse. kitten […]; through passionate balladeer […]; to energetic disco-style diva […],” and claiming the changes as part of her function as an icon for gay men. The changes are not as straightforward and linear as Clifton’s argument might seem to imply, but his overall point is valid, especially in the structural division of Madonna’s developing vocality in relation to her role in Evita, and a change is indeed clearly perceptible in her vocal style and ability at this point in her career: as her vocal coach noted, “Madonna developed an upper range she didn’t know she had” (qtd. in Taraborrelli 249). The role certainly seemed to require much more of Madonna’s voice than she had previously achieved: more complex melodies involving higher ranges, often at low volumes, demanded a greater level of vocal control. In 1993, Simon Frith had argued that “She gets her effects not by switching gear but by switching register, and, whether she’s singing from mouth or throat or chest, when she pushes her voice it becomes shrill and petulant” (88). Since Evita, however, Madonna’s upper register has become noticeably more controlled and effective, and her lower range sounds distinctly less forced. Arguably, we might expect a more reliable voice from Madonna in her middle age, since the physiological maturation Apart from Madonna’s strikingly visual mutability, her voice has also been proposed as a site of deliberate modiﬁcation throughout her career. Keith Clifton argues for this, observing her development from “squealing sex of the laryngeal cartilages results in a better-supported larynx, and potentially a more stable voice. Yet her conscious vocal preparation for the role of Evita, and her self-awareness of this, documented in her diaries 411 at the time, ultimately confront discourses surrounding vocal training, and a dialogue arises between natural maturation and conscious coaching. What has also changed discernibly since Evita is the role played by technological factors in the construction of Madonna’s voice, which have been used throughout her career to affect the presentation of her voice, in greater or lesser degrees of visibility (or, rather, audibility). Apart from the common deployment of Madonna’s own voice as a ‘backing’ singer, there is a sense on her early albums that technology is used as a mechanism by which to conceal certain weaknesses in her voice, using reverb or overdubbing to thicken her lower register without her having to use a forced, abdominal sound (and thereby going some way to masking the problems noted by Simon Frith). The use of manipulative technology seems to have changed its focus in Madonna’s work, having the effect of seeming more deliberate, of having more self-conscious purpose, and the construction of Madonna’s voice has become gradually more associated with technologies: in ‘Don’t Tell Me,’ from Music, Madonna’s vocal phrases are deliberately truncated to imitate a similar technique applied to the guitar riff; in ‘Die Another Day,’ from American Life, her voice becomes almost entirely digitized and the temporal details are constructed in a similar way to ‘Don’t Tell Me’; at the end of ‘Hollywood’ (also on American Life), Madonna’s spoken voice descends in pitch to a clearly manipulated sound, via a point at which it sounds like a normal male voice, recalling much of the gender-play for which she is wellknown. Perhaps it is partly because she has supposedly ‘established’ herself as a ‘legitimate’ singer by means of the vocal work done for Evita, that she ‘is able’ to play with technology in this way, or more speciﬁcally, is able to be seen to be technologically manipulating her voice. Another important site of Madonna’s engagement with the idea of ‘different’ voices is her use of what might be termed ‘character’ voices, and this seems linked to her repeated appropriation of various national identities. The ‘character’ voice is particularly perceptible on I’m Breathless from 1990, the soundtrack that accompanied the ﬁlm Dick Tracy, set in 1930s Chicago, in which Madonna played a gangster’s moll and club-singer. Several of the songs on I’m Breathless allude to this particular historical-geographical setting through vocal characteristics, with a strong sense of parody emerging from parts of the album. Madonna also offers an example of her recurring interest in Hispanic identities on the same album, in ‘I’m Going Bananas,’ which she sings in a heavy Latin-American accent. Reinvoking another recurrent theme in her work, that of Weimar Germany, the performance of ‘Like a Virgin’ during The Girlie Show tour is also worth noting here: singing in a heavy German accent, Madonna transformed the 412 Girl’ were characterized by a particularly nasal type of voice, exaggerating the so-called ‘little-girl voice’ used on the original recording of that track; more recently, on ‘Mother and Father’ (on American Life), her vocal quality and a dry, sometimes inexpressive verbal articulation seem to reﬂect the lyrics’ evocation of her childhood. The ‘Like a W/Virgin’ questions raised by Madonna’s transformative vocality hold up for scrutiny the relationship between the voice and the way we understand identity, and conventional understandings of that relationship. Christopher Norris notes how the voice allegedly suggests “an intimate link between sound and sense, an inward and immediate realisation of meaning which yields itself up without reserve to perfect, transparent understanding.” The speaking voice, at least, has become “a metaphor of truth and authenticity,” apparently more representative of a person than the “lifeless emanations of writing” (qtd. in The Girlie Show (1993) Vanity Fair (October 2003) Whiteley 158). Wayne Koestenbaum also identiﬁes the long-established trope of the voice as a signiﬁer of “selfknowledge, self-portrayal, presence,” and describes an refrain to ‘Like a wirgin,’ the word ‘beat’ was distorted to sound more like ‘bitte,’ and she underlined her speciﬁc reference to Marlene Dietrich by segueing into the ﬁrst verse of ‘Falling in Love Again.’ There is also a sense that Madonna has consciously come to regard her vocality as worthy of comment in its own terms: during the Blond Ambition tour, her performances of ‘Material “ideology of ‘voice’ as original and identity-bestowing” (205), or, indeed, identity-revealing. This paradigm is more common than I have time here to describe or account for, so for now let it simply be said that it runs extensively through theoretical and popular discourses; and there is much more to negotiate than I can here, regarding the relationship between the singing and 413 speaking voices, and the regions and functions of each. In this ideological framework, then, in what way might we begin to unravel Madonna’s vocal transformations? An initial response might be to question the extent to which agency is a factor here, albeit with the acknowledgment American Life (Åkerlund, 2003). that answers may not be established. If we understand these manipulations to be conscious and determined, do they mean differently than if they are denied intent? Are the changes in Madonna’s voice any less signiﬁcant if they are understood as ‘natural’ (like physiological development) than if they are perceptibly intentional (like her character voices, or use of technology)? To a Drowned World Tour (2001) certain extent, intentionality may well be a signiﬁcant factor in our understanding of Madonna’s changing vocalities, albeit a problematic one. Moreover, I would like to suggest that in much the same way as her visual modes of transformation have involved various levels of knowing purpose, but remain signiﬁcant even when their intent is questionable, her vocal metamorphoses are equally productive a subject of analysis, inasmuch Sex (1992) ‘…evoking female ejaculation, the great open secret of lesbian subculture in the early 90s’, Andrew Ross (1993), ‘This Bridge Called My Pussy’, in Frank, Lisa and Paul Smith (eds), Madonnarama: Essays on Sex and Popular Culture, Pittsburgh and San Francisco: Cleis Press, p. 58. as they are a site for the examination of anxieties relating to identity, authority, and authenticity. Madonna’s bodily transformations suggest layers, masks, perhaps therefore a kind of ‘inauthenticity,’ while also being open for interpretation as intensely meaningful, informed and carefully crafted. At the same time, the sense of vocal mobility I have noted underlines a common perception of Madonna as something of a problematic subject of 414 analysis, and seems to converge with the discourse of inauthenticity which so crucially informs the construction of her personae. Conversely, both vocal and bodily transformation may also be available for interpretation within the vocabulary of authenticity. As Madonna said of the editing of Truth or Dare, “While you can argue that I chose to show what I wanna show, I can also say that what I chose to show is very revealing” (qtd. in Pribram 190, her emphasis). Perhaps, then, we might see her mutability not simply as a series of masks, covering some putative core ‘truth,’ but also as a process of uncovering, tempting us with that presumed core, while simultaneously playing along a chain of simulacra, ever delaying the revelation of the core which, we might suspect, is not available for display. Madonna’s relationship with the idea of the ‘queer,’ then, is one informed by bodily and vocal mutation, sometimes drawing on sexually queer themes, and consistently seeming to present challenges to normative constructions of identity, as underpinned by understandings of body and voice. While visual transformations throughout her career have undoubtedly received more critical attention, a sense of variable vocality is equally recurrent, although perhaps less immediately perceptible, and this studied variability in her vocal production represents a productive working through of the role of voice in our perception of identity. Quite possibly, the common failure to consider Madonna’s vocality is part of an intricate layering of discourses, clustering around a sense that she has become more famous for simply being Madonna than for any of her culturally consumable products. What I have ultimately tried to suggest here is that any attempt to understand Madonna’s multiplicitous meanings must be underscored by a recognition of her complexity, and by an engagement with an overwhelming sense in her œuvre that, as she would put it, “nothing is what it seems.” 415 Daly, Steven. ‘Madonna Marlene.’ Vanity Fair October Endnotes 1. See Bego 211 and 230; Fisher 185. 2000: 166-71, 224-6. Dick Tracy. Dir. Warren Beatty. Perf. Madonna and Warren Beatty. 1990. 2. See Jarman-Ivens for more in-depth analysis of this topic. Die Another Day. Dir. Lee Tamahori. 2002. 3. See Romaine Brooks, Una, Lady Troubridge. Oil on canvas, 127.3 x 76.8 cm. 1924. Doan, Laura. “Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s.” Feminist Studies 24 (1998): 663-700. 4. See for example, Fouz-Hernández and JarmanIvens, Guilbert, or Schwichtenberg, Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996. Selected Bibliography Bego, Mark. Madonna: Blond Ambition. London: Plexus, 1992. Evita. By Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Dir. Alan Parker. Perf. Madonna, Jonathan Pryce, and Antonio Banderas. 1996. Brinich, Paul and Christopher Shelley. The Self and Personality Structure. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2002. Fisher, Carrie. “True Confessions: The Rolling Stone Interview with Madonna, Part One.” Madonna: The Rolling Stone Files. Ed. Rolling Stone. New York: Clifton, Keith E. “Queer Hearing and the Madonna Queen.” Madonna’s Drowned Worlds: New Fordham, Frieda. An Introduction to Jung’s Psychology. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963. Hyperion, 1997. 170-85. First published 1991. Approaches to her Subcultural Transformations, 1983-2003. Ed. Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens. Aldershot: Ashgate, Forthcoming. Chapter 5. Fouz-Hernández, Santiago and Freya Jarman-Ivens, 416 eds. Madonna’s Drowned Worlds: New Approaches to her Subcultural Transformations, 1983-2003. Aldershot: Ashgate, Forthcoming. Koestenbaum, Wayne. “The Queen’s Throat: (Homo)sexuality and the Art of Singing.” Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Ed. D. Fuss. London: Routledge, 1991. 205-34. Frith, Simon. “The Sound of Erotica: Pain, Power, and Pop.” Madonnarama: Essays on Sex and Popular ” Culture. Ed. Lisa Frank and Paul Smith. Pittsburgh and San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1993. 87-92. Madonna. American Life. Maverick, 2003. Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. London: Penguin Books, 1993. ––––. Erotica. Warner Brothers, 1992. Live Down Under: The Girlie Show Tour. Perf. Madonna. 1993. DVD. 1997. Guilbert, Georges-Claude. Madonna as Postmodern Myth: How One Star’s Self-Construction Rewrites Sex, Gender, Hollywood and the American Dream. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2002. ––––. I’m Breathless. Warner Brothers, 1993. ––––. Music. Maverick, 2000. ––––. Sex. Warner Books, 1992. Jarman-Ivens, Freya. “What it Feels Like for Two Girls: Madonna’s play with lesbian (sub-)cultures.” Madonna’s Drowned Worlds: New Approaches to her Subcultural Transformations, 1983-2003. Ed. Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens. Aldershot: Ashgate, Forthcoming. Chapter 6. Pribram, Deirdre E. “Seduction, Control, and the Search for Authenticity: Madonna’s Truth or Dare.” The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory. Ed. Cathy Schwichtenberg. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993. Johnson, Frank. “The Western Concept of Self.” Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives. Ed. Anthony J. Marsella, George DeVos, and Francis L. K. Hsu. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985. 91-138. Rowan, John. Subpersonalities: The People Inside Us. London: Routledge, 1990. 189-212. 417 Schwichtenberg, Cathy, ed. The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993. Taraborrelli, J. Randy. Madonna: An Intimate Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Truth or Dare? (In Bed With Madonna). Dir. Alek Keshishian. Perf. Madonna. 1991. Victor/Victoria. Dir. Blake Edwards. Perf. Julie Andrews, James Garner and Robert Preston. 1982. Whiteley, Sheila. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity. London: Routledge, 2000. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Killing the Music: Whodunnit? The Criminal - First Interrogation Bruce Johnson backing, karaoke, DJs, and synthesizer/vocal solo and duo acts. Apart from music, there is also an expanded range of pub entertainment, including wide-screen TV sports broadcasts. My own experience as a musician conﬁrms the pattern of arriving for a gig to be told by a barman we have to wait up to an hour: ‘They’re watching the footie ﬁnal, mate. They’ll lynch me if I turn it off’. And a few weeks later: ‘Some of the members want their telly room, mate, and we’re ﬁnishing up the band’. In the wake of government attempts to discourage ‘happy hour’ binge drinking, pubs have come up with other alternative crowd-pullers: trivia nights, strippers, strip poker, jelly wrestling, and even such oddities as the Glebe Four-in-Hand pub’s Thursday night crab racing. Introduction A lthough the report Vanishing Acts concerned live music, the liberalisation of gaming machine legislation was so prominent in public discussion of the subject that it was believed that these machines had singlehandedly undermined live music, and gig gossip constantly fed the mythology. Ironically, while I was conducting the research, my own band lost a wellestablished jazz residency in a city pub. At ﬁrst we all cried ‘pokies’, but in trying to track down the reasons, I found a pattern emerging that corresponded with the larger picture which my work as a researcher was also disclosing. Changes in leisure cultures In addition, all these are presented in a broader context of changing leisure environments, particularly Central to this picture are sea changes in popular music and leisure cultures. Changes in leisure technologies are producing amenities which compete with the traditional ‘live music’ format of a band consisting of four or ﬁve performers in a pub. Musically, there is an increasing component of pre-recorded material, with lipsynching acts (though one venue management reported that many patrons feel ‘cheated’ by these), pre-recorded in relation to the diversiﬁcation and sophistication of home entertainment. Playstations, the internet, and quasi ‘home cinema’ facilities, all help to make the idea of a ‘night in’, with a takeaway, a six-pack and a DVD, a more attractive prospect than a ‘night out’, with transport problems, the increased constraints on public alcohol and tobacco consumption, and, in Sydney, growing anxiety about street violence. 419 There is also what I refer to as the ‘distraction factor’. One venue manager said, “Kids are not educated to watch live musicians”. Both visually and acoustically we are being habituated to increasing and diversiﬁed technologically mediated stimulation. There are higher levels of noise and information inundation. The audience protocols of relatively focussed listening that sustained the traditional pub and club gig, are disappearing among younger patrons, who are increasingly drawn to the very different dynamic of dance and club cultures. Sectors of responsibility as philanthropic projects, sponsorship of community events and benevolent participation in local council debates. In such cases, there was a strong correlation with effective live music policies. Similarly, in venues where management thought strategically about the overall relationship between their various revenue streams from ancillary services such as food, gaming and live entetrtainment. That is, they recognised that the proﬁtability or otherwise of a band should be seen not in isolation, but as an element in a larger repertoire of leisure amenities which is overall ﬁnancially viable. These changes represent a tide running against the live music format of the ‘golden age’ of pub and club music in the 1970s and 1980s. But it is also clear that where there is the will, live music can be sustained. The responsibility for doing so is dispersed among a number of sectors. • Venue management So too, when management gave attention to the particular performance space and associated technology, recognising the importance of a good PA, lighting, sight-lines, dance and seating space, not surprisingly, live music was more likely to succeed. Something as obvious, yet frequently overlooked, as bar space also mattered. My own experience conﬁrms the point that if there is not enough service space at the bar, and if management declines to hire extra bar staff while a band is playing, this can kill the gig as patronage drops off. Some careful thought about musical styles also produced a healthy live scene. In particular, by diversiﬁcation, venues could create a series of niche markets that attracted a range of audiences at different times of day, on different days, and in different spaces. These ranged through lunchtime singalongs for older Our research found that the success of live music policies was closely related to the awareness displayed by venue managements of their larger social function within their particular location. Apart from the obvious question of what kind of clientele might be expected in, for example, a beachside suburb, a backpacker zone, or student enclave, they manifested an involvement in the local community. This might take such forms 420 patrons - a sort of senior citizens’ karaoke - to the contemporary equivalent of afternoon ‘tea-dances’ (especially popular on weekends), with karaoke in the evenings and late night ‘off-your-face’ grunge acts. • Musicians demos and websites, also tended not surprisingly to be more successful in gaining and keeping gigs. Above all, and especially for rock/pop groups working in increasingly congested urban spaces, they need to think about noise. Why is their volume at eleven in this particular space on this particular occasion? What is the function of volume? Noise was perhaps the biggest single issue, and I shall return to it shortly. • The music industry Ironically, it emerged that one sector which often contributed to the failure of live music was the musicians themselves. As a jazz musician of over thirty years of continuous gigging, and from the double perspective of an music administrator involved in policy ‘R & D’, I have been dismayed at the prima donna preciousness of colleagues who believe that being a musician is in itself sufﬁcient reason to assume that society will deferentially arrange itself around one’s privileged sensibilities. All they need to do is to nurture their skills in sacred solitude, then place them on display. The research conﬁrmed that if musicians want to get gigs, develop their repertoire and performance competencies, they will have to grow out of the belief that they are artists and not entertainers, or that there is even a positivitic distinction between the two. That is, they must think of their work as a social transaction. Managers It was suggested by informants that different sectors of the music industry could play a more considered role in nurturing the live music scene. Record companies proﬁt from the emergence of new acts, but show little if any inclination to invest in any venue development. It was suggested that they should be encouraged to provide inventives and support to venues with a record of trying to develop new talent and repertoire, through sponsorships, recording opportunities, subsidies and joint promotion. Likewise, agencies are frequently complicit in the failure of live music enterprises, and indeed, in our survey, they emerged as a predominantly counter-productive force. Apart from booking groups that were inappropriate to the venue and the occasion, the survey suggested that they were a crucial factor in driving up costs. It was noted that musicians’ award rates have remained pegged to national and state wage cases, yet venue managers reported a general decline in what they and patrons regarded as stagecraft, suggesting that both jazz and rock musicians need to think about stage rhetoric, presentation and posturing. Those who participated in their own promotion rather than leaving it entirely to the venue, through press releases, community radio 421 reported disproportionate increases in the costs of bands. One reason appears to be an increase in ‘third party’ fees, as in professional venue consultants and agents. Although reluctant to make their views public for fear of losing agency work, musicians themselves report questionable practices such as forms of ‘doubledipping’: extracting unregulated fees from both band and booker. • The regulatory framework • The community In the words of the report (p. 43), live music produces noise, and this was cited as the most difﬁcult and expensive problem in the relationship between live music venues and the local community, and it becomes more so as the volume of bands increases at the same time as the density of urban populations. Venue managers have born the primary expenses associated with noise, but we suggest that the responsibility is not theirs alone. Musicians themselves seem to have ceased to consider volume as a variable, and need to consider the relationship between sound levels, place and occasion. If they are trying to attract an audience, yet the volume drives an audience out of the room, it should occur to them that they are doing something wrong. Obtaining entertainment licenses has become an increasingly labyrinthine and protracted process. The terms of compliance frequently appear to be arbitrary and irrational, with local variations in enforcement and unofﬁcial kickback arrangements with various local authorities. A number of venue managers reported that their growing frustration at the tangled application process enhanced the appeal of more straightforward options such as gaming machines. One major But noise is also a community matter. Communities also make ‘noise’. Noise becomes a problem not simply because a band is playing, but also because of choices people make about where and how they want to live. The gentriﬁcation process impacts not just upon entertainment venues, but upon the existing community, and is more of a disruption of that community than an established live music venue. Yet it is almost invariably the intruder who demands that the changes be made, and who has the literal and cultural capital to apply pressure regulatory problem not covered in our report because it only emerged as a factor after we had completed it, is the question of public liability insurance, which became prohibitively expensive after the events now referred to as September 11. This appears to be obliterating or at the very least threatening many sectors of public entertainment, from school fetes to annual fairs or shows (many of which traditionally employed musicians), as well as music-speciﬁc events. 422 successfully. In attempting to resolve this tension, it should by no means be taken for granted that the gentiﬁcation process should be privileged at the expense (literally) of the pre-existing local culture, and this includes its relationship to existing music venues. This has relevance to local council attitudes to development applications. It is anomalous that a pre-existing music venue be required to conduct expensive sound-prooﬁng because a new adjacent townhouse was not required to incorporate its own acoustic insulation. Recommendations residential development; • Educational programmes raising community awareness, including the introduction into schools of local history projects incorporating the study of local music traditions. Outcomes Needless to say, we felt that the recommendations were perfectly reasonable. However, having worked one way or another in arts policy with both the New South Wales and commonwealth governments for about ﬁfteen years, I am fully aware that the ﬁeld is The funding bodies invited us to make recommendations as the basis for possible legislative reform. We made ﬁfteen in the report, each addressing in some way the issues I have discussed, under a series of headings. traversed by ambiguities and contingencies that can sink the most laudable and unexceptionable policy proposals. I ﬁrst wrote to the NSW Premer, Bob Carr, to raise • The establishment of a consultative committee representing all stakeholders; the issue of a possible connection between gambling and live music over a year before this research project began, and at the ﬁrst meeting I had with representatives • Economic facilitation, through arts funding bodies, taxation incentives, and a diversion of a proportion of gambling revenue to fund live music infrastructure; of his department and the CEO of the Australian Hotels Association (AHA), it was abundantly clear that the ‘prime suspect’ was also a valued friend of the ﬁscal arm of government. • Rationalisation of licensing and legislation relating to live music venues and locations, in particular, recognition of ‘existing rights’ in planning and Consider that at the end of June 2002, in New South Wales the total number of gaming machines was reported 423 to be 3,216. The average tax per year ﬂowing directly to the NSW government from each one of those machines was $9,285. This did not include taxes on ancillary goods such as alcohol and tobacco. In addition, on June 22 2003, following the State election on March 22 2003, the NSW government announced a further tax of $100 million pa on poker machines. The indignation from the pubs and clubs was loud in the land, especially given that, as revealed on March 6 2003, the AHA had been a major donor to election fund-raising (Sydney Morning Herald, 6/2/03). The synergy between government and gaming revenue was powerfully driven: at the end of June 2002, total turnover from gaming machines in NSW was $42.9 billion, with ofﬁcial assessed proﬁt at $4.4 billion. So, even if the report had found against gaming machines as the cause of the decline in live music, we knew they were not going to go away. we submitted the report in July 2002 for clearance by State and Commonwealth funding bodies, we assumed it would be released with some alacrity. After time, however, investigations seemed to suggest that the State government was planning to hold it back until just before the coming election, and then launch it with some fanfare. This supposition found some conﬁrmation in the pre-election Labor policy document, Arts for Everyone, which among its various undertakings announced that it would ‘use the ﬁndings of a recent review of live music to encourage more music in hotels and clubs’. The election was called for August 22 2003. However, just nine days before that, on March 13, the NSW Minister for Gaming and Racing suddenly became the unhappy subject of media attention. Making some capital out of his name, Richard Face, under the headline ‘Labor loses But overall it did not. Notwithstanding what I had expected when I ﬁrst signalled the problem to the Premer’s Department, the research indicated that the causes of the problem were much more dispersed. Gaming machine legislation provided a much more straightforward as well as proﬁtable alternative to a form of entertainment that was already in steady decline, and mired in regulatory red tape. Indeed, in many cases, gaming income in pubs was subsidising live music, as it had in licensed clubs since the 1950s. Thus, when Face over gaming gaffe’, the Sydney Morning Herald (13/3/03) announced that the Minister had become ‘the ﬁrst casualty of the NSW election yesterday, forced to stand down over his plans to set up a gaming consultancy when he quits politics. ... in a humiliating end to his 30 years in public ofﬁce, Mr Face spared Labor more woes by agreeing to leave his ministerial post immediately to “clear the air” ‘. In the words of the national newspaper, The Australian (15/3/03), he had ‘touted for business on behalf of his post-parliament gambling consultancy 424 while still in ofﬁce’. In particular, his alleged impropriety was linked to gaming machines, as in the headline ‘The face that launched 24,000 Pokies’ (Sydney Morning • It has been announced that the increased tax on gaming machines ‘will be earmarked for community projects’. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, or can be created, we will argue that music should be included in the category ‘community projects’. Herald 19/3/03), and also to the AHA which, in what now emerged as a piece of very poor timing, had reportedly arranged a $326 per couple dinner in his honour, scheduled for the week after the election, but leaked to the media three days before it. I don’t necessarily argue cause and effect, but suddenly all references to gambling disappeared from the state government’s election campaign material. • Since the election, the NSW government has announced the abolotion of the Liquor Administration Board, to be replaced by an organisation with wider terms of reference and powers, the Liquor and Gaming Commission (Sun Herald, 15/6/03). With control over the hotel, club, casino and gambling In any event, the Labor government was returned. The industries, it is to be hoped that this body will bring to bear a more uniﬁed perspective on the connections between gambling and alcohol-fuelled recreation, that will keep live music in the picture. Vanishing Acts report was ofﬁcially released in May. It received a considerable amount of media coverage both locally and nationally, particularly in the print press and on radio. Since then, there have been three relevant developments of some note. It must be emphasised that we do not for a moment ﬂatter ourselves that our report generated the last two • The ﬁrst of our recommendations was for the establishment of a consultative committee, which would be intended to activate discussion of all the others. An approach to this has been foreshadowed in subsequent discussions with the NSW Ministry for the Arts, in the form of a planned major forum, sponsored by the Ministry and the Australia Council, bringing together all stakeholders in the live music sector (1) developments. Rather, I believe the report, so far, has achieved two things. First, it added a little impetus to a growing debate on the social implications of gambling. More importantly, and very gratifyingly, it brought the issue of live music into the discussion of those implications, and explicitly and publicly installed the subject of popular music into the deﬁnition of a community and its welfare. 425 Endnotes The report, Vanishing Acts: An inquiry into the state of live popular music opportunities in New South Wales, was written by Associate Professor Bruce Johnson (University of New South Wales) and Dr. Shane Homan (University of Newcastle). It was funded by the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts, and is available online from their websites: www.ozco.gov.au www.arts.nsw.gov.au 1. Since presenting the paper, I have been informed by Sally Pryor of the Canberra Times that ‘... on the strength of your study and my column, Greens MLA Kerrie Tucker held an open forum at the ACT [Australian Capital Territory] Legislative Assemble this week tio discuss the problems faced by Canberra’s nightlife and live music scene’ (Email, 24/7/03) IASPM03 - MONTREAL Claiming Authority Lars Kaijser One distinguishing feature that could be observed here is the participating entrepreneurs’ continuing symbolic work of establishing or claiming authority. The question of authority and context Introduction This paper is part of a work in progress, and it is based on a ﬁeldwork among entrepreneurs in the sector of Liverpool Beatles tourism. Today, I will address the question of authority when popular music history is represented. I use the concept of authority to cover the social processes deﬁning how to represent the Beatles. Loosely inspired by Pierre Bourdieus’ notion of ﬁeld Liverpool Beatles tourism could be seen as part of the experience economy and the phenomenon of Beatles is used in a diverse setting of businesses. In Liverpool you ﬁnd a museum, guided tours, rock clubs, bars and shops selling memorabilia. Here, the Beatles is not just a story to be told properly, but a resource that could be used in economic activities. I view the community of Beatles tourism as an arena where different agents are striving for recognition for their way of doing business. To have authority is to be able to recognise, identify and acknowledge the correct ways of doing business and representing the Beatles. And, as this is a social process, authority is something that is always contested. And this contesting is done by the competing companies as well as by representatives The use of and interest in The Beatles brings several actors together. With a reference to Anthony Cohen, the social anthropologist, I would say that the entrepreneurs share Beatles as a symbolic asset and that they thereby constitute a kind of community. At the same time, it is important to stress that there is no equal sign between the actors in this community and their ways of interpreting the phenomenon of Beatles (Cohen 1985). from media, local authorities and by their customers. One way for the entrepreneurs to handle this, as I have found it, is their symbolic work of showing and claiming authority, and thereby seeking legitimacy for their work and their way of interpreting the Beatles. It is possible in the greater context of Beatles tourism to identify, at least, three communities with separated 427 frames of discourse that puts the symbolic work of the entrepreneurs in context. I think that all of these frames are important to acknowledge when the question of authority is viewed. The frames of discourse that I have identiﬁed are for the ﬁrst: The local political community and the way to understand and apprehend Liverpool. For the second: a commercial context and the way of doing business. And for the third: The global context of mediated popular culture and the question of how the history of Beatles best should be interpreted and told. Example directors from Cavern City Tours, the Beatles early drummer Pete Best, who is best known for being sacked and replaced by Ringo Starr as a drummer, a few days before the Beatles recorded their ﬁrst single. Present were also George Harrisons’ sister Louise Harrison and a Counsellor from Liverpool City Council. The press conference was very informal. The participants took turns and said a few words each. The director from Cavern City Tours started the event with welcoming us to the club. He told us that the To be able to elaborate this I would like to use an empirical example from my ﬁeldwork, which highlights some of the themes important and valid in the ﬁeld of Beatles tourism. The situation is a press conference held at the Cavern Club in Liverpool during the 2002 Beatles week. Beatles week is an event organised by Cavern City Tours, one of the main companies in the ﬁeld of Beatles tourism. They are pioneers and established themselves some 20 years ago. festival’ had improved every years since it started, and that it today attracts visitors and bands from literally all the world. Then the ﬁrst one to speak was Louise Harrison, who told us that she was glad to be back in Liverpool. The word, then, goes to the counsellor. He tells us that Liverpool is a fantastic place to visit, and a great place to view where the Beatles started. He said that Liverpool City Council wants to reemphasis the importance of The Cavern club used here is a replica of the original club that hosted the vibrant Liverpool pop scene in the beginning of the sixtieth. The club is located in Mathew Street close to the original spot, and owned by Cavern City Tours. The press conference gathered a small group of journalist. On stage were one of the Beatles to Liverpool and that the amount of money that visitor spends in Liverpool is unbelievable. He said that he wants the visitors to see how beautiful the city is. He also say’s that it is important for the bid for Cultural Capital to acknowledge that bands from all over the world comes to play in Liverpool. 428 The director answers this by telling us that the counsellor is to humble, and that Cavern City Tours is grateful for all the contributions from the City Council. Then the Director said that this week will be dedicated to the memory of the late George Harrison and that Cavern City Tours’ are very happy to have a Harrison person present. He then tells us that for the ﬁrst time in the history of the festival a Beatle is to perform. This ends the press conference. The director says that we all can meet at the bar. I was a bit disappointed after the press conference. When there I found that the event was a bit lame. Later I have found it to be a powerful symbolic way of both showing and claiming authority in the ﬁeld of Beatles tourism. And now I will elaborate the question of authority. The Local setting So, it is time for Pete Best to speak. He tells us that he has three duties this festival. First: he will play with his band. Second: he is together with his two brothers launching a book about their mother and her work with a club called the Casbah club, a club that was prior to the Cavern. And for the third: the Casbah club is to be re-launched. So he invites us all to join him and his brothers at a party that will take place tomorrow. I may add that this is an event that competes with Cavern City Tours own activities during the Beatles festival. It is easy, today, to see Liverpool as part of a general movement in the growth of a post-industrial society, where the importance of manufacture industries has declined and the importance of tourism has increased. Then there are four or ﬁve questions from the audience, and Cavern City Tours are asked if they ever has tried to get Ringo or Paul to perform. The director says that they have never approached them, but that the Beatles company Apple approached Cavern City Tours in 1999 and used the Beatles festival of that year to re-launch the movie Yellow Submarine. The Liverpool of today has changed radically since Liverpool, today, promotes itself as the birthplace of the Beatles. Images of the Beatles are frequently used for example the airport has ofﬁcially changed name to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. But, this has not always been the case. The ﬁrst frame of discourse that could be identiﬁed deals with the interpretation of Liverpool. This addresses the question of how different regions and cities works with their identity, and how this symbolic work with identity has an effect on how stories or local tales are represented and told. 429 Cavern City Tours was established. Twenty years ago Liverpool was a city known for unemployment and riots. The local government during the eighties took no interest in their popular culture heritage (Cohen 2002). At that time, to view Liverpool’ as a location for tourist could easily be taken for a joke. Since then, Liverpool has been working, fairly successfully, with getting rid of the image as a troubled city. economically contributes to the city, but also as a symbolic value in the competition to become cultural capital in 2008. (Which I may add succeeded). Authority here, from the entrepreneur’s points of view, deals with the issue of being able to deﬁne the present situation, being inﬂuential in the assessment of Liverpool, and thereby be inﬂuential in how the future is shaped. Here, the Beatles is a resource that helps to recognise Liverpool as a good city. An underlying assumption here is: if Liverpool is such a bad place, how come it gave birth to the Beatles? And guides often tell stories about how the Beatles has acknowledged their Liverpool roots. And how they secretly and more ofﬁcially has contributed to the city, donating money and so on. In this scenario, telling the story of the Beatles has been part of a process with the purpose to re-establish Liverpool’s reputation. The second frame of discourse puts focus on the commercial sector and the way of doing business. When the counsellor was present at the press conference he did not just show that Cavern City Tours and the City Council have mutual interests but, also that the city now has acknowledged Cavern City Tours way of redeﬁning Liverpool as a destination for tourist. Among Companies and businesses Early on, Cavern City Tours was lobbying for the city to change its policy. Cavern City Tours argued that Beatles was an important resource for the city and a heritage that should be respected (Cohen 2003). It is easy to see the presence of a Counsellor from Liverpool City Council at the press conference’ as a triumph, more so when he in such positive manner acknowledged the importance of the Beatles. Both, as a factor that The companies involved in my study competes’ on an economic market best described in terms of proﬁts and amounts of customers. But, they also compete on a more ideological market, where different companies are trying to get recognition for their way of doing business. This could be viewed a struggle where the actual form and the ideals for carrying out their profession is at stake. In a more down to earth sense this means how 430 to treat customers, what is a good deal when making business or how to treat competing rivals. This frame puts the companies in the Beatles business in the same frame as every other shop, business or entrepreneurial activity. But, it is also important to show distance, to show that you’re not a fanatic. Bare in mind that the image of a fan could be a screaming teenager, and worse, that John Lennon was killed by an obsessive fan. So, you have to show that you enjoy the pop group, but at the same time to keep a distance to the people involved. When it comes to the area of business, to gain an authority is to have a saying, in who is to do business, and how business should be conducted. So telling the story of the Beatles is a work of balance where you have to show seriousness, knowledge and distance at the same time. When I have been talking to people in the Beatles business in Liverpool, at least the representatives from the bigger companies, they have been very expressive with what they don’t want to be. They do not want to be like Elvis Presley’s old home in Graceland. They do not want to be seen as tacky or cheap. I think it is possible to understand the low-key atmosphere that characterised the press conference in this light, and the press conference could well be described as staged modesty. This Liverpool sector of Beatles tourism is by no means settled. There are several companies striving to be recognised as the foremost company in the business. Liverpool City Council are one important actor when recognising who’s in charge of Beatles tourism. But the most important consecration here comes from the Beatles themselves. When the director during the press conference told us that the ﬁlm Yellow Submarine once was re launched at a Beatles festival, he was also very careful enough to point out that it was the Beatles company that contacted Cavern City Tours, not vice Through the area of Liverpool Beatles industry runs a friction between being a fan and a businessman. It is important to show that you are a fan of the Beatles, that you love their music, and are well acquainted with their history, but that you are not here, just for the money. You have to show that you are one of the fans, just helping the other fans to be able to enjoy a good time. versa. The field of representing history The third theme deals with the representation of Beatles. The Beatles could be seen as a global cultural heritage, so this frame of discourse evokes a word-wide community nurtured by the global network of media. 431 The short period of ten years that Beatles existed has resulted in a continuing ﬂow of books and ﬁlms. Journalist, writers, critics and scholars all contribute to these representations, telling the story of the Beatles from their angle and adapting it to their contexts. The story of the Beatles could be interpreted in many ways. In Liverpool, at least often, the story of Beatles is a social drama. was attending the press conference should not be underestimated. To have an original Beatles drummer and the sister of George Harrison is by association very close to having the Beatle there by himself. The importance of their presence was not primary what they said, but being there. Authority when dealing with the history of Beatles is to be able to tell story in a trustworthy way, often with It is possible, when dealing with representing the Beatles to ﬁnd the same wish for authenticity as in every other cultural area. Here items from the sixties are viewed to be more authentic, then memorabilia from the eighties or nineties. And the closer a person or a thing is to the Beatles themselves the more authenticity it carries. So, here authenticity is linked to an intimacy with Beatles, and often the possibility to get a glance of the private spheres of the Beatles lives (Kaijser 2002). reference to a person close to the Beatles. In Liverpool it is also custom to tell the story from a local point of view, and it is important to know the local whereabouts. You got to know the social surroundings of the place where John Lennon grew up, how close this is to Strawberry ﬁeld, and how far it was from the city centre. But here I am dealing with an entrepreneurial setting and another aspect of telling the story is to be able to create the arenas where the stories can be told. So For example: when attending a guided tour to the Beatles Liverpool you don’t get to know that much about the Beatles musical gains. Instead, you here stories’ about their childhood, adolescent and their families. Here, the guided tours’ brings you on a social journey to Liverpool set in a timescape of the forties, ﬁfties and early sixties. authority is also to be able to watch over those arenas and thereby show an inﬂuence in how and by whom the story is told. Of course, being able to use the Cavern Club when organising a press conference, in a symbolic way is a show of strength. And this, even if it is a replica. It could be seen as a bit provoking that Pete Best took The symbolic power of some of the people that the opportunity to invite us to a party that undoubtedly 432 was competing with Cavern City Tours own activities. But, I would assume that this from a symbolic point of view was working in the line of Cavern City Tours ambitions. Here Cavern Club was used as the place, the arena, where you could get an invitation back home to Pete Best and one of the original places that Beatles played. And when it comes to authenticity and intimacy, of course, this is hard to beat. Conclusion was on display in the window of one the shops selling Beatles memorabilia. The next day Liverpool Echo had the same guitar on the front page, but now the by-line was “Fake Lennon guitar”. This was the story. The people responsible for the shop said that a man had approached them and asked them if they wanted to display a Lennon guitar. They thought this was a good idea. They thought it would be fun for the fans to see a reel piece of Lennon The representation of popular music history is moulded through different, but linked frames of discourse. When dealing with the question of authority in an entrepreneurial setting, it is important to stress the multivalent ways of authority that is at stake. It is important to ask what qualities that could be identiﬁed, how and by whom they are recognised, and at the same time ask for the credits that authority gives in each separate community. equipment, as most things in Liverpool are copies or non-original artefacts. Later, when the guitar was in the window a representative from Rickenbacker passed by and revealed that the guitar was a replica made in the late nineties. The guitar was soon taken away, but the question of the authenticity of the guitar was to continue during the fall. When the guitar has being mentioned in conversation with representatives from other companies it has I will conclude with an example, which I think that brings together the frames of discourse that I have been trying to show. caused a lot of irritation and rage. One man told me that during last festival there were hundreds of thousands of people in the city and they were all enjoying themselves, but he had to answer questions from journalist about a On the ﬁrst day of last years Beatles festival the local paper, Liverpool Echo, on the front page had a picture showing a Rickenbacker guitar that was to have belonged to John Lennon. The black and white guitar fake guitar. He said that this was embarrassing. The guitar evoked the frame of discourse that deals with the representation of Liverpool. The guitar recalled the city’s negative image and made it necessary for the 433 businessman to deal with the image of the Liverpool man as a dealer or as a conman. Selected Bibliography Bourdieu, Pierre 1995. The rules of art: genesis and structure of the literary ﬁeld. Stanford, California.: Stanford Univ. Press Furthermore the story of the guitar brought forward the question of how to do business. Several of the businessmen that I have been talking to told me that Beatles business is known to be tasteful. The fake Lennon guitar became an example of how not to make business, an example of a practice ruining the reputation for everyone else in the business. Cohen, Anthony 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Tavistock Publication Limited. Cohen, Sara 2002. Paying One’s Dues In: Talbot, Michael (ed.) The Business of Music. Liverpool: In the end the guitar also raise questions of what you have to know to be able to work with Beatles tourism. One person tells me that everyone who’s in to Beatles knows that it was impossible that Lennons’ guitar would end up in a window display. There are only two guitars of that type and he know where they are. Someone else told me that there had been a rumour about a set list on the guitar arm, but as everyone know: Lennon was too nearsighted to use a set list. So, a serious entrepreneur would have recognised the guitar to be a fake before it ended up in the window. Liverpool University Press. Cohen, Sara 2003 (forthcomming). Convergent Cultures: the Media and the Tourist Imagination. Screaming at the Moptops: convergences between tourism and popular music. Kaijser, Lars 2002. And the rest is history… In: Eriksen, Anne, Jan Garnert & Torunn Sellberg (red.). Historien in på livet. Lund: Nordic Academic Press/Historiska media Urry, John 1995. Consuming places. London: Routledge. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Is There Green Popular Music (Studies)?: Approaching the Question through Pulp’s Album We Love Life Kari Kallioniemi T wo years ago I read an article from New Statesman-magazine (1) where Jonathan Bate, For Bate, the academics have been among the last to wake up to the true extent of our ecological crisis. That is why there hasn’t been any “green attitudes”, approaches or “ideology” in cultural studies. I will ask in this paper what could be green popular music studies? What could this kind of study be by looking it through the history of green themes in pop/rock? In relation to this, I’ll give an example of innovative use of green themes in pop: Pulp’s We Love Life-album. Green Popular Music? the author of the book The Song of the Earth (2) pondered how often do you get to see a ﬁlm or play, or read a novel or work of history or cultural commentary, that is manifestly “green”? He continued arguing that the cultural revolutions of the 1960s (the rights of women, ethnic minorities and gays) are widely recognised and embedded in our consciousness. Cultural studies as much as popular music studies have permeated these new ideas and attitudes through the fabric of society. But what happened to the other great cultural revolution of the 60s: environmental consciousness? Bate’s answer is that since the 60s ecological action has gradually superseded the political direct action. First, during the 70s, the oil crisis made everyone aware of the limits of natural resources. From the 80s and on, more people were engaged in environmental campaigning of various kinds – from local protests over new housing and roads to the global consciousnessraising of Greenpeace – than any other kind of political direct action. Bate’s own ﬁeld of expertise is English literature. He tells in New Statesman-article how he a decade ago got frustrated with the huge industry in the recovery of the literary past (female poets, black autobiographers, gay novelists) while looking around to get some inspiration and for precedents for his approach. In this path he was greeted with near silence. That’s why he started doing ecological literary criticism by re-reading mostly English romantic literary from the point of promotion of an environmental agenda. He found two more reasons for this non-existent of green cultural studies apart from this supposed silence 435 in academia. First, he thought that environmental activists might say they are too busy doing things – saving a whale, stopping a roadwork – to bother with theory. Second, who could speak on behalf of the nature as other as pioneers of post-modern readings of “otherness” have done? Environmental theorists are not themselves trees or whales or ozone holes. If this applies to literary studies, as well as to cultural studies, there is no doubt that the same goes with popular music studies. On the other hand, there is the rich tapestry of green themes in the history of popular music. In particular 1960s-related rock-culture has always been keen to believe that rock maintains certain kind of mythical power, which is related to its pantheistic regenerating force. That is to say that rock likes to thrive towards primitive, towards the soil of the earth and pastoral green utopia. As Robert Pattison argues in his book The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in The Mirror of Romanticism, this is the hidden cultural power of rock and the romantic mythical explanation for its artistic and commercial success (3). Therefore rock could be viewed as the natural bedding for green issues. While tracing “green ideology” in the history of rock, this is apparently true in many ways. First, the romantic myth of rock’s authenticity has guaranteed that certain genres of popular music have always been appropriated having more “green value” than others, in other words, exemplifying more direct relationship towards nature than other musical styles. Folk, different roots musics (country & western, hillibilly), world music and reggae, for example, talk more directly from the viewpoint of natural environments than genres related to urban experiences (hip-hop, synth-pop, industrial). Second, certain kind of popular music has been perceived as having more value working in the ﬁeld of music therapy. In relation to this there are even people who believe that certain music could help to heal the environment. Call it the ecological use of music or whatever, the whole ambient/mood music industry feeds itself from the therapeutical and environmental use of music. The use of ambient music as therapy also comes close to the ideas of green pastoralism in pop, be it the gathering of the tribes in rock-festivals or putting yourself in the position of the nature as “other”. This could happen by imagining what is to be a mole in the Wind in the Willows, as much of the British psychedelia has done, or imagining what is to be a tree, or a whale or a ozone layer – tendency favoured by, for example, psychedelic green albums like Pink Floyd’s Piper At the Gates of Dawn and the rock-apostles like Julian Cope. Not far away from psychedelia are green issues camouﬂaged as metaphor for cosmological angst 436 relating to the ecological catastrophes or environmental apocalypses. Fourth, green political activism of rock-stars. Sting trying to save Amazonian rain-forests and its indigeneous people, Chrissie Hynde supporting Greenpeace and Peter Gabriel trying to raise green consciousness by recording his album in the ﬂoatation tank, are just few examples of, straight and obscure political actions of green ideology in pop. The latest green rock star accessory is the The Future Forests scheme, started in 1996 when Joe Strummer helped to think up the idea to ensure that bands remain “carbon neutral”. It meant that 1 pence per the cd produced by artists went to the project to plant trees with Future Forests to reabsorb the carbon dioxide associated with the production of the album (4). Thus Coldplay, Foo Fighters and Massive Attack have at the moment their personal forests in India, Louisiana and Germany to prevent the global warming. We Love Life as the Green Album cultural force”. But the use of green issues in popular music could also be handled in a different way. For example, as a metaphor for urban alienation and thus ignoring the monolithic idea of rock as “essentially green”. By analysing British band Pulp’s We Love Life album and its exceptional relationship to green issues, the green ideology comes alive in a new and a different light. The singer-songwriter of the group, Jarvis Cocker, has openly admitted in interviews, that he wrote most of the We Love Life while he was frustrated with the celebrity culture of the end-of-the millennium as well as with his role as the some kind of tabloid-freak of 1990s Britpop (5). This led him to his “back to nature”-project. He began to look his favourite subjects of outsiderdom, semi-urban alienation and dysfunctional relationships through environment and nature. If the essential human being for Cocker was an outsider or freak, now nature itself seemed to be transformed into But could you imagine ecological rock criticism or rock history written from the point of view of green issues? As far as I know, there is not examples of these. Maybe there are two reasons for this: Popular music’s often uncomfortable and complicated relationship to politics, and second, the mythical idea of rock being essentially and nonproblematically undeconstructed “green this concept of “freakness”. For Cocker, not only nature serves as a metaphor for human condition, but at the same time it is perceived from darker perspectives than the well-known pastoral ones. The album opener Weeds and Weeds II (The Origin of the Species) connects its central image to the British class consciousness using its wild vegetation to stand in for the immigrants and 437 working-class people who are disdained, exploited, enjoyed, ignored, and discarded by polite society. In this case, the common folk are the weeds of society: useless trees; they never said that you were leaving” Thus We love Life interconnects personal problems and “Weeds must be kept under control or they will destroy everything in their path” The Wicker Man is the same time an ode to the new age paganism and the story of a river in the industrialised area which ﬂows through a timeless course whilst everything else around it mutates. Sunrise is the anthem associated with the majesty of dawn and its healing components which recuperate the lonely bedsitter who has spent too much time behind the curtains and with books and records. Roadkill is a reﬂection on a trip to the airport to pick up the other half of a doomed relationship. The narrator catches sight of a deer dying in the road, and in retrospect, takes it as a sign that the relationship was doomed from the beginning. The Trees might be the most conventional song in the album lyric-wise. Cocker laments a lost love coming to terms with the fact that trying to get it back just is not possible anymore. Personal problems are associated with collective ecological problems while Cocker croons: human relationships to environmental problems and uses “dysfunctional” nature as a metaphor for both. At the same time it seeks new ways to display green ideology in the contemporary urban culture. The nature for Jarvis Cocker is the nest for human mating rituals and therefore the sanctuary from the urban turmoil. But nature also reminds human beings about their shabby personal and environmental conditions. Therefore We Love Life is the record which attempts to re-negotiate the whole concept of environment in popular music culture. In addition to this, Pulp also maintained overtly political but unusual green proﬁle when promoting the album. During the summer 2002 the group organised an unique tour consisting gigs exclusively played in British national forests. The band also attended at the Eden project in StAustell, Cornwall, at the place where new vegetation was produced in the specially created greenhouse environment. The band also took part in the Future Forests scheme. Some afterwords “Yeah, the trees, those useless trees produce the air that I am breathing/Yeah, the trees, those These public appearances and the themes of the album were obviously an attempt to expand the relationship 438 between pop and green ideology and to ﬁnd new ways to promote green themes in pop. Personally I am currently trying to create the research project where the historical and cultural analysis of green themes in popular music are linked to the question how and why that kind of research could be raised in the ﬁeld of popular music studies. (1) Bate, Jonathan: Out of the Twilight. New Statesman 16 July 2001, 25-27. Endnotes (2) Bate, Jonathan: The Song of the Earth. Harvard University Press 2000. (3) Pattison, Robert: The Triumph of Vulgarity. Rock Music in the Mirror of Romanticism. Oxford University Press 1987. (4) New Musical Express 7 June 2003, 15. (5) Kessler, Ted: Postcards from the Hedge. New Musical Express 2 June 2001, 27-29. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “At Times, We May Have Gone a Bit Too Far”: Technologies of Spectacle in Pink Floyd’s P.U.L.S.E. Stage Performance at Earl’s Court, London 1994 Kimi Kärki age imago they had and which they hated. Thus anonymity become a part of group’s authenticity: essayist Walter Benjamin’s idea on the “Here and Now” value of the work of art is reversed – Pink Floyd is not “Hier und Jetzt”, it’s “out there behind their wall of spectacle”. They are and are not present at stage. The star of the show is the techno-spectacle itself, not the performer of the music. This technological mask is what the group is being recognised from and which paradoxically, while covering and surrounding them with modern phantasmagoria, gives them their special place in the ﬁeld of rock performance. Introduction P ink Floyd, a band almost synonymous for audiovisual innovations from the mid-1960s and massive rock-spectacles of the 1970s, has become a source of popular nostalgia for several generations. This role is obvious in the band’s later career, especially after the megalomaniac Primus Motor of the group, Roger Waters, left the band in the early 1980s. Perhaps the most ambitioned effort of the post-Waters Pink Floyd was their 1994 Division Bell Tour. I never saw any of the shows which my paper deals with. That is why I use a video copy of P.U.L.S.E., which is Pink Floyd Division Bell Tour live at Earl’s Court, London 1994. I will discuss this P.U.L.S.E. performance from two points of view. First, I will consider the position of the group as a deﬁner of the stadium rock aesthetics, I’d like to suggest that while Pink Floyd members were not very personal on stage or had not very much typical star-like quality in their performance they could actually beneﬁt from that anonymity. This particular lack of star quality on stage had an effect to their techno-spectacle, and fed the space- and second, I will examine some dystopic narratives of Pink Floyd’s stage spectacle. I will argue in this context, that technological innovations are often produced to maintain forms of spectacular entertainment and mass-culture. 440 Visualisation of Sounds? that it is as important for the designer to be aware of acoustics as of theatrical structures, when designing a stadium event. The sound itself creates spatial illusion sometimes very central for the intended concert experience. The central point of an arena show is in its portability. I quote Eric Holding, the author of the book on the probably most inﬂuential stage designer, Mark Fisher, who has also designed the Division Bell -stage, and other stages for U2 (ZooTV, PopMart), Rolling Stones (Voodoo Lounge, Bridges to Babylon), and so on: “In this respect they are fugitive architectures which, like a circus or a fairground, magically arrive, I start by quoting researcher Andrew Goodwin: Indeed, most stadium concerts are now accompanied by simultaneous video replay onto large screens. Attending a live performance by a pop megastar these days is often roughly the experience of listening to pre-recorded music (taped or sequenced) while watching a small, noisy TV set in a large, crowded ﬁeld.(1) Stadium scale performance is based on the architecture of light and sound, where the space, when needed, disappears, and gives way to new reﬂected worlds that are easily transformed to meet the demands of each song and the general themes and narratives of the tour. recontextualise their surroundings and then disappear quite literally into the night.”(2) My example concentrates on the movie clip from the beginning of the last song of the performance, “Run Like Hell”, compared to earlier performance of the same song. Division Bell tour can be seen as professional My argument is, that the usage of light is one of the key elements in modern architecture in general, but especially so in technological spectacles. In rockspectacles the light comes second, right after the sound. So, are we able to call these spectacles the architecture of sound and light? Or should we just say that designing stages is all about designing the material stage itself plus the lighting, and let the musicians worry about the music itself? I would like to argue show, in which every single factor has been made to serve the performance. Mark Fisher’s stage designs and Marc Brickman’s lighting formed a technological basis for the shows. By the way, Brickman used clear references to the psychedelic lighting of 1960s clubs, just to add to the general nostalgia… The example footage was ﬁlmed in Pink Floyd’s Concert at Earl’s Court, London, 1994. What we 441 see is surroundings for David Gilmour’s rather long guitar intro during the beginning of a song “Run Like Hell”, originally from The Wall album 1979. Walther Benjamin called photographing “quoting with light”. I’d like to say that my audiovisual examples really are all about quoting with motion, light and sound. “Soundalisation” of Visions? just saw, through the lighting and special effects. But it is also a “soundalisation” of visions. How come this word, “soundalisation”, does not exist in the regular speech? Yes, our culture is dominated by visual metaphors, as stated earlier, but is there any way to try and change that for a minute? There is certainly sometimes a correspondence between the sound and the visual phenomena on stage, synaesthesia if you like, but I agree with Research Professor Nicholas Cook who claimed in his book Analyzing Musical Multimedia that “interaction” is much better concept for this analysis. There is an interaction, which is harder to interpret than the self-evident links between the light and sound. That is the interaction between the textual narratives – the lyrics, sometimes whole conceptual stories – of the song and the sonic phenomena – rhythm, characteristic voices, sound effects, and so on. One ease is of course the fact that lyrics are also sung, and thus one does “soundalise” one’s visions by singing the lyrics of the songs. Words don’t just duplicate musical meanings, they add new layers of meaning, AND they ARE music as well. The tone, accents, emotions, and so on, are all important factors here. Another example, again “Run Like Hell”, somewhat illustrates my points of views. In a CD-example, My aim is to interpret these concerts also from the musical point of view. The question of sound is related to the history of senses and to the way our acoustic surroundings – or Soundscapes if you like – and how our different ways of listening are determined by our cultural background. To be able to distance ourselves from traditional text-based hermeneutics we must face the challenge listening brings to the interpretation process. Interpretation is a dialogue itself, and thus listening is a major part of hermeneutic process.(3) Listening to the audiovisual sources opens up a different kind, a more concrete interpretative ﬁeld. Listening becomes for a moment the central way to reach for the past lebenswelt. This leads us to the history of the senses in the age of mechanical reproduction, to the necessity of understanding the chronological aspects of the sounds.(4) What mostly happens in a rock concert is a visualisation of sound thorough the screened narratives, or, as we 442 Pink Floyd starting the same song in 1980-81 The Wall –tour. The opening speech and vocal effects deﬁnitely add a very different idea on the interpretation. Here listeners are not allowed to enjoy the song, they are actually forced to think their role. experience of the audience. The “star” or “artist” on the stage is not alone, just behind and all around him is a mediated and simultaneous representation of the very same stadium star. Mass-stardom is thus a powerful mix of physical presence and media construction. Staging the audiovisual Aaaaghhh ! Are there any paranoids in the audience tonight? Is there anyone who worries about things? Pathetic! This is for all the weak people in the audience. Is there anyone here who’s weak? This is for you, it’s called Run Like Hell. Let’s all have a clap! Come on, we can’t hear you get your hands together, have a good time! Enjoy yourselves! That’s better! (5) The most interesting thing here is the presence of the audience in both examples, the video and the CD. The audience is the faceless corpus responding to every possible act of the artist with a loud cheer. The crowd wants to participate, have a good old ritualistic call-and-response dialogue. The video screens change the live concert to an even more multi-layered event: it fortiﬁes the sensory Technological innovations are often produced to maintain forms of spectacular entertainment and mass-culture. The use of gigantic venues changed rock performances into total or totalitarian mass-art, in which rock stardom was preserved and created by technological means. Aesthetics of the stadium spectacle have grown from this effort to exaggerate and fortify audiovisual gestures through technology. Without this cultural technology there wouldn’t be any stadium stardom: by showing the close-ups of the facial expressions of the artists in the video screen it is possible – even if this happens only partly – to restore the intimacy that has been lost because of the huge scale of the events. According to journalist Paul Stump Pink Floyd was one of the ﬁrst legends of the 1960s who realised how to exploit their huge masses of fans by the nostalgia created in large arena tours. He feels that the group has in its later years invited their fans to 443 worship their myth in a ritualistic fashion. Nothing more was needed than that the myth was kept alive in a right way. Stump sees irony especially in the fact that this band, which had once been one of the leaders of musical counterculture in England and later the harsh critic of the high culture fortresses, had now become a satire of itself. To quote Stump: ”[t]hree-quarters of one of the most imaginative rock outﬁts in history plodding through yet another evening of Industrial Light and Magic.”(6) like nature of the western world in his inﬂuential and polemic book La Societe du Spéctaclé, The Society of the Spectacle. For him the spectacle means social human relation, which is mediated through pictures. However, it has nothing to do with communication, as spectacle is disrupting the world and emphasising the autonomy of the visual. So, spectacle for Debord is deﬁnitely something negative in its nature. As we live in the society of spectacle, everything appears as visual surface without any deeper substance. Spectacle demands passive approving: everything that appears Guitar player and singer – in this order – David Gilmour noted this paradox of Pink Floyd scale stadium spectacles already in 1978, in an interview for Italian Ciao 2000 magazine. He recognised that the group had become a monstrous machine, and that their technology had suffocated the feelings of the music. Thus he felt they had sometimes lost the control over their own performances. I quote: ”If you only rely on the technique alone, there isn’t any real purpose to the music. At times, we may have gone a bit too far.”(7) Funnily enough, Gilmour was the Primus Motor to strive towards even bigger stadium scale shows in the 1980s and 1990s, with Delicate Sound of Thunder, and Division Bell tours. So, we are dealing with the special effects now. One central feature of technical world is spectacle. Cultural theorist Guy Debord has discussed the spectacle- is good, and everything good appears. Here we have an obvious tautology, which is no accident. To me this is the real core of the cultural pessimism and anxiety of earlier Pink Floyd, so well and surprisingly manifested in this later version of the band that had lost the annoying sarcasm, hate and conceptual framework of its earlier mastermind Waters. Spectacle feeds on itself, and the technological dimension of Pink Floyd only brings new levels to the ritualistic visual quality of group’s performances. Debord claims that spectacle is a direct continuation of religion, a materialistic reconstruction of a religious illusion.(8) One could compare it also to Walter Benjamin’s ideas on phantasmagoria. Conclusion Stadium technology was innovated to provide means 444 for modern Gesamtkunstwerk, a complete work of art. The technology connects the performer’s theatrical gestures to wider, well beforehand planned thematic structures. This is what large venues and their disposable architecture are all about: connecting sound, light and material surfaces with popular imagery, and in the case of Pink Floyd also with popular nostalgia – of the several fan generations from 60s Hyde Park listeners onward – and the historical references of the audiovisual narratives. refers straight to Nazism’s way of presenting the politics in aesthetic way. Furthermore, these images have been exploited both in Hollywood entertainment (such as Star Wars series) and modern music videos.(9) This description by Kupiainen refers to the Wagnerian and theatrical gestures of Friz Lang’s movie Metropolis, but it also applies perfectly to rock stadium spectacle in all it’s exaggeration, don’t you think? The fact that Kupiainen mentions the music videos is certainly The idea of a uniﬁed work of art has received harsh critique from Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno. Philosopher Reijo Kupiainen sums this conversation interestingly, when he relates Wagner-critique to some newer forms of uniﬁed work of art. Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk is, by the deﬁnition of Heidegger, religious fever or ecstasy of masses, where the music has the central role as the provider of the experience. The great stage-set is where the music becomes the core of the event, and the accelerator of emotions. Uniﬁed work of art is for all of these three philosophers conventional idea, the fake art of the masses. Kupiainen summarises this well (my own translation from Finnish): important. Remember Queen and their use of the images of Metropolis in their video “Radio Gaga” in the early 1980s. Even better comparison can be made with the Riefenstahlian aesthetics of Third Reich in the 1930s, The Triumph of the Will, etc. Especially Alan Parker’s movie The Wall seems to be in parts a straight comment on fascism-like conventions on stage. PULSE, then again, is essentially epitomising what could be called techno-spectacle in its most Debordian way. In my sources the visual and acoustic worlds are intertwined. This combined experience forms the basis of my interpretation. This way one audiovisual source can alter the total “sound-picture” I have, as happened in the case of my example of two versions of Run Like Hell, and thus revise my hermeneutic process completely. Wagnerism is condensed into the bombastic images, where the work and crowds have been subjected to rhythmic decoration. This certainly 445 Gadamer, Hans-Georg: Truth and Method. 2nd revised Endnotes 1. Goodwin 1990, 269. edition. Transl. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Alkuteos: Warheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischer hermeneutik (1960). New York: Continuum, 1999. 2. Holding 2000. 3. Gadamer 1999, 462. Goodwin, Andrew: ”Sample and Hold. Pop Music in the Digital Age of Reproducing”. Orig. Critical Quarterly 30 (3) 1988. In On Record. Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Ed. by Simon Frith & Andrew Goodwin. London: Routledge, 1990. 4. On the history of the senses see Salmi 2001, 339-357. 5. Pink Floyd 2000, “Run Like Hell”. 6. Stump 2001, 50. Holding, Eric: Mark Fisher. Staged Architecture. Chichester: Wiley-Academy, Architectural Monographs No 52, 2000. 7. Ciao 2001 (Italy) 13.8.1978. Fitch 2001, 252. 8. Debord 1995, 12-15, 17-18. Kupiainen, Reijo: Heideggerin ja Nietzschen taidekäsitysten jäljillä. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1997. 9. Kupiainen 1997, 80-82. Pink Floyd: Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live. Pink Floyd 1980-81. Limited edition. EMI. LC0542 7243 5 23562 2 5 (5 23563-4 2). 2000. Selected Bibliography Debord, Guy: The Society of the Spectacle. Orig. La Société du spectacle (1967). Trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1995. Pink Floyd: P.U.L.S.E. 20.10.94. D: David Mallet. M: Pink Floyd. Columbia Music Video, PMI MVD 4914363, 1995. Fitch, Vernon (ed.): Pink Floyd. The Press Reports 1966-1983. Burlington, Ontario: Collector’s Guide Publishing, 2001. Salmi, Hannu: ”Onko tuoksuilla ja äänillä menneisyys? 446 Aistiympäristön historia tutkimuskohteena”. In Immonen, Kari & Leskelä-Kärki, Maarit (Eds.): Kulttuurihistoria. Johdatus tutkimukseen. Helsinki: Tietolipas 175. SKS, 2001. 339-357. Stump, Paul: ”The Incredible Journey”. Uncut, Take 54, November 2001. 42-50. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Across the River: The Stage Performance Design Co-operation of Peter Gabriel and Robert Lepage Kimi Kärki T his paper is more or less a sideproject from my PhD work-in-progress on Anglo-American ideas and meanings which links them all together. I am particularly interested in the methods, conditions and limits of a creative design process. stadium stage design, particularly focused on British designer Mark Fisher and his work with bands such as Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, and U2. This brief excursion with Peter Gabriel and Robert Lepage will give me more knowledge of designing a large scale rock performance, as the way they work is different from Fisher’s, being more intimate and theatre-based. I want to understand how they work and what kind of creative process it is. This is the paper as it was presented in Rome, with only some small changes, but I am developing an article based on these ideas. Peter Gabriel (born 1950), one of the most well known rock stars in the world, has always been interested in rock music performance as a form of theatre. His stage performances are famous for their theatrical innovations and experiments. Already in Genesis in the late 1960s and especially in the ﬁrst half of 1970s he took weird roles, stories and costumes to the centre of their performances. In his early solo days, while trying to get away from the heritage of Genesis, he consciously avoided these performative elements, but Designing a powerful rock performance is a demanding task. One must have knowledge of both theatrical and technical issues to be able to combine audiovisual narratives with well working machinery behind the show. The spectacle is the audiovisual surface, a materialist substitute for religion, as argued by philosopher Guy Debord, but under the surface there is also another, mostly hidden world of mechanics, machines, lighting rigs, wires, road crew, and especially the world of all this changed in the early 1990s. He became hugely interested in the possibilities of multimedia, and had a plan to create a theme park around his audiovisual ideas. This led to two CD-ROMs, Xplora and Eve, and furthermore the 20 minute long Millennium Dome main show (and its soundtrack Ovo) on which he worked with architectural designer Mark Fisher. Rather than a musician Gabriel would like to be labelled as an “experience designer”, just to mark that he is 448 constantly trying to create more than just a rock show. The suggested names for the planned theme park attractions speak for themselves: Minotaur Maze, Ride of Fears, Black Hole, Psyche Drama, Big Dipper Tripper, Hall of Digital Mirrors… all this in “Real World”, once called “Gabrieland”. for an “i”, (Robert Lepage becomes Peter Gabroel and Peter Gabriel becomes Ribert Lepage). All this tells us about eccentric minds that like to play games with words and numbers. Furthermore, both of them used Chinese system of meditating and predicting the future events, I Ching, for years as a creative tool when designing shows. They immediately felt they were meant to work Peter Gabriel’s two latest tours, Secret World (from 1993), and Growing Up (between 2002 and 2004) were ambitious audiovisual theatre, in many ways using the same imagery and ideas as his sideprojects of different multimedia products. They were planned in close co-operation with Canadian artist and designer Robert Lepage (born 1957) who had a long experience in the experimental theatre and opera as an actor, director and designer. Lepage had actually seen Genesis live in Quebec when he was twelveyear-old, and this experience had a profound inﬂuence on him and his choice of profession. The joint effort of Gabriel and Lepage offers us an interesting case-study on the usage of different cultural narratives and theatrical concepts in audiovisual rock performance. Right from the beginning of their co-operation when they met ﬁrst time in December 1990 they found they used the same goals to achieve creative results. They were fascinated to ﬁnd both of their names numerical value in numerology to be seven. Quite bizarrely they also noted that the letters of their names when fooled around as anagrams were the same save just one letter, an “o” together, in a way they felt being like doubles. I quote Lepage: I ﬁnd this fascinating. It’s not so much that I believe in it, but that it’s kind of poetry that helps me to create. Maybe the connections are only made because we decide to give meaning to the games of numbers and forms. But even if we don’t understand why they exist, these connections are nevertheless there. This is remarkable when we interpret rock shows, either as scholars or as rock fans, giving meanings to what we observe during a concert. I’d like to take this to a more methodological level. Methodological issues The hermeneutical philosophy of art as formulated by German philosophers Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer listens and watches the work of art as a dynamic actor, as a part of semiosis process where the meanings 449 and acts are fused. In the cultural sense the work of art only exists in its interpretations. Gadamer chose the German word ‘Spiel’ when talking about the interpretation of work of art. ‘Spiel’, meaning game or more appropriately play, has always its own rules, its own space and its own time. The art exists in its interpretations but it’s still more than any of the interpreters that observe the work of are AND it is more than any players of the play. That’s why doing research is always also mapping ones own position in relation to the object of the study. However, it is evident that the past of the work of art is present in it and thus understanding the work of art leads us to deeper understanding of the past. Thus, a work of art transfers historical information. The nature of this transfer is dialogical: work of art as a play is a subject which hides meanings and is renewed in relation to each player. Secret World and Growing Up shows would hardly qualify as art to this late German philosopher, nevertheless Lepage comes from highbrow theatre background. Certainly the playful elements combined with the serious and universal themes make them excellent subjects of interpretation. As a matter of fact Robert Lepage pays attention to Gabriel’s ability to play, calling him with a hard to translate French word ludique, which refers to playful character. As Lepage says: comes out of playing [music] a lot, and the idea of playing. I think that’s also why he got involved in this theme park thing, this idea that there’s so much to be transmitted and communicated through playing.[--] So it was important that I got a chance to go to Real World and play with him and try things out and play around. So we invented a miniature playground for this show and I got to explore with him some of the ideas really early on. I have witnessed Peter Gabriel live only once, in Bell Arena, Montreal, in summer 2003. This was a happy coincidence as I was there to participate in a previous IASPM international conference. However, this live show I saw was not purely one of those Growing Up tour shows, it was a special event for the fans in Montreal where Gabriel’s organization combined elements both from Secret World and Growing Up. The stage was a traditional angular one at the other end of the hall, so it didn’t utilize the round stage idea at all, an idea central to both concepts I’m dealing with here. So after all I am dealing heavily with the DVD material. The interpretation I make from the material is very heavily That’s one of the great qualities of Peter’s genius, his playfulness, pun intended – play in the sense of theatre as a player, what he does mediated, as it has been captured by several directed cameras and then ﬁxed by the editing process to be the ﬁnal mechanical reproduction as Walter Benjamin 450 would call it. As stated earlier the interpretation process must be a conscious hermeneutical dialogue or rather a play which will go on and on after every watching of the audiovisual material and every discussion concerning the ﬁlm. The chief danger is to let the dominant eye to rule the interpretation and focus less on the soundscapes of the concert ﬁlm. After all the experienced space is created not just by the material stage and the video walls giving the representation of the artist or some other narrative image… it is also notably created by the use of sound panning and the usage of different echoes and delays. Thus the architecture of rock sets is basically a strong interplay between light and sound. helped to create many of the special effects. To do a show completely in the round was the logical next step or evolution after ﬁnding the Secret World round stage more rewarding. Secret World The idea behind Us album was about relationships and communication. The original idea for the stage show was an “all out video assault” with ﬂying TV screens and lots of visual action. Gabriel decided to change the focus after he heard about U2’s ZooTV, a Mark Fisher design (Gabriel actually went to see the U2 show ﬁve times). He went to more intimate direction which probably serves the emotional narrative well. The show, besides including an army of special Secret World, a concept based on Gabriel’s Us album (1992), had a narrative on relationships between men and women, in both metaphorical and biographical level, and the design of the stage took the idea of symbolic masculinity and femininity further. Two horizontal stages, angular masculine and round feminine, were connected by a pathway / treadmill. This idea of connected horizontality was turned vertical in Growing Up tour stage, which had only round stage but in two ﬂoors, upper suspended to the lower level, these two forming up and down sky and earth parts. The earth part had two sections, inner and outer. The outer ring was also able to revolve horizontally which effects, also relies greatly on Peter Gabriel’s theatrical habitus. He is able to move from messianic rock star gestures to sharing his fractured face on video screens with a portable camera as in the song ‘Digging in the Dirt’. In show’s climax the whole band disappears in a suitcase on the ﬂoor. The suitcase is then picked up by Gabriel who walks to the centre of the round stage and is covered by a huge oval structure lowering from the ceiling. For Gabriel it is extremely important that the visual side is in sync with the songs. Quote: If you absorb the images as they come at you, 451 hopefully some of them will have an afterlife, and resonate a little. The sense I’ve got back from people is that the music and the imagery have come from the same place, that they haven’t been artiﬁcially stuck together. The very high level of musicianship is one very important factor in Peter Gabriel tours. Utilizing such well know musicians as Tony Levin, Manu Katche and David Rhodes, to name but a few, gives an organic feel behind the usage of loops and samplers which are needed to bring the multi-multi-multi-layered Real World Studio efforts alive. A lot of Us album was about relationships. This album is still from a personal perspective, but it probably looks at a bigger picture. I think a lot of what we see in life is what’s just ahead of us; we forget what’s above us or below us. [--] The moon and water were symbols for this record. They have a continuous unseen inﬂuence, and it’s that unseen world I wanted to write about. The process of designing Growing Up tour began with the usual discussions in expensive restaurants and sketches on table mats but then they turned up to something different. Lepage and Gabriel, who also collect art books, spent hours going through them to Example: “Come Talk To Me”. From the beginning of Secret World Live DVD [Dr. Who phonebooth, Tardis, anyone?!!! Notice the theatral gestures begging for communication from Gabriel at the male angular stage to the round stage where Paula Cole is acting as the feminine counterpart. Masculine and feminine voices interact and introduce the central theme: communication between the sexes.] Growing up ﬁnd the right feeling for the tour, and also went around to talk with artists and sculptors about their ideas. The show is performed at the round stage, a decision imposed by its ﬁnancial backers in order to sell more tickets. But this solution increased intimacy as well, Lepage believing that performing in the round gives the audience a different perspective from a regular live experience. Peter Gabriel’s latest album, Up, was the fruit of a long process. Ten years or so after the Us album he came up with a complex and more universally themed album. Gabriel on Up album: Growing Up show was surprisingly physical: Gabriel performs suspended upside down, riding around on a tiny bicycle, and rolling around the stage inside a giant transparent ball called Zorb. 452 Because the stages change gradually there is a fairly strict order on the set list. While the hanging cloth in the shape of an egg is suspended above the earth stage it acts as a three-dimensional projection screen that is lost when the Zorb ball has been released, so songs designed with video images have to appear earlier in the show. from earth stage to heaven stage. The heaven stage starts to move down until the two meet at the end of the song. Notice rising intense violin background and the gated drum sound, a signature element in many Gabriel songs such as ‘Intruder’ and ‘Biko’]. (Brief) Conclusion In the most successful contemporary arena spectacles As the themes of the Up album involve life cycles and growing up, the egg was a perfect choice. The images projected to the egg were mostly watery in their nature, water plants and shapes. The idea Gabriel and Lepage had was that the images would turn from water to drier elements and ﬁnally almost ﬁery before the egg gave birth to the Zorb ball. the visual narratives are carefully intertwined with the audio narratives and the lyrical content of the songs. Peter Gabriel goes through great effort to achieve this, he is in a way a living paradox, because he goes to these huge arenas to say “Shh, listen…” and performs quite a long list of introverted, emotionally bare songs such as “Secret World”, “Mercy Street”, and “I Grieve” among the more rocking songs, “Sledgehammer” being Marking the road crew by dressing them in orange is interesting and brilliant idea as they become part of the show, rising from the depths of the stage through trap doors to make the adjustments and slight changes to the stage. The musicians were stationed around the centre of the stage, facing each other, giving an intimate and close feel to their interaction. Example: 15 “Signal To Noise” from Growing Up Live DVD (1:52 onwards) [This song is based on the vocal improvisation by late suﬁ mystic singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Ged Lynch is drumming inside the fabric which forms an electric tower sending signal The move from horizontal to vertical changed the dynamics of the show, but the purpose was the same. the prime example of those. I quote Gabriel: I love to do that stuff. Robert is brilliant and I’m very lucky to work with him. When we sit down and start to conceive a show, the ideas are plenty and then we try to hold things back to a realistic budget. Going to arenas is a gamble but it gives me an opportunity to do some of these things we wouldn’t be able to do in a theater. 453 I quote Lepage: Selected Bibliography There are 20,000 fans who want to listen to ‘Sledgehammer’; you know it’s the last song on the set list and you have to get them there. Whatever you do, it has to be playful and poetic enough for them to be mesmerized. Bright, Spencer. Peter Gabriel. An Authorized Biography. London: Sidwick & Jackson 1999. Gabriel, Anna. Peter Gabriel. Growing Up On Tour A Family Portrait. A Film By Anna Gabriel. DVD. Real World, PGDVD01 180030000 15 4, 2003. Gabriel, Peter. Secret World Live. Widescreen. Digitally Re-Mixed and Re-Mastered. DVD. Real World / Geffen 0694935949, 2003. Gabriel, Peter, Hamilton, Hamish. Growing Up Live. DVD. Real World / Warner Music 5050466-8596-2-4, 2003. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Practice of Music Fandom on the Internet Marjorie Kibby fan ﬁction, such as the Nsync stories, but more commonly for music fans encompasses the production of web sites, compilation disks, artwork, favourites lists and genre guides. These practices are a form of “cultural creativity or ‘play’” based in consumerism. Hills calls these practices ‘performative consumption’ (2002:159). Practices of Fandom F an cultures occupy a space between consumerism and resistance. The image of fans as resisting mainstream culture through the creation of musicbased subcultures is a recurring theme in studies of popular music, and a number of writers have provided reasons for seeing fandom as ‘resistive’ (cf Jenkins 1992, Fiske 1992). However it is important to see fan cultures ﬁrmly within the context of commodiﬁcation. The practice of fandom is largely a “set of ‘unruly’ consumption practices” which are “rapidly recuperated within the discourses and practices of marketing” (Hills 2002:36). It is the level of performative consumption that provides social and cultural capital within the fan community. Cultural capital is expressed through the display of knowledge about the music or musicians and the possession of desirable paraphernalia. Social capital is revealed through personal contacts with the musicians, or their contacts; or with other high status fans. Fan practices occur at the conjunction of affect and commodiﬁcation, and incorporate enunciative experiences, consumption habits and textual Fandom as performative consumption is facilitated in a number of ways by networked computer technologies. The Internet is a social space, a communication channel, a publication medium, and a distribution mechanism, and as such facilitates, supports and enables a growing range of fan practices. The Internet is an “engine of social and commercial change” (Jones 2000:222) and has had a signiﬁcant effect on the social-commercial activities that are labelled ‘fandom’. The changes production (Fiske 1992). Enunciative practices cover the range of ways of talking about music and musicians. Consumption habits include not only the purchase of recorded music but the acquisition of a whole range of products from swapping bootlegs to buying t-shirts and following a live tour. Textual production includes 455 effecting performative consumption practices include: run by fans including Amy Walter’s ‘A Thousand Lights’ and Jo Gardiner’s ‘A Bullet For a Diamond Ring’, and 1. A growth in new discursive spaces and practices 2. A trend towards disintermediation 3. A reconﬁgured experience of space and time. Methodology the Augie March listing at Amazon.com (incorporating CDNow). Augie March @ Yahoo Groups The Augie March discussion forum is an e-group, it is a web based system with a site that describes the function This study examined the online practices of fans of the group Augie March. Augie March are an Australian group, formed in 1996 and based in Melbourne. They are generally seen as being part of the Melbourne music-art scene (their name taken from the Saul Bellow novel). Their music is labelled ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’ rock, although they are signed to the major label BMG. The band has to date released two CD ‘singles’ of ﬁve tracks, and two albums, Sunset Studies in 2000 and Strange Bird in 2002. They play in smaller venues, often aligned with University campuses or student audiences, and they receive airplay primarily on the national, government funded, youth radio station Triple J. This group was chosen because of their ‘local’ orientation, and their high proﬁle within that community. of the forum, and provides space for the sharing of photographs and other ﬁles, and a searchable archive of messages. Messages can be read and replied to on the web site, however it is experienced primarily as a mailing list, and most subscribers receive messages as individual email. The archives of this particular group are public, so anyone can read the messages but only registered members can post. Individuals ﬁrst register with Yahoo Groups and then join the Augie March group. The forum provides a new discursive space in that it is not bound by geography, time or other constraints of face-to-face discussion. The debut album gave the web address for the forum, and a large number of new people joined the group at this time. Many were The Internet practices of Augie March fans were analysed on a number of sites, the Augie March mailing list at Yahoo Groups, the Augie March ofﬁcial web site, the Augie March page on the BMG Music site, web sites fans who lived outside the major east-coast cities and had not seen Augie March live, and therefore were not able to participate in face-to-face discussion, or shared experiences. The online forum provided a space where 456 an online community formed around their shared taste culture, and fans engaged in a range of activities including the exchange of information and opinion, making decisions on a range of purchases and the production of new and adapted texts. Augie-March.com Amazon enable fans to communicate with each other about the musicians and the music, as an alternative to ‘professional’ reviews and charts. It also affords an opportunity for the production of new music related texts, and provides a value-added consumer experience. At these three sites, e-groups, web sites and online stores, fan practices were identiﬁed, categorised and The Augie March web site has a page for fans which contains links to fan sites, resources including stores and chart listings, recommendations of other music, and an email list for updated information. The BMG page gives only brief information on the band. Most of the fan sites complement the ofﬁcial site, linking to biographical information and tour dates rather than repeating them. These fan sites probably exemplify textual production by music fans and contain reviews and photos, guitar tablature and song lyrics, background information on ﬁlm-clips and cd art, gossipy news, and guest books for visitor comments. Augie March via Amazon.com compared to fan practices described in the literature. The major differences identiﬁed between online and ofﬂine fan experiences were the use of new discursive spaces and practices, a tendency for more direct contact with fewer intermediaries, and a redeﬁnition of concepts of space and time such as ‘local’ and ‘now’. A growth in new discursive spaces and practices “The most primal instinct a fan has is to talk to other fans about this common interest” (Clerc 1996:74) and the Internet has provided new opportunities and new mechanisms for this discussion. Discussion online is not an entirely new practice, nor does it create virtual communities separate from the face-to-face experience Amazon provides a number of spaces for fan activities; rate this item, customer reviews, guides, and listmania. Visitors to the Augie March listing are able to rate each CD in stars, review it in around one hundred words, submit a best-of list, or provide a guide to a genre, movement or artist. The discursive spaces at of fandom. Norms and patterns of communication on the Internet are fundamentally inﬂuenced by ofﬂine contexts, and inﬂuence them in return (Baym 1995). However, the Internet, which offers “constant access to a fan identity and community” intersects “with fans’ 457 affective relationships in such a way as to alter fan practices” (Hills 2002:172). Within fandom a sense of individuality-in-community is articulated, and fan identity is dependent on a relationship with other fans. This relationship is always available online. Online forums provide 24/7 contact between fans – someone is almost always there to discuss the object of fandom, and to share musical experiences. Online, musicians are linked to historical trends, contemporary issues and speciﬁc genres in detailed threaded discussions that may be more difﬁcult to experience in common fan meeting places. Information is authenticated, arguments extended to logical conclusions, a wide range of opinions are brought to bear on an issue. As a result, fans may come to experience a higher As a result, performative consumption can become a much larger part of everyday life. Fans develop cultural capital through the acquisition of knowledge about the object of fandom, and biographical, logistical, historical and musical information exchanges form the basis of online discussion. Fan social capital comes from the people known, and the online forums provide access to personnel linked to the performer, or to the performer themselves, and to a wide network of other fans. Fans with access to online discursive spaces and practices have the opportunity to acquire much greater cultural and social capital than those without. Online discussion forums also provide a space in which “listeners actively interpret and collectively construct their sense of music and its world” (Shepherd 1986:307). The characteristics of computer mediated communication perhaps allow for a more in-depth, more highly reasoned and more accurately researched exchange than some face-to-face forums. The people who subscribe to the list see themselves as ‘real’ fans ... the site is meant for people who are passionate about Augie March more than the parttime fan ... (Kris 8/03/00). It is a space where only mild criticism of particular gigs or songs is tolerated, and level of affective sensibility, where affective sensibility is deﬁned as a “particular form of engagement” in which certain texts come to matter more than others (Grossberg 1992:54). Affect is socially constructed in that it is the cultural baggage that gives colour to our experiences, and in turn “affect plays a crucial role in organising social life because affect is constantly constructing, not only the possibility of difference, but the ways speciﬁc differences come to matter” (Grossberg 1992:58). The amount, intensity and duration of online discussions can provide persuasive force in the determination of ‘difference’ - which album is smoother, which venue is livelier, which history is truer ... 458 then only if the criticism is qualiﬁed or tempered with general praise. ... with it being an Augie March mailing list do you really think this is the right place to be telling people about how your friends think Augie March is boring? ... (Daniel 23/01/00). Rating performances, reviewing collections, and publishing guides to music genres are activities available to all fans. A trend towards disintermediation The Augie March websites are an online equivalent of the fan magazine, the difference being that anyone with an interest in the band can publish online, and amateur sites can happily co-exist with the ofﬁcial publication. Online publication also enables the use of graphics that would be prohibitive in print format, and multi-media and interactive elements that would not be possible in print. While the number of Augie March sites reﬂect their international proﬁle, the range seems to be typical, from personal diary pages that are predominantly text to graphics heavy collections of links, to sophisticated multi media pages that represent a high level of creative textual production. Online publication enables a breadth of distribution, provides an immediacy of revision, enables a complexity of presentation, and permits a more inclusive production process. Online textual production therefore may be more available to a broader range of fans. The rapid development in the use of networked computers to exchange opinion, information and products, has had an effect on the relationship between musicians, record labels and fans. Whereas “the trend in the music industry has been toward the monopolistic intermediation of the musical product ... new technologies of communication have led to disintermediation (Jones 2002: 222), in that these technologies enable a connection between producer and consumer, musician and fan, without the need for an intermediary. Musicians can sell music products (CDs, concert tickets, merchandising) directly to consumers in an Internet marketplace. However “the emerging ‘Internet market’ will not be a perfect economic market where intermediaries disappear altogether ... While musicians and consumers may contact each other directly without recourse to a third party, this is not likely to become the dominant means of interaction” (Dolfsma 2000:8). What is most likely is that we will see new intermediaries providing information not just product. Internet markets are fraught with information problems. It is one thing to Similarly the fan involvement in commercial sites such as Amazon spans a wider range of discursive practices than are readily available in face-to-face interactions. distribute music products via the Internet, quite another to promote and market them. This is where the performative consumption of the fans will be highlighted. 459 Because members of virtual communities have such diverse geographic, social and cultural backgrounds, these communities overall will be more knowledgeable about new and marginal developments in popular music. Dissatisfaction with an established music distributor may grow rapidly, particularly if alternatives are readily available and information about them dispersed quickly and widely. Information about new music, and new music distribution channels is spread from fan to fan via mailing lists and web conferences. Information about what once were called ‘local music market as individual consumers promote minority musics. “Communities [of music fans] will aggregate demand to such an extent that niches will be created to economically sustain many previously unknown kinds of music or artists.“ (Dolfsma 2000:10) So the performative consumption of fans on the Internet may not lead to disintermediation, but there is evidence that it will bring about changing patterns of intermediation. For example, at the Amazon online store, consumers seem to rely less on record charts and music broadcasts for their purchase decisions and more on each others’ opinions. The Store facilitates this through a number of features. Searching for Augie March on the Amazon site brings up “Most popular results for augie march” : Strange Bird, Sunset Studies and Thanks for the Memes, and a full list of nine items. Potential purchasers are invited to see artists’ is now much more readily available on a global basis and musicians are in a position to ‘collect’ audiences across global barriers. In comparison with geographically-based fan groups, online fan communities have more opportunities to be heard, and greater power to create or sever relationships with intermediaries. “The most important effect is likely to be found is the shift in the locus of decision making regarding what music is made available to the public, what music can be heard, what music is available, and its cost” (Jones 2002: 223). Music consumers will move from a dependence on radio, television, music charts and mainstream publications to a reliance on fellow consumers for information on which to base their purchasing decisions. This is likely to lead to a continued diversiﬁcation of the similar music releases under the Alternative Rock heading, or to check out the “Listmania” lists in which Augie March appear and to add their own lists. The lists on the Augie March page include My Favourite albums of 2000 by saint 77, Fergus Says this is good by Fergus, Augie March -- best tracks by statistic no1, and Staggering works of musical genius by Kate. The lists range for 5 to 25 items and include comments on each item. The lists vary in the detail and quality 460 of the information presented, but the mere aligning of particular musicians may inﬂuence listening choices and potentially purchasing patterns. and Movie Mondays appearing on the CD as recorded live. A great starting point in your Augie March listening” -- Ben. CDNow primarily had links to mainstream information: various charts and ofﬁcial listings, published reviews and music journal articles. The Amazon site seems to be evidence of a belief in a shift away from mainstream sources of information on music purchases towards the opinions of other consumers. Clicking on a particular item, for example Thanks for the Memes, in the Amazon catalogue brings up the detail page for that item which provides additional opportunities for consumers to affect each others consumption practices. “What’s your advice” allows site visitors to suggest another item in addition to, or instead of, Thanks for the Memes. “Rate this Item” asks visitors to rate Thanks for the Memes from one to ﬁve stars. “Customer Reviews” gives two hundred word reviews of the album, an indication of the percentage of customers who found the review useful, and an invitation to write a review. Many of the discursive practices on the Augie March mailing list demonstrate the conjunction of affect and commodiﬁcation. Much of the discussion has a consumption orientation. Not surprisingly, the predominant threads are concerned with seeing live performances or purchasing CDs. There are continual “Before recording what is one if the greatest albums ever made, they came up with a couple of ep’s, including this one. Fantastic of course, rich in ﬂavour and feel, mood and text, but all words fail on describing track#1 ‘Century Son’. Let’s just say I haven’t heard a kaining rock song so hard since “Teen Spirit’, and before that ‘Search and Destroy’” – Stephen Deuters. “This is Augie March’s ﬁrst EP and is a lot ‘rockier’ than Waltz and Sunset Studies. It is a powerful, unpolished riff-o-rama, with 2 songs Future Seal questions and answers on when and where Augie March will play next, and the availability of tickets, and on the release date for new Augie March CDs. The list also exposes members to new music and music events, and seems to encourage, or at least facilitate, the purchase of a range of music products by similar artists such as CDs, festival tickets, and videos. However the discussion forum does reveal an anti-consumerism ideology that co-exists with consumption practices. This list provides a space where many feel they are outside the inﬂuence of the recording industry. While 461 speciﬁc criticism of BMG is non-existent, discussion threads often hinge on the perceived ‘manipulation’ of the market by the recording industry. One thread began with a discussion of the chord progressions in songs that will guarantee commercial success, and ended with proposals to use the formulae to establish a label that was successful, but still moral. List members seem to recognise the contradictions between their desire to consume and their opposition to the commodiﬁcation of the music they appreciate. replaced by a direct relationship between the musicians and the fans. The fact that the band’s lyricist and lead singer, Glenn Richards, has in the past posted to the mailing list and the manager, Matt High, regularly passes on ‘inside’ information, answers questions and posts behind-thescenes tour diaries, makes the connection between fans and the musicians ‘real’. A reconfigured experience of space and time Don’t you see the irony in bitching about consumerism and then expressing your disappointment in the augie’s not issuing a vinyl release? Just an observation (Daniel 9/5/02). Oh yes, I see the irony. We’re all fucking liars in the end aren’t we? My hypocrisy really shits me off, it contributes most effectively to my selfloathing. (Oscar 9/5/02). What enables the fans on the mailing list to resolves the ambivalence about consumerism is the feeling that the Internet in general, and the mailing list in particular, provide a space where they can communicate directly with the musicians, without the intermediation of the record company. This seems to allow a belief that the inﬂuence of the recording industry can be transcended, The globalization of popular culture has not led to an inevitable homogenisation of world cultures, despite predictions. What has occurred, is that while within a globalized music industry audiences are dispersed, this has increased afﬁliations with the local and the personal. The very process of globalization has enabled local or marginalised groups to make their voices heard as never before. The growth of Internet communication and distribution has facilitated a move from a local based merely on the accidents of geography to a virtual local. The local is now experienced in ways that are not bound by geography. Fandom has traditionally been organised within local boundaries, and the virtual local opens up new spaces for the construction of fan communities. Online fan communities formed on the basis of shared taste cultures come together in a shared ‘local’ forum made possible by the new 462 globalized media. Locality is constructed through the symbolic meanings attached to place, rather than being a fact of geographic location (Appadurai 1995). Selected Bibliography Appadurai, A (1995) The Production of Locality R Fardon (ed) Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge London, Routledge:204-226 The record super-store is an “architectural expression of the broader reordering which has gone on within the culture of popular music – one through which musical tastes and consumption habits have come to be fragmented, distributed across an expanding array of niches” (Straw 1995:59). The Internet will facilitate this fragmentation, as communities of well informed fans share information, ﬁles, and opinions. Straw noted that “the processes by which consumers come to know about and seek out records are increasingly differentiated, grounded in the everyday minutiae of word-of-mouth” (Straw 1995: 63). Networked communications are enabling the global spread of the everyday details of fan practices and opinions. These shared opinions will have a major effect on music consumption habits. As the music industry recognises, buyer behaviour is increasingly “a set of coherences which link the observed purchase of one title to the possible or probable purchase of another” (Straw 1995:63). Baym, Nancy (1995) The Emergence of Community in Computer Mediated Communication Steven Jones (ed) Cybersociety Sage, London:138-163 Clerc, Susan 2000 Estrogen brigades and ‘big tits’ threads: media fandom on-line and off-line The Cybercultures Reader D Bell & B Kennedy (eds) Routledge, London Dolfsma, Wilfred (2000) How Will the Music Industry Weather the Globalisation Storm? First Monday V5 N5 May http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_5/dolfsma/index. html Fiske, John (1992) The Cultural Economy of Fandom Lisa Lewis (ed) The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and the Popular Media London, Routledge: Grossberg, Lawrence (1992) Is There a Fan in the House?:The Affective Sensibility of Fandom Lisa Lewis (ed) The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and the Popular Media London, Routledge: 463 Hills, Matt (2002) Fan Cultures London and New York, Routledge http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Eternal_Life_Nsync_ Stories Jenkins, henry (1992) Textual Poachers London and New York, Routledge Jones, Steve (2000) Music and the Internet Popular Music V19 N2:217-230 Jones, Steve (2002) Music That Moves: Popular Music, Distribution and Network Technologies Cultural Studies V16 N1:213-232 Kruse, Holly (1993) Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music Culture Popular Music V12 N1:33-42 Shepherd, John (1986) Music Consumption and Cultural Self-Identities: Some Theoretical and Methodological Reﬂections Media Culture and Society V8: 305-330 Shuker, R (1994) Understanding Popular Music London, Routledge Straw, Will (1995) ‘Organised Disorder’: The Changing Space of the Record Shop The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Culture Studies Steve Redhead (ed) Blackwell, Oxford UK:57-65 IASPM03 - MONTREAL The World Wide Web and Music Activity: Metaphor or Analogy? Geoff King T he colonisation of cyberspace by all forms of music activity is bringing about fundamental shifts of consumers and direct them away from the widelyembraced free P2P services to pay-for-play in the case of PressPlay and MusicNet -subscription, lack of “ownership’ and portability etc -may be examples of wish-fulﬁlment rather than recognition of how the customer might behave. Apple have shown just what can be done with their on-line pay system that lets consumers use the music they acquire as they want at a price they are prepared to pay. A Press release on Jun 23, 2003 eight weeks after the service began read “iTunes Music Store Hits Five Million Downloads” and ”Apple to Ship One Millionth iPod This Week.” (Apple) With only access to Apple users thus far, its no wonder competitors are now queuing…. Similarly, the incredible take-up of the internet internationally suggests that it plugs into the cognitive processes and behaviours of its users. Can an estimated 605.60 million users world wide (NUA) by end of 2002 be wrong? The UCLA Internet report for 2002 said that shopping and buying and accessing entertainment news were in the top 5 internet activities in the U.S., so the music link is clearly here (UCLA p17). What set me on this particular line of investigation –“Is the World Wide Web an analogy or a metaphor for musical activity”- was through thinking about how to in processes and practices-of listening, buying, selling, piracy, sharing, informing, music making etc. Arguably, as currently evolved, these shifts can be seen as extensions of conventional behaviours. But might the future hold a different story? Those who succeed at music e-commerce might best recognise a psychological proﬁle of consumer behaviour, such as a CDNow, which provides not only the means to purchase music on the internet but also the ability to preview, recommend, allow feedback and criticism as well as linking to artist proﬁles, fan sites and so on, activities which fans traditionally have engaged in but in less centralised ways. CDNow’s motto was “to make every visit to the site, whether for browsing or buying, a valuable and rewarding experience” and it was this approach that made it a front runner in the early e-commerce boom (see Olim) Ironically it went public @ $16 a share in 1998, expanded rapidly and pretty much went caput in the dot.com crash, ended up being bought by Bertelmann for $3 share and now being run through Amazon (Hansell). The CDNow model, however, still remains a strong one. Attempts by the Music Majors to change the behaviour 465 represent a model of music activity in all its forms. I can give a fairly straight forward narrative account of how and why I bought a particular CD in Montreal a couple of days ago, and given the chance to listen to it I can give an account of what I think about it, how it affects me and so on. But then when I start thinking about the production process, the industrial context, the taste factors and formations, questions about the construction of my own subjectivity- race, class, gender, education, training, and experience-listening modes, uses music is put to, genres, analytical processes, cognitive functions, musical theory etc., its difﬁcult to imagine these being represented in any kind of linear narrative or hierarchical fashion. As a consequence I thought about the World Wide Web and its non-linear language of hypertext as both an analogy of how these things might be represented but also as a metaphor for the complex interrelationship of those factors. Metaphors communicate the unknown by transposing into the known (O’Sullivan p137); they can be seen as a means of experiencing one thing in terms of another; as a relationship between two memory structures eg the mapping of one category or schema onto another (Snyder p107) and, of course, they don’t have to be exact, nor indeed even in language: there are metaphors of the body, of taste, touch etc. Hence metaphors are one of the fundamental modes of communication. The work of cognitive scientists suggests that metaphors are not simply an anomalous use of language or a mark of the way we conceive intentional objects but are, in fact, central to human understanding as a whole (Zbikowski 2.3) Snyder, in “Music and Memory,” says: “recent theory has suggested that metaphorical mappings are not arbitrary, but are grounded in fundamental embodied cognitive structures generalised from recurring physical experiences, especially the experience of our own bodies.” These occur through the process of “image schemas”. (Snyder p108) Following Nicholas Cook, Zbikowski says that Roger Scruton argues that there’s a crucial distinction between sound and music. Sound, from Scruton’s perspective, is a material fact, and as such is a matter for scientiﬁc understanding. “Music, in contrast, is an intentional construct, a matter of the concepts through which we perceive the world. The evidence for this distinction is provided by the metaphorical nature of our characterizations of music, [which are often about] space and motion [.…]Although we speak of ‘musical space’ (and locate tones within it), this space does not correspond, in a rational way, to physical space; although we speak of ‘musical 466 motion’ the motion is at best apparent, and not real. The concepts of space and motion are extended to music through metaphorical transference as a way to account for certain aspects of our experience of music. These metaphors are not an addition to musical understanding, but are in fact basic to it. “ (Zbikowski 2.1) Some of these metaphors are up, down, centrality, linkage, causation, tension, pathways leading to a goal, containment, steps and leaps. Most of these have clear correlations with bodily experience. Leonard Meyer, in “Emotion and Meaning” says: Snyder makes a pivotal point following on from this: “Understanding possible metaphorical connections between music and experience can help us not only understand music, but also create it” (Snyder p111 ) I’ve already mentioned why my paper’s title concerns the World Wide Web but it’s clearly not just the Web that’s being discussed here (the Web with its own metaphors such as “the information superhighway” that have now been superseded) but other aspects of the Internet, indeed cyberspace per se. and I’ll try to make “Not only does music use no linguistic signs but, on one level at least, it operates as a closed system, that is, it employs no signs or symbols referring to the non-musical world of objects, concepts, and human desires. Thus the meanings which it imparts differ in important ways from those conveyed by literature, painting, biology, or physics. Unlike a closed , nonreferential mathematical system, music is said to communicate emotional and aesthetic meanings as well as purely intellectual ones” which as he says, “is a puzzling combination of abstractness with concrete emotional and aesthetic experience.” (p.vii) Of course, as he also says, “meaning and communication cannot speciﬁc what I’m referring to. I’m also not conﬁning myself here to music alone -but music activity generally as per the title. New technologies and new media lead to new practices, even if these are extensions and have analogies with existing practices. These new technologies, new media, new practices, bring with them and develop distinct terminologies, ideas, and theories that, to take up Snyder’s point, create new metaphors that then begin to be mapped over our existing metaphors ie our way of perceiving those activities and hence our thinking and our actions. Think of metaphors like “garage rock” –a place to make music, a sound, a kind of camaraderie or, related in the be separated from the cultural context in which they arise” (p.ix ) 467 genre, fuzz guitar as a metaphor for a testosteronefuelled, youthful masculinity (Hicks p22 ) or Attali’s “liberatory dream of the 60’s” inscribed in the noise of Joplin, Dylan, Hendrix (Attali p6 ) charging for its on-line newstracker service. Personally, there’s not enough value in it for me to pay to subscribe, not is there seemingly for the Major music corporations’ online music services with the lack of control for users, an issue that Itunes sufﬁciently avoids. So, this has to be true of the Internet, the Web, the digital realm, cyberspace. The battles to maintain “freedom” on the Web, championed by the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also suggest something of the psychology Pierre Levy says the world of cyberculture is characterised by (among other things) Interconnectivity, Virtual Community and Universe-without-totality – techno music being a key example (Levy p107). I’ll refer back to these as I continue. Sean Cubitt: “The Web has been conceived as a space in which the end user is in control, rather than the artist or the broadcaster” (Cubitt p167) Despite the push to commercialise the Web in the mid 90’s, there’s been considerable resistance and battles over control, as the music industry is ﬁnding. Peer2Peer software is the example here of course. Attempts in the past to set up subscription services across a range of media and information services haven’t done especially well. Just because people subscribe to newspapers and magazines in the ‘real world’ doesn’t mean that translates for businesses wanting to attract advertisers to guaranteed audiences/readers/consumers. Salon. com now makes you sit through an ad if you want to be a casual browser. The NY Times has just started involved here, and an ideology: the Web is “free” (once you’re on-line that is). Control is of course one of the bugbears of the music industry. Its always fought interactivity if it can’t in some way own the transaction or the end result. For example: NY Times April 26, 2003 Judge Stephen Wilson of United States District Court ruled that Grokster and StreamCast Networks, which offers the Morpheus peer-to-peer software, are not guilty of copyright infringement. The judge said those services - unlike Napster, an earlier music-swapping software company - were essentially no different from the companies that created the videocassette recorder, which also allowed consumers to make their own copies (Richtel). Well do we remember the “Home Taping is Killing Music” campaign when cassettes became popular. There’s no particular hierarchy on the Web; the individual can roam at will, but individual pages or websites are a different matter. There’s an organization in Sydney 468 which case studies useability for websites using a variety of technologies to track how a person looks and responds to a page’s layout, functionality, the interest particular parts of it arouse and so on (Manktelow). To the music industry, despite such minor headlines as “Juke box jury computer program ‘predicts hit songs’ ”(Ananova) this has been another thing to battle with -the power fans have to make “irrational” choices or to, more–or –less, roam at will through the music catalogues despite attempts at prioritising and setting up hierarchies for consumers by the power of money muscle. On the other hand, music producers ( in the recording sense ) have always created hierarchies for a sense, the virtual world or soundscape of a music recording. As mentioned, one of Levy’s cyberculture concepts is “universe -without-totality,” which he positions within a “global soup” that, despite some “local ﬂavours,” he says of which, “the dynamic of world popular music is an illustration of the universal-withouttotality; universal through the diffusion of musical forms and listening habits that are planetary, without totality because global styles are multiple and undergo constant transformation and renewal.”(Levy p119) But what he’s really getting at is that in the music world of cyberculture (electronica, techno etc.,) music circulates within virtual communities and is always in process, collaborative, unﬁnished. This puts into stark relief something which we’ve become used to, perhaps without realising it: that all music is unﬁnished. Is it possible for a piece of music to exist as some sort of discrete object? It always exists within ﬁelds of understanding, that interrelate with other pieces-within genres, within radio ﬂows, packages on CD, within a body of an artist’s work, historical references and so on. We are now totally familiar with different versionsthe album mix, the single mix, the 12” mix, the DJ remixes; recontextualised in the sample, in ads, in ﬁlms, in videos, in box sets and compilations; the new technology remasters (a form of remixing, from 78s listening -drawing attention to particular parameters at any moment- foregrounded in the mix through volume or positioning in the soundstage or intensity by using processes which remain largely unheard themselves but which prioritise the listeners’ attention such as voice double tracking. However, a lack of hierarchy in the wider sense is one of the concerns for some music artists : that online music download services will lead to individual tracks rather than whole albums being downloaded, not only depriving the artists, and particularly the songwriters, of royalties but also destroying the carefully sculptured work of art in its totality. Despite these fears this does not appear to be the case with Apples Itunes so far. Cyberspace “itself” is only a metaphor, but so is, in 469 cleaned up for LP to CD to surround-sound DVD), the demo versions, the live versions, the fan-release live albums, the bootlegs. Furthermore, “unﬁnished” is also linked to interactivity -from the psychology of making a sequence of sounds into the ﬂow of music (going back to those metaphors of movement to mentally construct a melody etc) and to the responses generated by those processes - emotion, dancing, returning to favourites and so on. There’s also the physical circumstances- whether you’re listening on the crappy speakers of a computer or a high end sound system; what levels you set the volume, or the tone controls and how these match with the intention in the recording processes. A lecturer in hypertext in my uni program told me once that the older the student the more difﬁculty they have with the concept of the multi-dimensional Web as a way of organising and presenting material. A Tree is how they tend to think about it. This metaphor of the Web displacing that of a Tree also has occurred in a slightly different context- fan tape trees such as Deadheads used to construct ie fan A makes several tape copies of a Dead concert, the recipients then each make several copies and pass them on to others etc. Why would you do that now? Apart from the fact that those fans can now The language of hypertext and the Web speaks of pages, nodes, and screens, and so much music increasingly comes to us via screens. Music media increasingly disappear. The CD (or DVD) hides away in a machine, maybe many at a time so we hold them less often, or music comes from the internet and stays “on” a screen or in an mp3 player. Digital radio will have screens. Not much music recording is done without a screen (and who writes without a screen?) What kind of hold on our thinking will the power of this metaphor prove to have? Doug Morris, Universal Music Group’s CEO, said in the Apple press release “The iTunes Music Store is pushing us into the future of how music is produced and consumed.”(Apple). I’m not sure what he actually means by this but “produced and consumed” is more substantial than merely “consumed” which is what the service allows. Selfridge-Field says that up to the 17thC there was a close analogy between the science of moving objects (astronomy) and the science of moving tones. The objective world of antiquity and the middle ages is now supplanted by an endlessly varied subjective domain operating in present time. (Selfridge-Field p186) Bolter argues that “Today the Cartesian demand for psychological unity and autonomy has largely been rejected in favour of a ﬂuid cognitive psychology that is often buy many of those concerts beautifully reproduced from the Dead organization on-line, you trade directly for a digital copy with other fans through their websites. 470 characterized as postmodern. The Web and associated Internet technologies, together with television and radio, provide us with genres and forms that suit our preference for multiple, shifting and highly mediated representations of identity, ‘the networked self.’ “This networked self is organized like the Web itself, as a constantly changing set of afﬁliations or links,” hence deﬁned by the connections at any given moment (Bolter p26) Programs such as Experiments in Musical Intelligence or Artiﬁcial Intelligence employ a variety of tools –pattern recognition, neural nets and so forth- to discover rules about combining sounds into a plausible, stylisticallyrecognizable music. Ultimately, though, it is the human interaction, the human cognitive functions at work that makes sound into music. John Blacking wrote about how, in his view, the idea that the development of consciousness in humans enabled music and dance to develop didn’t make sense; it was music and dance which enabled consciousness to develop. (Blacking p22;60) I began this paper by saying ”The colonisation of cyberspace by all forms of music activity is bringing about fundamental shifts in processes and practices,” but what this paper also leads me towards is a conclusion that cyberspace, -the internet, the Web- has itself colonised all forms of music activity and in ways that have yet to be fully realised. Hansell, Saul “Bertelsmann to Let Amazon Run CDNow” New York Times 26.Nov 2002 <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/technology/ 26ONLI.html?tntemail0> Cubit, Sean “Multi media” in Swiss ibid. p162 Bolter, Jay David “Identity” in Swiss, Thomas and Bruce Horner, eds. Unspun NewYork NYUni Press 2000 p26 Blacking, John ‘A commonsense view of all music’ Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990 Attali, Jacques, trans. Brian Massumi, Noise: The Political economy of music Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985 Selected Bibliography Ananova: “Juke box jury computer program ‘predicts hit songs’ “ 12 March 2003 [26 March 2003] <http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_759785. html> Apple press release Jun 23,2003 <http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/jun/23itunes. html> 471 Hicks, Michael Sixties Rock: Garage , Psychedelic & Other Satisfactions Urbana: Uni of Illinois Press, 1999 Selfridge-Field, Eleanor “Composition, combinatorics, and simulation:a historical and philosophical enquiry” in Cope, David Virtual Music: computer Synthesis of Levy, Pierre trans. Robert Bononno, Cyberculture: electronic mediations vol 4 Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press. London 2001 musical style Cambridge: MIT Press 2001 p186 Snyder, Bob Music and Memory: An Introduction Cambridge: MIT Press 2000 Manktelow, Nicole “Case Study: Usability Testing For Websites” The Age, May 6, 2003 “Next” p4 UCLA Internet Report Surveying the Digital Future Year Three UCLA Center For Communication Policy Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1956 Feb. 2003 p17 [6/6/03] <http://ccp.ucla.edu/pages/internet-report.asp> Nua Internet Surveys September 2002 [June 23, 2003] http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/ Zbikowski, Lawrence M. “Metaphor and Music Theory: Reﬂections from Cognitive Science” Music Theory On Line Volume 4.1 Olim, Jason, Olim, Mathew, Kent, Peter The CDNow Story:rags to riches on the internet Top Floor Publishing, Colorado. 1998 The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory [16 June 2003] <http://societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.98.4.1/ O’Sullivan, Tim; John Hartley, Danny Saunders, John Fiske Key Concepts in Communication P137 London Methuen, & NY 1983 mto.98.4.1.zbikowski_frames.html> Richtel, Matt “Entertainment Industry Loses in Web Case” New York Times 26 April 2003 <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/26/technology/ 26MUSI.html?tntemail0> IASPM03 - MONTREAL Effects of effects: exploring the message behind the use of echoes on vocals John Klepko the lyrics; the mood and setting. There is no reliable published research from this angle. However, there are many reliable audio practice textbooks that cover how to use echo effects [1], [2], [3]. Background Introduction A rtiﬁcial echo effects have been commonly used in popular music since the 1950’s. These include shorter echoes like “slapback” and doubling to longer repeated echo effects and reverberation. With particular emphasis on echoes applied to vocals, these added effects can imply certain meanings behind the music and lyric messages; they can help deﬁne a relationship between the singer and the listener. Or, perhaps there is no deeper intent than to simply enhance the musical and sonic aesthetic. What meaning can we reasonably extract from echo effects? Some possible answers could be to add a sense of mystery; folly; isolation, separation, nostalgia, surrealism, distance, intimacy, size, and spatial setting. Are any of these associations (intended or not) readily received and understood by the listener? Before proceeding, it may be necessary to properly distinguish between echo (delay) and reverberation. These two terms are often used interchangeably and can lead to confusion. “Reverberation” (or “reverb” for short) can be described as a contiguous and decaying prolongation of the original sound…like one might encounter in a large church or gymnasium; “Echo” is differentiated by being made of (one or more) distinct and discrete decaying repetitions of the original sound… like a canyon echo… “hello!…hello!…hello!…hello!…” Although echoes can exist in a natural acoustical environment, it is rare that they are intentionally This paper uniquely explores the consideration of echo effects in particular on vocal performances. The application to vocals is most interesting since there are potential connections between the type of echo effects and the song’s intended message; meaning of captured by microphones. Instead, they are simulated by electronic and mechanical means - hence being called an “artiﬁcial effect”. In popular music, Sam Phillips is often credited with ﬁrst developing the artiﬁcial echo effect at his Memphis Recording Service 473 (aka Sun Studios) in 1954. He accomplished individual instruments to achieve more intimate and fuller sounds. Actually since multitrack recording, echoes are most often an afterthought added after the performance i.e. the musician/singer often does not hear this effect (via headphones) while recording the song. It is not always part of recording process for various reasons of efﬁciency. It becomes more a part of the post-recording mixdown process. The decision on part of the producers, artist or mix engineer to incorporate echoes can imply… this effect by taking advantage of an unrelated design feature of analog tape recorders where the echo’s time separation is the result of the physical separation between the playback and record heads. (In electro-acoustic music circles, Pierre Schaeffer is recognized as pioneering a tape delay effect in 1951 by using a specially-designed multi-head tape machine, dubbed the “Morphophone”, that essentially replayed the sound several times in close succession). Despite the simplicity of achieving this echo effect, Phillips bafﬂed other recording engineers of his time. When RCA Studio engineers in Nashville (McGavock Street location) tried to emulate Phillips’ unique echo sound on some Elvis Presley sessions, all they could come up with was placing a loudspeaker and microphone at opposite ends of a long hallway to force a delayed pickup of the sound. The addition of echoes on a vocal often simply is for an enhanced musical or sonic aesthetic. It just plain sounds good. Like a soft-focus camera lens, it can blur, obscure and soften a sonic image - giving a sense of mystery calling upon the imagination of the listener to interpret the singer and their message in their own way. Musically it can support the melody with a resounding prolongation and sustain that can With the discovery of tape echo (sometimes called “slapback” or “tape slap”) came a noticeable change in music presentation away from a live documentation towards an imposed and enhanced aesthetic in pop music. The other notable shift in recording practice (around the 1950’s) leading to a unique production aesthetic was the increasing use of separate close-microphone techniques on ﬂatter a voice. On a short-sighted view, echo itself is an imitation. But on a larger scale, it is an imitation of the 1950’s tape slapback effect so common to music from that era. It is in itself a reﬂection – a nostalgic reference - a sonic allusion or tribute to the sound of 1950’s rock & roll. 474 Space or reverb) effects, then it is understood that the voice must be larger and more overbearing than the (already powerful) accompanying instruments. Echoes produced naturally from surface reﬂections can be a key index of space – giving cues to the size of the space. Echoes in the range of delay times typical of many artiﬁcial effects can occur under certain geometrical conditions with an uncommonly large space. This begs the question of whether the producers behind this effect are intending to mimic a real environment or not. (With digital reverberation effects, this is often the case where engineers seek to produce a natural and realistic room environment). In the case of echo, it is more often an effect in itself – with no intended connection to a real spatial context – perhaps a surreal environment. Echo also serves to deﬁne a spatial context by contributing to a sensation called depth-of-ﬁeld. The sonic mix can beneﬁt from the juxtaposition of spatial perspectives through differing depths of the elements (instruments and voices) where elements with more echo attached to it appear further away than those with less or no echo. Place in Space…existential We have all experienced in some way, an echo of our own voice. The stimulation of an echo can (consciously Nevertheless, we recognize the intention of adding long echoes to deﬁne a large spatial environment. Despite some intentions the message of long echoes is not about making the object (voice/singer) appear large, but about making the implied environment the object is in large. It supports a composite (object plus environment) “bigness”. A “dry” sound without any apparent echoes or reverb can make the object itself bigger because it is on top. Through the ultimate control of the mixing process, the human voice can be made to apparently overpower usually louder instruments like drums and electric guitars. If this is accomplished without the need for enhancement via echoes (and/ or subconsciously) reinforce a feeling of one’s own spatial existence relative to the surroundings - a feeling of occupying our own space: separate – unique – original. In a music mix, it can accomplish a similar effect by separating the voice from the accompaniment as a whole. If we think of vocals as the primary element, it imposes importance upon it - like a stage spotlight differentiating and highlighting certain performer(s) within a scene. Large amounts of echo can emphasize a feeling of the singer’s loneliness and emptiness within an imaginary large void of space that is usually ﬁlled with others. This 475 is in contrast to the feeling of isolation (i.e. a different form of loneliness) that may be aroused in a small room from an echoless voice. nostalgic ﬂashback than playing a section of a song with echoes added asking the test subject if they “understand” it as a ﬂashback). This same audio cliché in television productions is also intended to represent Certain echo effects can make the listener feel like they have been transported to another place, or that the singer is in another place – disconnected from reality. Echoes can promote a sense of distance in time as well as place a dream sequence. Perhaps this can be applied to a music/audio context in what has already been mentioned where the listener is transported to another imaginary place and/or time – someplace surreal. To perhaps confuse the situation even more, the same echo/reverb on a voice effect used in television productions can Echo is in itself a memory of the original sound it echoes – usually somewhat altered with each successive repeated echo. Each repetition has less detail like memory gradually failing or faltering as time passes. also be meant to represent hidden inner thoughts and feelings of the actor. This connotation is less likely to be understood by listeners within a purely musical audio context. Again, the nostalgic reference back to 1950’s rock & roll can fall under this category of distance in time. Echo can support the basic rhythmic patterns in pop music. Delay times can be calculated to fall into a bpm (beats-per-minute) tempo synchronization. This can be In television dramas (and sit-coms) it is an accepted cliché that a scene of an actor not speaking, but thinking of the past has their voice laced with echo or reverb. These ﬂashback sequences might be applied to a musical context. (This “effect” cannot be easily tested unless a song is played with a more typical amount of echo/reverb – then suddenly changes in one passage of the lyric. This sudden change could alert the listener that a different context is expected. Testing under this condition would be more likely to elicit a feeling of a subtle, or more obvious as in the vocal echoes found in songs like “Time Has Come Today” (The Chambers Brothers) or “Us & Them” (Pink Floyd). In characteristic 1950’s slapback echo, it was used to great effect by supporting the jerky dotted-eighth note rhythms of rockabilly music – especially when added to electric guitars. This type of rhythmical use can imply robotic/mechanical perfection or, can purposely be out-of-sync to promote 476 a feeling of tension. These could deﬁne a deeper delineation within Tagg’s and Collins’ [4] dystopia/utopia proposal (discussed in the next section). Mood This paper has proposed and described a sort of catalogue of possible intentions and meanings behind the use of echoes on vocals in popular music recordings. The intent is for both listeners and sound recording makers to take stock and potentially apply these ideas. Echoes may also evoke a haunting and disturbing quality to the voice. Philip Tagg and Karen Collins [4] call this “dystopia” as opposed to the idea that a sound without perceived echo represents a “utopia” (A good example of dystopian echoes can be found on Bob Dylan’s album “Time Out of Mind” where a distorted echo is used to make an already harsh voice even harsher). Yet in a contrasting sense, the stark reality of an echoless voice could make the listener feel uneasy that the singer appears to be so near and spatially intimate. In a related way, it is often an effective cliché device to abruptly turnoff the echo for a certain important vocal passage that is meant to be shocking or striking and catch the listener’s attention. On another level, this type of rhythmical repetition can seem like a parroted delayed ventriloquism (a parody) giving a feeling of folly. This playful type of echo can be found with a (left-right) stereo echo effect called “ping-pong” where each repeated echo originates from opposite sides of the stereo soundﬁeld. This can often be found in Jamaican “dub” style music productions. 477 Selected Bibliography [1] Anderton, C., “The Digital Delay Handbook”, Amsco Publications, N.Y., 1985. White, P., “Creative Recording: effects and [2] processors”, Sanctuary Publishing Ltd. London, UK, 1989. [3] Wadhams, W., “Sound Advice: the musicians guide to the recording studio”, Schirmer Books, N.Y., 1995. [4] Tagg, P., Collins, K. E., “The Sonic Aesthetics of the Industrial: Re-Constructing Yesterday’s Soundscape for Today’s Alienation and Tomorrow’s Dystopia “, Paper for Soundscape Studies conference, Dartington College, February 2001. http://www.theblackbook.net/ acad/tagg/articles/dartington2001.html IASPM03 - MONTREAL Tears and Screams: Performances of Pleasure and Pain in the Bolero 1 Dr Vanessa Knights A s we’re in a stream about queering practice and a session about transgressing gender boundaries, Susan Sontag’s description of camp as “a love of the exaggerated” (279). Indeed, Sontag includes La Lupe as part of the canon of camp in her classic 1964 essay, “Notes on Camp” (278). As a linguist I want to pause brieﬂy and consider what I mean by the term ‘camp’. The etymological origin of the term ‘camp’ can be traced variously to the Italian ‘campeggiare’ meaning ‘to stand out’, to the French ‘se camper’ meaning self-conscious posturing (Ross 157) or the Indo-European root ‘kamp’ signifying curved, ﬂexible, articulated (Cleto, “Queering the Camp” 29-30). Like queer, camp calls into question ﬁxed positions. However, the self-conscious theatrical nature of camp does not preclude it being sincere or politically motivated. In his analysis of a camp sensibility in cinema Jack Babuscio rephrases Oscar Wilde, “the importance of being artiﬁcial” is to force the audience to question their assumptions (128). The stylization of camp can act paradoxically to both distance and engage the audience. Similarly, Richard Dyer describes queer culture as demonstrating an acute awareness of surface, construction and play which is characterized by an urgency or edge because ‘mattering matters’(284). The frivolous becomes serious, to take up Babuscio’s contestation of Sontag’s categorization of camp as failed seriousness or as Fabio Cleto argues, camp let me begin by setting out some parameters. In this paper I will be interpreting queer as the unsettling of traditional, binary categorizations of gender and sexuality. My aim is to demonstrate that the bolero song genre traverses such boundaries through the semiotic uncertainty of its lyrics and the camp nature of the performative style of many singers, particularly women associated with the ‘ﬁlin’ or ‘feeling’ movement. ‘Feeling’, as its name suggests, is a more emotional or expressive style of singing achieved through various techniques (Rico Salazar 73). It can be characterized not only by features of composition (for example the use of impressionistic or jazz-inﬂected harmonies) and vocal technique (varying tempo and stress), but also by its performance style. For the Cuban musicologist Natalio Galán ‘ﬁlin’ demonstrates a camp sensibility, particularly associated with the highly dramatic, gestural performances of certain popular female singers (29699). The use of exaggerated vocal techniques, lush big band orchestration and excessive gestures by singers such as the Cubans La Lupe (Guadalupe Victoria Yoli Raimond) and Olga Guillot would seem to ﬁt in with 479 traverses the polarities of seriousness and play; you cannot camp what you do not take seriously (“Queering the Camp” 25-28). Through the explicit emphasis on deliberate performance ‘fílin’ provides a queer cultural space in which gender identities and sexual roles can be destabilized and singers such as La Lupe, Guillot and Chavela Vargas in Mexico have become camp icons or divas in the Hispanic world. Over the course of its history the bolero has shifted from the relatively private (or semi-public) performance of the serenade with simple guitar accompaniment to the public stage and wider audience of theatres, radio, ﬁlm and eventually television. The sonic requirements of the new performance arenas and early recording techniques inﬂuenced the change in instrumentation with the use of piano, orchestras and big bands which has paradoxically served to place increased emphasis on the vocality of the performer who becomes the focal point for audience identiﬁcation. As the bolero was internationalized the original rhythmic hegemony of the ‘cinquillo cubano’ (ﬁve notes value: long-shortlong-short-long) was lost and melodies increasingly followed the prosody of the lyrics; the voice and timbre of instruments such as the violin were more closely identiﬁed in the production of an apparently intimate sound. To turn to the voice in the bolero, it may be seductive, offering images of the ideal other and promises of eternal love. Indeed, the bolero is commonly conceived of as a discourse privileging unrestrained romanticism or sentimentality (Campos 637), and love in its multiple variations is the predominant, although by no means the exclusive, theme of the bolero. However, it is important to note that many boleros deal with the ﬂipside of romantic love: deception and disillusionment, jealousy, abandonment and betrayal. According to the Puerto Rican critic Iris Zavala, the bolero speaks the language of desire, of its absence and presence, of illusion and disillusionment and is therefore not so much about love or pleasure but about a desire that by deﬁnition is impossible to realize: the pursuit of the unattainable other (1991). It would thus seem to express modern theories of desire in its tension between absence and desire for presence. This psychoanalytic interpretation of the bolero is further explored by Karen Poe (1996) who examines the discourse of the bolero, the grain or erotic texture of the voice and the attempt to erase difference through the closeness of dance, in relation to the oneiric world of dreams and a return to the space of the maternal semiotic in an attempt to transgress the limits of the ‘ego’. Following on from Poe’s analysis of the depiction of femininity as the repressed other or Freudian ‘dark enigma’ in bolero lyrics, many critics have interpreted the bolero as a conservative genre in terms of gender politics (Aristizabal; Campos, Monsiváis). In other words the desire being articulated is resolutely male 480 and heterosexual. However, the bolero is far from being an exclusively male-produced discourse. As well as numerous female performers, there were many famous women composers of boleros such as the Mexicans María Grever and Consuelo Velázquez, and the Cubans Isolina Carrillo and Marta Valdés, to name but a few. Frances Aparicio engages in a more nuanced reading of the bolero that attempts to take into account the ambivalences inherent in the genre with regards to gender (1998). Along with Zavala (1991) and Poe (1996), she traces the development of bolero lyrics from the Western tradition of courtly love through the ‘modernista’ imagery of poets such as Rubén Darío in which women are idealized and mythiﬁed as almost divine ﬁgures, eternal and unattainable seductresses, objects of male unrequited longing or unconsummated love (Aparicio 125-28). In contrast many lyrics feature a rather decadent ‘femme fatale’ drawn from the nineteenth century romantic tradition of poems dedicated to ‘fallen women’. Whilst this would seem to fall into the typical dichotomy of woman as angel or whore, the latter is often celebrated rather than denigrated. Prostitutes and relationships outside the legal conﬁnes of marriage were particularly immortalized in the boleros of the proliﬁc Mexican composer Agustín Lara who began his career as a pianist in locales of ill-repute. In these boleros the motifs of absence, separation and abandonment are central and Aparicio suggests that they are a reaction to the increased access of women to public spaces as Latin America became increasingly industrialized and urbanized through the course of the twentieth century. In contrast to these narratives of loss, Aparicio argues that women composers and singers break with social norms in boleros which often take up this motif of separation to voice women’s desire for an alternative, independent path in life in which the emphasis is on mobility and freedom of movement clearly subverting the gendered binary division of masculine activity and feminine passivity (130-32). However, Aparicio’s reading of the libidinal economy inscribed in the bolero begins by examining songs in which the power differential between men and women is articulated through a discourse of male sexual domination. The synechdochal representation of women through fragmented eroticized body parts, particularly the eyes, lips, mouth and hands, would again seem to take up a longstanding poetic tradition harking back to the troubadours in which women are portrayed as fetichized objects of male desire and fantasy. However, in an inversion of traditional malefemale relationships in a patriarchal context, the male in the bolero is frequently presented as suffering and vulnerable, victimized by the female (Campos 638). Aparicio draws on Zavala’s discursive analyses of the bolero (1990, 1991) which focus on the gender ﬂuidity of the central signiﬁers or semiotic shifters, 481 ‘yo’ [I] and ‘tú/usted’ [you]. The majority of boleros are not addressed to a speciﬁc named, and therefore gendered, subject. This indeterminacy permits the relatively easy regendering of lyrics, allowing male and female performers to interpret the same song. A space is opened up through the ambivalent gender politics of the discourse of the bolero for a strong female voice which may be accusatory or passionate and erotically transgressive. For example, the imperative lyrics of Consuelo Velázquez’s “Bésame mucho” [Kiss me a lot] premiered by Chela Campos in 1941 openly express sexual desire through a repeated series of exhortations which suggest rather more than a chaste kiss on the mouth. Whilst the bolero can contest patriarchal categories of gender by subverting the binary of masculine activity and feminine passivity, thereby allowing women to express sexual desire, passion and anger, traditionally masculine qualities, its conventions also provide a sanctioned musical space within which men can cathartically express their emotions and sensitivity, traditionally feminine attributes. Big boys can and do cry. It is a discourse of affective self-disclosure in both the public and private realm as romantic music is not just used as a background sound for courtship in Latin America; as Deborah Pacini Hernández notes it may be used actively as a surrogate voice which articulates emotion and negotiates relationships through acts such as dedicating a song on the radio, giving a record or serenading a loved one (192). René Campos argues that the masculine voice expresses both passion and vulnerability through the bittersweet lyrics of the bolero and vocal techniques such as portamento, the lengthening of syllables at the end of a phrase (638), although I would add that this technique is by no means exclusive to male singers. It is a feature of the singing style of Olga Guillot whom I mentioned earlier. Interestingly, the blurring of traditional gender attributes that occurs within the lyrics and the performance onstage on the whole does not necessarily seem to compromize the perceived masculinity of the singers offstage or affect their popularity. The ‘Inquieto Anacobero’ [Devil that never stands still] Daniel Santos, also known as the ‘Ace of Hearts’ or ‘Charming Voice’, was a legendary Don Juan ﬁgure (in)famous for drinking to excess, brawling and getting arrested. As captured in the iconography of his record covers, his image is that of the hard-drinking, smoking man frequenting ‘cantinas’ and listening to boleros on the jukebox (the ‘victrola’ or ‘vellonera’). His position as a crooner of romantic songs such as “Dos gardenias” [Two gardenias] (Isolina Carrillo, 1947) did not interfere with his status as iconic macho par excellence. A perhaps more obviously ‘romantic’ heartthrob is Lucho Gatica who with his suave, brilliantined image was allegedly the dream man of thousands of female admirers. However, 482 his clear dominion of high registers could be described as feminine. Whilst on the one hand he is identiﬁed as the heterosexual, attractive ‘galán’ [heartthrob], as José Quiroga notes, the “Gentleman of Song” is a potential border crosser with whom a homosexual audience has also identiﬁed (161). Even more fascinating is the process by which an openly effeminate performer like Juan Gabriel (whose closeted homosexuality has been described as a ‘secreto a voces’ [open secret]) has gained the affections of the Mexican public in a society perhaps more noted for its overt homophobia and machismo. (2) However, on the whole, the bolero performers who have become icons of the Hispanic gay community are women associated with a camp style of performance. They are divas as deﬁned by Alberto Mira in his dictionary of Hispanic gay and lesbian culture: the Hispanic world who found themselves marginalized by the mainstream (although Chavela found success again in the 1990s through her recuperation in the ﬁlms of the highly successful Spanish ﬁlm director, Pedro Almodóvar). The fascination these wounded divas exert for gay audiences is complex and the identiﬁcation is not necessarily on the level of gender or sexuality. It may be accounted for by many factors including: identiﬁcation with the marginal and a capacity to survive difﬁcult circumstances, with an aesthetics of emotional suffering and intense pain, with risqué eroticism and excess, with the semiotics of glamour. La Lupe’s stage show was marked by her aggressive performative style which was excessive in both vocal technique and bodily display, and highly erotically suggestive breaking with social norms of decorum and passivity for women in Cuba in the 1950s. Her ﬂamboyance called attention to the artiﬁce of presumed natural gender roles through its acting out of images of excess. However, Quizá la clave que deﬁne a la diva es el modo en que habita su propio mito, el modo en que su vida supura en sus creaciones. (235) [Perhaps the key to deﬁning the diva (as opposed to the star) is the way in which she inhabits her own myth, the way in which her life oozes through her creations.] The blurring of private and public life has marked the careers of La Lupe and Chavela Vargas, both gay icons in both her fans and detractors describe her in terms conventionally associated with feminine emotion and irrationality: scandalous, eccentric, mad, hysterical. The identiﬁcation of her vocality with a violent, uncontrollable female sexuality seemed to provoke both desire and fear. Like La Lupe, Chavela Vargas was censured for her openly sexual stance in 1960s Mexico but in her case that stance was overtly lesbian (‘macha’ or butch). She ‘lesbianized’ lyrics alluding to heterosexual masculine subjects of desire and identiﬁed with a masculinized eroticism -grabbing her 483 crotch in performances and posing caressing a guitar (traditionally sexualized as the body of a woman)- and macho culture of smoking/tequila. Like La Lupe, the materiality of Chavela’s voice transcends the lyrics being sung to communicate emotion and eroticism through the body. There are passionate breaks in register and a whole gamut of (guttural) sounds are employed including sighs, moans, groans, grunts, laughter and cries. Many bolero lyrics make no explicit reference to gender whatsoever allowing for multiple meanings which shift through performance depending on who is singing, who is listening and whether the listener identiﬁes with the singing ‘yo’ [I] or the ‘tú’ [you] being addressed thereby facilitating both hetero- and homo-erotic identiﬁcations. For example “Tú me acostumbraste” by Frank Domínguez (1955) includes no gendered adjectives and has been recorded by diverse artists such as René Cabel, Lucho Gatica, Elena Burke and Olga Guillot without requiring any morphological transformation. In its oblique references to ‘esas cosas’ or ‘un mundo raro’ it opens up possibilities for resemanticization as a homoerotic articulation of desire (Zavala, “El bolero” 76-78). In a fascinating article about melodrama and nostalgia the Puerto Rican critic Eliseo Colón Zayas discusses a number of recordings in which the binary divisions of gender and sexuality are clearly broken down: Linda Ronstadt (U.S.) singing “Perﬁdia” [Perﬁdy] which is addressed to another woman without a regendering of the singing subject, Juan Gabriel (Mexico) and Rocío Durcal (Spain) singing “Fue un placer conocerte” {It was a pleasure to meet/know you] in unison thereby making both the subject and the object of the bolero simultaneously male and female, Gilberto Santa Rosa and Tito Rodríguez (Puerto Rico) singing “En la soledad” [In solitude] as a duet (made possible through digital technology some twenty years after Rodríguez’s death) in which two male voices sing to each other thereby displacing heterosexual discourse altogether (1995). A ﬂuid space is created for diverse subjectivities to be expressed. To conclude, the bolero remains a semantically unstable site of semiotic excess, slippery in its resistance to easy categorizations. It is a complex and contradictory form, a potentially conservative gendered discourse that simultaneously provides the opportunity for resistance to structures of domination. The power of the music is enhanced by its direct appeal to the listener creating a sense of belonging through affective investment. Through performances of erotic pleasure and emotional pain by men and women, male and female voices and bodies provide a potentially empowering site for a range of listeners identifying with the multiple positions held open in the bolero song form. To fully understand this phenomenon we need to engage in an analysis that goes beyond lyrics and musical features to examine closely performance style (including costume) and the materiality of the voices/ bodies of the bolero. 484 Novels of Manuel Puig.” World Literature Today 65.4 Endnotes 1. The author wishes to acknowledge the support of a British Academy Small Grant and University of Newcastle Arts and Humanities Research Fund Internal Fellowship. (1991): 637-42. Cleto, Fabio, ed. Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. 2. I am grateful to Rodrigo Laguarda for a copy of his unpublished paper, “Vamos al Noa Noa: de homosexualidad, secretos a voces y ambivalencias en la música de Juan Gabriel”, presented at the IV conference of the Latin American IASPM branch, 2-6 April 2002. ---. “Queering the Camp.” Cleto 1-42. Colón Zayas, Eliseo R.. “Desmayo de una lágrima: Nostalgia, simulacra y melodrama desde el bolero.” Cuadernos del Lazarillo: Revista Literaria Cultural 7 (1995): 30-34 Selected Bibliography Aparicio, Frances R. Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music and Puerto Rican Cultures. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1998. Dyer, Richard. Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film. London: Routledge, 1990. Galán, Natalio. Cuba y sus sones. Valencia: Pre-textos/ Música, 1983. Aristizabal, Alonso. “La América del bolero y el tango.” Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilie, 48 (1987): 145-48. Mira, Alberto, ed. Para entendernos: Diccionario de la cultura homosexual, gay y lésbica. Barcelona: Ediciones de la Tempestad, 1999. Babuscio, Jack. “The Cinema of Camp (Aka Camp and the Gay Sensibility).” Cleto 117-35. Monsiváis, Carlos. Mexican Postcards. Trans. John Kraniauskas. London: Verso, 1997. Campos, René A.. “The Poetics of the Bolero in the Pacini Hernández, Deborah. Bachata; A Social History 485 of a Dominican Popular Music. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Poe, Karen. Boleros. Heredia: Editorial de la Universidad Nacional, 1996. Quiroga, José. Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Rico Salazar, Jaime. Cien años de boleros. Bogota: Panamericana, 2000. Ross, Andrew. No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1989. Sontag, Susan. “Notes on “Camp”.” (1964) Susan Sontag. Against Interpretation. London: Vintage, 1994. 275-92. Zavala, Iris M. “De héroes y heroinas en lo imaginario social: El discurso amoroso del bolero.” Casa de las Américas 30.179 (1990): 123-29 ---. El bolero: Historia de un amor. Madrid: Alianza, 1991. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Film Music of Tôru Takemitsu: Sound and Silence in Double Suicide (Shinjû Ten no Amijima) Kyoko Koizumi lute), while composing his most celebrated work, November Steps for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The biwa is a symbolic instrument in both Takemitsu’s art and functional (that is ﬁlm) music after the middle 1960s, showing his originality and creativity as an Asian composer. However, Takemitsu’s initial use of the biwa was not in his art music, but in his music for ﬁlms, namely, Seppuku (1962) and Kwaidan (1964), both directed by Masaki Kobayashi. Hence, scholars have gradually come to notice the importance of Takemitsu’s ﬁlm music as a precedent for subsequent experimental art works (e.g. de Ferranti, 2002). From among Takemitsu’s 100 works for ﬁlm, I will analyze the ﬁlm sound track of Double Suicide (Shinjû Ten no Amijima, 1969, directed by Masahiro Shinoda). I have chosen this ﬁlm because the collaboration between Takemitsu and Shinoda was remarkable in Takemitsu’s biography of ﬁlm music as he composed scores for 16 of Shinoda’s ﬁlms, the largest number of his works for ﬁlm for a single director. In this ﬁlm, Takemitsu worked not The characteristic of ﬁrst and foremost importance in Takemitsu’s biography is that, in 1967, he used the traditional Japanese instrument called the biwa (Japanese only as a composer, but also as one of the dramatizers. Therefore, analyzing Double Suicide will be most helpful in understanding how Takemitsu thought about musical Introduction T ôru Takemitsu (1930-1996) is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary Japanese composers. Since his death in 1996, the number of studies of his work has dramatically increased both inside and outside Japan. However, I have reservations about this trend as serious musicologists have focused exclusively on his ‘art’ works and have tended to neglect his work for ﬁlm or, at best, to consider it as merely supplementary in his biography. Despite the fact that he is known as an established ﬁlm music composer who wrote the scores for some 100 ﬁlms, a great deal of his fame rested not on his ﬁlm music, but on his ‘serious’ music, such as orchestral works or chamber ensembles. Therefore, in this paper I would like to focus on his ﬁlm music and clarify where his originality lies. Music and Sound in Double Suicide 487 structure and sound construction for ﬁlm. Double Suicide was originally performed as gidayûbushi, a genre of Japanese traditional narrative music and an accompaniment for ningyô jôruri, Japanese traditional bunraku puppet theater. The story of Double Suicide, called Shinjû Ten no Amijima in Japanese, was written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), a distinguished playwright of the Edo era (1603-1867). Whereas the story line of the ﬁlm version of Double Suicide follows the original, the original gidayûbushi music is used in only several cues. In the rest of the soundtrack, Balinese gamelan, Turkish ﬂute, and even the sounds of voices on the telephone are alternatively used. Along with these ‘experimental’ sounds, Takemitsu used the biwa throughout the ﬁlm. As the biwa has traditionally been used as the accompaniment for storytellers in Japan, it may seem natural that Takemitsu used biwa in Double Suicide. However, I have to emphasize here that before Takemitsu, Japanese ﬁlms were accompanied with Western classical-style music, following the tradition of classical Hollywood ﬁlm music. Then, why did Takemitsu use such different kinds of music? How did he construct the soundtrack with these musics? I will now turn to an analysis of the meaning of musical cues in this ﬁlm. Figure 1 shows three scenes from Double Suicide which frame the sound structure of the ﬁlm. Next, as shown in Figure 2, music and sound in Double Suicide can largely be categorized into four kinds. Figure 3 indicates added sequences of the ﬁlm version of Double Suicide, while Figure 4 focuses on how Takemitsu was inﬂuenced by his forerunners. Figure 1. Three Scenes from Double Suicide Scene One (introduction): The Kawashô Tea House at Kita no Shinchi Scene Two (development): Jihei’s House at Temma Scene Three (rapid ﬁnale): The Yamatoya Tea House and the Tour for a Double Suicide Figure 2. Music and Sound in Double Suicide Japanese Traditional Music: shamisen (futozao), biwa, uchiwa-taiko Other Asian Traditional Music: Balinese gamelan, Turkish ﬂute and drum Human Voice: voices on the phone, recitation (tayû=gidayû reciter) Sound Effects: hyôshigi (wooden clappers), Daichôji Temple bell 488 Figure 3. Remarkably Added Sequences of the film version of Double Suicide Figure 4. The Forerunners of Takemitsu’s Music and Sounds in Double Suicide 1. Main Title (with Balinese gamelan, backstage sounds and voices on the phone) Use of Japanese Traditional Instruments: Toshirô Mayuzumi (in the 1950s) Uchiwa-daiko: Masaru Satoh (Yôjinbô, dir. Akira 2. Jihei on the Bridge (with uchiwa-daiko) Shamisen: unidentiﬁed (N.B. in the early 1960s, 3. Jihei & Koharu’s Love Scene in the Kawashô Tea House (with biwa) Satsuma biwa: Takemitsu himself (Seppuku, 1962 4. Kurogo’s Changing the Stage from Scene 1 to 2 (three-sound motif of bell) Turkish ﬂute: Michel Fano (Immortelle, dir. Alain 5. Kurogo’s Changing the Stage from Scene 2 to 3 (three-sound motif of bell) Balinese Gamelan: unidentiﬁed (N.B. Takemitsu 6. Jihei & Koharu’s Love Scene in the grave (with biwa and Koharu’s sensual voice) traveled to Bali in 1972 and then used gamelan soundlike effects in his piano work, For Away, 1973) Robbe Grillet, 1963) and Kwaidan, 1964, dir. Masaki Kobayashi) Takemitsu attended a performance of the bunraku puppet theater and was impressed with futozao) Kurosawa, 1961) In Figure 4, the most inﬂuential composer on Takemitsu’s music in Double Suicide would be Michel Fano. Fano was a student of Olivier Messiaen (1) and regarded ﬁlm music as ‘partition sonore’ (score of sound). The style of his compositions is musique concrète. Recently, he has worked as sound engineer for Jean-Luc Godard’s ﬁlms. Takemitsu himself acknowledged that he was greatly inspired by Fano’s use of real sounds in ﬁlm (see Takemitsu 1980: 161 ; Akiyama 1998: 217-220). 489 Fano’s inﬂuence on Takemitsu is conspicuous in Double Suicide. It is thought that the most experimental sound in the ﬁlm score is that of the Turkish ﬂute which is alien to Japanese listeners. Takemitsu cut off the more familiar sounds of biwa, bell and gamelan at the end of the ﬁlm with the intrusion of the Turkish ﬂute. It is likely that Takemitsu employs Turkish ﬂute in Double Suicide, following Fano’s use in Immortelle (1963, directed by Alain Robbe Grillet). Furthermore, Takemitsu’s use of bell sounds as the main tonal basis may also come from Fano’s technique of using Turkish ﬂute as ‘basso continuo’ in Immortelle. Table 1 shows the musical cues in Double Suicide. It is obvious that each cue is very short and completely different from nonstop Hollywood-style ﬁlm music. In addition, it is interesting that there are only a limited number of pieces of music that Takemitsu newly composed for this ﬁlm. Therefore, his role on Double Suicide is more like that of an editor or a sound designer than of a composer in a general sense. upon the narrative of the ﬁlm. The latter is thought to be so-called classical Hollywood ﬁlm music and follows a late Romantic style of orchestration. In addition, I use Gorbman’s third category of ‘metadiegetic’ music in order to analyze Double Suicide. Gorbman explains that metadiegetic music works as a psychological trigger to the protagonist’s memory of, for example, his or her lost lover or of past events. With regard to these three categories of music in ﬁlm soundtracks, the important point here is that there are two kinds of metadiegetic sound in Double Suicide. Firstly, biwa sounds relate to Koharu’s eroticism as a courtesan girl and the male protagonist’s passion for her. Scene 1 is underscored by many musical cues and biwa sounds are exposed as a key timbre. In Scene 2, music is used far less; however, the exceptional uses of biwa which are not related to Koharu are the 7th and 8th cues in Scene 2. Biwa sounds are related to the male protagonist’s wife, Osan as if she found her other self in Koharu. In fact, in this ﬁlm, the same actress takes the double role of these two female protagonists. Here For this analysis, I follow Claudia Gorbman’s categories of ‘diegetic’ and ‘nondiegetic’ music (Gorbman 1987). According to Gorbman, on the one hand, diegetic music issues from a source within the narrative of the ﬁlm; that is, we can see the sound source on the screen. On the other hand, the source of nondiegetic music is nowhere to be seen, and the music intrudes from elsewhere a fallen woman (Kohoku) and a virtuous wife (Osan) are effectively connected by biwa sounds ﬁlled with emotional connotation. The second example of the metadiegetic use of music is the relation between kurogo and original gidayû music, that is, tayû (a gidayû reciter) and shamisen (the Japanese three-string fretless lute). Kurogo 490 Table 1. Musical Cues in Double Suicide (total 104 min.) approx. time dura-tion on the screen (description) diegetic music/sounds nondiegetic music/sounds metadiegetic music/sounds MT 00.14-00.34 00.37-01.13 01.13-02.23 02.23-03.28 03.28-04.21 03.3404.22-04.38 04.38-04.49 19 36 1.10 1.05 53 backstage, credit backstage sounds voices on the phone backstage sounds voices on the phone hyôshigi before opening 16 11 title Balinese gamelan tayû=gidayû reciter kôjô=announcement Scene 1. 04.49-05.45 05.53-06.28 06.45-09.43 08.13-08.33 08.53-09.13 09.43-09.53 12.21-13.11 13.13-13-23 16.53-17.16 20.10-20.53 27.38-27.48 28.33-28.58 30.43-31.13 35.23-35.39 35.39-36.01 56 35 2.58 20 20 10 50 10 23 43 10 25 13 16 22 Jihei on a bridge a died couple Jihei in Kita uchiwa-taiko water sound bell (three-sound) Balinese gamelan Balinese gamelan Jihei and Koharu love scene 1 bell (one sound) Tahei Jihei in Kita tied-up Jihei bell Tahei, bystanders Osan’s letter dejected Koharu uchiwa-taiko Tahei’s song biwa biwa biwa tayû, shamisen tayû, shamisen biwa 36.51-37.11 20 kurogo, tiled roof (change scenes) bell (three-sound) Scene 2. 37.28-38.12 51.43-52.23 54.27-54.53 1.02.59- 03.28 1.11.24-11.33 1.12.03-12.28 1.13.13-13.33 1.14.13-15.39 44 40 26 29 9 25 20 1.26 Temma Jihei in bed Jihei with tears tayû, shamisen biwa biwa biwa surprised Gozaemon crying Osan crying Osan taiko shamisen shamisen biwa biwa 1.16.51-17.58 1.07 Jihei, kurogo, water (change scenes) bell (three sounds) Scene 3. 1.17.58-18.18 1.23.53-25.13 1.25.38-26.08 1.26.08 1.30.31-33.39 1.36.53-40.04 1.37.20 1.39.49 1.40.04-42.33 20 1.20 30 Jihei in Kita hyôshigi Magoemon recitation by Magoemon taiko biwa taiko(short) 3.08 3.11 love scene 2 couple in grave Temple bell Temple bell 2.29 Jihei’s suicide Turkish ﬂute and drum Koharu’s voice Daichôji Temple bell bell biwa 491 literally means an assistant in black dress and refers to a puppet manipulator in bunraku puppet theater. The idea of kurogo is also used in Double Suicide. Kurogo is situated to manipulate the narrative of the ﬁlm and the use of recitation and hyôshigi (wooden clappers) are inserted in order to remind the audience of the ﬁlm’s origin in bunraku puppet theater. Discussion appearances, the bell ﬁnally reveals its visual sound source as the Daichôji Temple bell which drives the tragic protagonists to commit suicide. Following this logic, gamelan can be conceived to be a ramiﬁcation of the reverberating Daichôji Temple bell sound. Furthermore, it is logical to consider that Takemitsu uses Turkish ﬂute in the last scene as a tribute to Fano, as Takemitsu followed Fano’s idea of developing the Turkish ﬂute in Immortelle in order to construct the sound design of Double Suicide. On the other hand, although biwa and shamisen sound very similar, Takemitsu effectively relates biwa sounds to Koharu, and ﬁnally also connects the biwa to the male protagonist’s wife. The emotional integration of these two contrasting female protagonists, a fallen woman and a virtuous wife, can thus be accomplished through the psychological and cautious development of biwa sounds at the metadiegetic level. In contrast to the use of the biwa, the shamisen is employed as though manipulated by kurogo. The short but repetitive use of gidayû music is effective to remind the audience of the fact that the story originates from bunraku puppet theater, while the destinies of the protagonists are manipulated like puppets by kurogo. In bunraku puppet theater, the gidayû reciter takes charge of both dialogues and narration. In other words, dialogues by the gidayû reciter are heard as diegetic sound, but the sound source is not seen on stage since Both ﬁlm and music critics have tended to attribute the originality of the Double Suicide soundtrack to its experimental use of gamelan, Turkish ﬂute and telephone voice in the cinematization of a traditional Japanese bunraku puppet theater play. However, according to my analysis, Takemitsu’s originality in this ﬁlm is twofold: ﬁrstly, the use of bell sounds as ‘basso continuo’ throughout the entire ﬁlm; and secondly, the effective use of biwa and original gidayû music at the metadiegetic level. On the one hand, Takemitsu uses bells as nondiegetic sound in the beginning and then as diegetic sound in Scene 3 to provide coherence throughout the ﬁlm, following Fano’s idea in Immortelle. If we regard the bell sound as a continuous base line on which Takemitsu builds the ﬁlm’s sound architecture, it can be said that at ﬁrst the bell displays its existence only at the auditory level, where sounds appear for only a short while and soon disappear. After repetitive sonic 492 both tayû reciter and the accompanying shamisen player perform off-stage-left. Hence, from the ﬁrst, gidayû music proposes a multi-layered audiovisual experience for the audience. By using gidayû music in the ﬁlm at a metadiegetic level, Takemitsu succeeds in utilizing the audience’s accumulated cultural capital about bunraku puppet theater, making their audiovisual experience much more complex. In the ﬁlm, gidayû music is unseen within the frame, but can be heard through the existence of kurogo puppet manipulators. Both hyôshigi and the telephone voices perform similar roles as metadiegetic sounds. However, of importance here is that the wooden clappers ﬁnally reveal their visual appearance on screen in Scene 3 while the telephone conversation used was obviously made between the ﬁlm director and the scriptwriter, and did not include the composer himself. In this regard, the true kurogo in Double Suicide is Takemitsu who was himself neither directly seen nor heard in the ﬁlm. 1. When Takemitsu started to teach himself to compose in his youth, he followed the styles of modern French composers, particularly Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. It is possible that Takemitsu was interested in Fano’s works for ﬁlm because of the latter’s apprenticeship under Messiaen whom Takemitsu especially admired. The researcher is grateful to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan for supporting this research (‘Experimentalism and Traditionalism in Tôru Takemitsu’s ﬁlm music’, the Grant-in-aid for Young Scientists (B), 2003, No. 15720023). Acknowledgements Endnotes Selected Bibliography Akiyama, K. (1998) Cine-music Kôza: Eiga Ongaku no 100-nen wo Kiku [Lectures on Cine-music: Hearing the Centennial History of Film Music], Tokyo: Film Art Sha (in Japanese). Burt, P. (2001) The Music of Tôru Takemitsu, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 493 de Ferranti, H. (2002) ‘Takemitsu’s biwa’, in de Ferranti and Narazaki (eds.) A Way a Lone: Writings on Tôru Takemitsu, Tokyo: Academia Music. Edition, Henshûshitsu (2003) Complete Takemitsu Edition, Vol. 3, Music for Movies 1, Tokyo: Shogakukan (in Japanese). Funayama, T. (1998) Takemitsu Tôru: Hibiki no Umi e [Tôru Takemitsu: Towards the Sea of Sound], Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomo Sha (in Japanese). Takemitsu, T. (1980) Ongaku no Yohaku kara [From the Space Left in Music], Tokyo: Shinchosha (in Japanese). Gorbman, C. (1987) Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Takemitsu, T. et. al.(1981) Ongaku no Niwa: Takemitsu Tôru Taidanshû [Music Garden: Collection of Conversations with Tôru Takemitsu], Tokyo: Shinchosha Gunji, M. (1969) ‘Chikamatsu eigaka no kyo to jitsu: sono yôshiki to realism no kaneai’ [The hollowness and reality on ﬁlmization of Chikamatsu: A balance between its style and realism], Kinema Junpô, Vol. 497 (June)(in Japanese). (in Japanese). Kobayashi, A. (2001) Nihon Eiga Ongaku no Kyosei Tachi I [Big Stars in Japanese Film Music, Vol. 1], Tokyo: Wides Shuppan (in Japanese). Ohtake, N. (1993) Creative Sources for the Music of Tôru Takemitsu, Aldershot: Ashgate. Saito, S. and Takemitsu, M. (eds.)(1997) Takemitsu Tôru no Sekai [The World of Tôru Takemitsu], Tokyo: Shueisha (in Japanese). Shogakukan Shuppankyoku, Complete Takemitsu IASPM03 - MONTREAL Intertextuality as a Tool for the Analysis of Popular Music: Gérard Genette and the Recorded Palimpsest Serge Lacasse that might link pop recordings to others. More precisely, I intend to outline the basis of a general descriptive model of what I will call transphonography, that is, a set of six intertextual perspectives applied to recorded popular music. In doing so, I wish to provide a set of terms and deﬁnitions that will contribute to enrich the analysis of pre- and co-existing elements in popular music, hoping that it will help us better understand our own relationship with music. II. From Transtextuality to Transphonography A. Gérard Genette’s Transtextuality I. Introduction In his review of Goldmember (Roach), the third movie of the trilogy featuring Austin Powers, British ﬁlm critique John Walsh writes: Allusions, nods, echoes, hommages—Austin Powers has them all. Movies today are all about yesterday’s movies [...]. We seem to have entered a ﬁlmic Echoland, in which virtually every major new movie is, or contains, a parody or pastiche or spoof or remake of another ﬁlm or several others. (Walsh 1) Of course, this would also apply to popular music: Not only do we ﬁnd innumerable cover versions of existing songs, but the advent of digital recording has now placed sampling as one of the most prominent features of today’s popular music. Perhaps more than ever before, popular songs, in various degrees, are linked with each other; sharing and borrowing all sorts of features. The aim of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework in order to describe and categorize the kinds of relations The model I will outline today is based on the one originally developed by literary theorist Gérard Genette in his Palimpsests, which still constitutes, more than twenty years after its ﬁrst publication, one of the landmarks in literary theory.(1) In the book’s introduction, Genette deﬁnes transtextuality as “all that sets the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts” (Palimpsests 1). This very broad conception of textual transcendence is virtually synonymous with intertextuality, a term widely in use in academia today.(2) However, the most interesting 495 aspect of Genette’s model lies in the way in which he divides transtextuality in “ﬁve types of transtextual relationships” (Palimpsests 1). He ﬁrst restricts the deﬁnition of intertextuality to “a relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts: that is to say [...] as the actual presence of one text within another” (Palimpsests 1-2). He then mentions quoting(3) as the most explicit form of this “restricted” form of intertextuality. The second type of Genette’s transtextuality is paratextuality which comprises “those liminal devices and conventions, both within the book (peritext) and outside it (epitext), that mediate the book to the reader” (Macksey xviii).(4) On a third level, Genette identiﬁes metatextuality which refers to any form of commentary: “It unites a given text to another, of which it speaks without necessarily citing it (without summoning it)” (Palimpsests 4); and Genette adds: “All [...] critics, for centuries, have been producing metatexts without knowing it” (Architext 82). The fourth type of transtextual relationship is called hypertextuality by Genette, who deﬁnes it as “any relationship uniting a text B [called the hypertext] to an earlier text A [called the hypotext], upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary” (Palimpsests 5). Apparently not entirely satisﬁed with such a negative description, Genette has recently proposed a simpler deﬁnition: “A hypertext is a text which derives from another following a process of formal and/or thematic transformation” (“Du texte” 21, my translation). Finally, architextuality constitutes the ﬁfth type of transtextuality described by Genette; it is “The most abstract and implicit of the transcendent categories, the relationship of inclusion linking each text to the various kinds of discourse of which it is a representative” (Macksey xix). Among other things, it studies the generic appurtenance of texts which, according to Genette, is “known to guide and determine to a considerable degree the readers’ expectations, and thus their reception of the work” (Palimpsests 5). B. From Transtextuality to Transphonography In the following, I would like to give a foretaste of how would look a similar model when adapted to popular music. In order to restrict our discussion, however, and without getting into a metaphysical argument about what constitutes a popular musical text, I would ﬁrst simply like to limit my proposed model mostly to popular music recordings, or phonograms. Of course, one could extend the notion of text to a much larger set of phenomena; but since we have to begin somewhere, I thought the best place to start would be the recording, since it still constitutes the reference medium in many genres of popular music. However, the model also potentially accounts for some other kinds of texts which circulate in close connection with recordings, 496 such as CD covers, liner notes or album reviews.(5) As we’ll see, all these elements interact in a dynamic intertextual system. Since, in the context of this model, the phonogram will be considered as the main popular musical “text”, I then suggest to simply replace the sufﬁx textuality by phonography for each of Genette’s ﬁve types of transtextuality. We would thus obtain interphonography, paraphonography, metaphonography, hyperphonography, and archiphonography. These constitute our ﬁve types of transphonography, to which I will add a sixth one that will be discussed later, and for which there is no corresponding type in Genette’s model: polyphonography.(6) Each of our (now) six transphonographic types offers a particular way of linking phonograms—as well as some extraphonographic texts—together. Now, despite this apparent rigorous categorization, transphonography is nothing but a ﬁxed concept: it is rather a malleable tool that can help us establish different kinds of relations between existing recordings and their related para- and metatexts. Indeed, Appendix 1 presents transphonographic practices as a dynamic process, where each practice can interact and even overlap with others.(7) In the remainder of this paper, however, we will only brieﬂy explore some of these practices, and see how they might interact with each other. But before I do so, the chart’s display needs a little explanation. Elements within the chart are distributed on three hierarchical levels (Appendix 2). This hierarchy is notably illustrated by the number and types of arrows leading to a given transphonographic practice. (I won’t take the time to describe in details the meaning of these arrows, but some of my later comments will provide a few indications.) For example, archiphonography, the most general category, is located at the ﬁrst level, while inter-, poly- and paraphonography occupy the third level. In addition to this vertical alignment, one can group practices in what I would call three “conceptual areas” (Appendix 3). It is according to this latter tripartite division that we will now brieﬂy explore transphonographic practices. III. Transphonographic Practices A. First Area: Archiphonography In the ﬁrst area, we ﬁnd a single item, archiphonography, which is concerned with relationships occurring at the highest, most abstract level. Paraphrasing Genette, it consists in the entire set of general categories—types of discourse, performing styles, musical genres— from which emerges each singular phonogram (Palimpsests 1). A possible metaphor for representing archiphonography could be a skewer, with which one would skewer a given set of recordings according to an ensemble of criteria. For example, one could decide 497 to group together all albums whose title begins with an s; or to study a set of CDs according to their artist’s geographic or ethnic origins. Of course, there is an inﬁnite number of possible criteria; but obviously some might be more interesting, or revealing than others, such as generic appurtenance, or stylistic features. Thus, archiphonography can become, for example, the theoretical locus for the study of intergeneric practices. David Brackett, invoking Derrida, writes that often: During the Toronto 2000/Musical Intersections Conference, I had the chance to hear a paper by Mark Spicer who demonstrated how the music of the Police could be considered as stylistic hybridization, replying, so to speak, to Echard’s and Brackett’s preoccupations. Spicer proposed an analysis of a couple of recordings that displayed particular features, such as guitar riffs, rhythm patterns, or keyboard sounds, each of them functioning as a kind of archetype for the style of which it is a representative (mostly reggae, but also Genres [...] overlap, and are constituted differently in different contexts [...]. Due to this phenomenon, a given musical text may belong to more than one genre simultaneously [...]. While close enough inspection of any text will throw into doubt that it belongs simply to a single genre, so is it also impossible to imagine a genreless text. (67) One way to circumvent this potential theoretical problem can perhaps be derived from William Echard’s forthcoming intertextual study of Neil Young’s music, where he proposes to approach genre as a kind of text, therefore opening the way to a form of generic intertextuality: “Genres are textual insofar as they are sites in which particular conﬁgurations and structures are dynamically mobilized for the creation of meaning in particular contexts” ([10]). punk, synth-pop and few others). By combining these archetypal elements with other elements more speciﬁc to the music of the Police—such as melodies, recording techniques or Sting’s voice—, Police’s own style starts to emerge. We have now reached the vast shores of genre studies, which probably constitutes one of the most important aspects of archiphonography, and of popular music studies in general. For example, this conference alone has featured tens of papers, and even whole panels, dealing with this topic, often attempting to describe the diverse relationships linking recordings to the characteristics of a given genre or style and to the expectations this linkage should arouse within a corresponding community. But, as I mentioned earlier, archiphonograhy is not only concerned with the questions of genre and style, and points to an even wider horizon that still needs to be mapped. 498 B. Second Area: Phonographic Interactions a wide range of different practices that need in turn to be described, a task that Dai Grifﬁths has recently partly undertaken. Indeed, some covers involve much more important transformations than others. For example, and as Wendy Nixon has illustrate in her paper appropriately entitled “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” tribute bands’ intention is mostly to re-create as perfectly as possible the performance of the bands they choose to cover, a practice that seems closer to copying than to covering: the music, lyrics, performing styles, and even staging Transphonographic categories belonging to the second conceptual area (see Appendix 3) do perhaps cover a more limited, and thus more manageable number of relations, which also probably constitute the most common and meaningful intertextual practices found in recorded popular music, such as sampling, covering, or the making of compilations. 1.Hyperphonography effects are as close as possible to the original. Moreover, the tribute band members even attempt to embody to different degrees the original band members’ personas. On the other hand, when Mike Flowers covers Oasis’ “Wonderwall” in a kind of 1960s cocktail musical style, not only is Oasis’ style profoundly altered, but also the singer’s persona: in this travesty, it is Flowers’ persona who performs the song, transferring it into a completely different generic context.(8) In addition to these taxonomic considerations, hyperphonography also explores axiological and ideological implications of such transformations. For example, in her analysis of Tori Amos’s cover of Eminem’s “97’ Bonnie and Clyde,” Tara Mimnagh—who also spoke at this conference, although on a different topic—shows how Amos manages to divert the song’s meaning without changing the lyrics. Not only transexuation is at play here, but also more subtle and subversive transformations. Hyperphonography, for instance, includes a very large ensemble of practices whose main characteristic is the transformation of pre-existing songs. More precisely, and paraphrasing Genette’s earlier quote, a hyperphonogram is a recording which derives from another recording following a process of formal and/or thematic transformation. Remixes, parodies, pastiches, and cover versions all fall into this category, as well as many other more speciﬁc practices, such as transmetriﬁcation (e.g., playing a song in a 3/4 waltz rhythm, instead of its original 4/4 feel), or transexuation (e.g., having a female artist performing a piece originally recorded by a male artist). In that context, covering probably constitutes one of the most typical forms of hyperphonography found in popular music. However, the term covering itself spans 499 The song relates the story of a man who, after having killed his wife, puts the body in the car’s trunk, and takes his daughter along with him in to dump the woman’s body in a lake. In Eminem’s original version, the narrator is the father-killer who engages in conversation with his daughter during the short trip; while in Amos’s version, it is the victim who attempts to speak to her child— using the father’s exact same words. By singing from inside a box, Amos alters her own voice timbre and suggests that it is the dead woman in the trunk who is singing. This transfer of speech from one character to another is what Genette calls transvocalisation. But this transvocalisation also inevitably leads to a change of focus—or transfocalisation: in the hyperphonogram, the story is now told according to the victim’s point of view, fundamentally altering, by the same token, the original song’s meaning and system of values. As one can see, since practices such as covering, remixes, parody or travesty constitute genres in themselves, there is an archiphonographic dimension within hyperphonography. However, some transphonographic categories might be even more closely bound to generic considerations, such as polyphonography, which I will now only brieﬂy comment. 2. Polyphonography large phonographic structures through the assemblage of smaller, self-contained recordings (See Appendix 4b). Perhaps the most obvious example of polyphonography is the album, which groups an ensemble of speciﬁc recorded songs into a larger structure. Commercial compilation CDs, such as greatest hits, constitute another kind of polyphonograms. Other practices, such as deejaying— which has been discussed by Gavin Kistner during this conference—or private mixed tapes, also fall under the heading of polyphonography. Interestingly, the individual recordings which constitute a given polyphonogram are mostly chosen and sequenced according to archiphonographic criteria, such as musical genre, year of release, or simply the music’s tempo. As a matter of fact, a fascinating website devoted to the practice of mix tapes, gathers more than 5000 members who have generated so far more than 50,000 sequences of songs (<www.artofthemix.org>). Moreover, many of these sequences are commented by the compilers who explain why they have chosen these recordings, and, perhaps more importantly, why they have arranged them in this speciﬁc order. In such a context, and somehow evoking Levi-Strauss’ notion (1962) of bricolage, the practice of private compilation is rightly considered a creative process by the compilers themselves (I’m quoting one of them): “The politics of the mixed tape concern the politics of art, Generally speaking, polyphonography includes all practices whose main purpose is the construction of for the mixed tape itself is an art, albeit a ‘lesser’ form of expression, ranking more with forms such as the collage, 500 the pastiche, the juxtaposition of found elements”.(9) 3. Interphonography Finally, I have grouped meta- and paraphonography in the area of “extraphonographic practices” (Appendix 3), since they mostly involve relations between recordings and non-phonographic texts, such as cover illustrations, album reviews, liner notes, and the like. However, as I decided to restrict this paper to intertextual relationships involving mostly recordings, I will not be discussing these practices in details. Perhaps just a word, though, to say how crucial a role these elements play in the relationship we maintain with recordings. Indeed, textual and graphic elements surrounding recordings, as well as the material which mediates them to the public—such as CD players or software interface—, have a very important inﬂuence on our reception and understanding of the music, another topic that has been covered during this conference. IV. Conclusion Contrary to polyphonography, interphonography studies the sharing of microstructures between recordings, such as samples or other forms of quoting. Appendix 4 presents a graphic representation of both practices. In the case of interphonography (Appendix 4a), we see a small unit of a given phonogram which becomes a part of another phonogram. This kind of relation usually leads to forms of allusion to earlier recordings, so typical of musical genres such as hip hop, of course. Here again, frontiers between transphonographic practices are rather permeable: While the analysis of samples’ narrative interaction belongs to interphonography, the generic grouping of recordings obeying to this aesthetic approach is typically archiphonographic. Furthermore, samples are very rarely found unaltered when travelling from one recording to another. Instead, and as illustrated in the diagram, they are often manipulated in all sorts of ways: they can be looped, slowed-down, reversed, ﬂanged, etc. It is then possible to consider a given sample as a (very) small unit in itself, and study its transformation from a hyperphonographic perspective. C. Third Area: Extraphonographic Practices In this paper, I have only presented a few aspects of transphonography. While it does not really explain how genres are socially constituted, or how people make their own connections between the recordings that punctuate their lives, I believe that it can be used as a powerful tool to describe potential kinds of relationships that might inﬂuence the audience’s “horizon of expectations”. Furthermore, while such a model still recognizes the existence of individual recordings, it also points to the inadequacy of notions such as the singularity of a given 501 song, or its corresponding alleged immutable meaning. Indeed, and as Genette points out, “humankind, which is ever discovering new meaning, cannot always invent new forms; it must at times be content to invest old forms with new meanings” (Palimpsests 400).(10) Endnotes (1) First published in French in 1982 (Genette, Palimpsestes), the book was recently translated in English (Palimpsests). See also his Introduction à l’architexte for a preliminary discussion on the topic, which was also translated in English (Architext). (2) For general introductions to intertextuality, see, among others, Bruce; Piégay-Gros; Allen; Rabau. (3) This particular form of literary practice has been studied in detail by Antoine Compagnon. Interestingly enough, Compagnon’s book is a reworked version of his doctoral thesis, supervised by none other than Julia Kristeva—who coined the term “intertextuality” in the ﬁrst place—, and for which Genette acted as examiner: small world indeed! (4) Genette has studied paratextuality in detail in Pratexts, originally published in French in 1987 as Seuils. (5) It is also obviously possible to extend this proposed model to any kind of popular music texts, such as videos and live performances. Furthermore, the study of the interaction between media, such as 502 music and images in the case of videos, is what constitutes the object of intermediality. For more on intermediality, see the recently founded journal Intermédialités : Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques, published by the Centre de recherche sur l’intermédialité (CRI) in Québec. Selected Bibliography Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. London: Routledge, 2000. Brackett, David. “(In Search of) Musical Meaning: Genres, Categories and Crossover.” Popular Music Studies. Ed. David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus. London: Arnold, (6) The term is borrowed from Bruno Monfort’s concept of “polytextualité”. I would like to thank René Audet for having pointing this out to me. 2002. 65-84. Bruce, Donald. De l’intertextuality à l’interdiscursivité : histoire d’une double émergence. Toronto: Paratexte, (7) This model is described in length in a forthcoming piece that will appear in a collection of essays entitled Incestuous Pop: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music (Lacasse, “Towards”). 1995. Compagnon, Antoine. La seconde main, ou le travail de la citation. Paris: Seuil, 1979. (8) For a discussion of travesty in popular music, see Lacasse, “Hypertextuality”. Echard, William. 2003. “‘Someone and Someone’: Dialogic Intertextuality in Neil Young”. Incestuous Pop: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music. Ed. Serge (9) For more on this speciﬁc website and on mixed tapes in general, see Fox; Lacasse, “L’anthologie”. Lacasse. Québec: Nota Bene, forthcoming. Fox, Kamal. “Mixed Feelings: Notes on the Romance (10) Support for the writing of this paper came from a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). I would also like to thank people at the Centre de recherche sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ) for their help. Genette, Gérard. Introduction à l’architexte. Paris: Seuil, 1979. of the Mixed Tape”. Rhizomes 5 (Fall 2002). 13 August 2003 <http://www.rhizomes.net>. 503 Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes : la littérature au second degré. Paris: Seuil, 1982. Levi-Strauss, Claude. La pensée sauvage. Paris: Plon, 1962. Genette, Gérard. Seuils. Paris: Seuil, 1987. Macksey, Richard. Foreword to Paratexts: Threshold of Interpretation, by Gérard Genette. Cambridge: Genette, Gérard. The Architext: An Introduction. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature to the Second Degree. Trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Mimnagh, Tara. “Faraway, So Close: Amos Does Eminem”. Incestuous Pop: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music. Ed. Serge Lacasse. Québec: Nota Bene, forthcoming.2003. Monfort, Bruno. “La nouvelle et son mode de publication. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Le cas américain”. Poétique 90 (April 1992): 153-171. Piégay-Gros, Nathalie. Introduction à l’intertextualité. Paris: Dunod, 1996. Genette, Gérard. “Du texte à l’œuvre”. Figures IV. Paris: Seuil, 1999. 7-45. Rabau, Sophie. L’intertextualité. Paris: Flammarion, 2002. Grifﬁths, Dai. “Cover Versions and the Sound of Identity in Motion”. Popular Music Studies. Ed. David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus. London: Arnold, 2002. 51-64. Spicer, Mark. “Ghosts in the Machine: Analyzing Style in the Music of the Police.” Unpublished paper. Toronto 2000 Musical Intersections Conference, Toronto, Canada, 1-5 November.2000. Lacasse, Serge. “Towards a Model of Transphonography”. Incestuous Pop: Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music. Ed. Serge Lacasse. Québec: Nota Bene, forthcoming. Walsh, John. “Is Pastiche Better than the Real Thing?: Yeah Baby!”. Review of Goldmember (Warner Bros. movie). The Independent on Sunday, LifeEtc. section 21 July 2002: 1-2. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Beyond the Yellow Submarine: Aspects of the Sublime in The Beatles’ “It’s All Too Much” Jim LeBlanc G eorge Harrison’s composition, “It’s All Too Much,” is hardly one of the Beatles’ most Recorded during dense barrage of background effects, the song’s production took the psychedelic aesthetic to its logical conclusion (7). Whatever one thinks of “It’s All Too Much” aesthetically, it is on the meta-aesthetic aspect of the song’s themes that I’d like to focus this morning -- that and the nature of the “logical conclusion” signaled by Harrison’s musical commentary on the allness of his psychedelic vision, the allness that is “too much,” an aesthetic experience we commonly call the sublime. In one of its deﬁnitions of the term, the Oxford English Dictionary glosses the adjective “sublime” as: “of things in nature and art; affecting the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur” (8). One of the most important and often cited philosophical analyses of the sublime appears in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment. At the risk of rendering a grossly simpliﬁed thumbnail of Kant’s study, I’d like universally memorable tracks. what Mark Lewisohn has described as “the Beatles’ creative dip in the late-spring of 1967” (1), the song has frequently been panned. Various Beatles critics have characterized it as: “mock inspirational,” not ﬁnely honed, and “boring” (2), a “protracted exercise in drugmesmerised ... monotony” (3), and “pretentious; it is tracks like these that are indeed too much” (4). The piece is not without its supporters, however, who have praised the song, chieﬂy for its psychedelic aspects. Stuart Madow and Jeff Sobul, in their Colour of Your Dreams, maintain that “It’s All Too Much” is a “quality psychedelic composition” and that “[d]espite the song’s heavy psychedelic tone, it has an endearing, almost uplifting quality to it” (5). Sobul, in fact, accords “It’s All Too Much” the number eight position in his personal top ten late-period Beatles songs (6). Bob Neaverson, in his Beatles Movies, goes even further: Although continually disregarded by the majority of critics, “It’s All Too Much” must surely be the most underrated song in the Beatles’ psychedelic canon. With its extraordinary tape loops and to highlight a couple of key aspects of his argument. First, the experience of the sublime is grounded in the perception of a “formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented, and yet its 505 totality is also present to thought” (9). Secondly, in the course of this “aesthetical estimation of magnitude ... the effort towards comprehension surpasses the power of our imagination” (10). The contemporary French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, has summarized Kant’s characterization of the sublime object as that which is “almost too great for our apprehension and deﬁnitely too great for our comprehension” (11). Both Kant and Derrida contend that the pleasure we derive from the sublime is directly attributable to this awareness of incomprehensible vastness, depth, or size, which threatens to overwhelm our perception and ﬂummox our understanding. For this reason, Derrida sees the abyss as the sublime object par excellence (12). “It’s All Too Much.” Harrison composed this piece in the spring of 1967, writing it, in his words: “in a childlike manner from realisations that appeared during and after some LSD experiences and which were later conﬁrmed in meditation” (13). The Beatles recorded the tune in late May in the aftermath of the Sgt. Pepper sessions. It was not included in that album, of course, nor was it considered for the forthcoming Magical Mystery Tour project. Rather, it became the second track to be set aside for the ﬁlm, Yellow Submarine (following Paul McCartney’s “All Together Now,” which was recorded a few days earlier). The song opens with a harsh, but magniﬁcently extended bit of feedback from John Lennon’s guitar, followed a few seconds later by Ringo Starr’s expansive drum entrance. In the words of Tim Riley, the Beatles “seem to be deﬁning as large a space as they can” (14). Indeed, both instrumentally and lyrically the piece depicts elements of the sublime. Harrison’s initial verse and the later lines he borrows from the Mersey’s tune “Sorrow” suggest an endless depth to his lover’s eyes and perhaps the overwhelming emotion of that love itself, especially as seen and experienced under psychedelic inﬂuences: When I look into your eyes Your love is there for me And the more I go inside The more there is to see. ... With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue You’re too much (15). Immediately following the second evocation of his lover’s deep blue eyes, Harrison’s voice soars to its upper boundary, threatening to go beyond its limits, in delivering the cryptic line: “We are dead.” The song’s acid roots surface more distinctly in its second verse: Floating down the stream of time From life to life with me 506 Makes no difference where you are Or where you’d like to be. We hear echoes of Lennon’s 1966 composition, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a song whose lyrics are derived from Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert’s Psychedelic Experience: “Turn off your mind, relax and ﬂoat downstream / It is not dying” (16). Further, the G-pedal that propels “It’s All Too Much,” with its recurring, but brieﬂy stated subdominant continually resolving into the sustaining tonic, recalls the relentless C chord that undergirds “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Together with the tracks’ pervasive electronic effects, this minimal use of harmonic variation helps to create the psychedelic drone that colors both pieces. The LSD experiences they represent can be overwhelming and, at times, all too much. Harrison backs away from the abyss, though. The lines “All the world is birthday cake / So take a piece, but not too much” and “Show me that I’m everywhere / And get me home to tea,” often criticized as compositional weaknesses, betray a nostalgia for the mundane and the unwillingness on the part of the singer to surrender himself completely to his vision. Kant maintains that the sublime is attractive to us only when we feel secure in the face of nature’s might (17). Harrison will later discover a safer ground for these insights in Eastern religion. Compare the lines “The more I learn, the less I know / And what I do is all too much” with the following verses from his 1968 composition, “The Inner Light,” based on the translation of a Lao-tse poem from the Tao Te Ching: The farther one travels The less one knows The less one really knows. Arrive without traveling. See all without looking. Do all without doing (18). “It’s All Too Much” was released in January 1969 as part of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. The Beatles themselves had very little to do with the production of the animated ﬁlm, apart from the contribution of four new original tunes in fulﬁllment of a contract obligation. “It’s All Too Much” was one of these. The ﬁlm tells a simple story of an idyllic Pepperland invaded by naysaying, music-hating Blue Meanies. To the rescue come Ringo, John, George, and Paul in a yellow submarine. Thematically, there is nothing particularly sublime about the ﬁlm, with the exception perhaps of the psychedelic artwork, which creates the kind of grand hallucinogenic landscape to which the sound of late ‘60s acid rock and the LSD experience itself relate. Interestingly, though, the word “all,” and the vast totality 507 it implies, occurs in the titles of three of the sixteen Beatles songs we hear in the ﬁlm: “All Together Now,” “All You Need Is Love,” and “It’s All Too Much.” These are three out of only six original Beatles compositions whose titles contain the word “all” (that is, 50% -there will be a quiz later to identify the other three). Moreover, eleven of the sixteen Beatles songs of which we hear at least snippets in the movie include the word “all” somewhere in their lyrics. While “all” is not an uncommon term in the lyrical vocabulary of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison (it appears in roughly 45% of their compositions), it is over 50% more common in tracks used for Yellow Submarine. Clearly, allness is a musical theme in the ﬁlm, and allness, as a perceptual aesthetic, can be too much. We hear a downsized version of Harrison’s composition near the very end of the movie, after the Blue Meanies have been routed and just before the Beatles make a brief and uninspired live-action appearance. The animated sequence that accompanies the song’s performance was one of the last ﬁlmed. The images were cobbled together from discarded artwork, in order to provide some kind of ending, some kind of logical conclusion for the cartoon narrative (19). Thus, “It’s All Too Much,” a musical throwaway from the Beatles’ post-Pepper sessions, is performed over a patchwork of rejected pieces of psychedelic art in the late ‘60s ﬁlm. The image of a plant growing extremely rapidly out of a mound of painted bluebirds, spiraling up, up, up and blooming over and over again to the screeching moan of Hendrix-like guitar feedback and reaching at its apogee a radiant, glowing landscape of afﬁrmation and continuously changing color, introduces what is perhaps Yellow Submarine’s most psychedelic segment. Almost too great for apprehension and deﬁnitely too great for comprehension, the ﬁlm’s climax attempts a synergetic artistic representation of the sublime. But what about the song’s lyrics? Absent are Harrison’s references to the stream of time and the ﬂow of life and death -- not to mention Patti Boyd’s long blonde hair. Instead, we get a pair of new couplets that are not heard on the sound track album -- a kind of banal bonus: Nice to have the time to take This opportunity. Time for me to look at you And you to look at me (20). What is this? An outtake from the original recording sessions maybe -- a throwaway verse from a throwaway song backing some throwaway footage in the movie? Why is it in the ﬁlm? I don’t have an answer, but these additional bland lines do mark a step further away from the compelling abyss about which Harrison originally sang, a step further away 508 from the awesome grandeur of the psychedelic landscape and profound religious insight, a step back from the sublime. I’d like to suggest that “It’s All Too Much,” in its sound track version and perhaps especially in its cinematic presentation, is symptomatic of a downturn -- a slow crash that began in May of 1967 when the song was ﬁrst recorded, following the completion of the monumental tracks for Sgt. Pepper; a slow crash that continued through the remainder of 1967, through 1968, and into 1969 when Yellow Submarine went into general release and the Beatles called it quits; a slow crash that included the death of Brian Epstein, disillusionment with the Maharishi, growing rifts in Harrison’s marriage to Patti Boyd and, ultimately, irreparable rifts within the Beatles themselves leading to the band’s demise. In some ways, the rapid growth of the giant plant at the conclusion of Yellow Submarine reﬂects the group’s meteoric rise and psychedelic apotheosis in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Pepperland. This high could not be sustained, this vision that was almost too great for apprehension and deﬁnitely too great for comprehension. “It’s All Too Much” signals the incipient fading of a sublime moment in musical, not to mention cultural history, a fading back from awesome beauty and grandeur to the mundane sights and sounds of everyday life, love, and death. 8. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). 7. Bob Neaverson, The Beatles Movies (London: Cassell, 1997) 92-93. 6. Madow and Sobul, The Colour of Your Dreams 113. 5. Stuart Madow and Jeff Sobul, The Colour of Your Dreams: The Beatles Psychedelic Music (Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1992) 76. 4. Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: “Revolver” through the “Anthology” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 128. 3. Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994) 208. Endnotes 1. Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Chronicle (London: Hamlyn, 1992) 276. 2. Tim Riley, Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (New York: Knopf, 1988) 243. 509 9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1951) 82. 20. The Beatles, perf., Yellow Submarine, George Dunning, 1969, videocassette, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Home Entertainment, 1999. 10. Kant, Critique of Judgment 94. 11. Jacques Derrida, La Vérité en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978) 144-145; my translation. 12. Derrida, La Vérité en peinture 148. 13. George Harrison, I Me Mine (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002) 106. 14. Riley, Tell Me Why 243; my emphasis. 15. The Beatles, “It’s All Too Much,” Yellow Submarine, Parlophone CDP7464452, 1969. 16. The Beatles, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver, Parlophone CDP7464412, 1966. 17. Kant, Critique of Judgment 100. 18. The Beatles, “The Inner Light,” Parlophone R5675. 19. Heinz Edelmann, as quoted in Robert R. Hieronimus, Inside the Yellow Submarine: The Making of the Beatles’ Animated Classic (Iola, WI: Krause, 2002) 198. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Simulacra or “Stimulacra”?: Musical Inflections on Quasi-Realism and Parody Claire Levy Y ears ago, when my mother was trying to convey to me her special appreciation to classical unfortunate thing – both for those who produce and transmit it and for those who are exposed to it. For its parallels would be something like a dance with no rhythm, or a wine with no alcohol, or words with no sense, or whatever phenomenon lacking its primary essence and purpose. Indeed, looking up at the ongoing dominant stream of cover versions, eclectic mixtures and collages, so popular in popular music, one can ﬁnd perhaps good enough reasons of introducing terms like “simulacra” and “blank parody”. What bothers me with both terms is that they generalize gloomy reﬂections on modern art as a whole and announce a dominant meaninglessness in modern cultural world, as if missing to point that, as Philip Tagg says, “social norms and musical symbols are in a constant change” (3), and in talking on meanings or lack of meanings, we must be aware of “which sounds mean what to whom in which context”(4). In this paper I want to argue that eclectic mixtures, recycled codes, and copies of hard-to-be-identiﬁed originals not only may transmit meaningful messages but – being based on highly conventionalized musical structures – they own a high communication potential and are even mandatory in constituting and producing opera singing, I started assuming that the vocal style of bell canto, which used to sometimes bring tears in her eyes, had completely opposite, or, at best, mixed effects on my feeling. I felt nothing against opera repertoire, yet something in the very vocal manner usually made me laugh for reasons which I’m still trying to understand (1). My initial intention to discuss here the relative nature of “tears and smiles”, that is, of the particular dichotomy in meanings transmitted by the language of music, took me to some of those recent reﬂections developed in cultural criticism which tend to see nothing but fake expressions in modern art. As Susan McClary notes in her book Conventional Wisdom, postmodern critics often label the products of our age “simulacra”, that is, copies that lack originals. Others refer to the mixtures and recycled codes in the art of our time as pastiche or blank parody, that is, “parody that has lost its sense of humor” (2). While the term of “simulacra” comes to state that today’s musicians have nothing left to do but to re-create, re-make, re-arrange and re-interpret what the world has already created in music so far, “blank parody”, no doubt, comes to describe a not less 511 Cuckoo Band: the attractive musical accent in “Showto na Slavi” [Slavi’s Show], at present the most popular Bulgarian tv show, performed in the format of political cabaret. Photographer: Milena Victorova (Slavi’s Show) of cultural meanings able to work in a large social context. Employing the communication model, suggested by Robert Craig (5), which understands the communication as a not just transmission of information but as a dialogical process which constitutes cultural meanings, I will take a closer look at a piece and discuss brieﬂy how it operates in terms of the codes and conventions it engages. The piece, titled To Chicago…and Back (6), is a 1999 record of Cuckoo Band – at present one of the most popular groups in Bulgaria who over the last decade developed their credo to entertain people on the ability of applying the aesthetics of parody and mocking at hot social and political topics which emerged in the post-communist 1989 transitional time in Bulgaria. Their humor, both verbal and non-verbal, counts rather on re-cycled codes and unpredictable eclectic mixtures which re-play a variety of global and regional Balkan styles. Goran Bregovich, the prominent composer who himself applies a similar approach in his music, deﬁnes the products of such an eclectics “charming monsters” 512 and sees in them a source of particular pleasures demanded in our time of condensed information and competed artistic streams. The piece is named after the travel notes (7) of the Bulgarian novelist Aleko Konstantinov (8), published in 1893 after the author’s visit to the World Chicago Fair held in June the same year. Why do the musicians of Cuckoo Band employ this title a hundred and six years after its appearance in the public literature life in Bulgaria? The answer could be “read” only if you know the huge popularity of this book which, for a sizable number of Bulgarians, suggests a touch with the realm of humor since both the name of the book and its author are deeply associated on the national level with the genres of satire and parody in literature. The very story, told in the book, brings a good enough portion of self-irony revealing the experience of one provincial person, coming from a “non-civilized” country like the late 19th century Bulgaria, who suddenly found himself bafﬂed and amazed in the big “civilized” world – a situation which creates a number of comic events. In fact, there is no immediate connection between the musical piece and the novel. In the song you cannot ﬁnd any direct reference to the story told in the book. It’s only the allusion of the humoresque feeling, associated with the book, which is quite laconically hinted between the lines of the lyrics: Aleko Konstantinov (1863-1897) This route, crossing the Atlantic ocean, was traveled all over on ship by the Bulgarian novelist Aleko Konstantinov to visit the Chicago World Fair in the summer of 1893. Photo collage: Nikolai Pekarev 513 She leads me in the dance, She misleads me in the dance… As if I’m walking on the edge of precipice. Stepping two ahead Then one back – Following this maddening aroma. She wants me to want her, She wants me to seek her.. As if I’m a drowned man, and she’s the strand. I want to catch her, Or her to catch me – I’m stepping two ahead, then one back. Refrain: But her steps Lead me to the end, If I get there – That wouldn’t be me, that wouldn’t be me… The song locates its message ﬁrmly at present times and refers, in fact, to the immigration syndrome obsessing many Bulgarians who after 1989 dream of escaping from the hard transitional time at home and of moving under the sun of the big “civilized” world, that is, somewhere in the West, no matter where exactly, just in the West where lifestyles supposed to be beautiful, smooth and rosy. We can assume that the very title of the piece is one of the re-cycled codes employed here to point to one humoresque intention – but how does this intention is developed further in sounds? The piece follows the structure of a diptych. Its ﬁrst part takes as its point of a departure a pleasing popular tango tune, presented ﬁrst instrumentally and then vocally. At ﬁrst hearing, one may bet that the tune takes to the aesthetics of quasi-realism and provokes associations which refer to melodrama, to pastiche reviving the “old good days”, to the movie “happy ends”; to the realm of escapism, utopia, naiveté; in short – to that sentimental territory where “all dreams come true”, as heard for instance in Elvis Presley’s Love me tender. Yet, is that really the unproblematic territory, suggested, say, by Henri Gates (9) in his attempt to distinguish between unmotivated and motivated signiﬁcation by means of art? Indeed, tango tune is chosen here to signify the “unproblematic beauty” of western lifestyle. Yet rather this “unproblematic beauty”, as heard later in the song, is the musical image of the hinted in the lyrics anonymous, elusive and problematic “she” who performs here the role of the wanted temptress. Thus, “she” is not a woman, not a lover. “She” is a metaphor of the Western lifestyle. This is the vocal interpretation of the male voices which introduces the problematic layer of the song meaning and creates, however, a double critical perspective, that is, a motivated 514 signiﬁcation, suggested by both the two quite different vocal manners and the lyrics. Applying the approach of call-and-response, the male vocalists contradict stylistically each other. The one manipulates the tune rather in the spirit of melodrama and in the style of sweetish classical crooner, slightly mocking the tango beauty when naming in a witty mode the tango basic dance steps: “stepping two ahead, then one back”, he sings, referring not so much to the dance steps but to a hesitation on whether or not it’s worthy to follow “this maddening aroma” of the imagined she. The other voice replies in a rather earthy and more dramatic manner and announce in fact the point of the message: “if I get there, that wouldn’t be me, that wouldn’t be me…”. This is how the tango convention, traditionally associated with a particular dance passion, is employed and transformed here to express a double feeling, a feeling of both desire and fear: desire of catching a rosy reality and fear of disillusion of this actually far-away reality which, as suggested indirectly in the lyrics, may be the “Promised Land” but you may hardly belong to it. false way”, employs what I would call a Balkan groove based on speciﬁc ornamental manner of Balkan brass bands and the asymmetric meter and rhythmic patterns of the particular regional dance meter 9/8. This turn to the regional instrumental sounds creates the allusion of “coming back”, that is, to the imagined reality of oriental semi-rural, semi-urban Balkans. It re-plays at the same time a stereotype which has historically frustrated Bulgarians – a stereotype which implies a comic dialogue between the “uncivilized here” and the “civilized there”. Rather this speciﬁc dialogue, full of kicking rhythmic riffs and associations to subversive body pleasures, creates a vital musical humor and a stimulus which produces amusement. This speciﬁc eclectics may signify different things to different people – and whether or not one can hear the musical smile here, that is, the stimulus which makes this parody meaningful, depends on a number of factors. Some of them refer, ﬁrst of all, to the degree of which you are inside the particular communication process, that is, inside Far from being didactic in its intended message, the second part of the diptych parodies the tango tune through the means of distinguished stylistic approaches developed in vernacular instrumental music all over the Balkans, known under the name of chalgija. The odd musical image, mirroring the rosy tango in a “wrong, the particular ongoing “purely musical” and “extra musical” conversation, based on a set of speciﬁc situations which reﬂect in the form of this musical piece. Thus, whether or not we shall qualify this particular piece as a “blank parody”, as a product of “simulacra” or as a product of “stimulacra” 515 depends on our personal experience, on our personal ability to get the ironic intentions of the performers, and not least, on our personal sense of humor. The possible ambivalence in reading/feeling the meanings in music which we face, however, all the time through our musical experience, questions the myth of music as a “universal language” and gives more arguments in covers, eclectic mixtures and re-cycled codes – that communal potential implied in well established musical conventions. Whether or not this comes to say that we witness a logic coming from the circle development of culture and a dialogue between pre-modernity and post-modernity is a another issue which I leave it aside for now. In conclusion, let me point that the analysis presented here should not be taken for granted. After all, this is my interpretation, my reading. I’m pretty sure that if someone else undertakes a further reading at the same musical text, the points or conclusions drawn here may turn to be different. For, I believe, nothing is ﬁnal in our trying to decode and understand the meanings implied in the musical texts. understanding the music as communicational language which may connote speciﬁc meanings working in particular social and cultural contexts. This understanding takes us to what Bakhtin suggests in his talking on dialogical nature of people’s comic culture. However, his analysis on the 16th century Rabelaisian parody (10) reveals that the good laugh does not deny its opposite, the serious perspective. The good laugh is always “double-voiced” and brings the potential to clean and supplement the level of seriousness. Apparently, the dichotomy of “tears and smiles”, of “laughing and crying” or, to use modern terms, of “light” and “serious”, understood quite often as mutually excluding each other artistic realms, is only a recent phenomenon associated with the cultural fragmentation and the way modernity imagine narrowly distinguished practices. Yet, as we hear in “To Chicago and Back”, “smiles and tears” keep co-existing and in a way, similar rather to the times of pre-modernity, exploit and innovate – predominantly in the forms of 516 Communication Theory, 9(2), 1999), 199, (also see: Endnotes 1. A possible reason is hinted, however, in the popular Bulgarian proverb which says: “Tell me what you laugh at, and I’ll know what kind of person you are”. This proverb has probably similar mates in different languages. One may bet that the proverb is applicable as well in a twisted way (“Tell me what makes you cry, and I’ll know what kind of person you are”) – and it would be hardly less truthful, at least when the “what” refers to purely verbal expressions. We can assume that the proverb may relate as well to a non-verbal language like music. Then we can also assume that tears and smiles, expressed so speciﬁcally by music itself, can hardly work in any universal way... http://spot.colorado.edu/~craigr/CTasaField.html) 6. To Chicago…and Back (song, 1999), Lyrics: Ivaylo Vulchev (translated from Bulgarian: Cl. Levy), Arrangement: Evgeni Dimitrov-Maestroto & Cuckoo Band, Performance: Georgy Milchev, Slavi Trifonov & Koukou Band 7. To Chicago and Back (published November 1893) – travel notes by Aleko Konstantinov telling of his visit to Chicago World Fair in the summer of 1893. 93. 3. 8 Aleko Konstantinov (1863-1897) – Bulgarian writer, n 2. The author refers to terms suggested by the postmodern critics Jean Boudrillard and Fredric Jameson (see Susan MacClary Conventional Wisdom: MacClary. The Content of Musical Form. Unversity of California Press, 2000, p. 139). 9 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 46-47 author of satirical, social and critical novels, travel notes, feuilletons, articles. 3. Philip Tagg. Introductory Notes to the Semiotics of Music. Version 3 (September 1999), p. 3 10 Michail Bakhtin. The works of Francois Rablez 4. Ibid. and People’s Culture of the Medieval Age and the Renaissance. (publ. in Bularian). Soﬁa: Nauka I 5. Robert Craig. Communication theory as a ﬁeld. izkustvo, 1978 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Join the ranks! Québec’s Musical Union and “Emergent Musics”: A New Field of Cultural Activity? Martin Lussier T hroughout this article, I describe the practices that had course in a debate occurring in Montreal In Canada’s province of Québec, this struggle brought artists to ask for a law recognizing them the juridical status of professionals. The argument was that if they were contributing to the economy in producing cultural commodities, they wanted to have a legal frame for their working relationships with producers. In 1987, a labor standards act deﬁning artists and recognizing them as autonomous workers was voted as the Law on the status of the artist (Québec (Province), 1992), followed the next year by the federal government of Canada (see Cliche, 1996). The heart of this law is the instauration of the Commission de reconnaissance des associations d’artistes et des associations de surrounding the provincial Law on the status of the artist. I underlined the way by which the debate was framed, the frontlines that were drawn and the ways by which delimitation of a unit made it possible “to resist”, to colonize, to be the object of knowledge or exercise of power. Through all this process I show how an established “category” – that of professional musician – was call into questions and how attempts to produce another way of gathering musical practices or of differentiating them as I described as the new “ﬁeld of activity” were done. With the increased speed of cultural industries’ transnationalisations in the last decades, cultural workers have faced the necessity of reorganizing themselves. In the new international division of cultural labor that organizes production of cultural “texts” globally, workers stand in a struggle between pressures to “deunionize” in order to stay competitive and a tendency to build transnational unions network to ensure minimal standards (Miller et al., 2001). This struggle has taken different forms in different locations. producteurs (CRAAAP, Commission of Recognition for Associations of Artists and Associations of Producers) an administrative court that judge on the recognition of some organizations – both of artists and producers sides – as legitimate interlocutors for a ﬁeld of cultural activity also deﬁned by it in the negotiations with producers of “minimal terms of reference” in their relationships. The Quebec Musicians Guild, part of the American Federation of Musicians, soon becomes the certiﬁed speaker for all artists working in the ﬁeld of 518 music in Québec, representing them in the negotiations with producers (Hardy et al., 1991). In this article, I want to examine the ways in which this recognition brought new tensions around the question of the ﬁelds of cultural activity and the organization that represents it. My purpose is to present a debate that illuminate the changing ideas about cultural labor and the modes of engagement with unions. I propose that it is, inter alia, through this debate that seems to take shape what I would call the “emergent musics”: not a musical category deﬁned a priori by its essence allowing to say that “a new” thing appeared, but rather a regrouping, historically located, conjunctural, which existence is at stake. The representativity problem actions - to deﬁne and choose who represent - that the CRAAAP is entrust to execute. It seems however that something slipped into the gears of the Law : working relationships in the musical sector have faced during the last years some particularly surging periods. I propose here to sketch one of them, touching the sphere of activity of the musicians playing in bars and small venues of la belle province. The first confrontation The ﬁrst clues of tension in the sector of the working conditions of bars’ musicians appeared during summer 2000. In its magazine Entracte, Québec Musicians Guild launches the ﬁrst strike of what will become a true media drama : “Too often, the musicians fall into the trap that owners of venues and producers without The heart of the Law on the status of the artist is the recognition of associations of artists or producers, as the principal battleﬁeld. The CRAAAP must deﬁne the sectors of negotiations or the ﬁelds of activities for which one recognition can be granted (CRAAAP, 2004). The Law stipulates that following this exercise, this administrative court has the mandate to recognize associations representative of this cultural sector. Following the Law, an association could be recognized if, inter alia, “[...] it gathers the majority of the artists of a sector of negotiation deﬁned by the Commission” (Québec (Province), 2004: 11, my translation). Two scruples which ‘allow’ them to play at ridiculous tariffs, even free” (Subirana, 2000: 3, my translation). This association representing the professional musicians according to the Law send negotiations notiﬁcations to the various venues or bars that do not have yet contract with the Guild : “We expect that owners of rooms of spectacles start to throw the high cries because their right to exploit musicians is threatened” (Subirana, 2000: 3, my translation). That will not delay. Obviously, the owners of bars and small venues retort to this attack in the media (Lamarche, 2000). But 519 during the summer 2001, Emile Subirana, president of Québec Musicians Guild, send a letter diffused in daily newspapers in which he persists and signs : venues and bars’ owners. When some musicians took part in the debate on the bars owners’ side, an hegemonic process in which owners are gaining the musicians’ assent in “exploiting musicians’ low self- “the exploitation of the musicians by many owners of bars and venues of the Montreal area constitutes the most recent episode of the constant ﬁght that musicians must do to obtain decent working conditions. The image of the 19th century employers who were indignant as soon as their workers dared to assert more than their thin pittance, today bars owners play the offended virgins in front of the charges made by the Guild according to which they are the worst exploiters of Québec musicians” (Subirana, 2001a: A19, my translation). This comment from the Guild’s president places the pawns of its play : the metaphor of class struggle is used to explain the relationship within the musical ﬁeld between dominants, those which possess the modes of productions – owners of bars and venues - and dominated, those which use these tools – the musicians. Perhaps coarse, this clear distinction between two factions, this line traced in the musical ﬁeld between owners/exploiters and musicians/exploited, will quickly become the principal front. In the confrontation, the Quebec Musicians Guild traces a dark portrait of small esteem” is blamed by the Guild. It labeled them “hypocrites artists exploiters” beneﬁting from the naivety of the younger musicians who adhere to, and are victims of, a particular and hegemonic way to see the world, qualifying it as a “Stockholm syndrome” (see Cottrill, 2002; Subirana, 2001a; 2001b) : “In most union situations, the workers are exploited by the employer and they form a union because they want to get better conditions. […] In this case, the workers would love to play for nothing for many of the employers, the employers know this, and so you have the musicians resisting the union’s attempts to improve conditions. Which is absolutely fascinating” (Subirana, in Cottrill, 2002: 6). Without wanting to stick to this argument, I rather prefer to propose that this is one way of framing the problem : the metaphor of class struggle is put forward and will be used to legitimize the actions taken by the Guild (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). But, not everybody is agreeing with this way of tracing the line between dominated/ dominant. 520 From the musicians’ side, the point of view is very different. The dividing line between dominants and dominated that they seem to put forward does not follow the one traced by the Guild. According to several commentators in the daily newspapers of that time, rather than to see itself in a ﬁght with bars and small venues owners, musicians seem to be opposed to Subirana and its association : “Frankly, since I cover the local and independent scene, no other organization caused as many criticisms and comments of frustration on behalf of the musicians. How much time I heard the expression ` Fucking Guild!’ on behalf of young artists [... ]?” (Parazelli, 2002b: 24, my translation). Not only musicians and bars’ owners see in the Guild a structure seeking to impose its way of seeing the world, but also one seeking to impose methods and rules. From their point of view, the despots are not where one tries to seek them at this time. For them and for the small bars and venues (see Lamarche, 2000), the Guild is not only one opponent, but is this dominant trying to subject others : With its close relationship to symphonic musicians and the bourgeois aura that goes with it, the Guild is seen as the bad one. The fact that it is part of the American Federation of Musicians, a union based in United States, reinforced this idea. If on a side the Guild afﬁrms to defend the interests of the musicians, others do not seem convinced. A lot of musicians rather saw this as an offensive not only against bars and small venues, but also against them. To cut out a population and to identify it... Neither the Guild nor its president succeeded in rallying the musicians aimed by their new battleﬁeld : “the noises of dissatisfaction from musicians and venues which diffuse them starts to be deafening : some require the resignation of the Musicians Guild president, Emile Subirana, others would like straightforwardly to see disappearing the union” (Titley, 2002: 14, my translation). They even start, with as its leader the musician Simon Jodoin from Montréal’s band Mort de rire, a movement with the « You know, a lot of musicians do not see the guild as a helper, but as an oppressive entity […]. The guild understood nothing. Guys like us had been playing these venues for maybe 10 years at that point and really didn’t want to see the guild come in and start messing with them » (Jodoin, in Barry, 2003: 10). unambiguous name All against the Guild, dedicated to the “musical guerrilla” (Petrowski, 2002) by concerts which, voluntarily, do not comply with the rules dictated by the ofﬁcial union. All against the Guild qualiﬁes itself and its actions as “revolutionists” (Lamarche, 2002a; Petrowski, 2002) when the Guild will label it as “danger” for musicians. 521 The movement All against the Guild, testifying the musicians’ dissatisfaction, puts on the front the problem of representation. If the Guild does not represent the interests of musicians, whom is it representing ? Slowly, this question takes the initiative in the debates and the problem of the adequacy between the Guild and some of the musicians is raised : musicians face the same reality, with the same problems. What links them together is a common characteristic that is the practice of a musical instrument : “Another problem […] with the guild is the scope of its mandate. Technically, every musician, from a lofty cellist with the MSO to a spoontapper in a cabane à sucre [sugar shack] falls under its rubric. By taking in that many diverse types of musicians […], the guild is placed in the impossible situation of trying to please, and work for, everyone at the same time” (Lejtenyi, 2003: 8). For the Guild and the bureaucratic structure that it summarizes, musicians who play in bars and small venues must have the same working conditions as those of the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra. President “A trade-union organization initially being used for orchestra musicians, the Guild seems completely detached from the rising musicians concerns, that are asked, more often than not, to produce themselves. The problem, it is that according to the law C-32 on the status of the artist, the Guild is the only organization entitled to represent the musicians in collective negotiations” (Titley, 2002: 14, my translation). This gap between Québec Musicians Guild and the musicians it is representing, places the problem at this last grouping. Who are the musicians and in particularly who are those resistants to a structure “which only wants their good” ? Subirana goes even to treat the musicians who produce themselves for less of “unfair competition” (see Subirana, 2002). Thus, following the Law, since they share the same ﬁeld of activity all musicians must work under the same standards. It doesn’t matter the different realities they must face, in fact for the Law For the Musicians Guild, musicians seem to be a uniform mass. As I rose earlier, it traces a portrait of the musicians as victims and exploited workers. But what this picture as well as the Law poses, is that all the they all have the same. All do not agree with this homogenization of musicians. From their point of view, musicians aimed by the actions 522 of the Guild underline the heterogeneity of this formless mass identiﬁed by the union : “‘The professional environments [among the province’s musicians] are all totally different’, he [a musician] says. One set of rules governing all musicians, he believes, simply won’t properly encompass the range of musical activity” (Lejtenyi, 2003: 8). Some musicians are refusing to be described as part of an undifferentiated unity. It implies that there are competing ﬁelds of activity while the musicians union acts as though there is one. The cutout suggested by the Guild did not ﬁt perfectly with that drawn from several actors’ experiment. Indeed, for many of them, musicians cannot have all the same statute. As a musician states : part of a formless grouping characterized by the simple fact of playing their instrument in public, it seems that nuances have to be brought. Where the Guild sees a homogeneous whole of professional practices at the moment that there is a producer that pays for it, its opponents are rather seeing a progression in a training, a professionalisation process. This process places the live experiment of concerts as one of the necessary condition in order to become pros (see Lamarche, 2000). What is then put to the front is the way in which bars and small venues are an entrance point, a training tool for some musicians. An inversion is proposed, where the exploitants are not bars owners anymore using musicians in order to produce more plus-value, but rather musicians who use these venues “The musician’s trajectory, from amateur to professional level, goes through stages. If the stages ‘amateur’ and ‘semi-professional’ could be recognized at the professional level for artists who want to engage in musical activities, particular statutes could be considered, as well as different rates and percentages according to these statutes” (Croteau in Lamarche, 2001: B7, my translation). Slowly, a particularization of the “ﬁeld of activity” covered by the Guild is proposed. For some musicians, in spite of the administrative weight tending to produce them as in a training process aiming at integrating a profession. Obviously, it is not the opinion of Québec Musicians Guild, which quickly responds to this argument. In seeing no differences between musicians, the logic of the musicians’ union is simple : “Musicians who play in these venues have the adequate qualiﬁcation level. The scene is not a school of formation” (Subirana, in Lamarche, 2000: B8, my translation). Here, it is the attendance on a scene that guarantees the quality, or the musicians’ level of professionalism – and which produces them as “concerned”, members of the “ﬁeld of activity” covered by the Guild. Even though, the sector of negotiation seems to appear much less 523 homogeneous, at least in comments from musicians and journalists. labeled, ﬁnger pointed – a range of terms are then used like “rising artists”, “auto-produced musicians”, “emergent music”, “underground” and so on. Some go a step further and propose that there is not only a plurality of musical practices, with completely different realities, but that some of these artistic practices represent a ﬁeld of activity in its full right. A new entity takes shape, a new ﬁeld of negotiation seems to appear. As the leader of All against the Guild states : “[... ] in talking with a lot of people recently, we realized that the problem comes from the fact that there is only one organization to represent all the musicians, in the broad sense. There is the option to prove that there is a sector which is not represented by an organization” (Jodoin, in Lamarche, 2002b: B2, my translation). Thus, slowly, a new delimitation is surfacing. In a vague whole of musical practices, some are grouped together and a border is traced around them. This new space circumscribed, the Musicians Guild doesn’t seem the association representing what populates it as their union anymore : “If the proof is made that the sector which we want to represent is neglected by the Guild, we will be able to present ourselves in front of the CRAAP” (Jodoin, in Lamarche, 2002b: B2, my translation). This is an act of distinction: there is a whole set of musicians which can be isolated and detached, at the same time by their everyday experience, and in front of the CRAAAP. A new sector is cut out, known and identiﬁed soon: it is The representation According to the Law on the status of the artist, to cover a ﬁeld of activity, to have the recognition of the CRAAAP, an association must gather the majority of the artists of a sector of negotiation deﬁned by the Commission. The grouping of musicians populating the new sector which was circumscribed includes only a small minority of Guild members (Bisaillon, 2003). Delimitation of a new ﬁeld of activity opens the way for a new interlocutor in the name of musicians, at least some of them, and for a readjustment of the articulation linking them to the governmental structure of the law. Under the impulse of this cut-out, and through its mediatisation – in particular in the constant cover from daily Montreal’s newspapers and cultural weekly magazines – musicians recognize themselves like members of a community and try to put themselves in relation to others in order to struggle with the Guild: “It is necessary to afﬁrm and organize ourselves. It is necessary to try to arrange ourselves against the large ones that take decisions, without them, because this is how we can make them react. It is necessary to move to make things happen” (Langevin, in Lamarche, 2003a: 524 B3, my translation). In fact, this quotation highlights how some musicians conceptualized their grouping like distinct and sovereign from other regroupings. Through a search for freedom from the yoke of “those that decide”, their sovereignty, or at least the search for it, appears in the desire “to organize themselves”. This was being translated in efforts, by some musicians, to constitute an association speciﬁcally representing this new ﬁeld of activity. The musicians have to engage in this process of organizing: “It is essential to engage ourselves in the businesses which concern us, it is precisely because nobody never implied himself before that Subirana could make such a devastation. That serf us as a lesson!” (Goulet, in Parazelli, 2003b: 26, my translation, see also Laurence, 2000). The introduction of a valid interlocutor allowing to ensure and hold together the poles of the new articulation implying the Law on the status of the artist and the experience of musicians playing in small bars. objective is rather simple: to confront Subirana and the Musicians Guild (Lamarche, 2002c). This association is created in order to facilitate the negotiations of a contract of employment with a possible musicians’ union (Lamarche, 2001). Thus trying to propose that they do not form part of the homogeneous unit “producers/ exploiters” which the Guild draws, but that they are rather speakers of the new “ﬁeld of activity” which is deﬁned slowly, the owners of small bars pose their association as one deserving CRAAAP’s recognition: “Sebastien Croteau, programmer since a year and a half, have not been the ﬁrst to react publicly to the methods of the Guild, that he judges, just like others, inappropriate. He seeks to push the idea that others had before him further [...], that is to say to contribute to the possible foundation of a regrouping of small bars and venues with the aim of establishing rules in agreement with the reality of what it deﬁnes as ‘a parallel economy’: ‘It is necessary to ﬁnd means of recognition to emergent musics and the venues which houses them’”(Lamarche, 2001: B7, my translation). But bars’ and venues’ owners are not the only ones to form an association. Some of the musicians also create the movement Tous contre la Guilde! (All against the Guild) of which it was quickly question earlier. Lead The ﬁrst to recognize and to organize themselves in order to choose a spokesman are the small bars. Under the impulse of Sebastien Croteau is born the Association pour la protection des lieux alternatifs de la culture émergente (APLACE – Association for the protection of alternatives venues for the emergent culture) at a meeting in a bar joining together nearly twenty Montréal bars’ owners (Parazelli, 2002b). The 525 by Simon Jodoin, this movement will quickly become the Association des musiciens autoproduits du Québec (AMAQ – Association of self-produced musicians of Quebec). The objective is quite simple, to become the ofﬁcial spokesman for musicians playing in the small bars and venues: “We are aiming at a sector of representation which is not covered by the Guild. We hope then to present us in front of the CRAAAP in order to make us recognize as a legitimate association of artists [... ]” (Jodoin, quoted in Brunet, 2002c: C3, my translation). Many techniques are put forward in order to express the possible legitimacy of the organization and its representativeness of the new “ﬁeld of activity”. One of those is the adoption of regulation, inter alia, to (1) obtain a legal statute for the “self-produced musicians”; (2) to support “the unity of all the self-produced musicians”; and (3) to study the problems of this grouping and to ensure its participation in their management (AMAQ, Not dated: 2, my translation). The way in which AMAQ positions itself in these objectives emphasizes its desire to become a legitimate spokesman for a grouping cut out and, in its opinion, not covered by the Guild. The AMAQ was also opposing itself to the way that the Guild used the class struggle metaphor and cast some of the musicians as the weak ones: people, we are not employees of the bar, but just musicians using these venues to do our shows. And if we are the producers of our shows, then we are free to ask whatever amount we want when we play » (Jodoin, quoted in Barry, 2003: 10). These two associations have both emitted the will to obtain the recognition of the CRAAAP as ofﬁcial representatives that can negotiate working conditions covering the new delimited ﬁeld of activity. Through this debate seems to take shape a community organizing itself and at the same moment to deﬁne who is part of it and who represents them: “It now rests on the alternative musicians to give themselves another organization to represent them, which will be able to deal with their realities” (Bisaillon, quoted in Brunet, 2002d: C3, my translation). But the production of this pool of musical practices that will become a “ﬁeld of activity” – perhaps not recognized ofﬁcially by the CRAAAP, but claimed – does not organize only the AMAQ and the APLACE like tactic of “resistance”. There is also another way of reconﬁguring the articulation between the Law on the status of the artist and the musicians occurring on the small scenes: the diversion of the institution by « […] we were forced to start l’AMAQ to make the union understand that no, we are not exploited an invasion – or what I could call a “corruption” – of the Guild by them. 526 After the confrontations as a mode of action and not to focus on whom “has” the power, but to the techniques which make it effective. Taking the perceived transformations of the Musicians Guild as the result of the resistance as an exercise of power I will now turn to the tactics put forward in the overthrow of the Subirana administration. Acting on, acting from Montreal, March 3, 2003. The victory of Team Masse is conﬁrmed at the election, by mail, of a new board of directors for the Musicians Guild. Since nearly a year, the vice-president of the Guild, Gérard Masse, disputed openly the practices of Subirana. Masse is surrounded by a team to which belonged, inter alia, Sébastien Croteau, who is at the same time a musician occurring on the scenes of small bars and venues, a concert programmer at the Café Chaos in Montreal, and the spark plug of the APLACE. After an incredible campaign (Lamarche, 2003b) Gerard Masse succeeded in overthrowing Subirana. When a journalist asks her what she thinks are “the good shots of 2002”, Shantal Arroyo – singer of Montréal’s bands Overbass and Collectivo, and leader of Discos del Torro, an indy disc company – answers: “The Musicians Guild president and its acts more than doubtful which allowed us, the young creators and emergent artists, to take ourselves in hand and to unit. He made us realize the importance to imply ourselves in our union, make hear our protests, to put forward the relevance to diffuse our art at places which we regard as the best ones for our music” (Arroyo, quoted in Parazelli, 2002a: 26, my translation). What I would like to retain of this quotation is the way in which it stresses the importance “to be implied” as one of the forms that take the resistance as an exercise of power. But this implication is not so much one in an organization that resists, that explicitly is opposing the One of the causes of Subirana’s defeat most generally put forward by the commentators of Québec’s cultural ﬁeld, is the stir created in the confrontations with small bars and venues and with musicians occurring there. A word order seems to have been launch: “something should be done”. I would like to start from this event as a sign of what they called the resistance of the musicians as an exercise of power. This type of exercise of power “from the bottom” is usually put opposite the power. However, to oppose resistance and power, is to give the latter an ontological statute reiﬁed, that can be sum up barely to “oppressors” apparatuses (Foucault, 1978). Following Foucault, I would like to take power 527 Guild like the APLACE or AMAQ, but a mode of action as such. Two aspects that take this mode of action on the union seem to deserve attention: contamination and invasion, or an action on and from the union. Very often, bars and venues owners and musicians playing in those places are not Guild members. Speaking to its leaders seems a difﬁcult task for them: “I do not want really to speak to people who are not [Guild] members and who represent anarchy, according to what I see” (Subirana, quoted in Brunet, 2002b: C3, my translation). However, people from inside the organization, full members and even administrators – as Gerard Masses at the time – denounce Guild practices and opinions in the debates surrounding small bars and venues. Others are used as informers on the ways in which the president manages the conﬂict (see Brunet, 2002a). What I would like to underline here is the way in which these various voices which rise from “inside” the Guild are presented by several as the effect of a kind of “contamination” of the union by Subirana’s opponents who are “outside” of it. For example, a leading article devoted to Tous contre la guilde! in one of the major francophone newspaper in Montréal stressed about this organization: “Its weapons’ call opened the valves” or “they succeeded in brewing more air in one week than in 100 years” (Petrowski, 2002: C3). It is through this contamination that the implication becomes a mode of action: it is a way of convening some actors in the debate, of weaving alliances with agents of inﬁltration, a process implying other people into an internal resistance to the unions’ administration. It’s an action on the Guild. “Implication” as an exercise of power has another aspect. This one implies not only an action from outside in order to create alliances with legitimate members of the Musicians Guild, but especially a tactic of “invasion” of the organization by musicians playing in small bars and venues. Not ﬁnding valid interlocutors within the organization, its opponents take it by storm (see Parazelli, 2003b). The implication then becomes an engagement into the musicians union. The best example of this form of implication is Sebastien Croteau, spokesman for the APLACE. Approached by Team Masse, he presented himself at the elections in order to become one of the Guild administrators: “[...] as Sebastien Croteau explained to me, to change the rules of the Guild or, at the very least, to discuss it, it is necessary to act from inside. What he promises to do as soon as possible” (Parazelli, 2003a: 26). Like a small Trojan horse, Croteau will be able – if he’s elected – “to act from inside”. The musicians are then asked to mobilize themselves, become Guild members and to go voting to relieve Subirana and, especially, to allow a team containing “resistants” to invade the organization’s administration. The messages come from everywhere and are addressed to the members 528 and the non-members: “[... ] pay your contribution right fucking now and vote the right way; to vote, it’s a duty!” (Goulet, quoted in Parazelli, 2003b: 26, my translation). Today, we know that Team Masses won the 2003 elections and had the possibility “of acting from inside”. But this mode of action and its result seem to imply a softening of the relations between musicians playing in small bars and venues and the Guild: diagnosis was posed: the “ﬁeld of activity” of small bars and venues and musicians playing there remains a shady zone. “The deplorable situation which currently prevails can be partly explained by the absence of a common reﬂexion in Québecois’ disc and spectacle industry on the stakes of self-production and the statute of amateurs practices [... ]” (Bisaillon, quoted in Brunet, 2002d: C3, my translation). This diagnosis of a lack of reﬂexion and information is not new, it “The changing of the guard means that the ferocious opponents to Subirana, brought together at the time of the recent show Tous contre la Guilde!, will have to put some water in their wine and to sit down with the new board of directors, where seats now one of them […]” (Titley, 2003: 29, my translation). With the overthrown of Subirana by Gérard Masse, the mode of action that is the implication becomes a synonym of collaboration with the Guild. As was important in the questioning of Musicians Guild legitimacy to represent artists occurring in small bars and venues. But with the election of the new board of directors, the union itself also states this diagnosis. The Guild proposes as its priority for the ﬁrst months of Masse presidency “to restore dialogue” with the small bars and venues and the musicians occurring there (Vigneault, 2003b). The Guild tries to set up a “no symphonic” committee aiming at gathering around the same table musicians, owners of bars and venues, and the members of union directors board (Lamarche, 2003b). Through this committee, one seeks “to renew contact” with the reality of musicians occurring in small bars and venues. On a side, it is a technique of production of knowledge which is installed making it possible to make pass, as by osmosis, the knowledge of persons who seem more legitimate than the Guild – for example, of some spokesman coming “from bottom”, this quotation underlines it, the opponents to the organization cannot use the same ferociousness in their modes of resistance: they now have “to take part to discussions”, they have to “going to have a coffee” with the new leaders (Vigneault, 2003a). The recognition, the knowledge At the moment of the confrontations with Subirana, a like APLACE or AMAQ – towards the organization: 529 one wants “to take the pulse of the musicians” (Brunet, 2004: 7, my translation). On another side, this committee also seems to produce the musicians, or at least some of them, as experts that the Guild is joining with in its various actions. Inside this committee the production of knowledge meets the production of knowing subjects in connection with a “ﬁeld of activity”. In producing these actors as experts for a ﬁeld, the Guild recognizes the existence of this sector, not as a new space of negotiation deserving a place in front of the CRAAAP, but rather as one of the variations of the zones covered by the association: a sub-group, a part of the whole various musical “universes” represented by the organization. It also puts the theme of expertise on the agenda. The Guild not only sets up those tactics in order to produce knowledges having for object the small bars and the musicians producing themselves there, and experts about those ﬁelds, but with the election of the Team Masse also seems to claim for itself some expertise concerning this “ﬁeld of activity”. One of the ways in which the new administration seems to hold a knowledge having speciﬁcally for object the small bars and venues, is by underlining career trajectories of members of the board of directors: in particular its president, Gérard Masse, and the director of the emergent musics’ sector, Sébastien Croteau. In the new administrators, Gerard Masse is depicted and presented itself as somebody having the “experience” of the small bars and venues. Indeed, if some articles are dedicated to trace a portrait of the program and actions of the new president (for example Brunet, 2004), others are centered on the presentation of the president as such (for example Vigneault, 2003a). He calls upon his past and is career trajectory in order to present himself as somebody who know what is the experience of the musicians playing on the small scenes: “‘When somebody says that I don’t know anything about the underground, I show them this picture’, he states [Masse], exhibing a black and white image on which we can see a hairy head behind an imposing drumset. The guy sitting behind this percussive ‘monster’, is of course Gérard Masse, at the time where he played in a rock band called Way Out and that he had so long hairs that they were getting stuck in the buckle of his belt” (Vigneault, 2003a: C1, my translation). His trajectory is presented as a proof of this form of expertise that Masse holds. What seems interesting o me is the way by which the rock is used as an argument for the idea of the “comprehension” of the reality of musicians playing in the small venues: Masse and the “misunderstoods” shared the same trajectory, several newspapers published soon after the arrival of 530 which is inscribed in the rock tradition. But he stressed that he’s not the only one in his team to have such knowledge, others have an equivalent past, they share this common career trajectory: “We all passed there. I am a product of the garage bands which played heavy 30 years ago [... ]” (Masse, quoted in Vigneault, 2003b: C1, my translation). There is no difference between them, as well as between them and musicians from the new “ﬁeld of activity”. that the post of director for which I postulate request a good knowledge of realities that musicians live in their working environment but also a good knowledge of the organizational structure of the ﬁeld” (Croteau, 2003: not paged, my translation). His career trajectory and this knowledge that Croteau seems to possess have the effect of an alibi for Team Masse in its entirety, making it possible to ensure that an “authentic expert” prevents the administrators from taking bad decisions. For example, a journalist reports that for the leaders of the AMAQ, The one for whom this trajectory through the performances on the scenes of small bars and venues is the most put in full view, is Sébastien Croteau. At the time of the election campaign to choose the new administration, almost all the candidates of the Team Masse published a small text on a website presenting the actions which they wanted to take in the functions for which they postulate. That of Croteau had something particular: more than the half of the text was devoted to the exposure of its various passed experiments on the musical and committed level. The number of gigs he did, the venues where they took place, the quantity of bands in which he took part, the ways in which he had to implied himself in the management of those bands, his day job as a programmer with the Café Chaos, his implication in the APLACE, all these details were presented as pledges of its “expertise” concerning musicians realities: “In my opinion, I believe “[... ] the presence of Sébastien Croteau in the Team Masse reassures. Member of the metal band Necrotic Mutation and spokesman for the Association pour la protection des lieux alternatifs de la culture émergente (APLACE), he knows the realities of the young artists well” (Vigneault, 2003a: C1, my translation). Croteau’s career trajectory makes it possible to legitimate the fact that he is the delegate of the Musicians Guild on the no symphonic committee that Team Masse sets up in order to take the pulse of the new “ﬁeld of activity” which appeared at the time of the confrontations with Subirana, and a proof that those musical practices are part of what is represented by the union. In producing knowledge and producing itself as an expert, Team Masse can propose what counts for truth in the story of the small bars and venues. In (de)placing those musical practices towards the ﬁeld of knowledge, 531 the new Guild administration can exert rightly a certain form of trade-union power on a known target, anticipate and measure the consequences. For example, it proposes a certain grid of tariff to employ musicians taking into account, according to it, the reality of the small bars and venues and the talent which is to be sold (Brunet, 2004). In short, the Guild proposes itself as representing legitimately this “new ﬁeld” by inserting it in the bosom of its expertise. Conclusion “ﬁeld of activity” made it possible to this whole of actors to be recognized as such, but also to circumscribe them, to mobilize them, to produce knowledge about them and to retransmit it to them – while justifying the Guild legitimacy to do it – by inscribing them in a program of public education. Not only the Guild gives information on the realities of the small venues, but it’s also giving hints to young musicians on how to adapt to the music business. Now that they take part in music’s larger ﬁeld of activity, musicians playing in small bars have to know the rules of the game. The possibility for a reform of At the intersection of the resistance by the action on/ from the inside and the entry of the Guild’s opponents in the ﬁeld of knowledge, an important process for several actors is education. Indeed, if on a side the contamination and the invasion of the organization by the musicians playing in small bars and venues seems to require the appearance – at least in the commentaries from newspapers – of new practices more “concealing”, under the banner of collaboration, this is done only through the constitution of a knowledge and the education of the Guild’s resistants to the ways in which it can now help them. Meetings are then organized in order to sensitize the musicians playing in the small venues to the ways of answering to some of their problems, to the difﬁculties they will face in their experience, and also the way the music industry works (Barry, 2003: 11). It seems that the delimitation of a these individuals will probably be the next step. For the moment, this “ﬁeld of activity” that was just going to escape from the Guild control and to regulate itself, is now more and better watch on. Contamination worked well, but in two directions: musicians had seized the Guild, but the Guild have gained in members and extended its ﬁeld of actions. 532 «nouvelle» Guilde des musiciens. La Presse, pp. 7. Selected Bibliography AMAQ. (Not dated). Statuts et réglements. Montréal: Association des musiciens autoproducteurs du Québec (AMAQ). Cliche, D. (1996). Status of the Artist or of Arts Organizations?: A Brief Discussion on the Canadian Status of the Artist Act. Canadian Journal of Communication, 21(2), 197-210. Barry, C. (2003, May 1). Unions, they are a-changin’. Mirror, pp. 10-11. Cottrill, D. (2002, January 10). Remember Hoffa? Hour, pp. 6. Bisaillon, J.-R. (2003). Musiques undergrounds du Québec. Montréal: Société pour la promotion de la relève musicale de l’espace francophone (SOPREF). CRAAAP. (2004). Rapport annuel 2003-2004. SainteFoy: Commission de reconnaissance des associations d’artistes et des associations de producteurs Brunet, A. (2002a, December 17). Émile Subirana a offert 50$ aux membres de la Guilde pour contre-manifester. La Presse, pp. C3. Croteau, S. (2003). Sébastien Croteau. Équipe Masse. Retrieved 25 novembre, 2004, from the World Wide Brunet, A. (2002b, December 12). Le porte parole de Tous contre la Guilde est mis en demeure. La Presse, pp. C3. Foucault, M. (1978). Précisions sur le pouvoir. Réponses Brunet, A. (2002c, December 19). Pas de mise en tutelle de la Guilde. La Presse, pp. C3. à certaines critiques. In J. Lagrange (Ed.), Dits et écrits II, 1976-1988 (pp. 625-635). Paris: Gallimard. Web: http://www.geocities.com/equipemasse/sebastien. htm#fr (CRAAAP). Brunet, A. (2002d, December 13). Une menace de tutelle plane sur la Guilde. La Presse, pp. C3. Hardy, D., Picard, N., Côté, F., & CRAA. (1991). Guilde des musiciens du Québec (Décision R-15-89). Montréal: Commission de reconnaissance des associations Brunet, A. (2004, May 6). Opération charme de la d’artistes (CRAA). 533 Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. direction de la Guilde des musiciens: Masse affrontera Subirana. Le Devoir, pp. B2. Lamarche, B. (2000, December 19). La Guilde des Musiciens repart en guerre. L’organisme est critiqué pour son manque d’engagement envers les musiciens semiprofessionnels et émergents. Le Devoir, pp. B8. Laurence, J.-C. (2000, February 24). L’underground mieux structuré mais mal diffusé. La Presse, pp. E13. Lejtenyi, P. (2003, March 6). Sonic disunion. Mirror, pp. 8. Miller, T., Govil, N., McMurria, J., & Maxwell, R. (2001). Lamarche, B. (2001, December 19). Une réponse aux pressions de la Guilde des musisiens. Vers un regroupement des petites salles. Le Devoir, pp. B7. Parazelli, É. (2002a, December 26). L’année de Shantal Arroyo. Voir, pp. 26. Lamarche, B. (2002a, December 6). Création d’un réseau de musiciens qui entend déﬁer le “corporatisme” du syndicat d’artistes. Le Devoir, pp. A1. Parazelli, É. (2002b, January 17). La Guilde des musiciens: le Café Chaos à l’asso! Voir, pp. 24. Global Hollywood. London: British Film Institute. Lamarche, B. (2002b, December 20). En réaction à la Guilde des musiciens des musiciens rebelles créent une association. Le Devoir, pp. B2. Parazelli, É. (2003a, March 6). Retour: Tous contre la Guilde, au Medley. Voir, pp. 26. Parazelli, É. (2003b, February 27). Tous contre la Guilde: Lamarche, B. (2002c, August 10). Guilde des musiciens: L’APLACE remet en question les pratiques du syndicat. Le Devoir, pp. A5. Petrowski, N. (2002, December 11). Aux armes, musiciens! La Presse, pp. C3. Lamarche, B. (2003a, January 31). De la musique indépendante pour l’OFF. Le Devoir, pp. B3. Québec (Province). (1992). La politique culturelle du Québec. Notre culture. Notre avenir. Québec: Ministère Lamarche, B. (2003b, January 17). La campagne à la des Affaires Culturelles. 2e spectacle Molotov! Voir, pp. 26. 534 Québec (Province). (2004). Loi sur le statut professionnel et les conditions d’engagement des artistes de la scène, du disque et du cinéma, L.R.Q., c. S-32.1. Québec: Les publications du Québec. Vigneault, A. (2003b, March 4). La Guilde à l’écoute. La Presse, pp. C1. Subirana, É. (2000). Message du président. L’Entracte, Été, 3. Subirana, É. (2001a, June 20). La Guilde des musiciens a-t-elle sa place dans les bars? Les musiciens de la relève sont exploités sans scrupule. La Presse, pp. A19. Subirana, É. (2001b). Message du président. L’Entracte, Printemps/Été, 3. Subirana, É. (2002, August 15). Des propriétaires de bar sans scrupules exploitent de jeunes musiciens. Le Devoir, pp. A7. Titley, N. (2002, December 12). Pour en ﬁnir avec la Guilde. Accords et désaccords. Voir, pp. 14. Titley, N. (2003, March 6). Lanois du plus fort. Voir, pp. 29. Vigneault, A. (2003a, March 6). Gérard Masse veut rétablir le contact. La Presse, pp. C1. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Disco, House and Techno: rethinking the local and the global in Italian Electronic Music Paolo Magaudda H ow can we conceive the relationship between global and local for those musical styles, which music formss is a particular use of melody. Therefore, concerning the representation of identity, it is possible to recognize strategies of “dissimulation” in Italian disco music, as well as practices of “exoticism” in Italian dance music in the 90s. On the other hand, in hardcore techno production we can ﬁnd other practices such as the “adaptation” of Italian tribes to the European rave subculture, as well as the elaboration of practices of “citation” of speciﬁc cultural references, such as Pasolini’s ﬁlms. At the end of the paper, the role of the city in a global ﬂow of cultural production is assessed and ﬁnally, the different practices of representation – or no-representation – of Italian musical identity are confronted with the concepts of de-territorialization and re-territorialization, in order to connect the elaboration of a local identity with the relationship between music, localness and media. 1. Introduction: electronic music, globalization, and the Italian periphery have no explicit geographical reference and which also do not use speech to deﬁne their own local identity? In this paper the author tries to further this debate through the example of Italian electronic music production and dissemination. In fact, three cases of dance and popular music produced in Bologna, an important city for music in Italy will be presented: Disco at the end of the 70s, House in the ’80 and the Hardcore Techno scene in the 90s. For all these music ﬁelds ﬁrstly, there is ﬁrstly a reconstruction of the little-known history of how these musical forms began to be introduced and produced in the city of Bologna, and how they have been disseminated on the foreign market with different practices of showing or not showing the Italian identity. Then it is considered, for example, how some disco tracks produced in Bologna became hits at the Warehouse Garage in Chicago in the early of 80s, where House music was born; how UK techno tribes moved to Bologna at the beginning of 90s escaping from British police repression of free rave parties. We will also see that the common speciﬁcity which represents the continuity among these different italian The relation between globalization and local music is a spicy question in today’s popular music studies, as well as in wider contemporary cultural theory. Arjun Appadurai, for example, discussing the “modernity at 536 large”, brings to light the example of the ability of Filipinos to reproduce American melodic songs in a better way than Americans do (Appadurai, 1996, p. 48). From a more musical point of view, the ethnomusicologist Steven Feld pointed out how the effects of globalization on world music have been viewed by scholars with a contradictory opposition between anxiety about the commodiﬁcation of original cultures and celebration of the positive hybridization of the same cultures (Feld, 2000). If we consider world music or older popular genres such as Motown, Appadurai recalls, it is relatively clear which is the “original” culture. From this point of view, the question appears to concern how the effects of globalization inﬂuence original musical cultures. I feel, however, that the local-global debate should take a step forward and that the case of electronic music is particularly apt for this purpose. The question at this point is how to conceive the relationship between local and global in a musical ﬁeld - electronic music – in which this relationship is much less clear than it is in original and locally-rooted music. And, more speciﬁcally, how to rethink the local-global relationship in analyzing musical forms which do not present an explicit characterization of their locality through direct aesthetic features, as happens with traditional or ethnic instrumentations or with the use of a speciﬁc language. More generally, it is necessary to examine the global-local dialectic of these musical forms, probably the ﬁrst product of the accelerated processes in transnational ﬂows of technology, media and popular culture - as far as musical instruments, musical styles, and ways of listening are concerned – and particularly of what is happening in popular electronic music. Although Italy can boast about its original contributions to “highbrow” electronic music history with artists such as Russolo, Berio Maderna and Nono, it does not appear to have made the same contribution to popular electronic music. The apparently poor presence of Italian popular electronic music in today’s global music ﬂow is partly due to the weakness of the Italian music industry, but it clearly needs to be rethought with further historical reconstruction and a deeper consideration of the production and circulation of new musical styles. From an Italian point of view, we will now take into consideration various aspects of the production, consumption and representation of Italian popular electronic music through both a historical reconstruction of Italian roots in electronic music and the results of ethnographic research into electronic music produced in Bologna, which is an important city in the total national musical production, as has recently been shown by a team of researchers (Santoro, 2002). More speciﬁcally, we will focus on the relationship between the different electronic music styles that 537 arrived in the local musical culture, the local artists who have reproduced them, and the local Italian identity, represented with explicit or implicit strategies of representation. In fact, electronic music, with its mixture of highbrow traditions, new technological development and new popular culture styles, is probably the musical ﬁeld that more than any other genre has challenged questions of authenticity, authorship and localness. Its preference for sounds and rhythms rather than words and speech, as well as the centrality of its phonographic circulation compared to its live dimension, are all complex aspects in rearranging the dialectic between the local dimension of electronic music and its globalization. Let us begin by considering 80s Italo-Disco and ItaloHouse, important contributions to popular electronic dance music, with a historical reconstruction and the example of the label Irma Records. Then we will consider the rave-based hardcore techno “scene” at the end of the 90s in Bologna, the musical output of the techno tribe Teknomobilsquad, and the sampling practice of the experimental techno label Sonic Belligeranza. We will show that the dialectic between local and global in electronic music is of particular interest in understanding how a musical periphery can not only rearticulate global genres in a local context, but also – more profoundly – how this periphery is able to rearticulate the different practices of musical thought in meeting global ﬂows of culture and music. Speciﬁcally, we will show how “dissimulation” of their local origins and practices of both “exoticism” and “citationism” are used in response to niche global music markets. Finally, we will consider these practices in the light of the concepts of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” introduced by James Lull (1995) and others in order to explain the relationship between culture, media and globalization. 2. “Dissimulated” Italo-Disco, House music and the “exoticism” of local identity Italian Disco and House represent the most important Italian contribution to popular electronic music. In fact, during the 80s, various speciﬁc deﬁnitions were coined to deﬁne this kind of music, such as “Spaghetti Disco”, “Italo-House” and “Riviera Beat” (Pacoda, 1999) . Disco music seems to have landed in Italy at the end of the 70s, when a singer of the balera – a typical dancing place in the Riviera Romagnola – asked the Bolognese producer Mauro Malavasi to remix an old song from the 60s, following “those new rhythms which were trendy in the USA” (Mazzi, 2002). In fact, the history of Italian Disco and House is connected to the experience of a few disco producers of the 70s. In those years, some Italian producers gained global success with disco tracks based on funk arrangements and on early attempts at producing sample-based music. Some 538 producers, such as Mauro Malavasi and Celso Valli, were creating disco music under many pseudonyms, such as Change, Macho or B.B. and Q band for the international market. These people had mostly had traditional training in music and had often studied at music conservatories. In the mid-70s, they went to New York, where they learnt the “new groove” in the temples of disco music, such as the Paradise Garage and Studio 54. Then, they came back in Bologna where they produced basic song patterns, played by local musicians. At the end of the process, they went to New York once more, looking for black American singers and modern studios in which to do the ﬁnal mix. In a 1993 article, Ross Harley noted how the work of these Italian disco bands, such as Change and Black Box, reﬂected the coming of what Foucault deﬁned as a “culture where discourse would circulate without any need for an author” (Harley, 1993, p. 217). Indeed, these producers were not the authors in conventional music terms. Their names did not appear on the covers, and their musical projects were always under pseudonyms, which they continuously changed. These albums did not have references to these artists and producers, excluding minor references inside the album. Normally, on the covers there was only the name and the photo of the singer, who was certainly not the main contributor to a track. Sometimes, for example in the case of Change’s albums, the cubist-style covers of the LPs were abstract, showing only geometrical ﬁgures on a white background with no images. Their productive routine was also challenging the classic ways of producing popular music. These producers were making the music in Italy, and then going to New York to add the voice and do the ﬁnal mix. They used mainly black American vocalists such as Luther Vandross (who was launched by Malavasi and later became a superstar in black music), Diva Gray and Fonzi Thornton. This music was an Italian product, but it was also a global product in which titles, speech, distribution and sales were international. As Mauro Malavasi, one of the protagonists of these productions, says about their musical practice, the production was a mixture of Italian and global resources. “We recorded at home in Bologna at Fonoprint, then went to New York and played the stuff to the label. We released the records ﬁrst in America, a couple of months earlier, when the song went to the top of the Billboard charts and everyone wanted it: Italy, Germany, France. There were no artists, we invented the names record by record. When the track was a hit, a couple of singers were hired just for television appearances”. (Interview with Mauro Malavasi, in Antonelli and De Luca, 1995, p. 51) 539 Harley also notes that these Italian producers were very good at catching the right grooves and reproducing them. Malavasi’s Change “carefully mimicked the sound of the hyper disco band Chic with expert precision” (Harley, 1993, p. 215). In any case, Change represents a piece of dance music history, as shown by the fact that the single “Paradise” became one of the top 50 hits played at the Warehouse club in Chicago, the place where house music was born at the beginning of the ’80s (Brewster and Broughton, 1999, p. 453). Therefore, their production was a mixture of many factors: the traditional Italian training at music schools; the opportunity offered by the presence in Bologna of good local musicians and of a recording studio for Italian popular music; the connection of these Italian producers with the New York producer Jacques Fred Petrus and their experience of new clubs such as the Paradise Garage in NY; the ability to mix the Italian sense of melody and the soul attitude of black American singers. Indeed, the success of these productions has been explained as the result of combining Italian melody with American musicality, a formula as well suited to listening as to dancing. Concerning the musical form, Italo-disco brought Italian melody again to the fore in combination with the soul feeling of the black singers (Montana, 1990). Another generation of Italian producers was at the centre of other popular international successes in house music at the end of the 90s. The band Black Box, founded by the DJ Daniele Davoli, the computer whiz Mirko Simoni and the classical clarinettist Valerio Semplici achieved global success in 1988 with the track “Ride on time”. This track, based on a sample of the voice of the American singer Loletta Holloway reached number one in the UK singles hit parade. Black Box’s “Ride on time” was also more melodic than other contemporary productions. The journalist Simon Reynolds narrates the success of this track thus: “At the end of the summer of ‘89, big raves were dominated by an absurd sound deﬁned “Italohouse” – voices of disco divas and oscillating piano vibrations – born on the beaches of Rimini and Riccione” (Reynolds 1998, it. trans. 2000, p. 92) Many of these Italian productions were based on the implicit strategy of “dissimulation” of local identity. The names of the projects were always Anglophone, as were the titles of the tracks. The singers were mostly black Americans, which was essential in giving the track – as Malavasi pointed out - “that soul attitude, that anger, that spirituality”. But what was going on in Italy in the 70s in the dance music world? The main place for dance culture in Italy was the Riviera Adriatica, the coast 100 kilometres 540 from Bologna. This was also where, in 1974, House took on a speciﬁc form in Italy, with the disco club Baia degli Angeli, three years before the Paradise Garage opened in New York. There also developed a speciﬁc sub-genre of House music, represented by the Italian djs Daniele Baldelli and Mozart under the name of Cosmic Afro, an old style which has been rediscovered in the last few years by the British musical press as well (Oldﬁeld, 2002). In that period on the Riviera, small distributors of dance mixes started their own activity in order to furnish local djs. It was from one of these distributors that the most popular Italian electronic music label of today was born in 1989, Irma Records. Irma was founded in Bologna by Umberto Damiani and Massimo Benini as a small label, producing dance mixes for the djs of the Riviera. They followed the popularity of the disco clubs which were exploding in those years, best represented by famous disco clubs such as the Cocoricò in Riccione and the Echos in Misano Adriatico. Irma Records annually produces more than half a million copies of its releases and now works mainly with foreign music markets. For Irma, the strategy of “exoticism” seems to be a winning choice, especially in countries where Italian style represents a general cultural attraction, such as in Japan. Irma also has a web site especially for the Japanese market) and many of their compilations use an Italian or Mediterranean identity to characterize the product. Explaining this connection to Japanese distribution, an Irma executive jokingly says: “Recently the Japanese market has also become relevant …in fact, we jokingly say that the real artistic director of Irma is no longer Umberto, but the head of Japanese distribution, that when he tells us what to do, we do it... it’s a joke, obviously, but the Japanese market has become so important for us that now when we make records, we think: will the Japanese like it? (Interview with Pierfrancesco Pacoda) For example, Irma’s compilations Future Sound of Italy (1999) and Italian Dance Classics (1997) are titles that refer to their Italian identity. The language of presentation of the CDs appears to be that of an international product, as one can understand from the CDs’ covers and booklets, which are all in English. It could be argued that in these cases, Italian identity is not used as a naturalistic reference to the music and to the production, but rather as a conscious tool to stimulate exoticism and curiosity in foreign markets. 3. Hardcore Techno, nomad tribes and high culture sampling Hardcore techno is probably the fastest and most 541 abrasive form of dance music. It started in Britain’s Second Summer of Love in 1988 and became successful during the 90s in the illegal rave scene, ﬁrst in the UK and then in continental Europe. As Simon Reynolds also narrates in Ecstasy Generation, the city of Bologna was a centre for the hardcore techno style during the mid-90s. Indeed, at the beginning of the decade, many UK techno tribes had to move away from Britain due to police repression of the illegal rave scene. But, as James Lull notes, “culture never dies, even in conditions of orchestrated repression” (Lull, 1995, p. 152). Therefore, it was a process of forced deterritorialization which marked the coming of the hardcore techno rave style to Bologna and it can be seen as what we can deﬁne as the “rave diaspora” from the UK. So, British tribes established their base in a small town near Bologna, Santarcangelo, where for example, one famous tribe, the Mutoid Waste Company has existed since 1990 (Reynolds, 1998, p. 196). These tribes found a good cultural environment in Bologna, represented by the tradition of squats and the anarchist political tendencies of that period. Indeed, when Spiral Tribe moved away from the UK, they in some way exported a subculture and sowed the seeds of rave culture in the region. As a result, in 1996 a hardcore techno scene began to develop in Bologna, with indigenous tribes such as Teknomobilsquad and Olstad (originally from Turin). In that period, Bologna also held some Technivals, European events which involve many European techno tribes. The local tribes organised illegal parties on the outskirts of Bologna in the period 1996-1999, until here too police repression became stronger and these tribes had to move or deﬁnitively stop organizing fully illegal raves. But the process of development of the local rave scene did not stop. In 1998, a rave parade was organized in the city for the ﬁrst time, following similar experiences in Berlin and Zurich. The latest (9th) edition in 2005 brought together nearly 100,000 young people. While today fully illegal rave parties are no longer possible, raves in a similar style are organized weekly in the centri sociali, and especially at Livello 57. Belonging to a “strong” subculture, the hardcore techno production of the Bologna Tribe Teknomobilquad does not need to make its local identity explicit. They do not need to dissimulate their own Italian identity, nor do they use their Italian identity to give their production a dimension of exoticism and curiosity. In this sense, it can be argued that in the hardcore techno scene characterised by a strong subcultural capital (Thornthon, 1995), exoticism is not a useful strategy, because of the high cultural competence required to join the techno scene. For the same reason, dissimulation also appears to be of little use because it is a ﬁeld of restricted cultural production (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 53), in which the audience often coincides with the producers, since 542 they know each other directly. This aspect is reﬂected in the fact that this kind of music is made by people - and for people - who are part of a European network in which local identity represents only an element of a wider belonging to a nomadic youth movement. While the dj mixes produced by Teknomobilquad (TMS) are aesthetically identical to other European productions, it can also be observed that the form of their music is different from that of other European tribes, such as French and Dutch ones. In particular, Italian hard-core music has more melody, because, having a different attitude to its European cousins, it also samples melodic punk patters of chords. Moreover, the music at the parties is different, more Mediterranean, as the musician Lou Chano of TMS tells us: is characterized by the national melodic tradition also represented by popular artists such as Domenico Modugno or Lucio Battisti. Another tribe from Bologna, Sonic Belligeranza, makes more extreme experimental techno, but with a more cultural attitude. For example, a Sonic Belligeranza track on the 2001 French compilation Par tous le trous necessaires on the electronic music label Cavage can help us to understand another way of presenting and representing the Italian cultural speciﬁcity of these kinds of music. Indeed, Dj Balli created a speed techno track Mangia, mangia, mangia? based on samples from Pierpaolo Pasolini’s ﬁlm Le Cento Giornate di Sodoma, a very provocative Italian movie from the 60s. Further Sonic Belligeranza productions that sample traditional Italian jingles, such as the public television’s Intervallo, explicitly recall a cultural politic of “The Italian style was contaminated by the talian punk experience and the vibra from southern Italy, since the Teknomobilsquad musicians came from there. The Dutch said that it wasn’t a heavy style like theirs, it was happier, there was melody, punk riffs, not just bass rhythms. Also a bit funky and disco” (Interview with Lou Chano). The dominance of a melodic attitude in hardcore techno is very interesting because it indicates a clear continuity with the Italian Disco and House tradition. It seems that in electronic music as well, Italian musical identity “Italo-exploitation” as a recontestualization of the “black exploitation” (or “blaxploitation”) strategy in American cultural production. This appears to be a different strategy to make the Italian identity of the local roots of electronic music explicit, which we can deﬁne as the strategy of “citationism”. It seems to be a way of consciously making a local identity explicit in a music scene characterized by high-subcultural capital . 4. Rethinking the role of the local: practices of representation, deterritorialization and reterritorializzation We have looked at some of the historical 543 developments of Italian electronic music and especially that from Bologna, which is an important centre for electronic music in Italy. But the question now is why Bologna, more than other cities, has interacted so deeply with international music production. And how to explain the role of the localglobal dialectic in generating the musical identity representation in the ﬁeld of electronic music. As regards the role of Bologna, we can conceive the role of the local as a question of serendipity. Speaking of this, the social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz, analyzing the role of the city in world cultural production, says that it is not only the quantitative factor represented by the population density. In a world characterized by extreme cultural complexity, the city is important because “it always also offers new occasions of serendipity; things can be found when they are not looked for, because they stay around us” (1992, p. 263). The quality that enables some cities to emerge in international cultural production resides “in the easy, or even insistent, availability of cultural interfaces” (ibidem). Moreover, focusing on music and particularly on the role of the local in an international cultural ﬂow, we have to focus on what Stahl described - criticizing the concept of subculture – as “the insistence, the scene’s social persistence, a demand and desire that cultural life in the city be made meaningful in a different way” (Stahl, 2003, p. 63). Partially bypassing the distinction between musical genres, the understanding of local music’s role in a global world may be considered as the history and attitude of a place. And so also the concept of habitus proposed by Pierre Boudieu (1979) could be used to make sense of a local musical scene habitus, in so doing taking into consideration how a speciﬁc place creates a musical “agency” in the global world as the result of a creative adaptation to a structural system of opportunities, ideologies and causalities. We have seen that the Italian disco and house production, which has achieved international success, has been a product of the traditional dance culture in Emilia Romagna, that of the balere; of the presence of Italian popular music studios and musicians in the city; of the technical training in the highly conservative Italian music conservatories such as the case of Mauro Malavasi; of the rock scene that has existed in the city since the end of the 70s (Rubini and Tinti, 2003). We have also seen that, while in early 90s disco music a practice of “dissimulation” characterized the construction of the local national identity, the afﬁrmation of Italo-House at the end of the decade led to a practice of “exoticism” in the international dissemination of Italian music. Hardcore techno developed in the city starting from a 544 Figure 1 – Practices of representation of Italian identity and de- and re-territorialization processes. Music which explicitly shows localness Music more connected with deterritorialization processes (more media interaction) Music more connected with reterritorialization processes (more media interaction) Music which does not explicitly show localness Exoticism (90s Dance - Lounge) Strategic dissimulation (Disco –80s House) Citationism (Experimental Techno) Adaptation to a subculture (Hardcore Techno) UK nomadic tribe who came to the region because of the presence of a theatre festival: they found a cultural and social humus in the politically-oriented sites of the centri sociali in which to develop their cultural practices; at the same time, a strong tradition of literary production created the context for rearranging the anti-cultural tendency of techno through the more conscious sampling activity of new musicians. In the case of these strong subcultural ﬁelds, “dissimulation” and “exoticism” do not represent active strategies. After a process of deterritorialization, such music also experimented with a further process of reterritorialization (Lull, 1995). This further reterritorialization enabled Italian techno tribes to redeﬁne their own speciﬁcity through direct interaction with other foreign tribes. Therefore, Italian tribes met other tribes and, in so doing, built their own identity directly, presenting their own Mediterranean style, which characterizes the way they animate the techno parties they organize. Following ﬁgure 1, we can afﬁrm that in electronic music the different degree of deterritorialization and reterritorialization is related to practices of constructing a locally-rooted identity. Disco and House music are more marked by a deterritorialized condition and more ﬁltered by the musical media, and, in so doing, in these ﬁelds the trend is to use active practices of hiding or showing the local identity of the music (through both strategic dissimulation or exoticism). In reterritorialized hardcore techno, the inﬂuence of a more direct and less media-driven interaction contributes to enabling other kinds of practices. These practices can involve an adaptation of the style of their subculture as well as a more cultural strategy represented by the citation of speciﬁc Italian cultural references. 545 4. Others who ﬁrst used these concepts are Appadurai Endnotes 1. The futurist painter Luigi Russolo was probably the ﬁrst noise musician in history as well as a prototheorist of the new music of the XX century with “The Art of Noises” (1916). The city of Milan was one of the three cradles of electronic music, together with Paris and Koln, in the 50s and 60s and ﬁgures such as Luciano Berio, Bruna Maderna and Luigi Nono are well-established fathers of electronic music. (1990), Featherstone (1995), and Morley and Robins (1995). For a wider discussion of these concepts, see Tomlinson (1999). 5. It is of interest that one of the main ﬁgures of 70s Euro-disco was the Italian composer Giorgio Moroder, who moved to Munich to work with the producer Pete Bellote. He produced some of the most popular Eurodisco hits such as “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer in 1977. Giorgio Moroder made his debut in 1969 2. A good indicator of the weakness of Italian electronic music production is the low presence of Italian acts in the AGM Guide to Electronic music, which contains more than 1,200 biographies and more than 5,000 album reviews (Bogdanov et al., 2001). In this guide, only four Italian acts are considered (one is Berio) and no more than 10 Italian albums are cited (among which are two Irma compilations to be considered later). with the single “Looky, Looky” and became famous with Euro-disco and the production of the Munich studio Musicland. In the 80s, he turned to ﬁlm music, composing the soundtracks to Alan Parker’s Midnight Express (1979), Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980) and Cat People (1983), and winning an Oscar for Flashdance (1983). Following that, he produced the British rock band Sigue Sigue Sputnik. 3. The ethnographic research was conducted into electronic music production in the city of Bologna, one of the Italian centres of electronic music. Part of the research is presented in Magaudda (2002); I have also collected material and interpretations of the drum’n’bass, experimental ambient and electroacoustic music scenes, but lack of space here prevents us from examining these other interesting cases. 6. The singer was identiﬁed as Marzio, a ballroom singer on the Italian Riviera (Rimini). Marzio only sang on the ﬁrst Macho album, and went on to record a solo LP called “Smoke on the volcano” (1980, EMI). According to sources, he died in the ﬁrst half of 2001. 7. The attitude of Italian disco producers marked a change in popular music production, especially 546 concerning the aura of originality and the authenticity of the artists and music. It was probably the very ﬁrst attempt to move from the idea of an authentic artist to that of technicians, more like today’s djs than the rock musicians of the 70s. 11. The success of this record was marred by controversy when it was revealed that the vocals had been sampled from Loletta Holloway’s “Love Sensation,” a disco song written and produced by Dan Hartman and released in 1980. The group had hired French model Katrin Quniol to pose as their singer. Quniol could not speak 8. Former lead and background vocalist on Change’s 1980 and 1981 albums, B. B. & Q.’s album in 1981 and Peter Jacques’ band’s 1980 album, Luther Ronzoni Vandross, died on July 1st, 2005 in Edison, NJ. He was 54. He ranked as one of the most successful R& B singers of the 80s and broke through to even wider commercial success in 1989 with “The Best of Luther Vandross”, which included the song “Here and Now,” his ﬁrst Grammy winning hit. English and had trouble lip-synching the song on music shows. Black Box later pointed out that Holloway got an expensive fur coat out of the compensation money they had to pay her (see http://www.songfacts.com/detail. lasso?id=3712 - access July 2005). 12. “Ride on Time” sold more than three million copies, also reaching number 16 in the USA hit parade. Moreover, it was also the unofﬁcial soundtrack of the 9. It is worth noticing that the popular USA dj Jeff Mills put a theme by Change on the 2004 compilation of his top 25 classic dance tracks. Moreover, it is important to know that when Malavasi, as well as the other producer Celso Valli, stopped making disco music, they became very popular music producers for some of the most famous Italian artists such as Lucio Dalla, Gianni Morandi and Andrea Bocelli (Mauro Malavasi) and Vasco Rossi, Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini (Celso Valli). American televising of the Superbowl (cfr. Sada, 1995, p. 49). One of the producers, Daniele Davoli, was also inserted, together with the Italian Joe t. Vannelli and Claudio Coccoluto, in the list of the 100 top world djs in 1997 by the British dance magazine “Dj Magazine”. (Pacoda, 1999, p. 79). 13. After an initial period of dance remix production, Irma developed its own production in the genres of acid jazz, lounge and cocktail music, as well as in other 10. Mauro Malavasi and Jacques Petrus had been producing their own music for almost two years under the company name of “Goody Music Production”. ﬁelds such as hip hop. In 2000, Irma’s sales reached 500,000 copies and more than 90% of its production goes outside Italy. Indeed, Irma’s production, especially 547 electronic, is clearly aimed at the foreign market, and some years ago the label opened two ofﬁces in London and New York. Irma also has a few sub-labels, one of which, the Will, only publishes for the American market. Moreover, it is worth noting that one of Irma’s Italian djs, Don Carlos, has been resident DJ at the cult dance club Ministry of Sound in London. roots in electronic music through the citation strategy is clearly connected with the literary experience of its leader Dj Balli. He is also a writer who published a book in 1998, Anche tu astronauta (Balli, 1998), a presentation as part of an international project Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA). In this respect, it is also notable that Bologna is one of the Italian cities where books and reading are a highly developed cultural aspect (Santoro 14. For example, the title of this compilation imitates the titles of other international electronic compilations such as Future Sounds of New York (1995, Emotive), Future Sounds of United Kingdom (1997, Open) and Future Sounds of Paris (1997, Ultra); in turn, these compilations echoed the name of one of the most famous UK electronic bands Future Sounds Of London (debut in 1989). and Sassatelli, 2002), as statistics about book selling in 2004 have shown, referring to Bologna as the city where more books per person are sold in Italy. It is also important to add that the relationship between music production and literature in Bologna presents many connections, mostly represented by musicians and singers who are also writers, such as Emidio Clementi (Clementi, 2001), singer of the dissolved rock band Massimo Volume and the new, partly electronic-based band, El Muniria. 15. It is interesting to note that the Mutoid Waste Company arrived in Santarcangelo because this little town holds one of the most important alternative theatre festivals in Italy. It was there in 1990 that they presented an exhibition of cars transformed into military tanks and other postindustrial iron sculptures (www. santarcangelofestival.com). Selected Bibliography Antonelli, C. and De Luca, F., 1995, Disco Inferno, Roma, Theoria. Appadurai, A., 1990, Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy, in Featerstone, M. (ed.), Global culture. Nationalism, globalization and modernity, 16. Trying to make a connection of this kind of attitude with the local cultural scene explicit, it is useful to note that the “highbrow” strategy of representing the Italian London, Sage, pp. 295-310. (it. Trans. Cultura globale: nazionalismo, globalizzazione e modernità, Roma, SEAM, 1996) 548 1996, Modernity at Large, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press (it. trans. Modernità in polvere, Roma, Meltemi, 2001) Feld, S., 2000, A Sweet Lullaby for World Music, in “Public Culture”, 12(1), pp. 145-172. Hannerz, U., 1992, Cultural Complexity. Studies in the Balli, R., 1998, Anche tu astronauta, Roma, Castelvecchi. social organization of meaning, New York Columbia University Press (it. Trans. La complessità culturale, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1998) Bogdanov, V. et al., (eds.), 2001, All Music Guide To Electronic Music, San Francisco, Back Beat Books. Harley, R., 1993, Beat in the system, in Rock and popular music: Politics, policies, institutions, ed. Tony Bennett, Simon Frith, Lawrence Grossberg, John Bourdieu, P., 1979, La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Ed. de Minuit (it. trans. La distinzione, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1983). Link Project, (ed.), 2000, Netmage, Milano, 1993, The ﬁeld of cultural production, Cambridge, Polity Press. Lull, J., 1995, Media, Communication, Culture, Brewster, B. and Broughton, F., 1999, Last Night a DJ saved my life, London, Headline Book Publishing. Magaudda, P. 2002, Non solo Rock. Il campo della Clementi, E., 2001, Le notti del Pratello, Roma, Fazi, 2001. musica popular, in Santoro M. (ed.), 2002, pp. 143209. Cambridge, Polity Press. Mondadori. Shepherd, and Graeme Turner, New York, Routledge, pp. 210-230. Featherstone, M., 1995, Undoing culture, London Routledge (it. Trans. La cultura dislocata: globalizzazione, postmodernismo, identità, Mazzi, L., 2002, Disco Story, Bologna, Buone Notizie Edizioni. Formello, SEAM, 1998) Montana, C., 1990, Dalla dance alla canzone d’autore, 549 Malavasi Style, in “Musica & Dischi”, n. 8. Santoro, M. and Sassatelli, R., 2002, Il libro, la lettura, la scrittura. Una ricerca sul “campo letterario” in Emilia- Morley D. and Robins K., 1995, Space of identity. Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundries, London, Routledge. Romagna, in L’informazione bibliograﬁca, n. 1 (2002) pp. 117-132. Stahl, G., 2003, ‘It’s like Canada Reduced’: setting the Oldﬁeld, L., 2002, Adriatic for the people, in “Seven Magazine”, February, 2002. scene in Montreal, in Bennet and Kahn-Harris (eds.), After Subculture, New York, Palgrave, pp. 51-64. Pacoda, P., 1999, Discotech, Roma, ADN Kronos. Thornton, S., 1995, Clubcultures. Music Media and subcultural capital, (it. trans. Dal Club ai Rave, Milano, Reynolds, S., 1998, Generation Ecstasy, London, Routledge (it. trans. Generazione ballo\sballo, Roma, Arcana, 2000). Feltrinelli, 1998) Tomlinson, J., 1999, Globalization and Culture, Cambridge, Polity Press. Rubini, O. and Tinti, A., (eds.), 2003, Non disperdetevi, 1977-1982, San Francisco, New York, Bologna - le zone libere del Mondo, Roma, Arcana Pop. Selected Discography Full discography of Change, the most important Italo-disco project of Mauro Malavasi: -1980, The Glow Of Love, Goody Music/RFC-Warner Russolo, L., 1916, L’arte dei rumori, Milano, Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia. Bros., singles: “A Lover’s Holiday”, “The Glow Of Love”, “Searching”, “Angel In My Pocket”, LP. Sada, R., 1995, La storia della house music, Milano, Gruppo Editoriale Abaco Service. Santoro, M., 2002, Suoni dalla città. La produzione musicale a Bologna, rapporto di ricerca, Bologna, istituto Cattaneo. -1981, Miracles, Goody Music/RFC-Atlantic, singles: “Paradise”, “Hold Tight”, “Miracles”. LP -1982, Sharing Your Love, RFC-Atlantic, singles: “The Very Best In You”, “Hard Times (It’s Gonna Be Alright)”, 550 “Oh What A Night”, LP - AAVV, 1999, Future Sounds of Italy , Irma Records - CD -1983, This Is Your Time, RFC-Atlantic, singles: “Got To Get Up”, “This Is Your Time”, “Don’t Wait Another Night”, “Magical Night”, LP. - Black Box, 1990, Dreamland, Carrere / Airplay -1984, Change Of Heart, Five/RFC-Atlantic, singles: “Change Of Heart”, “You Are My Melody”, “It Burns Me Up”, LP. - Giardini di Mirò, 2002, The academic rise of falling drifters, Homesleep - CD (remix by electronic bands of -1984, Greatest Hits, Five, LP. Giardini di Mirò’s album, The rise and fall of academic drifters, 2001, Homelseep) -1985, Greatest Hits, Renaissance, LP. - Macho, 1978, I’m A Man, Goody Music/Prelude - LP. -1985, Turn On Your Radio, Renaissance/RFC- Macho, 1980, Roll, Goody Music - LP. Atlantic, singles: “Let’s Go Together”, “Oh What A Feeling”, “Mutual Attraction”, “Examination”, LP. - Marzio, 1980, Smoke on the volcano, Emi – LP. -1998, The Very Best Of Change, Rhino-Atlantic, CD. - Massimo Volume, 1993, Stanze, Underground Records – CD/LP -2003, The Best Of Change, Warner Music, 2CD. - Mills Jeff, 2004, Choice: A Collection of Classics, Azuli – CD (track 19 is “The end” by Malavasi’s band Change) Records, LP/CD. - El Muniria, 2004, Stanza 218, Homesleep – CD. -2004, “You Miss My Love”, Yanis, Single. Others: - AAVV, 1997, Italian dance classics – ultimate Collection - House , Irma Records - CD - Sonic Belligeranza, 2001, Mangia, mangia, mangia – in AAVV, Par tous le trous necessaries, Cavage - CD 551 - Technomobilsquad, 1999-2004 – various white labels. - Wang inc., 2000, Wang Inc. EP, Sonig 04, - EP - Wang Inc. 2002, Risotto in 4/4, Bib-Hop Records CD. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Almost Famous: Finland’s Quest for International Popular Music Stardom, 1961–1999 Janne Mäkelä M y study deals with a history of failure. In Finland, at least, the period from the early 1960s to the Australia, Canada and several European countries warmly welcomed these new pop sensations, Finns were inclined to conclude that Finnish pop had ﬁnally “made it” in global pop markets. Numerous articles and interviews focussing on these artists suggested that something important had taken place. Suddenly a new kind of excitement and pride appeared in Finnish culture, creating a certain feeling that Finland had left the years of pop failure behind. The year 2000 in Finland was – in terms of popular music – the year of national relief. late 1990s has been perceived as an era during which certain dreams about popular music did not materialize. These dreams concerned Finland’s attempt to win fame in international popular music markets. It may appear strange that I am using here the nation state term “Finland” as these attempts were not conducted by Finnish government or other national authorities but, rather, taken by individual artists and the people and institutions behind them. Yet this process was in many ways connected to the development and state of Finnish popular music as well as to the changing idea of Finnishness. It was especially in the 1990s that the quest for international fame in popular music became a visible issue, if not even a national project in Finland This rupture has several interesting aspects. We can, for example, ask how these artists and groups were nationalized even though it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd any distinct characters traditionally associated with Finnishness with these acts and, especially, with their music styles. We should start from the year 2000. It was during that year that the hip hop/electro group Bomfunk MC’s, techno artist Darude and the metal group HIM simultaneously conquered music charts worldwide. It should be deﬁned that these artists and their sounds were not heard from every corner of the world – the United States still remained a mythical, impregnable territory for Finnish musicians – but as for example We can also ask whether this was a real breakthrough in a sense that it would have had continuity and not remain a single shot in the dark. Bomfunk MC’s, Darude and HIM invaded international pop charts but did they really obtain international star status? It seems that apart from HIM, who are still very popular in Central Europe, it is difﬁcult for Finnish names to retain the position once acquired, but since these breakthroughs 553 took place only three years ago this is the question we cannot answer yet. Periods of Pop Export: From Dreams to Desires famous” rock myth. Between the mid-70s and the early90s there appeared several rock groups and artists who, as the saying goes, almost made it. The two most often told stories are those of the progressive rock group, Wigwam, and the glam rock band Hanoi Rocks. Wigwam was perhaps the most renowned Finnish rock group in the early 1970s and as it became evident that the group was able to produce as ambitious and wellarticulated music as any other progressive group at the time, attempts to take the world (or at least Britain) by storm were taken. Wigwam travelled to England, did some touring and released singles but despite the encouraging feedback and promising coverage in the rock press the group did not achieve notable fame and soon ceased to exist – only to have several comebacks in the Finnish scene in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 1980s, Hanoi Rocks gained recognition abroad and inﬂuenced some American hard rock groups, most notably Guns’n’Roses, but – as Finnish rock historians and journalists have often emphasised (e.g. Bruun et al., 377) – the group never managed to make a “real breakthrough”. This is somewhat a misinterpretation since Hanoi Rocks actually gained huge recognition especially in Japan and Asia but since their attempt to conquer the mythical rock imperium, the axis of America and Britain, more or less failed we have been left with the understanding that the career of the band never came to its fulﬁllment. What interests me is not the rupture itself but the history behind it. My question is: In what ways was the quest for international success connected to the issues of nationality, cultural interaction and celebrity? To put it more straightforwardly: What made the pop year 2000 a relief? The answer to this question is actually quite simple: Finland had for years desired for international fame in popular music. This process started from Finland’s ﬁrst attendance in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1961 and continued with the international success of “Letkis”, a pop dance style epitomised by a hit record of the same name in 1963. The question was raised: could Finnish pop music and artists have international success? Since ﬁrst attempts to win international fame were sporadic and unorganized it is perhaps more accurate to talk about the dream of fame rather than about the quest for it. Some mainstream artists (Laila Kinnunen, Viktor Klimenko, Danny), who had enjoyed success in Finland, tried their luck in Europe but did not do it very determinedly and soon came back. It was in the mid-1970s that this period what I call the dream of international fame shifted to another period, the desire for international fame. More organised attempts were taken, resulting in the Finnish version of the “almost 554 The Third Period: Obsession for the Global gradually shifted from the period of desire to the period of national obsession. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Finnish rock press was the most visible institution to speculate about Finnish pop and rock acts’ search for international fame. Journalists also recognised that the lack of resources and poor international contacts were a problem which had to be resolved if Finnish musicians wished to have international success. In the 1990s, not only the rock press but the mainstream press and other media together with the music industry expressed their concerns about the slow development of internationalising Finnish popular music. What followed was that more organised actions were taken. For example: the annual event of the music industry, Music & Media, was established, the issue of pop export soon becoming the main concern in these meetings; national training programme for rock managers started in 1997; two major reports (Ahonen et al.; Mikkola et al.) focussing on the internationalization of Finnish popular music were published in 1998. This process coincided the general debate on the national identity in Finland. In an era of post-communism and pan-European ideologies there was a need to reconﬁgure the idea of Finnishness as something that is based on the cultural interaction with the Western part of the World rather than with the Slavic culture. In terms of popular music, this meant that the quest for international fame It can be suggested that in addition to the changing geopolitical situation, it was also globalization processes and the triumph of the new celebrity culture – and their impact on understanding modern culture as a ﬁeld of struggle for ﬁnancial proﬁt and fame – that had a powerful inﬂuence on new expectations for Finnish popular music. It is often understood that globalization in popular music means the dominance of the popular music industry by the major media conglomerates and the invasion of international music styles and stars. While it is true that the growth and acceleration of economic and cultural networks has resulted in multinational pop markets and thus transcended national boundaries, the globalization process also involves a strong local or national aspect. For example, the economic dimension of globalization not only means replacing national styles with international products but also includes selling local or national artists for mainstream global consumption. In some cases, as with Puerto Rican Ricky Martin or Colombian Shakira, national aspects and identities have played crucial roles in creating star images. The emergence of communication technologies and media networks clearly have had an effect in consumption of stars with different kinds of national backgrounds. 555 What I mean is that in the mid-1990s Finland globalization was not considered purely as a menacing form of “cultural imperialism”, but also as a challenge. Finland’s attempt to produce international artists in the 1990s reﬂected the need to hop in the bandwagon of global pop and fame. There are several concrete factors that fuelled this project. From the early 20th century to the late-1990s, Finland had achieved international success in several areas of culture, entertainment and business: there were famous sports heroes, from the long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi to Formula One racer Mika Häkkinen and the national ice hockey team which after years of failure ﬁnally won the world cup in 1995 (after which Finland went completely mad); there was a ﬁlm director in Hollywood, Renny Harlin; there were great men of classical music, from Sibelius to several internationally renowned conductors of the 1990s; there even was some pride over the assumption that Finland had an international porn star, Henry Saari (I, however, doubt that his deeds truly are internationally recognised); and, of course, there was Nokia, which in the late 1990s became a leading company in global telecommunication business. Yet Finland had no room in the biggest cultural industry of the world, popular music. For years Finland had envied Sweden for its huge success in global pop markets. From the breakthrough of Abba in the early 1970s to a number of worldfamous performers, including Roxette and Ace of Base, and the rise to the third place (after the USA and the UK) in the export ﬁgures for popular music in the 1990s, Finland’s Western neighbour has been highly successful in global pop markets. Furthermore, Sweden has won Eurovision Song Contest four times whereas Finland has a notorious record of occupying the last placing four times. In fact, annual disasters in this contest gradually became for Finns a national symbol of the failure in international popular music markets. In the 1990s, it was regularly acknowledged that the popular music match between Finland and Sweden, “Finnkampen” (to use a term associated with annual sports match between the two countries), was highly unbalanced. While we can perceive this Finnkampen in popular music as an extension of the long cultural, economic and political rivalry, which has its roots in the Sweden’s dominion of Finland for over six hundred years (ca.1200-1809), it now touched the issues of modernity, cultural interaction, national identity and, speciﬁcally, ideologies of popular music. For example, to cover their envy the Finnish press often complained that those Swedish acts, who had Perhaps the most important factor contributing Finland’s mission for international pop fame was envy. won international fame, did not sound “Swedish” at all or that the artists themselves could not be identiﬁed 556 as representing Swedishness. Thus, the old question of authenticity was brought in. Within this discussion it was forgotten that the origins of modern Swedish pop music do not lay in primitive and ethnic folk music cultures, i.e. “authentic” forms of national cultures, but, as argued by music historian Lars Lilliestam, in the rich cultural interaction and the development of urban society (67–68). The Last Rehearsal: Miisa The short career of the dance pop singer Miisa in the mid-1990s exempliﬁed the collision of old strategies and new attitudes in Finnish popular music culture. The attempt to sell Miisa and her mainstream soul-dance pop to American markets during 1995 and 1996 was widely reported and speculated in the Finnish pop and mainstream press. Miisa’s backers, record company The possible conﬂict between the “authentic” national and the “inauthentic” global was also noted in the Finnish music scene. By the late 1990s it had become evident that the emphasis on images traditionally associated with “Finnishness” – slavic melancholy, weird sense of humour, close relationship with the nature, the use of alcohol and other mythic traits – were exotic enough to provide cult status in Central Europe (e.g. humour groups Eläkeläiset and Leningrad Cowboys) but inadequate for gaining global recognition. It also seemed that those rock groups who had been highly successful in domestic markets were not able to break through in international markets. Attempts were taken (e.g. pop/ rock group Neljä ruusua who recorded two English albums as 4R), but apart from Hanoi Rocks, who shamelessly dropped Finnishness from their agenda and even boasted about such coup, they failed one by one. Something new was no doubt needed. executives, people working in the music business, other authorities and, of course, the artist herself were asked about her chances. High hopes were laid – yet suspicions were articulated as well. There was some criticism that the project called Miisa was not an authentic artist-based venture but an artiﬁcial project with an emphasis on the product rather than the real person. Miisa’s authenticity was put in question in three ways. First, she did not follow the traditional career process of the gradual build-up of a following from regional to national and then international stages. Miisa seemed to appear out of nowhere, or, rather, out of what Simon Frith calls the “talent pool” (113). She had released only one album in Finland when an American talent scout, who had come to Finland to look for new acts, found her and then sent her to Atlanta to sign a 3 million dollar deal with one of the biggest independent record companies in America, Ichiban. 557 Second, Miisa was juxtaposed with the particular ethos which had characterised the internationalization of Finnish pop music: “male-oriented rock Finnishness”. Miisa did not represent the paid-his-dues ethos which had been prevalent in previous efforts of exporting Finnish popular music. During the 1980s and the early 1990s the most visible attempts to obtain international fame were taken by male groups playing hard rock and writing their own music. As opposed to them, Miisa was a young woman singing mainstream dance pop written by professional songwriters. Third argument relates to the issue of controlship. It seemed that Miisa did not have any control over her products and that she was merely a puppet on a string singing what her masters asked her to sing. It was, for example, reported that Miisa was forced to change his music style from techno pop to modern r&b in order to appear as an Ichiban artist aiming at American markets. now that nothing like this happened. Despite the great expectations put upon her by the media and the amount of money invested by Ichiban, Miisa did not become a pop star. She recorded three Ichiban singles which did not enter U.S. pop charts. For a short moment her debut single “All or Nothing” managed to ﬁll dance ﬂoors in club circuits but the next minute it was gone – as was Miisa herself. Although her career was short, I think Miisa means something in the history of internationalizing Finnish popular music. She did not make a musical revolution nor appeared as an innovating musician. As a matter of fact, there have been some speculations that she even did not sing in her own records. But as Miisa shamelessly wanted to have an international career and as she did not have any notable merits in Finnish scene before appearing as a “dance pop sensation aiming America”, she actually stands as an example of However, as the pressure to win fame in international pop markets had become almost an unbearable issue in Finnish popular music, and as stylishing and grooming of artists had been accepted as standard practices in popular music, Miisa received more positive attraction than criticism. Finnish mainstream press even predicted that it is only a matter of time that Miisa becomes a widely recognised star and, perhaps, even challenges the world-leading pop lady herself, Madonna. We know how a new kind of promotional culture challenged the ideas of rock authenticity and rock nationality in Finnish popular music. Miisa was not authentic in a sense that she would have written her own songs or that her music and star image would have emerged from the imagery of Finnishness. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that she appeared as a democratic force in Finnish popular music and celebrity culture but she nevertheless showed that it was possible to respond 558 to the challenges of globalization and the celebrity culture without the ideal of “rock Finnishness” and its most powerful manifestation, the male rock group. It is very telling that when Bomfunk MCs (a project of two hip hop artists), Darude (an anonymous techno wizard) and HIM (mainly promoted through the romantically decadent lead singer, Ville Valo) did what she did not manage to do, the myth of rock Finnishness was no longer a major issue. What was the issue was the simple desire to win fame and at any cost in international pop markets. The images and sounds of Bomfunk, Darude and HIM did not represent trademarks associated with Finnishness, but the artists themselves became the pop darlings of the nation the moment they broke through. They were, in a way, immediately re-nationalised. Such is the power of economic success in modern societies that had Miisa succeeded ﬁve years back, I am certain that she would have been re-nationalised much in the same way as Bomfunk, Darude and HIM and that her image and music would have been praised as a triumph of new kind of pop aestheticism. As this did not happen she is now forgotten. While it is true that in the history of internationalising Finnish popular music Miisa remains an example of the failure, we can also perceive her career as a phase of national rehearsal for international success, which materialized ﬁve years later after her attempts. Selected Bibliography Ahonen, Sirpa, André Nöel Chaker & Stiina Honkamaa. The Internationalizing of Finnish Popular Music. Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration B10. Helsinki: Culminatum/Sibelius Academy, 1998. Bruun, Seppo, Jukka Lindfors, Santtu Luoto & Markku Salo. Jee jee jee. Suomalaisen rockin historia. Helsinki: WSOY, 1998. Frith, Simon. “Video Pop. Picking up the Pieces.” Facing the Music. Ed. Simon Frith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. 105–128. Lilliestam, Lars. Svensk rock. Musik, lyrik, historik. Göteborg: Bo Ejeby Förlag, 1998. Mikkola, Timo, Tiina Ashorn, Hannu Hiilamo, Mikko Mannonen, Helena Pekkarinen & Kalevi Tervanen. Yrittäjyys musiikkiteollisuudessa. Suomalaisen musiikkielämän kilpailukyvyn kehittäminen. Helsinki: F & L Management Services Ltd, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Digital Recording Technologies and New Music-Making Practices: A Case Study of Young Musicians in Rural Canada Jan Marontate a new project that is still evolving and I encouraged suggestions at the conference. One motivation for presenting preliminary ﬁndings at conferences is to seek insights from colleagues. In this text for the conference proceedings I will include comments on insights gained by reﬂection with colleagues at the conference, insights that have spurred me to reframe my questions about how young musicians are appropriating new recording technologies in unanticipated ways. Early recording technologies and the crystallization of musical works Introduction D igital technologies and the creative practices associated with them are transforming the lived experience of music in ways that may radically reconﬁgure relations between creators (or producers), mediators and publics (audiences, fans, consumers, users). This paper examines the argument that the re-emergence of the musical works as practices rather than objects is a central feature of these new relations. It begins with an overview of theoretical insights and hypotheses about “music in action” (Théberge 1997, DeNora 2000) and about centrality of “performativity” in mediation practices related to music (Hennion 2000). Then I brieﬂy present a few examples drawn from a case study about the place of digital recording practices in the creative practices of young musicians in rural Canada enrolled in a music technology program at a small undergraduate university (Acadia University). This case study is part of a larger research project about the transformation of creative practices associated with new uses of digital recording technology in performance and composition. As it is Much recent research on the history of sound recording and instrument design has emphasized the complexity of relations between technological change and musical practice (Théberge 1997, Kraft, Mitsui and Hosokawa éberge 1998, Hennion et al. 2000). For many types of participants in popular (and other) music genres, sound recordings came to be seen as crystallizations of popular musical works. French sociologist and musicologist Antoine Hennion has maintained that early recordings of classical and popular music attained a status similar to that of conventional art objects in the visual arts– as 560 records of a past creative act, “frozen in time”, preserved intact to be savoured or emulated (Hennion, 1997). Many scholars have pointed out that the reception of musical works is very diverse, even of works that may in some respects be identical. Listeners are active agents who creatively appropriate music and “use” it in diverse ways(DeNora 2000). Nonetheless many uses of recorded popular music in the 20th century drew on or reinforced the canonical character of the recordings as primary evidence and embodiments of the creative act. In this perspective, recordings served to deemphasize “performative” nature of music-making for listeners. It was no longer necessary to make music or be around musicians in order to hear music. New recording technologies have made the manipulation of music feasible even for listeners without musical training enhancing the potential for active engagement of listeners. However our focus in this paper is on people involved with music-making and recording. New technologies and “performative” practices : insights from social studies of technology property rights and fair use has focused on how new practices blur the distinctions between originality, authorship, ownership, emulation and replication. New technologies used in connection with ﬁle-sharing protocols have been at the center of media coverage in the past ﬁve years in connection with audiences and consumption patterns, however such practices have also been associated with creative processes in diverse and innovative ways. File-sharing and other forms of internet use have transformed both listeners and creative participants (musician, sound technicians etc.) into active agents in mediation and dissemination processes. Our study is concerned with ways in which the appropriation of such new technologies may be transforming creative practices. Although these new practices raise important social and political issues, our preliminary results indicate that digital recording technologies and the creative practices associated with them are indeed reviving performance as a “listening technique” and a “composition technique” in unexpected ways. Sociologists and cultural studies researchers often use the term “performativity” In the past few decades computer-based music-making practices have increasingly integrated recording processes into composition and improvisation. Some techniques, like sampling, present challenges for past conventions about the place of replication in creative processes. Much public debate about intellectual in connection with studies of identity, gender and sexuality as a way of going beyond old notions of a separation between symbolic meaning and practices. Antoine Hennion has used it in studies of reception in music and taste (or, passion) for music. This notion of “performativity” is very useful as a concept for 561 understanding how new recording technologies are bringing action back into musical creation. Drawing on new approaches to actor-network theory (for example, in the recent work of Antoine Hennion, Bruno Latour and Madeleine Akrich), this study also considers the relations between human and non-human components in the music-making processes. The place of recording technology in new music-making practices cannot be reduced to technological determinism. Nor are the practices easily apprehended by extreme social constructivist approaches that insist on evacuating the characteristics of the music from analysis. The central idea in our study is that technology (in this case digital recording software and hardware) shapes and is shaped by users, their values and practices in speciﬁc socio-historic contexts. A related research question concerns the claims that digital technologies reposition geographical, physical and time factors in the creative process. For musicians working in rural contexts this is an important issue. In later parts of the study, institutional and macrosocial organizational changes associated with new technologies will be considered in more depth. Case study of music technology students: research questions primarily undergraduate university in rural Nova Scotia, Canada is part of a larger interdisciplinary research project, with multiple goals and interests (aesthetic, social, political, economic and ethical). The project is funded by Industry Canada and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in the Initiative on the New Economy program. It investigates strategies for developing sustainable careers and viable enterprises in music, audio recording, and multimedia production. The rational for the study is premised on the notion that widespread adoption of digital technologies is so recent and the practices so unstable that it is difﬁcult to gauge what is happening. Nonetheless it is clear that people working in music and audio production need to develop fresh strategies. A reconﬁguration of ‘techno-cultural’ activities is underway. Some of the questions we hope to address are: How are musicians, composers, technicians and other occupational groups in the sector experiencing and using new technologies? What educational programs and infrastructures could improve the opportunities of Canadians already working in music-related occupations? How can we prepare new generations of Canadian musicians, composers, sound engineers and multimedia entrepreneurs to survive and prosper in the 21st century? The research examines trends and models concerned with 1) recent The study of the values and practices of students in a music technology program at Acadia University, a small, developments pertinent to music, sound production and multimedia in Canada in the context of international 562 practices; 2) technological change and the organization of creative work, and 3) ethical and aesthetic dimensions of products, services and practices. The music technology program at Acadia University is of interest for several reasons. In the ﬁrst place it is a small, rural campus far from major centres of the music industry that has adopted a policy of intensive use of computers on campus. All students have laptops. Most of the campus is fully wired. In the music programs there is an active integration of digital recording and composition technologies (featuring Steinberg software, Roland equipment and a digital recording studio). One of the widely bruited advantages of new technologies is the notion that communications and information networks will dissolve distances between centres and peripheries. Music technology students at Acadia thus constitute a promising group for studying these issues. In the case study of Acadia University music technology students we began by gathering documentation about the history of the music technology program since its inception and built a website (still under construction) to archive relevant course materials since 1992 for subsequent analysis (http://music.acadiau.ca/ musictech). This includes syllabi, assignments, and tests for courses that are core requirements in the program as well as some other materials (notably information about performances). Eventually we hope to include extensive samples of student recording projects for the period but permissions must ﬁrst be obtained. Many of the written assignments had to be digitized and we are now in the process of converting material to .mp3 formats. The website also includes a second important section about resources for electroacoustic music intended to be of use to students and recent graduates. This second section will also be used to generate a sample for a series of interviews about models and survival strategies of people working with digital technologies in music and audio recording. Focused analysis of a sample of music student works is currently under way. A survey of students will also be conducted in the fall of 2003. The draft questionnaire include questions that will enable us to look at the impact of tastes in musical genres, education and training on creative experiences, paid and unpaid work and integration into organizations (networks, associations and unions). The survey results will be linked to targeted interviews and an analysis of student works in this ﬁrst component of the larger research program. Student Projects: integrating new technologies with conventions An examination of selected projects from the music technology programme shows that although students and professors insist on innovative elements of new technologies and instrumentation 563 they actually use new technologies in music composition and performance in ways that draw heavily on industry practices and conventions in the ﬁeld of musical composition (although they often integrate popular and high culture forms in surprising ways). For example, Mauricio DuarteNeira, a student who completed the music technology program in 2003 used varied recording and imaging techniques to create “scores” to be played using different software interfaces. In one of his projects he combined visual techniques with audio imaging by carving “happy faces” on a multitracker and then remixing the results (please see the project description oppositte and listen to the composition). Other students have produced CDs, music videos and web sites in creative projects that make use of new recording techniques and communications technologies associated with them in ways that are intended to deliberately challenge the popular music industry, producing texts, scores and recordings that mimic and mock music industry conventions. For example, recent graduates a hip hop video (please view the video): <Mike> “Get out, get out, get outta my mind Unwind to ﬁnd the time, it’s time when it’s on your dime It burns! It burns when you’re takin’ turns Lightin’ my neurons on ﬁre Extinguish the ﬂame burnin’ in my brain When I say ‘ooooooo, I’m in so much pain’ How can I become hectic if I don’t know how to play? Rhymes become erected if I just knew what to say I can stay here, chillin’ in the cold night, out of ﬁght That I might go crazy if I’m left alone tonight Fearin’ that I’ll bust a brother’s brain in just right If I let myself go out and get into a pistol ﬁght Move so I can get by, groove Or you’ll ﬁnd yourself swimmin’ in the dead pool People think it’s cool tellin’ kids to stay in school But I think it’s cruel if you don’t know what do With yourself as your body melts in a special mold Be prepared to come on down and do just what you’re told Mike Gillespie and Martin Maunder maintain a website that includes material from their student projects and more recent works (http://www. thesoundandthefury.ca). One music video ‘Video Hit’ to begins with what appears to be a satire of 564 “Happy Face Experiment” As technology gets better and better, or sometimes worse and even much more complicated, I decided to fool around with it and make something fun. As a tech student here at Acadia university, I ﬁnd the advantage of doing such interesting work. What I did was grab 7 tracks from any multi-tracker (you can’t see track 7 in the picture because I couldn’t manage to make them ﬁt for the picture). You can do this with Cubase, Cubasis, Cakewalk, Cool Edit. For this one, I used Cool Edit to draw the picture. But I then used Cubase to add the effects and make the ﬁnal cut. I assigned track one as the drum beat track. I selected 3 drum samples. Then, for each face I selected different instruments in track 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. The ﬁrst face, the yellow one in the left, it was my experimental phase. I just assigned whatever instrument I could to tracks 1 to 7 and drew the face and see what happened. Then for face 2, the blue face, I had a more creative approach. I managed to make a LATIN beat! As for Face 3, instead of drawing the face with Waves, I decided to carve the face on a huge wav. This was pretty experimental. As for the last big happy face, it was the same idea but I used tones and Pure Sine Waves just to see how it worked out to be like. As soon as I had that done. I was happy to make such a strange creation. The music is obviously bad, but if you see the purpose and the way it was designed and done, I think it’s crazy yet interesting. As for effects, I used various VST plug-ins. Flangers, Reverbs, Distortions and I used a pretty cool feature called slow tempo and higher tempo. It was great. I hope you enjoy my project! H. Mauricio Duarte 565 Sometimes people like to play Games that drive your mind astray Sit down, shut up, throw the dice and play Stay only if you wanna throw it all away Throw it all away, lose before you play Pay for gettin’ paid, the predator must pay.” On something that’s original--heaven forbid” The duo laments the negative effects on “genuine” artists of industry practices and gullible consumers who fall for marketing gimmicks: “The media conglomerates like where they sit Later the duo uses knowledge of the genre to express distain for marketing techniques that promote formulaic approaches to music rather than “music with some mental stimulation”: Churning out the same old and collectin’ the money From spoiled 14-year old teenie-bopper dummies Who follow the trends of which they wanna be a part Makin’ it harder for the artist every time they choose the fake art They ﬁll their cart and approach the check-out line Choosin’ packaging over content every single time Record company employees cruise the chatlines at night Spreadin’ rumours, makin’ street buzz, creating the hype Gauranteein’ the sales before the CD’s out” The video concludes with a call to arms to musicians and their fans that encourages downloading and promotes the “open source” approach to music “You’re dissin’ my life and it’s pissin’ me off What you call music just makes my brain soft What I’m lookin’ for is music with some mental stimulation Not the latest fad dance hall craze sensation You say you’re feelin’ it but I just don’t get it-What you call music is <<over-produced, overedited>> To ﬁt the needs of speciﬁc target market Putting meaning in the music is the least important part The record company hires their marketer chum To create the latest fad that they can cash in on Take an old idea and change it just a bit-There’s tons of money involved and they can’t afford to risk it 566 consumption, the implication being that the best way to “support your local musician” is to cease purchasing works from recording industry giants: and dexterity with new recording technologies and related dissemination tools (the World Wide Web). Concluding Remarks --Preliminary Insights “The System’s so fucked I just wanna shout How did we ever let it get this way? It makes me so depressed--I just wanna say: Let’s take the music back, they can’t keep it from us Without their wallets they’re not so tough. Yeah.... Little shout out to Deanne Cameron at EMI Stan Coolin at Warner, yeah, yeah... Doug Chappell at Polygram Richard Cameleri at Sony Musics... We’re not buyin’ your shit no more.... Support Your Local Musician....” [“Video Hit” lyrics by Mike Gillespie and Martin Maunder http://www.thesoundandthefury.ca] Thus the authors of “Video Hit” express distain for “the system” and the effects of the advertising and economic practices of the recording industry and fans who purchase works recorded by the music industry. At the same time they emphasize their sense of empowerment What do these very preliminary ﬁndings tell us about the place of new recording technologies in the practices of young musicians in Atlantic Canada? First of all they suggest that digital recording has a central place in some contemporary techniques of musical creation allowing for a convergence of music as object, creation-performance and composition. Although some current practices (such as those based on sampling) challenge past notions of authorship & authenticity of the musical act the integration of previously recorded works (composed or performed by others) may constitute a new system of “footnotes” that establish links with other musicians in ways that other types of references (stylistic or formal) did in the past. Questions still remain, however, about whether new technologies are fundamentally changing musical practices. It is hoped that the other informationgathering activities foreseen in this project will help answer these questions. The most important insight from the examination of student works has been that new recording technologies are a central mode of communication that allows young musicians to participate in creative networks. Recent graduates of the music technology programme use 567 digital recording technologies for the dissemination of works at low cost and with considerable ease. However the extent to which this sort of access will allow these young musicians to build sustainable careers in the ﬁeld of music is still unclear. In order to understand the place of technology in student works it is necessary to go beyond simplistic models of technological determinism to arrive at an understanding of how cultural innovation occurs, how ‘innovations’ are identiﬁed and how they attain recognition in the ﬁeld of music. As well research on the spaces of labour in information “internetworks” has demonstrated that however abstract the notion of a “virtual” economy might seem arriving at a clearer understanding of “what workers do, and where they do it, is fundamental” [Downey 2001]. Further observation is needed in order to understand the place of new recording technologies in the careers of musicians and other creative participants in music making (like recording technicians) in peripheral areas far from major centres. Selected Bibliography Ackrich, Madeleine. « Les utilisateurs, acteurs de l’innovation », in L’innovation en question. Education Permanente, No. 134, 1998, pp. 79-90. DeNora, Tia. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge U. Press, 2000. Downey, Greg. “Virtual Webs, Physical Technologies and Hidden Workers: The Spaces of Labor in Information Internetworks,” Technology and Culture. April 2001, 42:2, pp. 209-235. Hennion, A. « La musicalisation des arts plastiques » in Images Numériques. Publication Collective sur ‘L’aventure du Regard’, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 19997, pp. 147-151. Hennion, Antoine, Sophie Maisonneuve, Émilie Gomart. Figures de l’amateur. Formes, objets et pratiques de l’amour de la musique aujourd’hui, Paris, La Documentation française, 2000 Hennion,Antoine. “Music Lovers. Taste as Performance”, Theory, Culture, Society vol. 18(5), 2001: 1-22 Mitsui, Toru and Shuhei Hosokawa. (ed.). Karaoke 568 around the world. Global technology, local singing. New York: Routledge. 1998. Théberge, Paul. Any Sound You Can Imagine. Making Music, Consuming Technology. Ashgate, 1997. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Centre/Periphery Relationships in Connection with Cultural Flow and the ‘Problem’ of Local and Ethnic Traits in Danish Popular Music since 1990 Henrik Marstal T he purpose of this paper (1) is to discuss the media policy in Denmark and address some of Western European societies, which might have been going on already since the beginning of the seventies, but which have increased their impact during the nineties and continued until today: 1) Profound globalisation processes have taken place, which have led to the emergence of multicultural societies on a large scale throughout Western Europe. 2) The economic and political processes of the EEC towards a Europe with more or less shared interests have had a profound impact on European citizens in the sense that people more and more have understood themselves as Europeans. 3) At the same time, though, some contradicting processes towards an increasing focus on national identities and the discourses of the local seem to have taken place as well. the problems which are present here. The media today throughout Western Europe tend in many respects to maintain an Anglo-American based, hegemonic pop discourse, where national characteristics and nonwestern features are often considered as merely ‘local compromises’ or ‘ﬂavours of ethniticism’ (2). And I do mean hegemonic in a Gramscian sense of the word, i.e. as a moral, cultural and political leadership. In other words, the most listened to or watched media channels and programmes on radio and television – through which the notion of an imagined multicultural community is established and maintained – seem to favour pop music from the Anglo-American centre at the expense of local and/or ethnic peripheries. This is certainly the case for popular music. Sales ﬁgures I will claim that there seems to be some kind of disproportion at work here, simply because this situation does not reﬂect the dynamics of late modern societies throughout the Nordic countries, among these my own country, Denmark. During recent years we have witnessed three major developments in most show that even though sales in several European countries have declined since the late nineties, the percentage of the local repertoires is generally increasing (Ritto 2003). Moreover, music produced by European citizens with ethnic backgrounds has made its way into popular music culture in most 570 European countries as well. And in recent years, still more European artists have been marketed in other European countries, not least through the diverse branches of MTV. As a result of this, popular music from countries like France, Russia, Germany and the Nordic countries is now part of the musical everyday discourse throughout Europe, which it not necessarily was 10 or 15 years ago. re-establish its hold on national popular music both in terms of production, distribution and consumption after a longer period where local music was at the forefront also in the radio media. I would like to emphasise that I will view ‘the concept of the national’ as a discursive construction (Jørgensen & Phillips 1999:174), i.e. as a construction which takes into account that the concept of the national is not a given thing at all. During the nineties and until this day, nationally produced rock In other words: we tend to consume more and more music which is produced in its local area, in other European countries or by local ethnic groups. So, how come that most radio stations still tend to favour the Anglo-American repertoires of pop and rock, exactly like they did in the early days of Radio Luxembourg, and like they did on the national pop channels during the sixties? How come that the Anglo-American hegemony of these repertoires has maintained its hold on the radio media ever since the days of rock’n’roll when the European societies in the same period have been subject to profound changes on almost every scale? And how come that we are still locked in an ‘the iron cage’ of Anglo-American music (Gudmundsson 1999:43), as one Nordic scholar has called it using a Weberian term? In this paper, I will draw on the case of Denmark since 1990, where this hegemonic pop discourse seemed to and pop, however, has of course not vanished in terms of airplay on the national media. But only the national musics which copy or draw heavily on transnational popular musical trends and/or at the same time are performed accompanied by lyrics in the English language, have really been in a position to be airplayed on the most listened to national radio pop channel. At the same time, and perhaps for similar reasons, ethnic or non-Western music as well as music from many other European countries has been almost totally absent in the Danish radio media. Almost all kinds of ethnic popular music have not been found appropriate in this soundscape, apart from certain specialised and ‘narrow’ programs late in the evening. Exactly the same goes for music from other countries in Europe. A survey of Danish playlists shows that apart from the music of Great Britain, only music from our Nordic neighbour countries, Norway and especially Sweden, seems to 571 have some sort of attention from the radio media. Music from other Nordic countries like Finland and Iceland or from our neighbour to the south, Germany, seems in general not to be worth playing. The same is of course the case for the music from the Benelux countries and from France not to mention Italy or Spain. II. My ﬁrst question is: Why is an Anglo-American agenda constantly pursued and maintained on the radio? There are a number of answers to that question, I think. The ﬁrst one is that Anglo-American music, no matter in which musical genre it appears, So, the fact today is that the Danish media somehow do not really reﬂect the globalised, Europeanised and localised society which Denmark, like many other West-European countries, has turned into during the recent 10 or 15 years. The music in favour has still primarily its basis in an Anglo-American centre, not in a non-Western, European or local periphery. That goes for the radio media and for the television media as well: around 85 per cent of the music shown on MTVNorthern in 1998 and 1999 – which included Denmark – was from the United States or the UK (Meyer et al. 2002:[19]). In the following parts of my paper, I will try to discuss this situation which might have to do with a sort of miscalculated media policy which in many ways seems to underestimate the needs and competencies of listeners living their lives in Denmark. I will feed this discussion by asking some questions regarding the Danish media policy. During this discussion, I will understand Anglo-American music in a very broad sense, since I will not have time to go into details concerning generic and historical matters. has some certain characteristics and qualities, which ethnic and local musics not necessarily have. AngloAmerican music is very good at creating a neutral ﬂow – a ﬂow which seems to be absolutely crucial for mainstream-orientated radio channels. I will restrict myself to deﬁne ﬂow as a constructed way of keeping the listener tuned into the radio station by a feel-good combination of music, talk and perhaps local news, which the listener in a relaxing manner can use as a resonating space for her or his own thoughts. In creating a ﬂow, the static of the ﬂow seems also to be important because it is the constant ‘radiation’, so to speak, of the radio that again and again creates and maintains the addiction to it. Another reason for the Anglo-American agenda is that the traditional American inﬂuence on Europe economically, politically and mentally is reﬂected in the media, like it is reﬂected in many other parts of everyday discourse. Since the very ﬁrst years of radio, people in Europe have been listening to Anglophone 572 and especially American music from jazz through rock’n’roll to beat, soul, hip hop and r’n’b, and this ’tradition’ is maintained or reﬂected when playing Anglo-American music today. This also has to do with the fact that America always has served as a role model for European societies. Because the imaginary America has always existed in European thought as a kind of mirror in which Europe could live out its dreams of a better world and hopes for the future. In a vague and symbolic manner, America has always been an exponent for modernity (Pells 1997:11), and therefore it has been an indispensable instrument in the modernity-related individualisation, which has become more and more apparent during the 20th century in many European societies. So, one can say that Anglo-American music has been favoured because there has been a need for it in terms of individualisation. The consequence has been that Anglo-American music has been played in the media almost automatically and certainly without much self-reﬂection involved. If there has been any kind of Americanisation at stake here, it seems to have been the kind which the German scholar Winfried Fluck has termed ’self-Americanisation’ (Fluck 2001:n.p.). In other words, we are not being Americanised – instead, we Americanise ourselves. Apart from the reasons given, I will claim that there also are some more practical reasons for the favourisation of Anglo-American music. In the ﬁrst place, this part of the music industry has always had local branches in Denmark and other European countries, for that matter. And therefore pluggers as well as other employees in these companies have been able to put pressure on the radio stations in order to make them play their products instead of other products. And in the second place, there is an economic motivation at stake concerning music from the United States. Since the United States, like a few European countries, never signed the Bern convention about the protection of copyrights, it is actually totally free to play American produced music in the Danish radio. In other words, it is cheaper to play American than local or European produced music, and of course this fact has had certain consequences for the policy of what is actually being played. I don’t think that any one on the commercial radio stations, and especially not on the national radio station, would admit that this is the case. Radio journalists on the national radio have told me that they never actually have been called upon to do it. But everyone apparently knows that it is like this, and of course the journalists responsible for the playlists of the radio will tend to put in as much free music as possible in order to save money. So, Anglo-American popular music has established a hegemonic position throughout the Western world. This 573 is a problem, however, if one asks for a world where there should be more diversity. The Swedish social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz is such a person, and I ﬁnd his arguments for diversity very useful and relevant to my discussion of the role of the radio media. In his book Transnational Connections from 1996, Hannerz argues for diversity as a necessary tool in the handling of the ongoing globalisation processes, or, as he calls it, the global ecumene. The greater interconnectedness of the world, Hannerz states, will lead to an increasing creolisation of the world, i.e. a world where people rooted in one locality enter other cultures and thus become creolised (1996:60-61). In one passage, Hannerz says: ”My point […] is that local culture, on its home ground, is strong enough […] to force the expansive culture of the center [sic] into a compromise, and in this lies the creolization.” (ibid.:176, end note 4) area, including Great Britain (since the days of The Beatles) and to a lesser extent other English-speaking areas like Canada, Australia and New Zealand. While countries like Sweden, Germany and France might be possible exceptions – one can perhaps call them semiperipheries, but certainly not semi-centres – the rest of the European countries is peripheries in the sense that they tend to reﬂect musical trends and styles from the centre rather than creating them themselves. In this sense, Denmark is as much a periphery as, for instance, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands or Italy. Hannerz is sure that the periphery always will try to negotiate the trends going on in the centre and thus ”talk back” (ibid.:220). And even though this seems to be right in many respects, also in the case of Denmark, it does not seem to be reﬂected much in the Danish media policy, as I will try to explain in the remaining But one of the reasons why this does not seem to be the case in most popular culture, is, according to Hannerz, that an asymmetrical relationship between America and the rest of the world has been practised throughout most of the 20th century and apparently continues to do so in the present century. In this asymmetrical relationship, America is the centre and most of Western Europe is the periphery. With regard to popular music, things seem to be slightly different, with the centre being not only America, but the whole of the Anglo-American part of my talk. III. I will now turn to the role of the local repertoires. So, my next question is: Why is local music only played on a limited scale, especially the one which is in the vernacular language? There are also a number of reasons for that, I think. The most important one has to do with the concept of ﬂow, which I talked about as a very important agent for every radio channel, 574 simply because it is the ﬂow and the sense of ’musical action’ that seem to keep the listeners tuned in on the channel. Compared to Anglo-American music which is sort of neutral, smooth and transnational, and which – as I also mentioned before – contains a promise of individualisation and self-realisation, local music is simply just local. Listeners will somehow often be aware of which music is local and which isn’t, and this awareness or piece of information inﬂuences the listening experience and the reception of the music in question. Local music is not encircled with that magic glamour which international music is, and especially in Denmark local music is often regarded as a music which really isn’t original because it more or less draws on international trends. This is especially the case for local music sung in the English language. So, the ﬂow of the radio is somewhat broken by the very appearance of local artists on the air just because they are local. But on the other hand, though, the local artists which are played tend to be the ones which are willing to produce music on the terms of the ﬂow, that is, music which tries to subdue itself to the current international trends. these two features is that this music is more related to a certain placeness or at least sense of place, which of course is the local setting. But according to the English sociologist Anthony Giddens, one of the most striking features of late modernity is the separation of space and place. Place has become increasingly phantasmagoric, as Giddens claims in his book The Consequence of Modernity (1990:18-19). No matter where in, say, the Western world we are situated, modernity processes tend to make the place in question equal to all other places. Giddens claims that every small grocery shop today contains goods from all over the world, and that every small city has its own shopping mall which is more or less identical to all other shopping malls in the world (ibid.). So, space and place are being separated. This is also the case in late modern popular music, because the Anglo-American pop discourse as I mentioned earlier seem to have held the rest of the world in a hegemonic iron cage. Most popular music today is not concerned with place, but refers rather to a transnational pop discourse with no particularly references to place other Local music sung in the vernacular language is of course also music which tends to break the ﬂow. It has not only to do with the change of language which is involved here, but also with the casual use of local music traditions and ﬂavours. The consequence of than very broad and vague references to the Western world. Concerning local popular music using vernacular language and drawing on local music traditions, the sense of place is of course strong here. Often one can actually hear characteristic local references, even 575 though the music involved draws on international rock, pop or hip hop trends. And this ‘placed’ character means that a lot of this music isn’t really favoured on the radio. The ones which are, seem exclusively to be the ones which are willing to make their music work on the terms of the ﬂow, that is, produce music that somehow reﬂects the hegemonic pop discourse without questioning it too much. IV. musical and cultural means. But maybe ’otherness’ needs to be mediated before we can take it in. That is why we prefer to be confronted with ’the other’ through already known forms of expression and thus prefer Westernised ’othernesses’ at the expense of ’the real thing’. Another reason for the lack of ethnic and European popular music on Danish radio channels is that only the Anglo-American music is ’controllable’ in the sense that the various discourses or frames which it works within always seem to be ’known’ to the radio producers, since everyone engaged in Western popular culture has gained enormous competencies in dealing with Anglo-American music due to its hegemonic status. But almost all other repertoires would not be ’controllable’ at all, because the discourses in which they belong are more or less unknown or even unsafe to the producers. It would therefore take much hard work if these repertoires were to be played in a proper manner – and I don’t think that many radio stations in Denmark would make that priority. V. Let us now turn to the ethnic popular music and popular music from other European countries, which I only will have time to concentrate on brieﬂy, though. My third and ﬁnal question, then, is: Why is ethnic and European popular music only heard on the radio on a very limited scale? The answer to this question is somewhat similar to the former question. Because, those musics seem for the same reasons to break the ﬂow of the radio. Furthermore, especially ethnic popular music is not considered to be as ’hip’ and related to issues of modernity as Anglo-American music. In other words, the promise of individualisation and self-realisation is not redeemed here, and therefore this music is not found worth playing at all. Maybe one could be a little puzzled about that, because Western popular culture has always been concerned with notions of ’the other’ in various ways. And ethnic music seems more than anything else to represent ’the other’ through a lot of Until now, I have tried to discuss some of the reasons why the media policy in Denmark seems to maintain an Anglo-American hegemony. And I think it should be clear that this media policy actually seems to ﬁt a 576 lot of the listeners’ preferences and needs. But still, to some extent this media policy seems to be out of time with the demands of the modern listener. The very complex events and developments which have led to the emergence of this hegemony, are not necessarily valid anymore. Radio producers, media promoters and boards of directors seem to have overlooked or perhaps even ignored the fact that many people actually prefer local and/or ethnic music to international, AngloAmerican or Anglo-Americanised music. their importance due to an increased amount of people listening to them. This might force the established radio channels to rethink and revaluate the repertoires they prefer to play. Maybe these channels will ﬁnd out that they are not playing universal popular music because there is not such a thing as universal music anymore, even though the Anglo-American world still is a centre in Ulf Hannerz’ sense of the word. If national and commercial radio pop channels wish to maintain their importance and continue to attract investors, they may be forced to reﬂect society in a much broader scope As I also mentioned earlier, the Anglo-American and Anglo-Americanised music tend to separate space from place. But this tendency does not go for all of the local music. Still more people want to produce and listen to music which actually is related to a speciﬁc place, because they want to be conﬁrmed in the fact that they are not only free-ﬂoating inhabitants of the Western world, but also interrelated subjects who actually do have a geographically and culturally related rootedness in a certain, well-deﬁned area or nation. by playing other musics as well. So, to conclude, I do hope that it might only be a matter of time before the Anglo-American ironcage of the radio media will be broken down by the increasing appearances of local, European and ethnic musics. In few years, these things might change anyway. By now, there are several thousands radio channels on the Internet, of which many have specialised in a certain repertoire, genre, geographical restricted area or period. As the technological developments constantly improve, it won’t be long before these radio channels will increase 577 Anglocentric World of Rock.’, in: Young 7/2, pp. 43-61. Endnotes 1. This paper is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the conference ’The Power of Pop’. Conference on Pop Music and Youth Culture in Europe, Goethe-Institut, Brussels, May 23-24, 2003. . Jørgensen, Marianne Winther & Louise Phillips (1999): 2. In this context, the expression ’Anglo-American’, which will be used throughout the paper, does not, as one could think, refer to the American population with English ancestors, but exclusively to the geographical sphere of the English-speaking Western World (in particular the United States and Great Britain, but also Australia, New Zealand and Canada). Meyer, Gust de, Steven Malliet & Keith Roe: ‘Globalisation and Local Musical Identity. MTV in Europe and Belgium.’ Paper presented by Gust de Meyer at the conference ‘The Power of Pop’. Conference on Pop Music and Youth Culture in Europe, Goethe-Institut, Brussels, May 23-24, 2003. Fluck, Winfried (2001): ‘Invasion of the Culture Snatchers?’, in: Project Syndicate. An Association of Newspapers Around the World (http://www. project-syndicate.cz/ contributors/contributor_ text. php4?id=783&lang=1, downloaded 290502), n.p. Pells, Richard (1997): Not Like US. How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II. New York: Basic Books. Diskursanalyse som teori og metode Frederiksberg: metode. Roskilde Universitetsforlag. Hannerz, Ulf (1996): Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places. London & New York: Routledge. Selected Bibliography Giddens, Anthony (1990): The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ritto, Michael (2003): ‘Den internationale krises betydning for danske pladeselskaber’. Paper presented at the conference ’Udgivelser af rytmisk musik – danske Gudmundsson, Gestur (1999): ’To ﬁnd your Voice in a Foreign Language – Authenticity and Reﬂexivity in the pladeselskaber og det rytmiske musikliv’, Holmen, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 12, 2003. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Character and Popular Music in West Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums Kari McDonald W es Anderson is a director who knows what he wants. In the movies he co-wrote with Owen been tedious and lacking in emotion. The Royal Tenenbaums is the story of a family of failed childhood geniuses and their estranged father, who return home together one winter. As described by narrator Alec Baldwin (2002), ‘virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster’. These two decades have also left the Tenenbaum family, and childhood friend Eli Cash, with a seeming lack of emotion. Anderson chooses an eclectic collection of popular music to portray personality, emotion, and the dynamics of the family’s relationships, belying the ﬂat affect of most of the characters. Furthermore, he uses musical association to establish a context in which to present particular scenes. Several complex relationships are axial to the story of The Royal Tenenbaums, many of which are clariﬁed and developed through the use of popular song.1 The Royal Tenenbaums is organized like a novel, with sections arranged and titled as chapters. The movie begins with a prologue –Baldwin narrating the family’s background to an instrumental version of Lennon/ McCartney’s Hey Jude, scored by Mothersbaugh for his group, the Mutato Muzika Orchestra. Its instrumentation Wilson, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and the most recent, The Royal Tenenbaums, he is very particular about every aspect, from set and art design, to costumes and hairstyles, to music. This is especially evident in his 2001 ﬁlm, The Royal Tenenbaums. For this ﬁlm, he participated in nearly every aspect of pre- and postproduction. This included re-painting and decorating a New York home to create the Tenenbaums’ residence which served as the set for most of the movie; having his brother, Eric Anderson, design and paint murals and paintings for set decoration; and fastidiously choosing the soundtrack to accompany Mark Mothersbaugh’s original score. In fact, many songs were chosen in the early stages of script writing. In her interview on the Criterion Collection DVD (2002), actress Gwyneth Paltrow recalls: ‘He’s so unique because he’s so prepared… [N]obody ever knows what song is going in a montage until way into post-production… [W]e’re lucky to be blessed with Wes who does all this incredible pre-planning, and knows what the music is going to be… It just makes it seem so visceral’. It is this element which is especially important in creating the powerful backdrop to a movie which could easily have 579 resembles Mothersbaugh’s other contributions to the score, but the song takes on additional signiﬁcance with its highly recognizable melody. Paul McCartney originally wrote Hey Jude as comfort for Julian Lennon after his parents’ divorce. Here, it shows the Tenenbaum family’s reaction to the dissolution of Royal and Etheline’s marriage and demonstrates Royal’s speciﬁc failures with his children. Several other key relationships are introduced, including Eli’s friendship with the family and Richie’s near-obsession with his sister Margot. The opening montage ends with Richie releasing his falcon to the ﬁrst strains of the ‘na, nas’ that end ‘Hey Jude’: ‘Go, Mordecai!’ (Royal Tenenbaums, 2002) Richie Tenenbaum’s longing to be free. The ﬁrst chapter establishes the Tenenbaum family and Eli Cash in present time. In the second chapter, we are introduced to each Tenenbaum child individually as, one-by-one, they return home. The songs chosen in this chapter are especially signiﬁcant, and they give viewers insight into each grown child’s emotional situation. We meet Chas Tenenbaum ﬁrst, played by Ben Stiller. Chas was a child prodigy in business and ﬁnance who recently lost his wife in a plane crash. Chas and his two sons, Ari and Uzi, survived. One reviewer describes Chas: ‘…talent at business has isolated him, made him rigid and unyielding to the point where trauma (the death of his wife…) sends him into a paranoid spiral. He refuses to trust any situation he cannot control’ (Pinsky, 2002). His ability to trust had already been severely damaged by his father’s prior actions. Since the accident, he has become increasingly obsessed with the safety of his children. After deciding their current apartment was simply not safe, he takes his children and returns home. As he talks to his boys in his old bedroom, John Lennon’s ‘Look At Me’ plays softly in the background. The lyrics can be heard clearly behind Chas’ conversation with his sons, as he says ‘goodnight’ and decides to sleep on the ﬂoor to be near them. Particularly relevant here are the pleading questions of the earlier verses, resolutely answered in the ﬁnal verse: ‘Who am I supposed to be?’ ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ‘Nobody knows but me’ (Lennon, 1970). Chas is entirely alone and, without his wife, does not know how to take care of his sons or himself. Chas’s paranoia for the safety of his children and his distrust for his father are further enforced in Chapter Four with Emitt Rhodes’ ‘Lullaby’ (1993). The lyrics here clearly demonstrate the same insecurity in one who has lost someone they love: Tears that angels cry When your love still is strong And they darken all the sky When the one you love is gone When the one you love says good-bye… 580 Margot Tenenbaum, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, is an adopted child and the only daughter. Initially, we meet her as a once-famous playwright who has outgrown her prodigy status. She refuses to become an adult, however, and still wears the shirtdresses, fur coat, and heavy eye make-up from her early teens. As her mother escorts her from her unhappy marriage, we hear piano music from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s instrumental ‘Christmas Time is Here’. While expressionless on the surface, Margot clearly feels to return home is to return to her childhood when she was happiest. Margot’s identity is further explored when she arrives at a ship terminal to meet the ﬁnal Tenenbaum child returning home, Luke Wilson as Richie. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, showing a slowmotion Margot approaching Richie to Nico’s version of Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’. Anderson envisioned this scene, Nico’s song included, from the outset – before he and Wilson even began writing the script. In his commentary (2002), he remembers: ‘[I knew] that this music would go with… this image. Although I didn’t really know about who was walking off the bus, and I don’t even think it was a bus… But the thing I did know about was the expression she would have on her face, which is the thing that I think makes it work’. Anderson carries it further: ‘Often, there’s music that inspires ideas in the script. It also… can suggest the tenor of the movie’. In an earlier scene, Richie dictated a telegram to Eli confessing his love for his adopted sister. “These Days” gives viewers insight to their relationship, which is another central focus of the movie. Both of their expressions are difﬁcult to decipher. Margot hides behind heavy eye make-up, but her wide eyes and slight smile suggest perhaps vague anticipation. Richie almost completely covers his face with long hair, a full beard, large sunglasses, and the headband left over from his days as a professional tennis player. Were it not for his earlier confessions, a viewer might be clueless towards his feelings for Margot. Nico’s off-tune but eerily compelling voice and Browne’s lyrics, accompanied by Anderson’s use of slow motion, portray a deeper sentiment ﬁlled with regret – on both their parts. Their awkward embrace following the fade-out of the song conﬁrms this. Anderson succeeds, with this one short scene, in establishing the tone for the remainder of the ﬁlm. After meeting his sister, Richie returns home and permanently frees his falcon, Mordecai. Nico’s voice can be heard low in the background until just before the bird’s release. Perhaps Richie feels that by releasing Mordecai he himself will become free of his encumbering feelings for Margot. Chapter 3 uses The Clash’s cover of Junior Murvin’s ‘Police & Thieves’ to characterize the Tenenbaum’s friend Eli Cash, played by Owen Wilson. In his commentary, Anderson alludes to a connection between 581 Eli’s character and The Clash. While a vague concept at best, popular music critics and historians often associate the British punk movement with a rebellion against suburban middle-class culture (see Sabin, 1999). This is a social class embodied in the lives of the Tenenbaum children – a family Eli longs to be part of but can never hope to join. Suzanne Moore’s (1999) description of punk in her article ‘Is That All There Is?’ ideally describes Eli Cash’s rebellion: Casbah’. During this scene, Eli bemoans: ‘I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum’, before leaving by a back window to avoid rehabilitation. Near the end of the ﬁlm, Eli – on drugs, face wildly painted – recklessly drives his little sports convertible into the Tenenbaum home, narrowly missing Ari and Uzi and killing their dog Buckley. The collapse of hisself into chaos. Also in chapter 5, Bob Dylan’s instrumental ‘Wigwam’ displays two youthful relationships in the Tenenbaum circle. Etheline, the Tenenbaum matriarch played by If punk was a revolution then what was it for and what was it against? In the abstract I can tell you that it was about the end, about going the whole way, about the collapse of the self into chaos… It was about being the same but different. Eli’s scenes in the ﬁlm show a gradual descent. We are repeatedly reminded of his desire to be a Tenenbaum – the stagnant affair with Margot, sending Etheline his article clippings, his attempts at becoming regarded as ‘genius’ by literary critics. However, when on publicity tours for his new novel, interviewers doubt his genius and compare him to the Tenenbaums he grew up with. No matter how hard he tries to be ‘the same’ he ends up ‘different’. As the movie progresses and Eli and Margot end their relationship, Eli becomes addicted to drugs. In chapter 7, Richie attempts an intervention accompanied by another Clash song, ‘Rock The Anjelica Huston, has been alone since asking Royal to leave almost twenty years earlier, dedicating her life instead to her children. The music begins while Etheline and her accountant-turned-ﬁancé Henry Sherman, played by Danny Glover, discuss their relationship. The scene carries a comedic underlay. For example, while Etheline is trying to convince Henry of the depth of her feelings for him, she is so preoccupied by what she is saying, that she does not notice he has fallen into a hole in the archeological dig-site they are walking through. The feelings behind their conversation, however, are entirely serious – they are both embarking on second marriages after many years of being alone. When Henry asks Etheline why she is nervous, she confesses: ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t slept with a man in eighteen years’ (Royal Tenenbaums, 2002). The placement of Dylan’s song is precise – the gentle instrumental introduction begins after Henry’s 582 question, and Dylan’s off-key nonsensical vocals join in after Etheline’s response. The song has two purposes. Initially, it lightens a mood that has become quite serious as the couple explores their insecurities. It also demonstrates how Etheline and Henry feel like giddy teenagers embarking on their ﬁrst relationship. This second impression is solidiﬁed when their ﬁrst kiss is followed by a nervous giggle. ‘Wigwam’ continues as the ﬁlm moves to another new and insecure relationship – that between Royal Tenenbaum, played by Gene Hackman, and his recently met grandsons. Royal realizes he failed as a father, and wants to recompense with his grandsons – albeit he has created the opportunity for this relationship by lying about a fatal ‘case of stomach cancer’ (Royal in Royal Tenenbaums, 2002). The music fades slightly, but stays in the background when Royal approaches Ari and Uzi in the playground/gym and introduces himself. This foreshadows the youthful quality of their relationship – Royal will allow Chas’s sons to become the carefree, reckless children that their uptight father restrained. Despite Chas’s misgivings about his father, Ari and Uzi manage to continue this relationship. As Royal says, ‘…you can’t raise boys to be scared of life. Ya gotta brew some recklessness into them’ (Royal Tenenbaums, 2002). Paul Simon’s ‘Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard’ serves as an excellent backdrop for the growing affection between Royal and his grandsons through their increasingly recalcitrant activities. We see them running at an indoor pool, running across the street at the ‘Don’t Walk’ light, doing jumps on horseback, racing go-carts, throwing water balloons at taxis cabs, shoplifting at the corner store, riding a garbage truck, and betting at the dog ﬁghts. Throughout the montage, Royal and his grandsons carry huge grins on their faces. Chapter six focuses solely on the convoluted relationship between Richie Tenenbaum and his adopted sister Margot. Along with Margot’s husband, Richie has hired a private investigator to look into his sister’s inﬁdelities. The Ramone’s ‘Judy Is A Punk’ accompanies a visual representation of Margot’s ﬁle, which reveals not only her current affair with Eli Cash, but also an entire secret life. The Ramones embody the American aspect of punk culture. In his article ‘Chewing out a rhythm on my bubble-gum’, Bill Osgerby (1999) suggests that the Ramones, along with bands such as the Dictators and the Dickies, ‘created a playfully ironic pastiche of suburban adolescence’. By using the Ramones to accompany his portrayal of Margot’s secret life, Anderson reinforces Margot’s adolescent immaturity – her inability to develop emotionally. Richie is completely shattered by what these images have revealed. Elliot Smith’s ‘Needle In The Hay’ accompanies the following pivotal scene. On the surface, Smith’s song is ‘a stark personal account of 583 heroin use’ (Mundy, 1998: 110). Although Richie is not a heroin user, Anderson speciﬁcally chose this song – it is shown on the pre-production storyboards (Royal Tenenbaums, 2002). He uses it to create an intense emotional backdrop for Richie’s attempted suicide, and reinterprets the lyrics to suite his purpose. Margot is Richie’s addiction. As his sister, albeit adopted, she is forbidden to him, and his need for her has driven him not only from his family, but also from civilization – he has spent the last year travelling alone on an ocean liner. What the private investigator revealed to him of Margot’s private life is devastating. Margot’s secret life conﬁrms for Richie her feelings towards him. Like Richie, the incestuous aspect of their feelings towards each other torments her – while not blood related, they were raised as siblings. Her countless affairs and secretive habits are simply escapes from the forbidden feelings towards her adopted brother. Richie confronts the certitude that he and Margot can never be together. As with many addicts, he feels that he is better off dead than not receiving his ‘ﬁx’. Smith’s pained voice and stark guitar accentuate Richie’s hopelessness as he removes his outer layers – the large, dark sunglasses, he cuts the thick hair, and shaves the beard. Anderson borrows key scenes from earlier in the ﬁlm, alternating Margot’s exit from the Green Line bus with ﬂashes of Richie’s falcon and other images of Margot. It is an intensely affecting scene and signals a turning point. Although one of the few post-production additions to the score, Nick Drake’s ‘Fly’ (1970) is ideally placed after the attempted suicide.2 The lyrics that open the song summarize the two key relationships of the ﬁlm: Margot and Richie, and Royal with the entire family: Please give me a second grace Please give me a second face I’ve fallen far down The ﬁrst time around Now I just sit on the ground in your way While Drake sings, Anderson shows Richie secretly riding the bus home from the hospital, alternating with Royal following in a cab. Both Richie and Royal are looking for second chances. Richie had given up after discovering Margot’s secrets. Royal’s deception has been revealed to his estranged family, and he longs only to be accepted by those he has hurt. Royal’s key relationship is with his son, Richie. The Velvet Underground’s ‘Stephanie Says’ begins after an earnest father-son conversation. Richie confesses his feelings for Margot, and Royal confesses his regrets as a failed father. As the lyrics begin, Richie hears a falcon’s cry, and sees Mordecai ﬂying towards him. Mordecai’s desire, indeed Richie’s desire, to be free from his surrounding relationships is ﬁnished. Stephanie ‘wants to know / Why she’s given half her life to people 584 she hates now,’ (Reed, 1985) – why she pretends any longer to be something she is not. Richie decides not to pretend, and to take Mordecai home and accept who he is and who he loves. The ﬁlm concludes with two ﬁnal songs: ‘The Fairest Of The Seasons’ and ‘Everyone’. As with ‘These Days’, ‘The Fairest Of The Seasons’ was written by Jackson Browne and performed by Nico on her album Chelsea Girl . Nico’s tracks open and close the popular songs on the ﬁlm’s soundtrack album – reviewer Heather Phares suggests they ‘bookend the soundtrack as beautifully concise meditations on, respectively, regret (“Please don’t confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them”) and hope (“Do I stay or do I go?/And maybe try another time?”)’ (accessed 2003). These songs frame the ﬁlm’s story line, as well. With ‘These Days’, the viewer is introduced to the central relationship of the ﬁlm – in a powerful way that causes the scene to remain prominent in the audience’s awareness throughout the remainder of the story. Nico’s voice is distinctive, and her ﬁrst strains in ‘The Fairest Of The Seasons’ signify that we are approaching the conclusion. Their contrasting topics of regret and hope show the progression the Tenenbaums have made. Anderson shows the same by using a parallel ‘tour’ of the characters to the opening montage.3 The song is ideally begun just as Margot tentatively puts her hand on Richie’s shoulder and pulls him closer. In the following scenes, Etheline and Henry are married, Margot produces a new play, Eli enters a rehabilitation program, Richie starts a children’s tennis program, and Royal takes his grandsons – and their father Chas – for a ride on a garbage truck.4 The only relationship conﬂict left unresolved is between Margot and her father. Having made peace with most of his family, Royal dies of a heart attack accompanied only by his son Chas. Nico’s voice fades as the family assembles for his funeral. Van Morrison’s ‘Everyone’ begins as we see the epitaph on Royal’s tombstone: DIED TRAGICALLY RESCUING HIS FAMILY FROM THE WRECKAGE OF A DESTROYED SINKING BATTLESHIP The characters walk in slow motion off screen, one-byone, including Uzi, Ari, Chas, Eli, Etheline, Henry, Margot, and ﬁnally Richie who throws a rose and is the last to walk off before the gate closes to the family plot. Anderson believes that Richie Tenenbaum is the central character of the story. His acceptance of his father as he is, and his confusion and guilt over his sister provide a backdrop for the entire ﬁlm. However, as Van Morrision explicitly states, The Royal Tenenbaums is about ‘everyone’ – about the family coming together and overcoming the decades of betrayal. As Royal’s tombstone effectively describes, it is about their rescue from inevitable destruction. 585 Anderson successfully shows the arc of the Tenenbaum’s complex relationships by using popular song. These songs deepen characters such as Eli, Richie, and Margot, explore various relationships, and effectively impart emotion to people that are too damaged to show it themselves. With Anderson’s help, we fall in love with the Tenenbaum family and celebrate when, in their unique way, they triumph over the obstacles of the past. Endnotes 1. A longer version of this paper would include discussion of Mark Mothersbaugh’s Enescu-inspired score. However, time restraints do not permit this here. 2. According the Anderson’s commentary, he was playing this song during the ﬁlming of Luke Wilson’s part of the scene. When viewing the ‘dailies’, Anderson heard the track playing in the background and found it perfect for the scene – especially poignant due to Drake’s own death being purported a suicide. 3. In his commentary (2002), Anderson says at this point: “And now we go on another tour of all the characters, and sort of catch up to what happens to them.” 4. This refers to a similar scene during Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard” with Royal, Ari, and Uzi. Selected Bibliography Drake, Nick (1970) ‘Fly’, Bryter Layter, Universal. Dylan, Bob (1970) ‘Wigwam’, Self Portrait, Sony. Lennon, John (1970) ‘Look At Me’, Plastic Ono Band, Capitol. 586 Moore, Suzanne (1999) ‘Is that all there is?’, in Roger Sabin (ed), Punk Rock: so what?, London: Routledge. Reed, Lou (1985) ‘Stephanie Says’, VU, Polygram. Rhodes, Emitt (1993) ‘Lullaby’, Emitt Rhodes, One Way Records. Morrison, Van (1970) ‘Everyone’, Moondance, Warner Brothers. Royal Tenenbaums, The (2002) with commentary, interviews, and other special features, Dir. Wes Anderson. Mundy, Chris (1998) ‘Misery Loves Elliott’, The Rolling Stone 794, 3 September. Sabin, Roger, ed (1999) Punk Rock: so what?, London: Nico (1967a) ‘These Days’, lyrics by Jackson Browne, Chelsea Girl, Polygram. Routledge. Touchstone Pictures and Criterion Collection. Nico (1967b) ‘The Fairest Of The Seasons’, lyrics by Jackson Browne, Chelsea Girl, Polygram. Osgerby, Bill (1999) ‘ “Chewing out a rhythm on my bubble-gum”: The teenage aesthetic and genealogies of American punk’, in Roger Sabin (ed), Punk Rock: so what?, London: Routledge. Phares, Heather (no date) ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, March 22, 2003 at www.allmusic.com, search ‘Royal Tenenbaums’ under ‘albums’. Pinsky, Mike (2002) ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, March 22, 2003 at www.daily-reviews.com/r/ mproyaltenenbaums.htm. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Discommunication: Noise Music in Post-80’s Japan Anne McKnight aesthetic meaningful during its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s? I focus on one prominent ﬁgure in the noise scene, a musician/writer named AKITA Masami—dba Merzbow. (1) In the nineteen-eighties, the term “noise” turned a conceptual corner, due in large part to a movement of which Akita is believed to be a ﬁrst-generation member. “Noise” transformed from being a category of description, an aesthetic qualiﬁer (being called “noisy”) of non-musical elements usually purged from music or found in non-musical sources, to being a new genre of musical production. “Noise” is, in Akita’s view, an umbrella-term that described a whole collection of musics that mingled two ingredients in different proportions: an oppositional attitude toward the culture industry represented in rock music, techno-pop, and what is broadly consigned to commercial music, and, second, a performance of that opposition by using literally “noisy” elements to interrupt or short-circuit the different networks musicians inhabit when producing, distributing, listening, and working with technology. In the avant-garde past dating from the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire, Akita writes, noise has served as a lingua franca for trans-national AngloEuropean audiences. In contrast to this rich legacy Introduction — Noise as internationalist counterculture T he writer Seymour Glass offers a lurid and intriguing analogy for the work of the noise music unit Merzbow. His analogy illustrates some compelling connections between the acoustic genre of “noise” and other everyday cultures of mechanical reproduction. Glass writes: “Above Chez Merzbow, there’s a neon sign blinking on and off--over 12 billion dubbed.” (1) This throwaway line illustrates how the venue of noise is poised in contradiction. Noise is frequented by connoisseurs, but often processed and “served up” as an object characterized by the McDonalds’s-like features: an economy of scale, a montaging of a variety of source materials into the form of a mass commodity, and dubious taste. The question I want to address today is how and why did Japan get to be known as the highbrow fast-food nation of “noise” music in the nineteen-eighties and nineties? According to the rep it gained in the ‘eighties, noise was faster, louder and stronger than experimental and popular musics alike. It was montaged together and sent overseas like a franchised hamburger, and often qualiﬁed by its dubious taste. But what kind of politics made this 588 of Anglo-European counter-cultures, Akita makes the bald claim that Japanese music had no such countertraditions to technologically under-written commercial music until the nineteen-eighties, when “noise” (as a genre) was manifested as the ﬁrst real counter-tradition to Japanese popular music. At the point that noise cut its teeth as a bona ﬁde genre, a whole set of terms did in fact already exist to describe the material, formal and semantic dimensions of sounds that were conspicuously a-musical or antimusical. Two examples are the aleatory ready-made materials of postwar contemporary music (gendai ongaku 現代音楽) both before and after infusions of John Cage, and the broken syntax of the free jazz counter-culture.(3) And noise was also familiar to those rifﬁng on the cacophony (sô-on 騒音) of Futuristderived industrial musics. For the Futurists, “noise” was about “insisting that the art of the past was dead, that the artist must now concern himself or herself with the vital, noisy life of the industrial city” (Hirata 133).(4) But less sanguine about the aesthetic value of by-products of industrialism, the nineteen-eighties version of noise tied “noise” to a critique of ideological obliviousness seen to be chronic in techno-pop. The “bad object” of popular music against which noise must deﬁne itself is not, as you might expect, the kayô (song, chanson) rooted in folk singing. Rather, it is the techno-pop that aspired to international acclaim, as crystallized by the eighties’ music of YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra).(5) What makes noise the ﬁrst effective counter-culture? In order to track this, we would have to look at a succession of modern musical movements that is beyond the scope of this paper—from Meiji minyô folk singing to the English-language Group Sounds of the ‘sixties, to ‘eighties punk and prog rock. Rather than taking Akita’s hyperbole about noise’s novelty as my starting point, I think it is more plausible to think that the culture that noise is counter to did not, itself, appear until fairly recently—in the form of information culture and the homologies it makes between human and machine through concepts like control and communication. (6) The antagonism speciﬁc to this set of ideas and ideologies is the subject of my paper. While the authenticity of noise as pure counter-culture may be up for debate, Akita is a most vital ﬁgure in the history of noise because, in addition to his work as a musician/artist, he has consistently been the most articulate provider of discourse for noise, placing it in the context of avant-garde and popular music movements and periodizing elements of form and experience that are speciﬁc to the era of “information culture.” I will return later to specify and pick up some of these elements. On one hand, we can see the deference to Akita as a founder of discourse in the airtime he receives from the fan press, the English-language experimental press (e.g. The Wire), and from other noise units. His 589 framework for noise is synthesized in Noise Wars: Noise Music and Its Development/Noise Ten Years (1998)—a collection that is available only in Japanese. Noise Wars frames noise as a diffuse, international set of counter-cultures. The sheer scope of materials Akita marshals, from popular post-structuralism (not an oxymoron in a country that translated Foucault and Derrida in cheap paperback editions before they were available in English) to newsprint ephemera, makes Noise Wars the most attentive critical take on noise’s stakes in popular and experimental musical cultures (various electronic music movements), as well as art movements and intellectual projects (Jacques Attali, Georges Bataille, critiques of fetishism). Essentially, notes Mason Jones, the editor of the Japanese independent music magazine Ongaku Otaku, Merzbow is to noise what the Sex Pistols were to punk. Akita is the ﬁrst person to release “noise,” in the polemically post-punk DIY format of tape-cassette mail art, on his own label in 1980. His work uses images of mass culture (pinups, ready-made elements of graphic design) and production techniques derived from consumer electronics (tape manipulation, feedback). Materials are used in ways that emphasize processes of transformation and “distortion” the farther from the sound source they get. Merzbow’s noise is mythic, and it is inchoate, largely due to the large scale and volume— in both senses of the word—of his output. Moreover, his work has been wildly generative, in the sense that his tools, method and sound provide an “origin” to the story of a movement, in both the domestic-use and international discourses.(7) But like many emissaries of the punk ethos, Merzbow’s negativity is off-putting to many people, and his work remains popular through the enthusiasm of a self-selected sub-cultural audience. Akita’s basic take in Noise Wars is fairly teleological in its operations, as it follows a sequence of movements in chronological order. While moving from old to new, his classically deconstructive method tries to show the internal contradictions that inhabit the trajectory of technological modernization. Rooting out internal contradiction results in the demonstration that technopop and industrial music came from the same pool of resources, but split off in oppositional directions based on their attitude toward technology.(8) In his capsule history of “tech-noise,” one chapter of Noise Wars, Akita writes that the studio work of musique concrète and the live art performances of “happenings” in the ‘sixties paralleled the trajectory of electro-pop and psychedelic countercultures, which had the most “organic” view of music and technology, and expanded the “nervous systems” of both to produce a faster rush and move the units of “knowledge” (知 chi) that were key to the commodity fetishism of information culture. In the early ‘seventies, he writes, ties between modern music and rock were still possible in groups like The Mothers of 590 Invention, and in Pierre Henry’s collaborations, until the crucial juncture of German techno-pop, which did not jibe with the pre-existing counter-culture tendency. Rather, it produced a second counter-culture forged from the internal contradictions of heavy metal-tinged rock and modern music. The parting of the ways happens as some groups embrace the systematicity and repetition of sequencers and rhythm boxes, aspiring, like the synthesizer, to “noise degree zero.” Among different ways of working out the balance between the “cutting-edge active formation of music” and “music technology inventions,” Akita singles out the “underground” musicians of early techno-pop who stressed the impoverishment of machines, rather than the beauty of their technology— sticking to old rhythm boxes, vocals that were off-beat from the rhythms established by electronic instruments, using old one-tone Casiotone synthesizers, and moving in herky-jerky ways, such that a group like Devo would be the hero of this low-budget story. Akita moves out of this sequential history of musical ﬂow to make his point, that the positive version of negativity seen in this low-ﬁ “deconstruction of sci-ﬁ utopias” differs from other groups’ mechanical utopia more reminiscent of Metropolis, or their longings for the Futurists’ aesthetic of urban industrial redemption. The difference is due to the tendency to demonstrate that the fusion of technology and musical performance was always already out of synch. This crucial parting of the ways vis-à-vis fusion with the machine leads, then, to two separate trajectories. The ﬁrst is a movement toward musical puriﬁcation that sees techno-pop as an icon of larger sweeps of technology and links it strongly to an epistemology (techno-pop illustrated with medical art, autopsy art) that cultivates a medicalized attitude toward the body that experiences technology, terminating in a kitschy biopolitics of fascism. The other trajectory is, simply, content to live with the internal rot (TG, Tuxedo Moon, Pere Ubu, Cabaret Voltaire), rather than examining it with a fascinated, photo-realistic gaze, investing such fetishism as “propaganda” for a post-industrial music. The central tension established in Akita’s account is an inter-locking dependence of fetishism and the critique of ready-made mechanical objects. Techno-pop often used celebrations of modernization to rework its ideology into utopian moments of community formation. In contrast, noise put a positive spin on experiences of negativity by showing the physical effort and mind-taxing effects of keeping coordinated with the machine. Noise took the classically modernist stance of totalizing the enemy and standing against it, being about not being about a lot of things: not being lyrically listenable, harmonic, melodic, danceable, song-based, or “communicating” in full homologous synch with machines, using culture to get back to nature. If the Frankfurt school had thrown 591 away their typewriters, although they would not have gotten the same fetishistic frisson Akita and noise musicians get from the pain of experiencing the din and interference, the sounds the apparatus made crashing to the ground might have been noise. Noise Wars proceeds to map this tension, seeing it in terms of a modernist dynamic of rupture and consolidation, immersion and contemplation, of a subjectivity intimately related to mass culture.(9) It tracks this tension as it appears in the Anglo-European genealogies of noise in prog rock, cut-up art, Dadaism, power electronics and other musical modes, moving between industrial and information-based mass cultures. Chapters focus on auteurs (Moholy-Nagy and the Breakdown of Records), on genre (harsh electronics), on movements and collectivities (mail music and underground radio networks), and on nonmusical interfaces (William Burroughs, noise and kitsch) that have inhabited Anglo-European noise over the last ten years. At the same time, the plurality of conceptual frames within the umbrella-term of “noise” is notable because it allows Akita to ﬁnd a place for Japanese noise that is neither purely Japanese nor purely a mimetic copy of an Anglo-European avantgarde.(10) Noise Wars argues that the various movements that cluster under the term ‘noise’ mix music and conceptual art to provide a set of provocative responses to nineteen-eighties’ information culture. In the texts he chooses, the force is not purely mechanization, but has shifted to communication between parts of the machine, or its circuits. This is why the primary antagonist of conceptual artists like Throbbing Gristle (TG) and William Burroughs is “control,” and the primary category of experience is “information culture.” While the stance of noise may be modernist (resistant, oppositional, working within a system of totality), its materials are dependent on concepts of circuitry and communication that derive in broad terms from midcentury electronic engineering and its application to the behavioral and social sciences. (11) In cybernetic terms, “control” is the set of dynamics that determines the nature of exchanges that a machine can undertake. TG, Burroughs and Akita use the term to describe human-machine relations somewhat idiosyncratically to stress the elements of interchange between parts of machines and circuits within a market, and ask, what is the nature of exchanges a musician/artist can undertake in the circuits of a culture industry? (12) In the context of a world market of listeners, noise is fascinating because its positioning as a domestic counter-tradition gives it the counter-intuitive potential to become a trans-national avant-garde. This avantgarde is deﬁned by its materials, its sound, and other “mode of production” terms.(13) But beyond this, the translatability of noise as an avant-garde is derived 592 from grafting a common center-periphery structure of music/noise onto multiple contexts. In the transfers form domestic to international market, noise is inverted from being a critique of “information culture” to its very epitome—faster, louder, stronger. This transposition into a world composed of various and forms of center-periphery organization makes noisefrom-Japan represent the furthest extremity of distance and comprehension, a limit experience. Translation of noise, then, happens not purely through the fan’s reception of a strange context-less artifact. Rather, it works precisely because a common center-periphery context is assumed, a common modular set of countercultural terms according to which noise resists any of a number of totalizing tendencies that techno-pop is imagined to represent (e.g. tendencies often exposed and critiqued by political modernism, such as lack of ideology, disengagement from history, bad politics, and collusion with expansionist capital, all of which are well-trod critiques of techno-pop and its investment in culture industries).(14) This formalist tendency of noise/music and center/ periphery leads me to the paradox of noise, or what’s positive about negativity. In the words of Nakajima Akifumi, who runs one of the major noise record labels, and operates as the noise unit AUBE, noise was distinct because it enabled Japanese artists to “cross the border.” The translatability of noise--which might also be seen as its mania-ﬁcation as a perceived culture of extremity--can be seen in recent albums such as the USJapan Noise Treaty and more thoughtfully in the annual Canadian No Music festival, as well as in magazines like Ongaku Otaku, which covers the noise scene in the US and Japan. In other words, Nakajima sees it, noise units have been able to skip the country, tour overseas, work with musicians abroad, and escape the conﬁnes of a market deﬁned either by those who can understand Japanese lyrics, or who fetishize Japanese pop. Paradoxically, although the noise movement is popular in no sense of the word (e.g. it is not a mainstream music, and it claims no relation to a folkic or popular Japanese musical tradition), noise represents itself as the most universally accessible of all the cultures of sound proliferating from Japan. And equally paradoxically, the powerful critiques of expansionist capital that make sense in noise’s Japanese context are erased as Merzbow is commodiﬁed, and self-commodiﬁes, in order to reach international audiences. Noise becomes a formalist enterprise, stressing the “faster, louder, stronger” dynamics of its speed- and volume-oriented sound, of negativity when the dialectical foundation it is resisting in the information culture Akita describes is not exported at the same time. As noise and small labels have gotten better distribution, noise has become well-known to listeners of college radio and romantic explorers of record shops. Alan 593 Cummings nicely ventriloquizes the tone that greeted the wildly different array of Japanese recordings when they ﬁrst became heard and distributed in the US and Britain about ﬁfteen years ago. Perhaps it would be better to discuss the “release” of the music— a term that conveys the unspoken “area studies” subtext behind the reception of noise. Which is to say, it describes more vividly how the reporting of the time vibrated with the energy derived from tapping into this musical scene, and breaking through to liberate it from a repressive force that had previously held it pent-up and conﬁned, and integrate it into a world market and knowledge system: order to explain how this took place in a certain political and economic climate if the nineteen-eighties, we need to look closer at the term of “communication.” Historicizing ‘noise’ as a counter-culture of “communication” Earlier I mentioned how noise was generally aghast at the cozy homology of man and machine presented by techno-pop, preferring to retain its status as offbeat scavenger of the internal contradictions of music as mass culture within information culture. It’s important to recognize that noise music’s stance of negativity when it homologizes man and machine is distinct from critiques of industrial mass culture. Noise In the late 80s and early 90s it seemed as though some seismic fault deep beneath Japan had ﬁnally cracked, unleashing a tsunami of new and confusing groups onto an unsuspecting western world. From the toxic multi-genre pileups of The Boredoms, and the Magma-inspired operatic hardcore of the bass and drums duo Ruins, to the technological meltdown of Merzbow, here, it seemed, was postmodernism run riot (The Primer: Japanese Psychedelia, 30. places its critical scrutiny on the conditions of possibility of “communication” that occur between parts of a system. Introducing Merzbow in a little more detail will let us plot the conceptual links between “communication” and the need to proclaim economic communication as a pre-condition of globalization in the form of the neoliberal economic order that emerged in the nineteeneighties.(15) In a general biographical scheme, Akita’s date of birth coincides roughly with the declared “end of the postwar era” in Japan, and with the beginning of the era of high- Most of these groups were assimilated in the unruly category of “noise,” a grouping that shifted the way that noise had been seen prior to the nineteen-eighties. In speed economic growth that persisted until the bubble broke in the early 1990s.(16) Born in 1956 in Tokyo, Akita grew up with a salaryman father, whose job as a 594 bank employee required the family to move regularly. Akita credits this sequence of moves with establishing his love of ready-made material objects that were anonymous and exchangeable, setting in place a modular lifestyle in which his identity as a “Dadaist of the danchi” was fostered (Interview, 11).(17) Danchi is a key term for imagining a modular modernist aesthetic in the context of daily life in information-culture-era Japan. Danchi are high-rise apartment buildings constructed in the nineteen-ﬁfties in the outskirts of Tokyo and other cities to provide housing for company families. They came to be associated with the modular social formations and phenomena of alienated, middleclass, nuclear-family, postwar suburbia. And moreover, danchi housed the products that came to symbolize the disenchanted holy trinity of international postwar consumer life—reiﬁcation, alienation and fetishism as major constituents of daily life.(18) The dishiest showing of the danchi‘s foundations of repression is narrated in the hugely successful and cultishly popular genre of soft-core “pink” porn ﬁlms called roman poruno (=romantic pornography. (19)Becoming a Dadaist of the danchi meant, then, developing an aesthetic of negativity that drew on high-culture styles to liberate a repressed and un-communicative energy present in ready-made things organized in a modular pattern. Ready-made objects, whether housewives, machines or sounds, describe and critique the fantasies, images and exchange systems that were historically speciﬁc to the era of high-speed economic growth and “information culture.” Noise drew its materials from low and mass cultures in an era when high-culture productions were being linked to world markets in unprecedented ways. But Akita notes that dialogue between the art world and the music world was conspicuously missing, and made for a scene quite different than the Anglo-European mingling of art rock he describes in Noise Wars. Moreover, in Japan in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, visual and conceptual arts had staged deﬁantly public “happenings,” Neo-Dada stunts, and theatrical performances, often using graphics and other elements of knowledge culture in skeptical and critical ways.(20) But during the bubble economy, the art world was more notorious for its high-ﬂying corporate collection capers and the hyper-capitalization of the art market. Apart from its focus on jacking up the value of masterpieces, the international art market established the expectation of an artistic link between Japan and other trading partners. But whereas Japanese visual collectors were positioned as consumers in the art market, in the acoustic market, they were situated very polemically as producers. Not Japan as copy-cat, not Japan as aesthetic knockoff, or even drawing power from citing that Orientalist tic pace YMO, but Japan as a producer of a new kind of music. Re-linking Akita’s music and the critical writings that 595 give us Akita’s interpretation of the project of AngloEuropean noise can help us understand why “noise” as an aesthetic of production has more at stake than being faster, louder and stronger, and how it might sit critically in the bubble economy that set such high hopes on information culture. Needless to say, I’m not aiming to re-embed noise in a nativist scene of production that uses the “universal” tools of technology to reach back to an essential, time-traveling version of Japan as primordial community, albeit one that would be cacophonous rather than harmonious.(21) Rather, I want to encourage you to be aware of a key term out of which noise music and discourse has been built, and which has dropped out of the critical conversation—the term of “communication.” This is why historicizing the emergence of communications as a social science of culture in the postwar era helps us understand the terms of culture that Merzbow is counter to. “Communication” is important because it was the concept that linked ideas about culture and information culture, and Japan’s predisposition to excel at producing and “versioning” both, to high-speed economic growth.(22) This is even a common second-order cultural studies discourse, for instance, in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman.(23) In this collaboratively-written case study of how consumer technologies are made meaningful, it is assumed to be common mass-consumer knowledge that “Japanese” signiﬁes the common themes of modernization theory: high tech, and a clash of tradition and modernity resolved through communications technologies. The common function of version of this modernization theory account of “communication” was recognizing Japan as a site of cultural production highly invested in the terms of the new world order of politics that emerged from the war and the US Occupation, the network of newly decolonized and de-colonizing and revolutionary states that the US wanted to integrate into its market and political circuits. Let me brieﬂy draw attention to two moments in which “communication” is signiﬁcant in postwar political economies, and why we must go beyond reading sign cultures, to read the material cultures that underwrite them. The ﬁrst is the use of “communication” by the ﬁrst group of popular culture scholars after the war to ground their idea of a new public sphere on their own terms critical of their occupiers. “Communication” was used in the Japanese context of popular culture scholarship beginning in 1946 when the ﬁrst postwar group of scholars working systematically on popular culture used “communication” along with other social and behavioral sciences to ground their journal The Science of Thought. Initially, communication was drawn from the thinking of American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. Using the philosophies of American liberal pragmatism as standards to judge their Occupiers, 596 the group conducted rhetorical analyses transactions such as trials, confrontations, and other conﬂicts in the Occupation public sphere as instances of “discommunication.” A second programmatic link between control, communication and ampliﬁcation surfaces in rhetoric of public policy and functionalist anthropology, and the management theories of the nineteen-eighties. These theories credited “communication” as characteristic that is both high-tech and native to Japanese culture. This is seen primarily in the imagined Japanese ability to integrate hierarchically structured components of a vertical social system to effectively communicate, manage, and distribute resources and information, resulting in for success in a postwar economic context.(24) Used in the nineteen-seventies and ‘eighties, these theories of Japanese uniqueness, known as nihonjin-ron, excavated the key to Japanese economic success in an international market that has been embedded in socio-cultural reasons usually relating to the structural organization of hierarchy within community. While Nihonjin-ron’s frames of reference drew on functionalist sociology, they were also cut with the vocabulary of consumer electronics. In brief, these descriptions of Japanese success at achieving the universal process of “modernization” were found in the ampliﬁcation of the harmony of pre-existing “nativist” cultural elements to their maximum potentiality.(25) Conclusion Does Merzbow always retain his modernist purity by refusing to communicate? Yes and no. In some cases, shifting the value of the exchange simply means moving the units, and reversing the “diffusionist” direction of modernization from AngloEuropean music to Japan. Any hipster who has been to an indie record store in the last ten years knows that to call Merzbow’s output ‘proliﬁc’ would be a comical understatement. Akita has not only claimed he aimed to outpace the production of Sun Ra. His para-musical production is also astounding—he has been a veritable one-man-band of merchandizing techniques, linking his music other commodity-information forms like record jackets, limited editions, and, most notoriously, the CD that was sold embedded in the dashboard of a Studebaker. A recent conspicuous example of his works’ (often ambivalent) investment in exposing and therefore shifting the values of commodity culture is the limited-edition of 1000 copies of the Merzbox, that snugly assembles an anthology like one of Marcel Duchamps’ boxes. Containing 50 CDs from work made from 1979-1997, the Merzbox nests a host of beautifully-designed, limited-edition items in its zip-up fetish rubber package: the MerzROM CD-ROM, the Merzshirt T-shirt, the Merzbook selection of critical essays, photos and interviews, the Merzdallion, and 597 other fetish Merz items. (26) Is Merzbow simply cashing in on the utopian desire of Anglo-American music connoisseurs to imagine a place that is faster, louder, and stronger? Is he simply encouraging another kind of identity exchange, in which consumers actually succumb to the dire Burroughslike form of self-enslavement known as “control,” by trading their desires in exchange for recognition as a connoisseur in the marketplace, recognizable yet polemically differentiated from other connoisseurs? Again, yes and no. The versioning of discourse into domestic-use-only and for-international-sales that has only allowed Akita’s critiques of kitsch in through the open door of sensationalism (pornography, other medicalized photo-realisms) can only be done if the artist licenses the discourse that frames his work abroad, in what is without a doubt a complicated politics of exchange. What interests me in his work is its constant attention to the dynamics of fetishism that animate our daily lives and our engagements with mass culture, particularly as information culture encourages us to “communicate” with parts and people of the world we know little about, including the lore of the modern folks next door to us. 2. Merzbow was named after the dwellings-cumarchitectural installations called Merzbau built by the Dada-afﬁliated conceptual artist, typography designer, children’s book writer, and ultimately “degenerate artist” refugee, Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948). The whole corpus of Schwitters’ work came to be known as Merz (a signiﬁer of commodity and exchange torn out of the word Kommerz). The Merzbau (house of commerce) architectural assemblages designated a series of structures in which the spectator found him/herself standing inside and surrounded by the work of art, installations that Schwitters began making around 1920 out of sections of his house. For images, see Dorothea Dietrich, The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation. For a good set of images and critical readings situating the Merz project in terms of German mystical naturalism, see Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery. Endnotes 1. Seymour Glass is one of the longest-running commentators on the Japanese noise scene, through his record distribution company and his eclectic selfpublished magazine Bananaﬁsh He is quoted in the highly valuable and interesting Merzbook, by Brett Woodward, that accompanies the Merzbox, and is also on sale separately. 598 3. The ﬁrst all-out history of Japanese free jazz was published in 2002. An English-translation excerpt can be found in the launch issue of the magazine Improvised Music from Japan. See www.japanimprov.com for more information; the magazine is available in record stores. Hosokawa Syuhei sees the beginnings of noise, in fact, in the guitar-based free jazz of Takayanagi Masayuki. See “Japanese Popular Music of the Past Twenty Years: Its Mainstream and Underground,” a booklet published by the Japan Foundation. King and I, “Musicals and Modernization,” does a good job of linking the musical to the integrating functions of modernization theory. See Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961. Her work is distinctive because the markets and kinship networks she analyses are global, rather than exclusively proper to the bilateral hegemony of US-Japan relations. 6. In its broad sense, “information culture” is used in two ways. First, to refer to a push on the part of Japanese policy-makers to shift Japan from being an industrial 4. The Futurist Manifesto (Art of Noise) was translated by the naturalist novelist Mori Ôgai and published in Japanese in 1909, the same year it appeared in Le ﬁgaro. economy to a post-industrial economy. And second, the cultural re-evaluation of things like knowledge, R&D, and information embedded in everyday life that was supposed to inspire a change in values toward knowledge, and its attendant forms of commodity 5. YMO was a three-man unit fronted by SAKAMOTO Ryûichi, whose buoyant electronica and pageant-like stage productions in the ‘eighties used a fashionable, and arch, self-Orientalizing sensibility to join in the universal groove of tour circuits, danceability and worldwide distribution. Hosokawa Shûhei’s piece on YMO member Hosono Haruomi’s ‘soy sauce’ music as a retort to Martin Denny’s exotica engages YMO at a point sympathetic to my argument. See Shûhei Hosokawa, “ ‘Soy Sauce Music’: Haruomi Hosono and Japanese Self-Orientalism,” in Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Postwar Popular Music. Christina Klein’s chapter on The fetishism. For a precise and systematic analysis of information culture as a set of policy responses to trade and labor crises in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Beyond Computopia: Information, Automation and Democracy in Japan. 7. According to musician and magazine editor TANO Yukiharu, noise has now produced four generations of musicians: ﬁrst, Hijô kaidan, Merzbow, Incapacitants, Solmania, NULL, NORD; second, Hanatarashi, Gerogerogegege, Adjustment, K2; third, MSBR, C.C.C.C. Aube, PAIN, Masonna, Jerk, Thirdorgan, 599 Violent Onsen Geisha; fourth, Endo Kazaumoto, Government Alpha, Koji Marutani, Sukora; and ﬁnally, he mentions but sets apart, the people some music press call onkyô, that would include Ôtomo Yoshihide, Ikeda Ryôji, Sugimoto Taku, Nakamura Toshimaru, Akiyama Tetuzi, and others who themselves are reluctant to embrace the term. contained of possible resistance to the Paciﬁc War. The intricate play of that genealogy of oppression, in opposition to a ‘world’ context of globalized capital in which Akita’s music is disseminated, is absolutely suggestive. 10. I am referring to David Morley and Kevin Robins’ classic article on techno-Orientalism in The Space of 8. His use of dialectic and relentless insistence on negativity to question received forms of communication is most compatible with Theodor Adono’s vision of negative dialectics. Unlike Adorno, however, Akita, however, transposes his vision of negativity into the highly inter-subjective realms of sexuality as they appear in mass culture. Identity, “Techno-Orientalism: Japan Panic.” 11. The “classic” 1949 text of communications demands a mathematical reading ability. See Claude Shannon, The Mathematical Theory of Communication. For communication’s link to behavioral science, see Haraway, Donna J. “The High Cost of Information in Post World War II Evolutionary Biology: Ergonomics, 9. There is also a very postwar/modern history speciﬁc to Japanese interpretations of modernity in this model of repression. If I were to speculate on why noise is the ﬁrst, it is because for whatever reason, I would say that noise’s claim to fame comes from escaping the oppression of the iron ﬁst of Confucianism, a model of generalized social oppression that was seen to lead to fascist mobilization. In postwar interpretations by commentators like Maruyama Masao, and political modernist cultural ﬁgures (see note 14) like Ôshima Nagisa, Confucianism was connected to fascism as a totalizing structure of oppression that successfully Semiotics, and The Sociobiology of Communications Systems.” 12. Akita’s positioning of noise as a politics of the integrated circuit appeared at roughly the same time as two other key events of integrated circuitry that emphasized the politics of exchange in new economic circuits: Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto (19831991), and the debates on world music in the late ‘eighties. Haraway’s piece offered a hurly-burly of terms for thinking of collectivities within feminism in a global capitalist context not based on similarity—she 600 stressed the “noise” that appeared between different elements of her highly metaphoric vision of feminism as integrated circuit. She wanted to see models of feminism made out of political, not biological, kinship, would “rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” The alliance of Akita’s sometimes sexually sensational project with second-wave feminisms is obviously beyond the scope of my paper. But especially given Akita’s numerous books on sexuality, sexology and fetishism, I see the basic framework of a politics of the integrated circuit as a structuring problematic of both Haraway’s and Akita’s projects, one that similarly brings the question of “communication” between constituent elements of a system to the forefront. 15. Merzbow is technically a group; however, Akita is usually singled out as the spokesperson and creative center of the group. 16. For a brief and accessible essay on why people disagree about whether the postwar ended with the Korean War, the economic recovery of Japan, or other brackets, see John Dower’s essay “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conﬂict” in Postwar Japan as History. 17. The phrase comes up jokingly in the context of a 1998 interview with the sub-culture magazine EATER. 13. I use the term avant-garde to mean a modernist discourse that contains a revelatory or prophetic statement about the direction of a movement. My use is probably closest to the one in Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 18. For an analysis of how new household objects were seen to “communicate” with an new aesthetic of functional, not moral, cleanliness in French everyday life, see Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Ordering of French Culture, especially chapter 2 on housework and Jacques Tati ﬁlms. Her book is essentially about 14. I use the term political modernism following David Rodowick’s coinage. In The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory, he uses it to describe a series of strategies for formal and ideological critique that ﬁlmmakers used in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. the ways that both popular print materials and structuralism were both privatized and universalized in rhetorics equating modernization and hygiene, and resulted in a hygienic ﬂight from history, especially a history that would precipitate colonial relations and hegemony. 601 19. Beginning in 1971, roman poruno ﬁlms revitalized the moribund Nikkatsu ﬁlm studio. In exchange for the license to make more “aesthetic” (and by implication less sexy) stories, and evade the “repressive” authoritative studio system hierarchy of the time, new directors at Nikkatsu got to develop their highculture aesthetic of freedom by contracting to make soft-core porn ﬁlms, conventionally seen as the most narratologically limited of genres. The ﬁrst series of twenty-one ﬁlms was based on the classic plot of the “lonely housewife,” set in danchi. Inevitably, the lonely atomized housewives were re-awakened and set free to their desires by visiting handymen, but also set in context familiar to many contemporary feminist critiques, with recognizable second-wave feminist conﬂicts with husbands, families and neighbors. For a history that dwells more on Nikkatsu than the plot summaries, see Thomas Weisser and Yuko Mihara Weisser, The Sex Films: Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. I don’t have space for many readings, but Akita’s own early tape collage piece “Tape Dada,” from the 1981 self-released cassette Rembrandt Assemblage, gives a hint of how “noise” extends a modernist avant-garde bag of tricks into the expanded repertoire of information culture. The piece draws on properties of composition from two temporally dissonant artistic traditions: one mixed-media avant-garde, Dadaism, and one canonical early modern repertoire, by Rembrandt. From Dadaism it takes the stance of negation and the technique of collage. And certainly. the Dadaist mix of handiwork and ready-made object, and the splicing of slices of indexical realities that place the listener in multiple relations to speed, time, and space is characteristic of post-musique concrète tape manipulation in general. And from Rembrandt, “Tape Dada” takes the language of visuality—primarily color—to arrange the materials of sound in a way that challenges the listener’s perspective vis-à-vis the object. This exercise bears some 20. In my opinion, Hi Red Center, a three-man group of Akasegawa Genpei, Nakanishi Natsuyuki and Nam June Paik, is the ‘sixties neo-Dadaist group most compelled by the need to organize empirical structures of knowledge that buttresses information culture. See Nam June Paik’s essay featuring the Shelter Plan event, in “To Catch Up or Not To Catch Up With the West, Hijikata and Hi Red Center,” in Alexandra Munroe, ed. resemblance to musique concrète’s tactic of reduced listening. But the piece is more about the gradations of sound color than about exploring the limits of a sound’s phenomenology. But the transposition of the concept of chiaroscuro gradation from visual to acoustic worlds, and hand-wrought etching to hand-constructed collage, is speciﬁc to Akita’s work. The piece was edited down from a 45-minute piece; the 602 ﬁrst half is, Akita writes, “a compilation of short fragments using prepared guitar with radio and concrete sound” of tabla, voice, radio, egg cutter and other percussion instruments, and contact microphones. And the “other half is started backward slow pitch tape work.” It begins with repetitions in a minor key, whose effect is soothing, haunting, and repetitious. Over the course of six minutes, several repeated rhythms of electronic sound and percussion emerge thickly from a layered ground of other sounds at different proximities to each other, generating different perspectives for listening. It is common to notice that framing a collage as unruly, multiply-centered and open-ended as a Dadaist work is a vexing and sometimes imperious job, due to elements extended willfully outside of the frame. The same is true of Akita’s collage of ready-made sounds. The frame, however, provides a sense of perspective absent in Akita’s work. Its arbitrary length and multiple centers draw the piece out twice as long as a three-minute pop song, but unlike musique concrète, it neither cares about tying the semantic integrity of the sound source to documentary value, nor preserving the integrity of any boundary between sounds whatsoever. the Representation.” Mirror of Modernity and Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan. 22. Although he sees the expansionist tendencies of communication dating from the Enlightenment, and not in terms of a postwar world order, Armand Mattelart’s reading of communication as concept par excellence of neo-liberal economic accumulation is compelling. See Armand Mattelart, The Invention of Communication and A. Mattelart, L’invention de la communication. 23. Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay and Keith Negus, Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. The book is an interesting exposition of how it is possible to do cultural studies in an era where global expertise is no longer possible. It is also interesting because the specters of globalized Japanese techno-nativism (cutting edge high tech, monks with Walkmen crooning alongside leggy white supermodels in miniskirts, etc.) are invoked and read in advertising and management discourse through a sociological lens that tries to de-link the design process of making the Walkman from essentialism about 21. There are several good studies of connections between the folkloric, the fascistic and mass culture that treat the interwar years. See especially Harry Harootunian, “Figuring the Folk: History, Poetics, and Japanese culture. 24. For a typical description of this modular aesthetic that connects feudal society, Confucianism, and 603 modern corporate life, see the entry on tate shakai, or vertical society, at http://www.hevanet.com/miyumi/ nenkojoretsu.htm. Cummings, Alan. “The Primer: Japanese Psychedelia.” The Wire 186 (1999): 30. Dower, John W. “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: 25. In addition to Mattelart, Ron Tobin and Dorothy Ross’ histories of modernist social sciences and behavioral sciences give a good sense of how functionalism and behavioralism became governing epistemes of both domestic and foreign policy in the ‘ﬁfties and ‘sixties, through the functionalist sociology of Talcott Parsons, and the foundations set up under the Kennedy Administration. See Ross’ chronologically earlier Gamard, Elizabeth Burns. Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery. Building Studies. Vol. 5. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay and Keith Negus. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications, 1997. External Policy and Internal Conﬂict.” Postwar Japan as History. Ed.Andrew Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. account in The Origins of American Social Science and Tobin’s Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Industrial Complex. Selected Bibliography “Interview with Akita Masami.” EATER 1999: 11. Haraway, Donna. “The High Cost of Information in Post World War Ii Evolutionary Biology: Ergonomics, Semiotics, and the Sociobiology of Communications Adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Systems.” Philosophical Forum 12.2-3 (1981-1982). Harootunian, H.D. “Figuring the Folk: History, Poetics, Akita, Masami. Noizu Woa: Noizu Myuuzukkiu to Sono Hatten. Tokyo: Aomisha, 1992. and the Representation.” Mirror of Modernity. Ed.Stephen Vlastos: The Regents of the University of California, 1998. 144-59. Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987. Harootunian, Harry. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton: 604 Princeton University Press, 2000. Ross, Dorothy. Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Hirata, Hosea. The Poetry and Poetics of Nishiwaki Junzaburô: Modernism in Translation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. University Press, 1994. Hosokawa, Shûhei. Japanese Popular Music of the Past Twenty Years: Its Mainstream and Underground. Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1994. ---. “’Soy Sauce Music’: Haruomi Hosono and Japanese Self-Orientalism.” Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Postwar Popular Music. Ed.Philip Hayward. Sydney: John Libbey, 1999. 114-44. Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Mattelart, Armand. L’invention de la Communication. Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1994. ---. The Invention of Communication. L’invention de communication. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Robin, Ron Theodore. The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Problems in Popular Music History Writing Morten Michelsen S ix months ago, I and ﬁve other researchers received a grant of approx. 1 mio. Canadian by postcolonial theory, the project aims to focus on and interpret statements and life stories from individual actors. Our intention is to understand and explain the continuous and complex changes taking place within the cultural ﬁeld. In this work, the following concepts will be points of departure: dollars for a three-year research project entitled ‘Danish rock culture from the 50s to the 80s’. At an overall level, this project aims at examining how social and cultural interactions have constructed local and national rock cultures in relation to increasingly intensiﬁed globalisation processes. Focus will be on the dynamics of the meetings within a number of cultural patterns as well as between various local actors – that is, musicians, audiences, people within the music industries, cultural ‘opponents’ to rock music etc. As far as the international inﬂuence is concerned, a development is discernable from imitation of to inspiration from foreign artists and styles, that is, a movement from dependence to partial independence in which there is room for local experiences, for example the use of the Danish language and musical traditions. Simultaneously, however, the inﬂuence from older Danish popular culture has been declining, a process that started to accelerate when rock music began to demarcate itself from its ‘other’, namely ‘pop’. Ethnomusicology and Bourdieu-inspired 1) ‘identity’; among other things in relation the weakening of cultural constraints in late modernity and in relation to notions of ‘Danishness’ 2) ’the other’, e.g. in relation to the construction of ‘otherness’ of older generations and foreign ‘models’ 3) notions related to the ‘local/global’ dichotomy with regard to the interactions taking place 4) In addition, a sociological perspective on everyday practices will inform the analysis of concrete, affective and meaning-producing aspects related to the various reproduction technologies cultural theory set the theoretical frame of the project. Against a background of an ethnomusicology informed Larger issues related to the ﬁeld of musicology will also be addressed within the project. The attempt to 606 write a history of Danish rock from the perspective of ethnomusicology may inform both larger debates concerning the writing of music history in general as well as questions related to music analysis. While music technology and everyday sociology are drawn upon in order to understand the complexity of practices at a micro level, a Bourdieu-based framework is used in order to understand the formation and development of the rock culture and its relations to other ﬁelds. My part in this project – apart from administrating it – is to reﬂect on the historiographical aspects of popular music in general and realte those problems to Danish rock culture. And this I will turn to now. As the project has just started, what I will have to say will probably raise a few questions rather than give answers. The research project is confronted by the problems of history because it tries to interpret changes through time, it tries to deal with a dynamic and contested culture – or maybe cultures – that slowly evolves and develops distinct features which afterwards slowly change. Especially in the US, musicology is by deﬁnition historical musicology, and like the rest of the humanities, it has been challenged by the poststructural turn. Other kinds of music and the deconstructionist tendency of ‘theory’ has raised severe doubts about the whole musicological project, and in the last 15 years or so, discussions have been quite intense. What is ultimately at stake is the place, the identity and even the existence of the musical work and the aesthetic experience within historical narratives. In practice, most ‘New Musicologists’ still adhere to old conceptions of the autonomous work in their radical hermeneutic readings (cf. Treitler 1999 and Tomlinson 1993). Only few have tried to argue for another way of applying poststructuralist theory to the historical study of music. One is Gary Tomlinson who argues for a resolute historicizing of musical utterances. He suggests a contextualism that explodes ‘outwards through an imaginative building of contexts out of as wealthy a concatenation of the past traces as the historian can manage.’ (Tomlinson 1993: 22). His aim is not to reconstruct the original situation realising that it is not possible. Instead, his strategy is to localize a historical account among many potential meanings. I think that a contextualising historical approach can deal with musical objects and shy away from reifying them as autonomous objects. They are still aesthetic objects, but not in the sense that they are judged according to rules of ‘the beautiful’. Intstead, they are aesthetic in the word’s original meaning: the objects are experienced through the senses. And involved in the ‘context-building’ is the perspective that those musical objects probably meant a lot to the people in question with regard to, say, fun or transcendence in multiple ways. 607 It is clear as well, that concepts like aesthetics, work, and even music needs questioning. They have been very active for a couple of hundred years, but in the face of the research project I have mentioned, they need rethinking if we are to make any sensible use of them. Take the concept of music, for example. Peter Wicke has repeatedly called for a different concept of music, deﬁning it as a ‘medium in sound’ (for example in Shepherd & Wicke 1997), which could lead on to different historical perspectives. This he documents in his book Von Mozart zu Madonna (Wicke 1998), where the body’s relation to popular music through 200 years is the leitmotif, and where the sensory pleasure of music lies in its sounds. One example is the female piano students who often feared and loathed their teachers, but gained a sensuous pleasure from performing in front of guests. An important point is that the sensuous pleasure was gained from the actual sounds (not the music’s structure) as an expression of both the body and the feelings. Part of the object od study is the music, both understood as objects and as processess made manifest in practice. Music functions and can be understood as aesthetic objects in an emphatical sense, i.e. as non-physical and separate entities (parts of songs, songs, albums, genres) that unfolds in time and can be experienced by listeners who can name them through language. Music is also objectiﬁed as goods which are sold, be it directly as computer ﬁles, cds, and on notepaper or indirectly as merchandise, music press stories etc. On the other hand music functions and can be understood as the processual and historically changing practices, which constitute the making, use and enjoyment of the same objects, which in that process often loose their object character. Music in such a way is constantly in ﬂux, always on the verge of becoming something else. This object/nonobject duality (music as artefacts and music as part of everyday life) (1) gives the popular music history study some methodological problems, which maybe can be solved with help from ethnomusicological views on music and music history. Redeﬁning what music as an object is, is of course one road to a different conception of how music works in culture, and Wicke’s change of focus from structure to sound is important. Another way is to acknowledge, that there are many different concepts or notions of music circulating in culture which may or may not correspond to music practices. This is discussed by Philip Bohlman in an article, ‘Ontologies of Music’ (note the plural). He opens with two basic facts about music: ‘Music may be what we think it is; it may not be.’ and ‘What music is remains open to questions at alle time and in all places.’ (1999: 17). Just as several, not necessarily consistent histories exist at personal and intra-personal levels, ideas about what music is 608 can be just as entangled. One single person can have several ideas or practices concerning music and that goes for whole cultures as well. The insight that ideas and concepts of music are multifarious can break open everyday practices related to rock culture. During the 80s and 90s ethnomusicology and historical musicology has entered into a dialogue, and a sort of ‘anthropology at home’ has become more common. Instead of seeing the ethnomusicological study as primarily a presentation of a present (while the researchers’ research is taking place) some ethnomusicologists following Bruno Nettl have focussed on the histories behind that present as well. The study of local cultures through ﬁeldwork is one of ethnomusicology’s most distinctive traits, and a modern and reﬂexive ethnomusicology has discovered that there exists a diversity of pasts and several concepts of music, even within one single culture. These two aspects will be dealt with below. Philip Bohlman are among those who have reﬂected most intensively on historiography and etnomusicology. In an article, ‘Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past’ (1997), he argues for a set of paradoxes in historical ﬁeldwork: everyday vs. other, practice vs. culture, and present vs. past. These paradoxes open up for a historical space understood as a discursive space of boundaries ‘within which cultures locate themselves’. And he continues: Culture within these [boundary] spaces no longer forms into systems, but rather becomes ﬂuid, ephemeral, and contested. History can no longer be recuperated into teleological narratives that “once happened” and now can be told again and again in their inscribed versions. History, too, forms in a temporal space, contested because fragments of the past remain in the everyday of the present. (1997: 140) This means that cultures are always in between, relating now to one boundary, now to another in a dynamic movement which is hard to grasp. As representations of such events and everydays, histories come to work the same way, by necessity giving up homogenic and chronologically linear structurations. Futhermore, the histories not only represent the past or the present, but also the time in between. This becomes interesting when you think of studying Danish rock culture. The music and everydays that constitute the empirical object are of course historical (i.e. in the past), but the actors are still alive, and they remember days past through time, here 20 to 50 years. This makes it impossible to ﬁnd out, how is ‘really’ was, and it is not the intention. In this perspective, actors cannot be judged critically as sources. 609 Histories are everywhere in our everyday life, also when we are teaching, discussing, and writing scolarly articles. They are a part of our identities, and thus one way of reasoning who we are and who we are not, both at an individual and at a social level. They point to where ‘I’ or ‘we’ come from and often show the directions in which to go. As much as histories can belong to a ‘we’, they are often contested among the ‘we’ and in relation to other ‘wes’. At given moments speciﬁc histories seem to be in dialogue with the present, which in turn will give rise to new histories. Bands, audiences, media etc. are constantly referring to or taking into consideration histories of what has happened before. Such histories are produced, reproduced and circulated in everyday life among individuals, but they are also produced, reproduced and circulated in written form in order to identify the ‘we’ and persuade the ‘we’ in question that it is actually a ‘we’. Thus, written history always has a hegemonic thrust, an ‘I’ that speaks on behalf of the ‘we’. If this thrust is laid open it tends to become less hegemonic, but only less. A history book will always be a construction that helps its readers construct their own histories. To produce written histories of popular music is to chose between everyday histories and in the end to construct your own on the basis of these. And in the process it has lost much of the relation to and the situatedness of the intial histories. Hardly anyone would suggest to stop writing histories because of the hegemonic thrust. They seem necessary to our culture for the abovementioned reasons. But there is also the necessity to tell the histories anew, both to get rid of the hegemonic thrusts of the older ones, to explain why things are the way they are, and in order to point in new directions. A main point is to ﬁnd out/study what has been going on in the everyday practices between ‘highlights’, i.e. records, concerts, between canonical moments. Both in order to nuance the overall picture and in order to puncture the canon. Rock music has, since the mid-ﬁfties, held an important position within Danish culture – initially in opposition to the established high culture and later as an integrated part of a cultural landscape in which the markers of high and popular culture were less pronounced. This development has been the result of an ongoing negotiation within a range of cultural contexts, ﬁrst and foremost between international mass-mediated cultures of rock and/ or youth, and locally and nationally grounded cultures of popular culture and social traditions. In the research project Danish rock culture is seen as the amalgamation of these processes of negotiation, in which the use of music and lyrics, the ways of playing and listening etc. has played a signiﬁcant role for both coherence and identity. 610 Compared to British and US rock cultures Danish rock culture is numerically quite small. Contrary to popular opinion, it seems that only small groups of people were heavily involved (maybe a few thousand), but their activities inﬂuenced quite a lot of mainly young people. Nevertheless, a historical structure has been formed which follows British and American structures quite closely (same periods, same styles), a date of birth has been established (at a dance concert in 1956), and a broad sociological context has been established along with a canon.(2) Nowadays, Danish rock culture from the 50s to the 80s is perceived along the lines of sameness or homogeneity, it is one cultural unit. This happens in order to have a stable past upon which to build present identities. Within this sameness struggles of course have taken place, but present media-generated histories have no room for otherness in the historical past. The wrinkles of history are ironed out, so to speak. In this sameness the participants were white, male Danes who played music, smoked pot and had fun (even though mixed gender and womens’ groups did have some success in the 70s). It is my intention to destabilize this past, to ﬁnd out the many different histories and the complexities in daily life, to lay bare the many boundary spaces that the participants experienced and acted within. I’m looking for everyday practices beyond the reiﬁed albums and the mythological constructions (among which rock culture itself is one). For example, albums might have been experienced as markers of time in their time (i.e. fans have been looking forward to an album release and its release and the following listening experience are markers in individual lives),(3) but in the historical present the constructions are only foetal, they work as nascent narrativizations of the everyday, ofte constructed by the electronic and print media. A few of these narrativizations take root and come to constitute the historical narratives about the culture. One album from 1967, HIP, by Steppeulvene (The Steppenwolves) is held to mark the birth of Danish rock culture. The music and the lyrics are sort of midsixties Dylanesque and sung in Danish. Arguably, it is the ﬁrst full rock album in Danish, and the singer’s subsequent disappearance and mysterious suicide in India contributes to the myth of the album. But the album’s ‘classicness’ is a much later construction. Firstly, the album was largely neglected at the time of its release,(4) and secondly, it seems at least just as important to point to a string of singles released by others before that date. From a conventional historical perspective ‘the ﬁrst of its kind’ and ‘the new’ is important, but to me its more important how this album took up a place in the everyday lives of the culture’s participants and how it helped form a Danish rock identity (if it, 611 indeed, did?). The abrupt changes described by conventional history were hardly experienced as such in the given presents. Another, and more general, construction is the the boundaries between pop and rock in the late 60s and 70s, which have always been seen as rather absolute. But a detailed and local study can perhaps show that it is yet another unstable boundary that musicians and audiences crossed frequently without really taking notice. Maybe as an example that ideology and practice do not necessarily ﬁt together. Fx in the early 70s the Danish National Radio broadcast an album top ten late every saturday. The playlist consisted of Deep Purple and Bob Dylan and James Last and Freddy Breck. Both kinds of music were thus part of the everyday, and most Danes know the light music hits from the 50s and 60s very well even though the artists were not respected. In the research project these problems will be central. Apart from my study on the historiography of popular music, they will be dealt with in projects about fan cultures, Danish rock culture as a Bourdieuian ﬁeld, notions of Danishness, rock musicians’ ways of learning, and technologies. And I look forward to solving some of the problems that I have mentioned here. By the way, in October 2005 the project will host an international conference in Copenhagen. It working title is ‘Local and National Rock Cultures in a ocal Globalised World”. You are all invited. Bohlman, Philip. “Ontologies of Music.” Rethinking Bille, Torben, ed. Dansk Rockleksikon [Encyclopedia of Danish Rock]. Copenhagen: Politiken, 2002. Endnotes 1. Which is not quite the text/context dichotomy as the non-objective character is not necessarily contextually given. 2. The local canon is probably not as strong and hegemonic as the international, partly because it has not been as codiﬁed nearly as rigidly and as often, partly because bands and musicians have all been local – you could actually talk to them after shows and see them in the supermarket next day. In this way mythologization it not a central part of Danish rock culture. 3. The expectancy and release of Sgt. Pepper was a collective time marker. 4. It was released in 1.000 copies but only sold a few hundred. Around 1988 it had sold 25.000 copies (Bille 2002: 487). It was reviewed in Information and Ekstrabladet (Danish dailies). Selected Bibliography 612 Music. Eds. Cook, Nicholas, & Mark Everist. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. --- ”Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past.” Fieldwork Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. Eds. Barz, G.F., & T.J. Cooley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Tomlinson, Gary. “Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer.” Current Musicology (53) 1993. Treitler, Leo. “The Historiography of Music: Issues of Past and Present.” Rethinking Music. Eds. Cook, Nicholas, & Mark Everist. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Shepherd, John, & Peter Wicke. Music and Cultural Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997. Wicke Peter. Von Mozart zu Madonna [From Mozart to Madonna]. Leipzig: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Girls on top, or Stealing the Phallus Richard Middleton I n a 1982 paper (1) Barbara Bradby and Brian Torode introduced the concept of ‘song-work’. ‘Gloria’ (Van Morrison) What they had in mind was Freud’s theory of dreams, according to which the ‘manifest’ meanings of dreams stand for, but at the same time misrepresent the ‘latent’ meanings expressing unconscious desires and fantasies. The transformations produced are, in Freud’s quasi-economic model, the result of ‘dreamwork’, and it’s the task of the psychoanalyst to undo this work, that is, to interpret the dream. By analogy, songs – according to Bradby and Torode – transform unconscious desires, fantasies and anxieties into vocalised patterns and effects. Vocal labour channels, represents, constructs the ﬂows of psychic energy going to form, de-form, re-form the patterns of human subjectivity; and, as with dream-work, the transformations inevitably leave traces, slips, aporias behind for the analyst to work on. It’s a classic of what has become known as the ‘cockrock’ genre, in which a strutting male voice, dripping with demand, imposes his phallic authority on a female object of desire. Patti Smith’s cover, as Mike Daley has pointed out in an article in Popular Music (4), comprehensively re-works the original. She encases it in new material which foregrounds the moral dangers of her lustful desires; and she pushes her appropriation of Morrison’s vocal persona to an extreme. ‘Gloria’ (Smith) Daley rightly brings out the way that Smith’s vocal extremes – the switching of registers, which confuses gender norms, the vast range of vocal effects, the barely coherent climaxes – seem both to parody the conventions of cock-rock and appropriate them for The subject of the analysis is a song from Patti Smith’s 1975 album Horses (2), a cover of Van Morrison’s 1965 garage-rock classic, ‘Gloria’. And the course of treatment proceeds through three sessions, each superintended by a different analyst – Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek. herself, thereby inverting the traditional structure of sexual positioning. A straightforwardly feminist critique of oedipal norms, then? There’s certainly plenty of material in Smith’s biography, including her relationships with a mother 614 who was a religious fanatic and a militantly atheistic father, subsequent relationships with men, and her many appropriations of cock-rock songs, to suggest oedipal complications (5). And the interplay of Lacan’s concept of the phallus is complex and by no means stable. The key point, though, is that, although he does keep a place for the real phallus, this is far less important than the phallus as image – in this Imaginary register, it mirrors or reﬂects back desire – and the phallus as symbol – in the register of the Symbolic, it comes to stand for the whole structure of Law, the Law of the Signiﬁer. Simplifying, we may locate the phallic image in the sphere of Lacan’s objets petits a – the famous Freudian part-objects, for Lacan, object-causes of desire; and the phallic symbol in the sphere of the Lacanian Big Other – that radical alterity, the locus of language, culture, law, which precedes all individual subjectivity. The importance of castration is as a marker of the paternal threat, which institutes the superego, founds ‘culture’ itself; and is mapped, in an asymmetrical structure, on to the ﬁeld of sexual division: the possession or lack of a real phallus is taken retroactively as a ﬁgure for the unequal positioning of men and women in the symbolic ﬁeld. sexual transgression and religious obsession is a motif throughout her career, starting with adolescent hallucinations when, she said, she fantasised about being fucked by the Holy Ghost. She was undoubtedly inﬂuenced by the gender-bending and sexual deviancy characteristic of late sixties/ early seventies New York bohemia – Andy Warhol and co – and of course this was also the moment par excellence of second-wave feminism: Germaine Greer, Kate Millett and others were critiquing Freud, and Masters and Johnson (6) seemed to have demolished the ‘myth of the vaginal orgasm’; as feminists grabbed hold of the clitoris, so to speak, the standard Freudian theory according to which girls must abandon the phallic orientation shared with little boys, accept a proper – a vaginal – passivity, and answer their resulting penis-envy with a phallic substitute, a baby, was in some considerable difﬁculty. Jouissance is Lacan’s term for a transgressive pleasure On this ﬁrst level of analysis, the appropriation taking place is simply of a body-part. But doesn’t sex happen in the head? For Freud, sexuality is always psychosexuality, and the phallus functions on the symbolic as well as the biological level – an approach pushed much further in Jacques Lacan’s re-reading of Freud. - and it’s essentially phallic; perhaps we may think of this powerful image-fantasy as standing at the head of the whole family of part-objects – objets petits a – and in that sense the signs of jouissance we noticed earlier in Patti Smith’s vocal mark the coursing of her desire around Gloria’s ‘bits’. Indeed, ‘voice’ – along with ‘gaze’ 615 – is Lacan’s addition to Freud’s list of part-objects; and the ‘object-voice’ is deﬁned precisely as that impossible (because inaudible) surplus left over when the symbolic stratum of the vocal stream has been accounted for. To the extent that Smith’s vocal performance approaches objectivity in this sense, it’s the terrifying jouissance associated with an invocation of the object-voice that is at issue. tones redolent of both trauma and of the cocky, morethan-human self-staging of the rock god. So far I have treated Smith’s recording as, precisely, a record – but it’s also a performance, an énonciation as well as an énoncé. In this performance, who exactly is it who speaks? And to whom? And also, who looks? In both Van Morrison’s original and Patti Smith’s cover, ‘Gloria’ has an intensely ﬁlmic quality; the story is Applications of the jouissance idea usually link it to subversion of patriarchal law – hence, ﬁgure it as in some sense ‘feminine’. But for Lacan himself, the idea of a non-phallic, a ‘feminine’ jouissance is problematic: there is no pre-symbolic reality; for him, jouissance (what escapes in sexuality) and signiﬁance (what shifts within language) are inseparable, and the excess is therefore radically undecideable in its orientation. It can subvert the Law but it can also stick to it, the terrifying, superhuman, disembodied voice of the patriarchal god acting precisely as what lends a spurious authority to the dicta of the superego – le-père-jouissance, as Lacan calls it – the obscene ecstasy of control as such. From this perspective, this is a song of desire, but also one of blasphemy: the Law-of-the-Father is rejected (or perhaps co-opted – the phallus appropriated), but the looming tower, the tolling bells, the half-time day-ofjudgement moment are marks of terror and guilt, and the initial declaration of moral autonomy is delivered in told through the scopophilic gaze of the singer. The track has very much the structure of fantasy as Freud and Lacan describe it: a quasi-theatrical staging of a ‘scene’ within which the subject’s unconscious desire is obsessively acted out, and which acts as a defence against trauma – veiling the unavoidable insatiability of desire, ultimately the lack in the Other. To explore this further, we can turn to our third shrink, Slavoj Žižek, who has written persuasively on the two objets a – voice and gaze. In ‘Gloria’, the voices can, at one level, be thought of as helping to put in place the structure of the fantasyscene, constructing that symbolic ﬁction which we know as ‘reality’, speaking for characters to imaginary listeners. But on another level, that of object-voice, they disrupt this ﬁction. With Lacan, Žižek argues that, as objects, both voice and gaze occupy a place from which the subject is always already excluded, simply 616 by virtue of his partiality of positioning; from the “thing that sees” and the “thing that sounds”, he becomes an ‘I’, a looking, vocalising subject. Žižek’s advance is to suggest that these two partial objects can supplement each other, the one ﬁlling the hole left in the ﬁeld of the other: ‘we hear things’, he says, ‘because we cannot see everything’ (7), and vice versa. And in ﬁlm, he argues, this can happen when the structure of montage – the network of intersecting gazes – necessarily implies a missing space – what has been excluded – which may be ﬁlled by an uncanny, unexpected voice, a sound that does not belong, or even a voice we strive to hear but cannot. One example must sufﬁce. It’s easy enough to hear the interplay of Smith and the ‘boys in the band’ as they combine to name Gloria in terms of an exchange of voiced gazes – a phallic exchange, centred on their joint, almost pornographic objectiﬁcation of ‘Gloria’. But where is ‘Gloria’ herself? Is she the surplus left over from the montage process, her voice traceable only in the senseless scream stratum of Smith’s vocal, or alternatively in the force of its almost palpable absence – as that silent scream which, for Žižek, represents object-voice in its purest form? Or, is she to be read, again within Smith’s vocal itself, but simply as a symptom of narcissistic (hence homosexual) fantasy. Or, given that the boys speak for her, name her, is she standing for the passages of subjectivity itself? Žižek, following Hegel, regards the naming power of language as the very mechanism whereby ‘pure self’ – the void that represents the ‘night of the world’ – moves into the symbolic order and assumes the trappings of subjectivity. And behind this process, sanctioning it through the ﬁgure of castration, stands the Big N, the Name-of-the-Father, which Smith tries to, but cannot, speak, but which is written in the song-title: ‘Gloria in excelsis deo’. 617 Endnotes 1 Bradby, B. and Torode, B.1982. ‘The musical inclusion, exclusion, and representation of women’, paper presented to the British Sociological Association conference, April 2 Them. 1965. ‘Gloria’. The Angry Young Them. Decca LK4700 3 Smith, P. 1975. ‘Gloria’. Horses. Arista ARCD-8362 4 Daley, M. 1997. ‘Patti Smith’s Gloria: intertextual play in a vocal performance, Popular Music, 16:3, 235-53 5 See Bockris, V. 1998. Patti Smith (London) 6 Greer, G. 1970. The Female Eunuch (London) Millett, K. 1970. Sexual Politics (New York) Masters, W.H. & Johnson, V.E. 1966. Human Sexual Response (Boston) 7 Žižek, S. 1996. ‘“I hear you with my eyes”; or, The , invisible master’, in Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, ed. R. Salecl and S. Žižek (Durham NC, 1996), 90-126 (93) IASPM03 - MONTREAL Behind the Practices; Catching Up With Depeche Mode 101: Verite Very Tara Mimnagh the performance. I will also brieﬂy explore Depeche Mode in relation to Simon Frith’s levels of pop persona to map how the devotion functions. Documentary cinema has its inherent ﬂaws, but 101 approaches these problems directly producing a ﬁlm that reveals the seams and unromantic parts of the road and rock as a business. The ﬁlm captures the contradictions of the music business, touring in particular, and the musical that rub up against the material and mundane with similar excess. Fans chase the band allowing the connection and disconnection between them and the music become the focus of the ﬁlm. 101 exploits the road ﬁlm’s potential to show how the music meets the people in a clash of excess both transcendent and material. Introduction: The Rockumentary Released in 1988, the rockumentary Depeche Mode 101 captures the British synth pop pioneers at arguably one of the highest points in their career following the release of Music for the Masses. The ﬁlm, shot by legendary documentary ﬁlmmaker DA Pennebaker, David Dawkins and Chris Hedegus, constructs a narrative concerning fans selected to follow Depeche Mode on a section of their US tour culminating in their landmark concert at the Rose Bowl. These fans, selected presumably for their looks and dancing ability, compete with the band for the attention of the cameras throughout the ﬁlm. In contrast, in other concert ﬁlms of that era like U2: Rattle and Hum, and Madonna: Truth or Dare, the focus remains solely on the artist. First I will discuss the documentary and how it functions in a ﬂawed yet effective way throughout the ﬁlm in that it captures the façade of the rock spectacle. I will then describe how the superﬁcial aspects of the ﬁlm -- largely captured in terms of material excesses – are contrasted with the other major concern of the ﬁlm, the fans who bring the immaterial, or spiritual to Pennebaker is best known for his previous work with Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back (1967) and political documentaries like Primary (1960), and The War Room (1993). Direct Cinema observes the action of everyday life with little or no interference by the ﬁlmmakers in the form of questions, voice over, or staged events. Reality is supposed to reveal itself before the camera. The camera is unwavering in its attention, peering into its subjects to extract some sort of reality from them. 619 In the age of reality television, however, there is another perspective forced upon us regarding the camera’s ability to reveal reality. We must acknowledge that the camera cannot be forgotten as it is a tool of power, vision, and exhibition. The stage is set early in 101 when the ﬁlmmakers set out to select the American teenagers who will follow their heroes on tour. The camera will accompany them and not the band who is brieﬂy visited several times. The band is merely part of the giant touring spectacle. The approach in this ﬁlm is to let the circumstances of stardom and touring unfold themselves with the young followers supplying contrast to the cynical action. Rather than attempting to capture moments of vulnerability, the superﬁcial parts of the band, fans, and the touring machine that surrounds them are chosen in editing to underline the artiﬁcial aspects of the modern rock spectacle. What comes across is how a contrivance can betray the truth of contradictions and the uneasiness of how persona, business, and music interact. 101 is divided into three parts: the fans, the band backstage and the band on stage. The constructed narrative of the ﬁlm maps the attempt to cross these three entities. The backstage elements of the band including the ﬁnancial, the mundane, the obnoxious, and plain, begin to collapse the fantasy of the group’s persona. The ﬁlm’s direct cinema style lets the characters display themselves as they choose since the fallacy is that no truth can unfold while the camera is rolling because its presence mediates the reality in front of it. Artiﬁce is highlighted by the camera. The subjects do not forget that the camera is there – it is the act that both band and fans put on that is most revealing. In contrast to the other major road ﬁlm released in 1988, U2: Rattle and Hum, 101 is centred upon the false, rather than pretending it does not exist. Rattle and Hum does not address U2’s sudden stardom, or money, instead presenting the band as musicians on a strictly musical journey through America. In 101, however, money, bad personalities, and the game of the major tour are revealed in the play of the mundane, the ﬂashy, and the artiﬁcial. At this point in music there is no rock show that was naked in its ambition. This rockumentary shows that there is no use in looking back. We have plugged in and the guitar is an accessory. The road ﬁlm captures the star’s only contact with fans. 101 contrasts the fan’s devotion with the backstage ﬂaws of the tour machine. By admitting to artiﬁce, rather than trying to cover it with fake spontaneity Depeche Mode 101 reveals that what seems shallow at ﬁrst is truly meaningful, if not spiritual for the fans. This could not be revealed through strictly studying the group as they move through the United States. 620 Shake Your Money Maker of electronic music. What comes out in the ﬁlm is that beyond the keyboards and the tape machines there is a bigger machine of which the members are merely a part. These behind the scenes secrets that shatter the image of a band are committed to ﬁlm as these traits reveal themselves before the camera. The presence of the camera allows the material and economic realities to bubble up to the surface. These are elements that a proper rock music persona would not usually betray on camera. Direct Cinema is a ﬂawed mechanism for approaching any sort of centrality, core, or truth that in both academic and layman’s terms has been abandoned in the face or irony, postmodernism, (un) reality television, simulacra, simulation, and the virtual. But before the camera, the main tool of re-presentation and distortion, the artiﬁcial has no choice but to percolate to the surface. It is like the photograph that not only won’t hide your ﬂaws but also reveals the make up you used to attempt to cover up your spots. Depeche Mode: The music does matter [Clip: The band’s tour manager calculates how much money they have made on that night, concluding that they have made “a load of money, a lot of money”] And then the band breaks into “Everything Counts” – a song eschewing the wages of greed -- this is an example of how the ﬁlm refuses to gloss over the creepy cracks that fester between reality and persona, and the of the juxtapositions of music and stardom. Pennebaker was constantly amused by the spectacle of Depeche Mode blowing into town and, “shaking $500,000 to $1 million from eager pockets in one night, then moving along to do it again somewhere else” (Lowenthal-Swift 45). In an interview he compares them to buccaneers looting islands in the Caribbean because they would visit these towns in America where no one knew them except for their fans, take their money and move to the next town. Their moneymaking system was based on merchandising and the prerecorded tape device that eliminated the need for other musicians. In fact, Pennebaker tells in an interview and mercifully not in the ﬁlm, that one of the keyboards was not plugged in because a band member was such a poor musician (Rabin 2). Depeche Mode is a group born from and sustained on machines as is the nature Simon Frith, in his book Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (1996), discusses the layers of character found in pop music and musicians with which audiences engage. As these levels relate to Depeche Mode, it becomes clear that there is a slightly different kind of identiﬁcation between these 621 fans and this band than that between the fans and other pop or rock stars. Depeche Mode’s schema is distorted in such a way that it is at the same time open for identiﬁcation because it is so elusive, but also creates a distance because there is not one individual to identify with. Firstly, audiences engage with the star as the particular person they are believed to be, as revealed through his or her voice, or in Depeche Mode’s case, the sounds captured from the atmosphere and the utterances of their keyboards, and multiple voices since three of the band members sing. The persona is mediated by technology in a similar manner in which the camera can distort an image, or editing can produce a personality. The result is that identiﬁcation does not occur with a single object or imagined subject, but instead with a swirling mass of images and sounds and the audience is left to ﬁll in the spaces. In contrast, we can look to U2 where Bono tells you what he is feeling. It would be odd to hear Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan urge his audience to “Fuck the revolution” as Bono does in Rattle and Hum. Instead Gahan’s stage persona is boiled down to the “ooaha” that he utters three to four times per song. The next level of engagement occurs with the persona of the star as read from, their packaging and publicity (Frith 199). This includes the slick 1980’s music videos directed by Anton Corbjin that portray Depeche Mode as stoic Europeans forced to tackle modernity and machines in a stylish way. This aesthetic carries over into the staging of their concerts seen in the ﬁlm: larger than life, industrial coldness with dramatic lighting. At this level Depeche Mode are curious as well because they again are rarely presented as individuals, but rather as an army of modernists in leather with arty references and rare interviews. Again, identiﬁcation is located in image and ambivalence. Finally, audiences can engage with the protagonists of particular songs (Frith 199). Pop stars, like ﬁlm stars, take on different roles in songs, but retain “an essential personality that is common to all of them and is the basis of their popular appeal”(199). This is slightly complicated since Martin Gore writes the songs that singer and video protagonist, Dave Gahan performs. Also, Gore sings lead on some tracks as well. The protagonist is ambivalent leaving room for the audience to infer more widely about who is telling the story whether it is a lovesick puppy as in “Somebody”, or an S & M enthusiast in “Master and Servant”. The result is that the band as a unit, and not a single person, has a persona that the fans identify with through songs. The complicated issue of persona results in a difﬁcult subject to ﬁlm. This is not true for all bands. For instance groups like Marilyn Manson and INXS have a distinct front man who overshadows the rest of the band. Conversely, a band like the Beatles 622 can have distinct personas captured on ﬁlm and tape. Nothing can be revealed if there is no core or centre to traverse towards. That is, after all, the purpose of the rockumentary, to unlock the secrets of the performer, to discover what inspiration they channel, how realize how much like you they really are. It was Depeche Mode’s idea to hire Pennebaker and his crew to capture their largest tour to date. When he went to see them live he was as captivated by the spectacle of the live show as much as the money making mechanism. Pennebaker says, “It came over me that their audience only went to Depeche Mode concerts . . . they had this strange audience that was kind of like a Druid ceremony” (Rabin 1). The ﬁlmmakers are interested in the dynamic between the fans and the band and not the band and its music. In Film Comment at the time of ﬁlming Pennebaker said with an air of defence, “I don’t think its necessary to have the same spiritual ascendancy as Dylan to make an interesting ﬁlm . . . we’re not in the sixties. We’re in something different. We had all that anybody could handle. This is now.” (Lowenthal-Swift 44). What couldn’t be handled anymore? Spiritual ascendancy? The eighties were a time of excess: big money, big clothes, big hair, and big music and a superﬁcial engagement with things. Repeatedly in the ﬁlm the band enters each show to a tape. The repeated action becomes mundane because it is like any other job. Toys like mobile phones and personal jets are shown in the ﬁlm as part of the backdrop that betrays excess along with discussions of ﬁnance, tshirt, and ticket sales. Perhaps the material comes at the sacriﬁce of the spiritual, or the transcendent which can be deﬁned as a rejection of the material or even corporeal in favour of what goes beyond the individual body. Ascendancy seeks to leave behind the individual body and to eliminate the gulf between self and object, or other. So objects and material objects lose their value at the expense of transgressing the border of the person. The ﬁlm does not simply give in to the material, by showing instances of excess in the road ﬁlm; contradictions are exposed rather than covered over. What is revealed is that despite the artiﬁcial façade of the multi million-dollar pop music spectacle, the transcendent still peeks through. [Show clip: 28:05: A concert scene where a young girl is loudly singing, screaming and crying as Depeche Mode play “Blasphemous Rumours”]. I would argue that they captured this girl in order to demonstrate the clash of material and spiritual excess though the fans, and not the band. This girl has lost herself in this moment: she clearly has no regard for those around her, or the sound of her voice. This is a relationship between the music and her. She exceeds the material in terms of her own subjectivity and the tour machine. 623 They Can See Us There is a moment in the ﬁlm where the camera is confronted and there is a collision between the camera, reality, and artiﬁce. [Show clip: 1:44:43]. Alan Wilder feels the camera on him and breaks the façade brieﬂy between star who is performing and camera that implies an uncrossable distance. When he looks at us he is really looking at the camera as if to say, I know that you are there, and I do know that this is not real, this is a sham, but isn’t it fun? And if that is not what rock is then what is it? This look breaks down the barrier by acknowledging it and the space that exists between star and audience as created by the camera. It is this space that the ﬁlm tries to map. By presenting it as gap or gulf that cannot be breached the alternating excesses of material and mechanical are set beside the humane in the form of music and the spirit. This gap cannot be represented or captured on camera and so it is presented in the form of juxtaposition and contradiction. The documentary ﬁlm is successful in that in its faults there is a shards of indication towards a statement. The ﬁlm is fascinated with the expression of the superﬁcial as an indicator of the state of popular music and the mega tour machine. The device reveals itself effortlessly. The audience does not get what they want – their heroes are not caught, but their ﬂaws are shown and they are revealed to be a cog in the machine and not behind the wheel. By revealing the seams and strings of money, the unsexy people that work for the band, and backstage anxiety, Depeche Mode are reduced from mysterious superstars to strangers in a strange land no more aware of their surroundings than their young fans. However, the fans are never able to reach the band. There is an extended sequence where the kids on the bus get lost and are unable to reach the band, which highlights the distance between them. In only one scene do the fans encounter band members when Alan Wilder and Andrew Fletcher visit their tour bus. It would seem as if an encounter between the fans and the band would be a very fulﬁlling event to capture for the devoted, but if this did occur it was omitted from the ﬁlm. Even when the kids do get to go see the band in concert and in rehearsal, they do not even occur in the same shot together. The distance created between the fans and the band is underlined. We are shown the backstage passes that will not be successful, the money counted from t-shirt sales -- clearly the fans are part of the machine as well, but they have an illusion surrounding them. The fans and their inability to reach the band mimic the inability of the crew to capture the nothing behind the band. By not having them appear together there is a parallel and not a connection drawn between the two aspects of the ﬁlm. 624 Selected Bibliography Depeche Mode 101. Dir. D.A Pennebaker et al. Perf. Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andrew Fletcher, Alan Wilder. Warner Reprise Video, 1989. Frith, Simon. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Lowenthal-Swift, Lauren. “Pennebaker: D.A Makes ‘em Dance”. Film Comment. Vol. 24. (1988): pp. 44-48. Rabin, Nathan. “D.A Pennebaker”. The Onion A.V Club. 14 May 1998. Onion Inc. 5 May 2003. <http://www.theavclub.com/avclub3318/avfeature3318 .html>. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Liminal Sounds and Images: Transnational Chinese Popular Music Tony Mitchell L iminal Sounds and Images explores different notions and manifestations of liminality or liminality, hybridity and syncretism can be detected in the transnational, intra-Asian cultural ﬂows of popular music genres and inﬂuences between the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Tibet. They also operate between Chinese forms of popular music and the Western forms of popular music that genres such as Cantopop, Cantorock and Mandapop derive from, between the industrial, ideological and generic divide between ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ popular music, between similarly established oppositions between rock ‘inbetwenness’, transition, hybridity and syncretism in popular music in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kjong and Taiwan. The term ‘liminal’ (from the Latin limen, threshold) was appropriated by anthropologist Victor W. Turner from Arnold van Gennep and applied to his studies of rites of passage. In his book The Ritual Process Turner states: the attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (‘threshold people’) are necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classiﬁcations that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualise social and cultural transitions (1969:95). music and pop music, and rock music and rap and hip hop, and between cinema and pop music (especially in Hong Kong where many prominent ﬁlm actors are also Cantopop stars). Liminality in transnational Chinese popular music also exists between traditional masculine and feminine gender roles, and gay and straight audiences for pop music, between local and global formations, genres and styles of music, and related notions of home and the world, as well as between live performance and the various forms of musical simulation in ﬁlm, music video and on the internet, which include virtual pop stars. Hong Kong director Peter Chan’s acclaimed ﬁlm Manifestations of similar kinds of border-crossing Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1997) ends with the 626 two mainland Chinese migrant ‘comrades’ of the title, Li Qiao and Xioajun (played by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung), meeting by chance, after being separated for 10 years, in front of the window of a New York department store. On multiple TV screens an obituary is showing of the Taiwanese Mandapop singer Teresa Teng, who died in Thailand after an asthma attack on May 8, 1995, and a medley of her songs plays, including ‘Tian mimi’ (Sweet Love), which is also the ﬁlm’s original Chinese title. As Gina Marchetti has commented, ‘Teng, as a dead pop icon on a collection of ﬂickering screens, stands in for the characters’ lives and emotions, their “almost” love story’ (2000: 311). Teng was immensely popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970s, but only became popular in the PRC in the 1980s after the Cultural Revolution, as the PRC government had denounced her love songs as examples of ‘pornography’ and ‘decadence’. But as the voice-over in the news broadcast states: ‘Wherever there are Chinese people, you will hear the songs of Teresa Teng’. Sheldon H. Lu has observed of the ending of Comrades, ‘It is the popular, deterritorialised, pan-Chinese songs of a Taiwanese singer more than the national anthem that unite ethnic Chinese and Hong Kongers into some sense of communal bonding’ (2000:273). In his commentary on the ﬁlm, Kwai-cheung Lo suggests that Teresa Teng’s music’s ‘primary function is to narrate and reinvent a ﬂuid and multiple trans-Chinese identity of social migration and transcultural production’ (2000:273) which serves to establish the inseparability of the local and the transnational in contemporary Hong Kong cinema. Being a fan of Teresa Tang, rather than being an embarrassing marker of mainland Chinese identity, becomes emblematic of a ﬂuid, transnational and local Chinese diasporic identity. Comrades provides a telling illustration of the enormous popularity which Cantopop (and its Mandarin language cousin Mandapop) has commanded throughout the Chinese diaspora, and evidence of what Geremie R. Barmé has referred to as the emergence of a ‘Chinese commonwealth’ since the late 1970s, in which nonmainland Chinese ﬁlms and popular music were appropriated and appreciated in the PRC (1999:125). In the 1990s there was a reverse trend in which Putonghua (Mandarin) language pop music has taken root in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Teresa Teng’s pan-Chinese musical constituency in Taiwan, the PRC and Hong Kong, as well as in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and even Vietnam, also illustrates that even the most mainstream, conservative and conventional forms of popular music can still be appreciated in ‘resistant‘ contexts, as well as overcoming and even resolving conﬂicts in taste between different societies where one Chinese notion of ‘pornography’ and ‘decadence’ can be another’s ‘soporiﬁc sentimentality’ (Jaivin 2001:5). 627 Limal Sounds and Images explores some of the transnational musical legacies of Teresa Teng in the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and by extension, elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora. Part One deals with some of the liminal aspects of recent rock and pop music in mainland China, and begins with a survey of the post-millennial ‘postmodern turn’ in Chinese popular music, which combines elements of both rock and pop, as manifested in what has become known as the ‘new sound movement’. The ﬁrst chapter is by Jeroen de Kloet, whose PhD thesis from the University of Amsterdam, Red Sonic Trajectories (2001) is one of only three existing comprehensive studies of recent mainland Chinese popular music (which include Jones’ book and a study in German by Andreas Steen). De Kloet points out that the notions of authenticy and opposition that were attached to Chinese rock music from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s have given way to much more ambivalent and less militant musical forms of expression. Andrew Jones was able to argue in 1992 that ‘Chinese popular music is less a mere adjunct to leisure than a battleﬁeld on which ideological struggle is waged … Rock musicians, operating outside the strictures of “mainstream” popular music, have yoked their music to the service of an oppositional ideology of individualism and anti-feudalism’ (1992:3). But with the turn of the millennium, this oppositional ideology in rock music - celebrated in Mabel Cheung’s 2002 ﬁlm Beijing Rocks, in which a Hong Kong Cantopop singer attempts to get in touch with the radical roots of the Beijing rock movement and embue his music with social signiﬁcance and a sense of urgency - has given way to far less militant and pop-oriented (and arguably more directly Westernised) musical expressions where leisure becomes more prominent. David Stokes, who has completed a PhD on contemporary Chinese popular music at the University of Melbourne, based on extensive work interviewing pop and rock music fans in the PRC, follows this with an analysis of the popular music press in the PRC. He discusses how it contributes to a ‘reconstruction of rock mythology’ which attributes serious cultural value to rock music and links it to the more indigenous genres of Taiwanese campus songs of the early 1980s and the ‘west wind’ songs of the late 1980s. But unlike Western academic and journalistic representations of Cui Jian’s music, this local reconstruction of rock music is not necessarily ideological or oppositional in form. Part Two shifts to Hong Kong, where Cantopop and Mandapop represent, in J. Laurence Witzeleben’s expression, ‘a border-crossing and dialect-crossing popular music culture, which is an explicitly Hong Kong adaptation of a primarily Western musical language, with a growing pan-Chinese component’ (Witzleben 2001). Apart from Witzleben’s work on Cantopop, the 628 music in the Hong Kong handover ceremonies and the Cantopop vamp and actress Anita Mui (1998, 1999, 2001), and Joanna Lee’s pioneering work (1992a, 1992b), there is still very little informed academic analysis of Cantopop and Mandopop in English (but see Wai-Ching Ho, 2000, 2003, and Liew Kai Khiun, 2003). One notable exception is John Erni’s 1998 article ‘Like A Culture: Notes on Pop Music and Popular Sensibility in Decolonized Hong Kong’, published in the now defunct Hong Kong Cultural Studies Bulletin. In the process of celebrating the ‘unoriginality and repetitiveness’ of Cantopop, Erni argues eloquently and persuasively that its syncretic, recombinative ﬂow represents a vitally important aspect of Hong Hong’s complex cultural self-identity: contradictory colonial experience ﬁnds its own expression (1998:60). Erni also argues that at the same time as its local manifestations provide an important cultural selfreferent, its global dispersal constitutes a transnational, pan-Asian musical process of identiﬁcation which travels throughout various Chinese diasporas: [C]antopop sings its way into a multi-million industry, but more importantly, into the fabric of popular lives in the territory, in neighbouring Asian countries, and across every Chinatown around the world, through a formula that works to maintain that sense of movement and ﬂow … At the various levels of its lyrics, genres, musical style, use of personas and images in music videos, and modes of transnational circulation, Cantopop learns to stay on the surface and thus contributes to a general expression of the unique brand of cultural belongingness lived out by the people of Hong Kong, as well as those who live in other overseas locales around the globe (Ibid:60). One result of this diasporic process is that Hong Kong pop stars such as Faye Wong, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung and Anita Mui have been able to give sell-out In its synthesiser-driven musical expressivity, in its hybrid cultural quotations from Japanese popular music to Madonna to even rap, in its unsentimental sentimentality of love found and love lost, in its lyrical inﬂections toward the vernacular and the street-level local, in its endless recycling and re-musicalising of popular teahouse tunes from old Shanghai or pre-war Kwangtung, and above all, in its playful glamorisation of a decadent and Westernised Chineseness, Cantopop has enabled a cultural surface upon which Hong Kong’s uniquely 629 concerts in large Australian venues such as the Sydney Entertainment Centre and the Melbourne Vodafone Arena to the transnational Chinese communities of Melbourne and Sydney, without their presence in the country even being noticed by the dominant AngloAustralian community. Algerian rai and Mexican mariachi being just three of many other possible examples) which have become key features in diasporic expatriate identity formation throughout the world. Erni ends his reﬂections with a song which he offers as a ‘cultural billboard’ (62) or paradigm of Cantopop, Jacky Cheung’s theme song for a Hong Kong television series, ’Unending Erni’s valorisation of Cantopop in both local and global diasporic contexts offers an impassioned justiﬁcation of its importance in a popular politics of everyday life in Hong Konga and throughout Southeast Asia. He goes on to identify a certain ‘so whatness’ in Cantopop’s refusal to concern itself with anxieties of authenticity and local idendity in an expression of ‘a vernacular …aesthetic that espouses an indifference toward the struggle for roots, homes, inheritances, or cultural boundaries’ (61). Cantopop nonetheless, he suggests, succeeds better than terms like postcolonialism and new nationalism in capturing ‘the permanent inbetweenness of our existence and our desire’ (62). This is due to three prominent and prevalent features: its lack of concern with differentiating the original from the copy, its commitment to ‘endless repetition and recombinance’ (60) and its ready combination with karaoke as a means of representing ‘the cultural condition of surface belongingness’ (61). Cantopop’s expression of ‘inbetweenness’ connects it to numerous other local musical idioms (Bollywood ﬁlm music, Flow’. This he interprets as an image of the masses undergoing historical change, an expression of the need for perseverence in life, and an evocation of the Chinese symbolism inherent in a river, signifying life and prosperity, as well as a metaphor for mainstream popular culture. But drawing on work by Joanna Lee (1992a), he also demonstrates that Cantopop, despite having been widely perceived as a bland, commerical mainstream pop idiom, can also be mobilised to express oppositional musical statements of resistance, dissent and political solidarity with post-Tienanmen dissidents in the PRC. Part Two of Liminal Sounds and Images builds on the foundations of Erni’s eloquent advocacy of Cantopop, as well as Lee and Witzleben’s work on the subject, beginning with a chapter by Witzleben which examines the two-direcional intertextuality between videos and performances of songs by Cantopop singers such as Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung and Faye Wong, and ﬁlm songs expressed through a device he calls ‘cinematic music 630 video’ which conjures up actors’ alter egos as singers in ﬁlms, which are then often recontextualised as music videos or reconstituted in live performance. John Erni then explores both visual and sonic representations of gender in Cantopop performances and how they relate to how gender is understood in the context of what he perceives as a prevailing indifference in everyday life in Hong Kong. I then look at the musical output of Faye Wong, the ‘empress’ of Cantopop and Mandapop, who has been described by Anthony Fung as the ‘reigning diva of Chinese pop music’ (2002:264). Known in the West mainly for her role in Wong-kar Wai’s 1995 ﬁlm Chungking Express, which included a ‘cinematic music video’ performance of a Cantonese version of the Irish group the Cranberries’ song ‘Dreams’, Wong is gradually amassing a signiﬁcant body of Western fans, known generically as ‘Fayenatics’, despite rarely performing songs in English. This chapter examines her reconstructions of Western pop songs by artists such as Tori Amos, the Sundays and the Cocteau Twins, and the inﬂuence on her of the Icelandic pop artist Bjork, and how her liminality extends to an ‘inbetween’ state between mainstream and alternative pop music which has led one critic to invent the term ‘Fayestream’. It also explores the inbetweeness of her career as an actress in ﬁlm and television in Hong Kong and Japan, her origins in Beijing which she remains committed to despite being based in Hong Kong, and her appeal to gay as well as straight audiences throughout the Chinese diaspora, and especially in Taiwan. Anthony Fung then analyses the career of another cantopop diva, Sammi Cheng, and the way in which she challenges conventional gender roles through her embodiment of an androgynous persona in her performances, which have impacted on both gender politics in Hong Kong and gay subcultures in the Chinese diaspora. He also examines her songs, many of which advocate a strong feminist perspective of female independence. Chan Ka Yan, recently completed an M Phil thesis at the Chinese University of Hong Kong based on participant observation with the pioneering Hong Kong hip hop group LMF, or ‘Lazymuthafucka’, a loose collective of rappers and DJs who emerged in 1999 from three thrash metal bands, to produce an expletive-ridden hardcore rap syncretism which combining a Cantonese opera inﬂuence with hip hop. LMF quickly established themselves as virtually the sole representatives of Cantorap, claiming that ‘through hip hop, we are trying to ﬁnd out who we are, what we are. That’s what black people in American did’ (Howe 2000). Like Da Crew and other recent hip hop posses in Korea, LMF have indigenised the global identity politics of rap into Asia and created what their DJ Tommy dubbed ‘chopstick hip hop’. Their second album sold 70,000 copies and in the process they have moved increasingly toward the Cantopop mainstream, which suggests that this 631 mainstream may not necessarily be as ‘middle of the road’ as it may seem, and is capable of incorporating alternative musical ﬁgures into its ﬂow. Following on from two theoretical articles about LMF by Eric Ma (2002 a, b), Chan analyses LMF in terms of their participation in a hip hop subculture in Hong Kong, and their incorporation of notions of subcultural ‘resistance’ and ‘authenticity’ into mainstream culture. Liew Kai Khiun will then consider diasporic Chinese hip hop in Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien in the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, which, largely inspired by LMF, has developed into a redoutable force in the late 1990s. Southeast Asia and in the West, and gives strong expression to notions of ‘Taiwaneseness’. Fellow Australian Fran Martin from Monash University then considers the ‘inbetween’ world of Sandee Chan, a Taiwanese Mandapop singer who has become a gay icon (or ‘dykon’) amongst lesbian communities while continuing to appeal to ‘straight’ audiences in Taiwan with her decidedly feminist songs and persona. Chan is analysed in the context of the alternative folk rock pub scene in Taiwan in the 1990s, the independent label Rock Records, and the all-girl rock group Ladybug. Finally, Zero Yiu from Hong Kong Baptist University examines the liminal virtual world of Gan-Giao-Long, a Taiwanese ‘singing comic strip character’ who produces Part Three looks at different manifestations of liminal forms of popular music in Taiwan, whose popular music output includes not only Teresa Tang but also the fascinatingly liminal ﬁgure of Hou Deijian, the dissident rock singer who defected to the PRC in 1983, became involved in the Tienanmen Square demonstrations in 1989, sought refuge in the Australian embassy in Beijing, and was unceremoniously deported back to Taiwan in 1990 (Jaivin 2001). This section begins with Jeremy Taylor’s analysis of Hokkien language songs about ‘home’ and how they mobilise local and international cultural ﬂows. Inﬂuenced by Japanese enka, this paradoxically insular musical genre appeals to a wide diaspora of Hokkien spoeakers throughout music on the internet which comments directly on social and political issues in Taiwan, and exempliﬁes the increasingly interactive and performative use of the internet in Asian pop music. This began with the creation of virtual pop stars in Japan in the mid 1990s, as reﬂected in William Gibson’s 1996 futuristic cyberpunk sci-ﬁ novel Idoru, set in 21st century Tokyo, about the pursuit of a holographic ‘idol singer’ called Rei Toei., a personality-construct, a congeries of software agents, the creation of information-designers, akin to … a “synthespian”, in Hollywood’ (92). For Gibson, the virtual phenomenon of Rei Toei , already a reality at the time in Japan, embodied the idea that ‘popular culture … is the testbed of our futurity’(238). The anime-like 632 pop star Gan-Gao-Long can be regarded as a ﬁctional heir of Rei Toei, and suggests that such musical manifestations of pop culture ‘futurity’ may be more likely to be constructed in Asia than in the West. prevented the ‘crossover’ of Chinese pop stars and rock musicians into the Western music industry. This is despite the success of ‘World Music’, a ‘global’ popular music genre which allows for songs in languages other than English, but which tends to establish a Eurocentric In his introduction to Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu argues that ‘Transnational cinema in the Chinese case as well as in the cinema of the world is the result of the globalisation of the mechanisms of ﬁlm production, distribution and consumption. The transformations in the world ﬁlm industry call into question the notion of “national cinema” and complicate the notion of “nationhood” in ﬁlmic discourse’ (1997:3). This is also applicable to transnational Chinese popular music, with the major difference that Cantopop, Mandapop and other pan-Chinese musical genres have not been globalised to the extent that Chinese cinema has, due to the continuing insistence of the ‘global’ (or predominantly Anglo-American) popular music industry on English language. While this means that a singer like Coco Lee can enjoy some success in the West on the back of the runaway success of Ang Lee’s ﬁlm Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), this relies on her singing and recording in English. Unlike ﬁlms, songs cannot be re-presented globally with English subtitles, and the language barriers that singing in Cantonese and Mandarin offer to the Western listener have and often neo-colonial hegemony of traditional, authentic, indigenous non-Western musics of the third world which has no place for more popular genres or for Asian music that is non-traditional (see Mitchell 1996:49-94; Taylor 1997 16-17). The 1994 edition of World Music; The Rough Guide, for example, contains a brief section on traditional Chinese music (Broughton 1994:452-457) and even a page and a half on Cui Jian and Chinese rock music, but the only reference to Hong Kong popular music derides it as ‘schmatlzy Hong Kong pop’ (1994:452). Even Joanna Lee’s brief contribution on Cantopop in the 2001 edition of The Rough Guide could be regarded as highly perfunctory, given the huge market it commands throughout the Chinese diaspora. This makes the necessity for a book such as Liminal Sounds and Images all the more evident, given the widespread incomprehensibility and inaccessibility of the music it analyses to most Western audiences. 633 Cultural Studies vol. 5, no.3, September, 263-290. Selected Bibliography Geremie Barmé. (1999) In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. William Gibson. (1996) Idoru, London: Viking. Kenneth Howe (2000) ‘New ground Zero for Rap’, South China Morning Post, 14 May. Tim Brace and Paul Friedlander (1992) ‘Rock and Roll on the New Long March:Popular Music, Cultural identity, and political Opposition in the people’s republic of China’, in Reebee Garofalo (ed.) Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, Boston:South End Press. Wai-chung Ho. (2000) ‘The political meaning of Hong Kong popular music: a review of sociopolitical relations Simon Broughton et al (1994) World Music; The Rough Guide, London: The Rough Guides. between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China since the 1980s’, in Popular Music v19n3, October, 341-353. Jeroen de Kloet (2001) Red Sonic Trajectories: Popular Music and Youth in Urban China, Amsterdam: School for Social science Resaerch. Linda Jaivin. (2001) The Monkey and the Dragon. Melbourne: Text Publishing. Wai-Ching Ho. (2003) ‘Between globalisation and localisation: a study of Hong Kong popular music’, Popular Music vol.22, no.2, 143-157. John Erni. (1998) ‘Like A Culture: Notes on Pop Music and popular Sensibility in decolonized Hong Kong’, Hong Kong Cultural Studies Bulletin no.8-9, Spring/ Summer, 55-63. Andrew F..Jones (1992) Like A Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music, Ithaca, NY:Cornell University East Asia Series. Liew Kai Khiun. (2003) ‘Limited pidgin-type patois? Anthony Fung and Michael Curtin (2002) ‘The Anomalies of being Faye (Wong): Gender Politics in Chinese Popular Music’, International Journal of Policy, language, technology, identity and the experience of Canto-pop in Singapore’, Popular Music vol. 22 no.2, 217-233. 634 Joanna Ching-Yun Lee. (1992a) ‘All for Freedom: The Rise of Patriotic/Pro-Democratic Popular Music in Hong Kong in Response to the Chinese Student Movement’, in Garofalo, op. cit. Gina Marchetti. (2000) ‘Buying American, Consuming Hong Kong: Cultural Commerce, Fantasies of Identity, and the Cinema’, in Fu and Desser, op. cit., 289-313. Tony Mitchell (1996) Popular Muaic and Local Identity: Joanna Ching-Yun Lee. (1992b) ‘Cantopop on Emigration from Hong Kong’, in Yearbook for Traditional Music, v24, 14-23. Andreas Steen (1996) Der Lange Marsch Des Rock ‘n’ Kwai-chung Lo (2000) ‘Transnationalization of the Local in Hong Kong Cinema of the 1990s’, in Esther C.M.Yau (ed.) At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, London, University of Minnesota Press, 261-276. Timothy Taylor (1997) Global Pop:World Music, World Markets, NY:Routledge. Roll: Pop Und Rockmusik in Der Volkesrepublic China, Berliner China-studien, no. 32, Hamburg:Lit Verlag. Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania, London: University of Leicester Press. Sheldon H. Lu. (2000) ‘Filming Diaspora and Identity: Hong Kong and 1997’, in Poshek Fu and David Desser, The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, Cambridge University Press, 273-288. Victor. W. Turner (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago:Aldine Publishing Company. J. Lawrence Witzelben. (2001) ‘Film Songs, Film Eric Kit-wai Ma (2002a) ‘Emotional Energy and Subcultural Politics: The Case of Alternative Bands in Post97 Hong Kong, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 3 no.2, 187-200. Singers, and Intertextuality in Hong Kong Popular Song: Some Preliminary Observations’, in Peter Doyle and Tony Mitchell (eds) Changing Sounds: New Directions and Conﬁgurations in Popular Music, University of Technology, Sydney, 416-417. Eric Kit-wai Ma (2002b) ‘Translocal Spatiality’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol.5, no.2, 131-152. J. Lawrence Witzelben. (1999) ‘Cantopop and Mandapop in pre-postcolonial Hong Kong: identity 635 negotiation in the performances of Anita Mui Yim-fong’, Popular Music v18 n2, 241-157 . J. Lawrence Witzelben. (1998) ‘Localism, nationalism, and transnationalism in pre-postcolonial Hong Kong popular song’, in Toru Mitsui (ed) Popular Music: Intercultural Interpretations, Graduate program in Music, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan, 469475. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Queering the Pitch: A Historical and Political Comment Martha Mockus American political machine seemed untenable and unethical. Emboldened by the emergent work of queer studies, I was compelled to write about appropriation and resistance without apology. I was honored to contribute to a collective project of queer resistance and celebration, a project willing to take a stand on the necessity of politically progressive and committed scholarship. I am still honored, and humbled, to be part of this conversation today. What strikes me now, nearly ten years after its publication, is the range of issues and debates raised by QtP and how active they continue to be in various branches of music and queer scholarship. The ﬁrst is how “queer” was conceptualized and the ways it sought to challenge various disciplinary paradigms. In musicology in the early 1990s, QtP produced revolutionary intellectual, methodological, and epistemological interventions. At the same time, the newer ﬁeld of queer studies concerned itself mainly with the social construction of queer subjectivities in modernity, postmodernity, patriarchy, local cultural contexts, etc. (but rarely capitalism or class struggle). This body of work was, and remains, dominated by scholars in history, literature, and ﬁlm, and therefore did not consider the role of music as a social force that Introduction W hen I got involved with Queering the Pitch (QtP) I was a very young graduate student in a cultural studies program working on queer and feminist issues about music from perspectives that were unwelcome in musicology. I wanted to address both the gender bias and the heterosexual bias in popular music studies. I was also interested in questions of how and why country music had a sizable queer audience: what was at stake in the intersection between the culture of country & western and the lives of its queer participants? what kinds of cultural needs were being met, for whom, and what were their political implications? k.d. lang was a visible and accessible case study for examining those questions at that particular time. The intellectual freedom I sensed then in the early 1990s was thoroughly contradicted by the larger political landscape of the United States. I was incredibly outraged at how much real damage the Reagan-Bush regime had inﬂicted on so many marginalized groups, including queer people, in and out of the university. Bill Clinton had not yet been elected president; hope and optimism were squarely out of reach. To ignore the devastating effects of the 637 constructs heteronormativity and, more importantly, resistant queer sexualities. QtP expanded queer very rare indeed in queer music studies. Who and what counts as “queer” needs to expand beyond “gay and lesbian.” For example, I think that future work on queer vocality and the sexual politics of the singing voice— especially the castrato, the sopranist, the sapphonic mezzo, voices that cross conventional boundaries of gender—would beneﬁt tremendously from transgender and transsexual scholarship that works (on conceptual and material levels) to further denaturalize sex, gender, and sexuality as well as their relationships to one another. In particular, work by Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Jay Prosser, and Susan Stryker would surely facilitate transgender re-theorizations of music and voice. Second, QtP failed to include work by or about queer people of color, and this failure, perhaps unwittingly, played into the perception of Queer studies by identifying music as a central “technology of desire.” Thus, the disciplinary interventions of QtP were twofold: a queer intervention in music studies, and a musical intervention in queer studies. In both contexts, the “queer” of QtP functions as a verb, transforming old ways of thinking in favor of asking and exploring different questions about music-making and music scholarship. Secondly, “queer” also functions as a noun to address the question of who we are: queer as an umbrella term of coalition connects “gay and lesbian” to one another, linking the two terms politically in a co-gender collaboration—the ﬁrst of its kind in music scholarship. Critique However, the “queer” of QtP remains problematic, and my brief critique is offered in full solidarity with the overall aims of the anthology and each of its contributors. For the problems I outline here, I hold myself accountable as well. First, as an umbrella term “queer” means much more than “lesbian and gay.” QtP does not include work addressing bisexual, transsexual or transgender issues, all of which are taken as relevant and important in the larger ﬁeld of queer studies (1). Even today, bisexual and transgender work remain Studies in general as a white-dominated project. Groundbreaking work from the late 1980s by Angela Davis on music and social consciousness; Hazel Carby on theorizing the sexual politics of the blues and the queer-friendly women who sang them; Eric Garber’s work that historicizes queer features of Jazz Age Harlem and Anthony Thomas’s work on house music certainly would have strengthened and complicated many of the arguments in QtP in productive ways. Thankfully, more recent queer analyses of disco and house music manage to take race and ethnicity more 638 seriously (Currid, Hajdu, Hubbs, Krasnow, Mitchell). In QtP, the lack of attention to race is compounded by a parallel lack of attention to class, particularly working class struggle and its overlap with queer struggle, not only on local levels but also largerscale attempts to theorize the political economy of sexuality. This brings me to the third point in my critique: the overly limited notion of “queer” as a white, middle class, gay or lesbian subject, derives from the nearexclusive reliance on postmodern and poststructural queer theory offered by Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, Sedgwick, Butler, and others. This is not in itself a bad thing. Certainly in the discipline of musicology, poststructural and postmodern ways of thinking allowed for new liberatory paradigms of criticism and analysis that, as Philip, Liz and Gary state in their preface, “incorporate our selves as subjects in our work, including those parts of ourselves that have been kept invisible and thought unacceptable and unspeakable, both by ourselves and others” (viii). I agree with this. However, scholars in other ﬁelds like women’s studies and feminist theory have long insisted on the notion of intersectionality--a mode of analysis committed to simultaneous forms of oppression that enables critiques of queer sexualities as they intertwine with race and class. Pioneers in queer-feminist intersectionality are Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Dorothy Allison, Adrienne Rich, Richard Fung, Isaac Julien (to name just a few). Their work encompasses a wide range of queer issues, but for my purposes here today, I am mostly concerned with their consistent attention to how race and class intertwine with sexuality. Unfortunately, their ideas do not form a substantial voice in how “queerness” itself is conceptualized in queer music studies. Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, Sedgwick, et al., are the dominant voices, not only in QtP but in much subsequent work. I am disturbed by the lack of critique of white bourgeois queer theory upon which so much work in music has relied (both art and popular music). In their Preface, Philip, Liz and Gary write that the contributors to QtP “cull from a postmodernist vocabulary of violation, disruption, decentering, and dislocation [,] new terms and different interpretive strategies, speculations, impressions and improvisations, which we can bring not only to our study of musical works and their production, but also to musical education, biography and history” (ix). The speciﬁcally postmodern energy is QtP’s greatest innovation and its greatest weakness. (I have to ask: which queer theories are utilized and whose interests are served?) This was not at all unique to QtP: in queer studies generally, in the rush to theorize queer identities and subjectivities, the political economy of sexuality was neglected. This is largely because the discursive features of music and sexuality were privileged over the economic. The dominant themes of queer identity, performativity, 639 pleasure, consumption, and diversity are regularly explored in popular music studies—sometimes with great nuance and sophistication--and yet those same themes have addressed a very speciﬁc and privileged group of queers and have not acknowledged the systematic operations of capitalism (Hennessy 273). In the mid-1990s, marxist and marxist feminist scholars launched vigorous critiques of the dangers of what they termed “ludic queer theory”—queer theory that ignored and even opposed class struggle as part of its agenda. Theorists such as Donald Morton, Rosemary Hennessy, Teresa Ebert and Nicola Field, to name a few, are all deeply concerned about the loss of class analysis in queer studies and I share their concern. As Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out in her 1976 essay on socialist feminism, “Class struggle occurs in every arena where the interests of classes conﬂict, and that includes education, health, art, music, etc. We aim to transform not only the ownership of the means of production, but the totality of social existence” (68). I would like to see future work in queer music studies strive for greater inclusiveness and widen its circle of solidarity. More speciﬁcally, I advocate a more conscientious theoretical grounding of “queer”—both as an umbrella term and its particular incarnations: bisexual, transgender, lesbian, gay, and S/M. We need to radically reconceptualize “queer” so as to connect queer identities/experiences/musical practices to race and class struggle. This has always been necessary, but it is especially so now in the U.S. where unemployment rates soar at an all time high, the labor movement is more fragile (workers are increasingly pitted against one another), racial and ethnic groups are more diverse and numerous than ever, and struggles of working class queer people are systematically ignored. Not all is lost. Excellent theoretical work by Lorde, Moraga, Hennessy, Morton (and many others; some of this was not available 10 years ago) engages the class issues at stake in queer theory and will enable us to restore greater attention to race, class, and the political economy of sexuality. 640 Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster. Bloomington: Indiana Endnotes (1) Todd Borgerding’s review of QtP in the GLSG Newsletter (March 1995) identiﬁes the absence of bisexuality as a signiﬁcant problem. Borgerding tries to connect this book, the GLSG, and queer activism in North America—a notable attempt to understand both the political context (history) and agenda (future) of QtP. University Press, 1995. 165-96. Davis, Angela Y. “Art on the Frontline: Mandate for a People’s Culture.” Women, Culture & Politics. New York: Vintage, 1990. 198-218. Ebert, Teresa. Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Selected Bibliography Ehrenreich, Barbara. “What Is Socialist Feminism?” Allison, Dorothy. Trash. Ithaca: Firebrand, 1988. Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. Ed. Rosemary Hennessy and _____. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature. Ithaca: Firebrand, 1994. Chrys Ingraham. New York: Routledge, 1997. 6570. Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Vintage, 1995. Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Carby, Hazel. “It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues,” Radical America 20/4 (June-July 1986). Field, Nicola. Over the Rainbow: Money, Class and Homophobia. London: Pluto Press, 1995. Currid, Brian. “‘We Are Family’: House Music and Queer Performativity.” Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Fung, Richard. “Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn.” How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video. Ed. Bad Object-Choices. Seattle: Bay Press, 1991. 145-60. 641 Garber, Eric. “A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem.” Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Ed. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. New York: Penguin Books, 1989. 318-31. Krasnow, Carolyn. “Fear and Loathing in the 70s: Race, Sexuality, and Disco,” Stanford Humanities Review 3/2 (Fall 1993): 37-45. Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984. Gluckman, Amy, and Betsy Reed, eds. Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life. New York: Routledge, 1997. Mitchell, Carmen. “Artistic Pretenders and Musical Provocateurs: House Divas, Gay Men, and Club Culture,” GLSG Newsletter 10/1 (Spring 2000): 6-8. Hajdu, David. Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. New York: North Point Press, 1996. Moraga, Cherrie. The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry. Boston: South End Press, 1993. Hennessy, Rosemary. Proﬁt and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. New York: Routledge, 2000. Morton, Donald. “The Politics of Queer Theory in the (Post)Modern Moment,” Genders 17 (Fall 1993): 12149. _____. “Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture,” Cultural Critique 29 (Winter 1994-95): 31-76. _____. “The Class Politics of Queer Theory,” College English 58 (1996): 471-82. Hubbs, Nadine. “I Will Survive: Musical Mappings of Queer Social Space in the 1970s Disco Anthem.” Unpublished manuscript. Prosser, Jay. Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Julien, Isaac, dir., Looking for Langston. Sankofa Film and Video: 1989. Rich, Adrienne. “Disloyal to Civilization: Feminism, Racism, Gynephobia.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. _____. Young Soul Rebels. British Film Institute, 1991. New York: Norton, 1979. 275-310. 642 Thomas, Anthony. “The House the Kids Built: The Gay Black Imprint on American Dance Music” Out/ Look 5 (Summer 1989): 24-33. Stryker, Susan. “The Transgender Issue: An Introduction,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4/2 (1998): 145-58. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Skill, Music, and Energy in Punk Performance Eugene Montague is parodied in three short, and not too skilful, solos, and then both violently and clownishly kicked aside in a clatter of equipment and Billy Joe Armstrong’s vocal outburst. These two excerpts exemplify the punk attitude to musical skill. Together with its associations of commercial success and star performers, skill can be parodied but is always ﬁrmly rejected. This rejection of skill has certainly been noted before as a deﬁning feature of punk, in both sound and text. However, this rejection is not, I think, purely a political gesture, though it is often read in that way. For through such rejection, in sonic terms, punk replaces skill with an alternative value based on simplicity. And it is through the power of this simplicity that punk music generates one of its cardinal qualities and values: that of “energy.” A brief history of skill Introduction M y talk today examines the interrelationships between musical skill and the somewhat elusive concept of energy in punk music. As punk has often shrugged off the label of music, it has also dismissed traditional notions of musical skill. I argue that this dismissal is not mere chance, rather it is essential in the creation of energy, a central value of punk rock. I begin with two excerpts from songs that convey a typical punk attitude to musical skill. The ﬁrst is from “Complete Control” by the Clash (The Clash 1979). Here, in a song whose lyrics satirise commercial recording, Mick Jones’s clichéd guitar solo, intentionally or not, is close to a parody of conventional guitar virtuosity. Joe Strummer’s taunting response: “you’re my guitar hero” instantly certiﬁes this impression, positing Strummer as the star-struck listener at the feet of the rock god. The second excerpt is from Green Day’s cover of “My Generation” (Green Day 1992). In this recording, Green Day lampoon the manic solo explosions that tend to characterize the Who’s versions of the song. In a process similar to the ﬁrst extract, musical technique I’m considering punk here in fairly traditional terms, as the musical genre that emerged in the mid-to-late 1970s in the US and UK. At this particular point in rock history, musical skill was both highly visible and contested, presented as a possession and a desirable 644 feature by bands as diverse as Genesis, Yes, and Pink Floyd. Bands such as these projected their skill in sound, image, and text; it is the sounding of skill on which I concentrate in this paper. In general, music sounds skilful when its sound directs attention through the sound to the intelligence behind it, whether composer or performer. Among the several ways in which this may be achieved, I wish to highlight two: the use of complexity and the performance of virtuosity. A ﬁne example of the type of complexity characteristic of progressive rock comes in Yes’s “Long Distance Runaround” (Yes 1972) . The complexity of this music is a product of its continually shifting parameters. Nothing of this sound—texture, phrase, or harmony— stays the same even through the short length of this excerpt. While it certainly may have other meanings, one central effect of this complexity is to draw attention to the creation of the sound as a skilful task, one worthy of the listener’s respect and admiration. My second example of skill also demands admiration and, perhaps, awe from its audience, this time through the virtuosity of performance. In Jeff Beck’s “You Know What I Mean” (Beck 1975), the layers and background harmonies attain more constancy than in the Yes song. This straightforwardness serves as the backdrop to the skill of the guitarist as he maneuvers his instrument in a ﬂashing technical display. It is clear that in some respects these two excerpts are not at all similar, and my brief remarks here cannot claim to characterize these songs or performers completely. However, in terms of the communication of skill, both command the admiration and reverence of the audience. Through this communication, the sound, heard as the sign of the performer or composer behind it, emerges as a complex mass that divides the skilful agent who produces from the listener who attends. Punk, of course, rejected the sound and image of progressive and stadium rock. And, certainly, as has often been observed, it did so in part in order to disavow any connections with high culture and to attempt to recapture an authentic, low-brow, street music. Yet, there is another aspect to the punk rejection of skill, an aspect that is not immediately concerned with issues of social image, but deals more with the experience of sound and performance. For it was through the absence of skill that punk bands created a particular, and highly valued, form of musical energy. Energy Many musical styles and genres, of course, refer to “energy” as an attribute. However, it occupies a special place in punk vocabulary or, more precisely, there is a special type of energy that is characteristic of punk. The concept, or better the feeling, of energy appears as a central element of fan response to and criticism of 645 punk in the 1970s, usually attached to performance, and the sound of a band playing live. In the quintessential UK ‘zine, Snifﬁn’ Glue, in early 1976, Mark P. describes a typical Sex Pistols gig: “[Y]ou just can’t help getting into it. Their sound is pure energy, you can’t describe it in stupid words—you’ve got to experience it to understand” (Mark P. 1976, 7). Other audience members at early Pistols gigs echoed these feelings. “Whether they were good or not was irrelevant. . .I wanted to be excited and they ﬁlled a spot.” “We thought they were great because there was so much energy.” (qtd in Savage 142–3). Nor is this concern with the projection of energy a historical issue in punk as a brief perusal of the current Punk Planet or Maximumrocknroll will reveal. “Energy,” “force,” “power,” “attack,” and other related words are at the core of punk praise. Simplicity and repetition Skill is irrelevant to this energy, the above evidence suggests, moreover it cannot be described in Mark P’s “stupid words.” Here, it seems, we are dealing with something simple and powerful, something that operates through sound rather than verbally. If we look for the source of such a power, I suggest we may ﬁnd it in the body, and more particularly in the relationship between sound and the moving body. Once we being to move with music, as do listeners to many styles of music including punk, we enter into a relationship of power—something close to a contract—with the sound. When we ﬁnd a constant beat, a regular repetition in the sound, we allow it to control our movements whether dancing per se, or just pogoing around. The more complex this beat becomes, however—the more changes and alternatives we hear within it—the more diffuse is the musical power. Through this diffusion, complex music has the potential to direct attention away from the moment of sounding and on to the producer or the conditions of production, as was argued above with reference to Yes and Jeff Beck. Simple music, and a simple beat, offers a straightforward, direct power for movement. With such simplicity, music creates a single, controlling relation to the listener’s body. Energy derives from the individual entering into a relationship with this power, deﬁning herself with or against it. Because it is simple and univocal this power this power has three main features. First, it forces a taking of sides. One moves with it, or against it. Second, it doesn’t easily allow observers or listeners who are ambivalent or uninvolved. Third, so long as it remains simple, this power disallows the performance of virtuosity. In terms of this power, the energy of a punk gig occurs as audience, and performer, engage with the simple beat. In different ways, the relationships between listener, performer, and musical power establish the 646 potential for energy. The performance of simplicity thus becomes a driving force in the creation of energy through performance. Without the possibility of crushing, a nihilism in sound. This particular form of punk energy, in which an individual emerges bloodied and bowed, yet perhaps unbroken, from the fray, is not conﬁned to the Pistols. It can be heard forming the sonic characters of ﬁgures such as Henry Rollins, and Ian McKaye, and in many subsequent forms of hardcore. Positive, collective energy performing in this simple fashion, the potential of this particular energy is lost or, at least, diverted. This was— and is—why punk music must reject the performance of musical skill. There is much more that could be said about this energy and the uses to which it is put. In this brief paper, however, I want to proceed without further theoretical ado to three brief analyses. These analyses illustrate how punk energy fuels the meanings of particular songs, and pointing brieﬂy to broader distinctions between different styles of punk based on this power of simplicity. Three forms of energy Negative, solipsistic energy In Hüsker Dü’s “New Day Rising” (Hüsker Dü 1985) the development of energy is quite different. The simplicity of the beat, here almost over-emphasized, functions to support a musical fusion, a joining of voices into a whole where no single individual dominates. In this song there is a process of bonding, a chaotic unison joined around a central power. The energy heard here, while generated by a similar power to that of the last excerpt, is a communal, even anarchic, one. Such energy certainly drove many grunge bands, including Nirvana. Comic, ironic energy My ﬁrst example is from the Sex Pistols “Holidays in the Sun” (Sex Pistols 1977). The beginning of this song is notable for its simple beat, a straightforward power, with the timbral associations of militarism and jackboots. John Lydon, as Johnny Rotten, bounces off this power as off an antagonist: an individual taking on the beat. This follows a procedure that in some ways is essentially virtuosic, but Rotten is no hero. If he battles the direct power of the instruments, by the end of the song he is lost and defeated. The energy here is negative, My last example of punk energy involves a comic, perhaps cartoonish effect. This energy plays off a simple power through phrase and repetition manipulation. The Ramones, perhaps more than any other band, offer wonderful examples of this variety of energy, this one comes from a 1975 demo version of “Judy is a Punk” 647 (Various, 2002). In this song, the phrase structure, delineated by harmonic change, constantly varies and yet never undermines the simple power of the song—a simplicity created not only by the drums but also through the monotone lyrics and almost undifferentiated texture. these matters, but that must wait for other times and places. What I will say in closing is that in forming this energy through its use of simple power, punk suggests a particular understanding of music in general. For, if punk rejects traditional notions of skill, it remains something that is performed, and thus something that can be The constant change of phrase-length, in relation to the simple powerful beat, could sound like a loss of control by the band, emphasizing their inability. And, with this interpretive response, the energy of the song remains punk, driven by the powerful simplicity of texture and beat. The strong inﬂuence of the Ramones on subsequent bands needs no reinforcement here, but it can be noted that this particular use of energy can be found in later bands such as Green Day, as well as several others in the broad “pop-punk” category. Music and Energy performed well or badly. Because energy and simplicity are central, however, playing punk well is not a function of overawing the listener with contrapuntal layers or ﬂashing virtuosity. Rather, the maintenance of energy becomes the paramount value. The performance of punk negates “musicianly” technique, but this negation itself promises a wider understanding of music. In the light of this understanding, then, the logic of my two opening examples appears irrefutable. For punk, and the production of energy, Strummer’s verbal taunting of Jones, and Billy Joe’s scatology perform a vital function: in undermining the emergence of skill, These three examples illustrate different ways in which punk bands have produced and exploited punk energy, drawing on a particular relationship to musical power. The examples are not all-inclusive of types of energy, nor have I had time to examine in detail the speciﬁc meanings of energy in these songs. Neither have I been able to mention the ways in which punk energy in sound can reﬂect and inﬂuence issues of gender, class, and politics. There is, indeed, much left to discuss in they keep punk simple. Such simplicity, I’ve argued, is what generates energy; the energy that, as an alternative to skill, allows and indeed requires Billy Joe, when presented with the opportunity for a dazzling solo, to exclaim “fuck that shit.” (1) 648 Yes, Fragile. Atlantic 19132, 1972 Endnotes (1) I thank Tobias van Veen for his observation at the conference that Billy Joe’s outburst quotes that of the psychotic Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper, in David Lynch’s 1986 ﬁlm Blue Velvet. This connection expands (but does not negate) the signiﬁcance of the internal logic of the outburst within the song. Various, CBGB’s and the Birth of US Punk. Ocho CD013, Union Square Music, 2002 Selected Bibliography P[erry], Mark. Snifﬁn’ Glue, No. 3. September 1976 Savage, Jon. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, PUnk Rock, and Beyond. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Selected Discography Green Day, Kerplunk. Lookout Records #46CD, 1992 Hüsker Dü, New Day Rising. SST Records, 1985 Jeff Beck, Blow by Blow, Epic 85440, 1975 The Clash, The Clash [UK version]. Epic 63882, 1979 Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks . . . Here’s the Sex Pistols. Warner 3147, 1977 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Practicing Formerly Popular Music: The Roots Music Community of Montreal Craig Morrison A s a multi-ethnic, bilingual northern metropolis, Montreal is geographically removed from the music. Some practitioners are dedicated to a particular genre such as blues or country while others are ﬂuent in several styles including Chicago blues, downhome blues, swing, cajun, western swing, bluegrass, honky tonk, and rockabilly. Richard Blaustein has identiﬁed two symbiotic sources of folk music revivalism. Both apply to this paper. The ﬁrst is “alienation from an unsatisfactory cultural identity, leading to folk romanticism”, and the second is “a subjective sense of deteriorating tradition, resulting in grass-roots preservationism.”1 Hillbilly Night At The Wheel southern and mid-western regions of the United States, the original cultural hearths of blues, country, and rock and roll. Despite the geographical disadvantage, Montreal has become a centre for these music forms that were developed and popularized decades earlier. This paper describes two venues in Montreal and the ideological stance of roots music, particularly how roots musicians deal with the concept of nostalgia, inevitably part of the foundation of a community which embraces music made in the 1950s and earlier. I will also highlight the role of the upright bass as a stylistic and symbolic marker. This paper is part of a larger inquiry into the continued presence of older forms of music. In the book Go Cat Go! I analyzed rockabilly and its revival, and in previous papers I discussed festivals dedicated to old music styles. Sources for this paper are interviews with session organizers, musicians, and fans, plus my experience for nearly 20 years as a participant musician in Montreal. Montreal’s roots music community includes dozens of bands—many of international stature—which play their individual interpretations and extensions of archaic Grass-roots preservationism is behind Hillbilly Night, held every Monday for 37 years. It is one of the most important sites in building the community. Most of the local roots musicians have performed there, and some are regulars. Authenticity at Hillbilly Night is addressed by strict rules: no electric instruments (except the lap steel), no drums, no pianos, and no songs newer than 1965. The regular performers, numbering about three dozen, and some of the audience, habitually dress in western clothes, particularly checkered shirts for the men. The house band includes acoustic guitar, 650 ﬁddle, lap steel, and the upright bass, for these are the instruments used by Hank Williams, who is the iconic presence behind the event. Banjo, mandolin, dobro, and occasionally other instruments are to be heard there also. Singers each do two songs. A reaction of disgust against the commercialization and modernization of country music is the motivation behind the preservationism of Hillbilly Night. Bob Fuller (born 1933 in Nova Scotia), who founded the event 37 years ago and still runs it, said: is Blaustein’s ﬁrst point that applies more: “alienation from an unsatisfactory cultural identity, leading to folk romanticism.” Only acoustic stringed instruments—guitars, mandolin, bass, sometimes banjo, but rarely ﬁddle— are used. Singers add their name to a blackboard and each do three songs, with the backup musicians coming in and out in no particular sequence, generally staying as long as they like. The two main organizers play in bands, as do most of the main musicians. Because of the enduring inﬂuence and importance Hillbilly Night is a mission. I’m a missionary. It’s something that has to be done. Nashville was going downhill. It went in two directions: orchestral or rock, and they manipulated it. That’s where I got my sense of mission. They made me angry by taking my music away. I may not be able to do much, but whatever I can do, I’ll do it. Bluegrass Night At The Barfly of Hillbilly Night and its younger cousin Bluegrass Night, Montreal roots musicians—whether they prefer swing, blues, rockabilly, or country—tend to be more aware and more steeped in country music traditions than in some other cities. There are other sessions around town, from blues to celtic to rock jams, but to my knowledge there is less interaction or overlap from these sessions with the sessions mentioned above. Retro Activities and Ideology Bluegrass Night is another weekly event, held on Sunday nights in a small, popular, and very smoky bar on St. Laurent Boulevard. Bluegrass Night has been going about 10 years. The popularity of the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou increased Bluegrass Night’s audience. They and the players are generally younger than the regulars at Hillbilly Night. For these people, it Roots music is associated with other activities that connect people to earlier decades, particularly the 1950s, such as jive dancing, customizing hot rod cars, collecting records, artifacts, and old furniture, and the wearing, shopping for, and making of retro clothing. Several local apartments are completely 651 furnished in 1950s style and decorated with period curios. Most of the roots community is deeply inﬂuenced and steeped in old music, particularly records from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. The attraction to play this type of music in the 21st century can be attributed to a number of factors that set it in opposition to later developments and positions. Roots music: In this paper, I concentrate on the ﬁrst and last of these points: that it is humanly created music and not technologically produced, and that it is currently valid and not nostalgic. To do so I draw from interviews with two individuals in the local community. Ronnie Hayward (born 1962 in British Columbia) is an acoustic bassist, vocalist, songwriter and bandleader. He is a well-known artist in the international roots scene, having toured in Canada and the US and several in opposition to technologically engineered music, it is humanly created times in Europe, and has had eight album released by various labels. Peter Sandmark (born 1959 in Quebec) plays drums, in opposition to “head” music inﬂuenced by drugs, it is body rhythm music and often danced to guitar, and harmonica and also sings. As a band member, he has made 10 albums, four with Ray Condo and his Hardrock Goners (1985-’94), four with the Crazy in opposition to the commercial mainstream, it is personal expression music, experienced as independent and alternative, and in the tradition of punk’s “do it yourself” philosophy Rhythm Daddies (1988 to present), and one each with the Howlin’ Hound Dogs, and Sophia Wolff and the Cubs. With each act he has performed internationally, several times in Europe and in the USA. Roots Imprinting in opposition to consumerism’s cult of the new, it valorizes old music Both Hayward and Sandmark were imprinted by the music they heard in the family home. Their experience in opposition to the post-modern environment, it maintains a living connection to the modern era highlights the longevity of old records and their inﬂuence. Hayward’s father played guitar in the style of Jimmy in opposition to any claim as nostalgia, it insists on its current validity Rogers and his mother sang songs by Rogers, Wilf Carter, and Kitty Wells. He says: “The ﬁrst song I 652 remember hearing was “T for Texas” by Jimmie Rogers. We had an old 78 player in the house and me and my brother used to put that record on and laugh about the part about old Thelma getting shot, how she’d jump and fall. We thought that was the funniest thing there was.” Sandmark grew up listening to the jazz and early R&B records in the collection his father, who had played rhythm guitar in a jazz trio in Sweden in the 1940s. He says: “Although I loved all the old jazz tunes and R&B records I’d grown up listening to, I never thought I could be in a band that would play that. I thought that music was over and we had to be playing some kind of new wave, post-punk alternative music.” Humanly Created Music: Acoustic Bass Vs. Electric Bass and very physical effort required in playing it, and its retro look, since the rockabilly revival it has increased its role as one of the most important markers of roots music and a symbol of its authenticity. In the last decade in Montreal there has been a remarkable rise in the number and visibility of players of this instrument. I know personally, and have performed, recorded, or jammed in public with, about 15 different acoustic bass players in blues, country, or early rock styles. Hayward says: I really like the sound of the upright bass, which is what attracted me to it in the ﬁrst place. At some point every band in the ‘80s I was in wanted me to play an electric bass and I never wanted to. I never did. The upright bass to me is more earthy, it has a warmth and a depth you just can’t get out of an electric bass. An electric bass you can play busier or with a pick or not, but an upright you can play it with a bow, you can slap it: it’s more varied. Nostalgia, Terminology and Type Casting Hayward: The human feel of roots music is expressed in an instrumentation which is, aside from the electric guitar (or electric lap steel), totally acoustic. Roots music rejects later technology (synthesizers, drum machines, samples, etc.). The upright bass is a stylistic and symbolic marker of the genre. The upright bass was used in rock and roll up until around 1960 and rarely heard in rock after that, though it was retained in much jazz, some country and ethnic music, and, of course, in classical music. Because of its acoustic sound, the obvious human Remember in the ‘70s when American Grafﬁti came out and then the Happy Days show? Then Sha Na Na had a TV show and there were a lot of bands doing that. I always saw 653 that as a separate thing. I’m not against that, it has its place and it’s popular and especially at that time that was where the money was if you were playing bigger gigs. But then there was the rockabilly revival. I didn’t really associate the two myself. As soon as the Stray Cats got big, every rockabilly band was pegged as a Stray Cats copy band. By ’85 or so, everytime you got booked somewhere you were either a grafﬁti band or a Stray Cats copier. You didn’t want to be pegged in either, ‘cause you weren’t. At that time there wasn’t all these terms like roots, nobody called anything roots music or Americana or even country blues, nobody even used that term. You just went and played anyway ‘cause you wanted to. Sandmark: missed the ‘60s version of it, when bands were trying to do rock and roll, inspired as kids in the ‘50s, while playing in garage bands, though it was louder and the drugs and all that. Having come of age in the disco era, I got into punk looking for someone new that was going to do rock and roll. It’s not quite nostalgia, it’s wanting to get into rock and roll, feeling that we missed the boat. The punk movement says do it yourself so we stated doing our own bands. If you say its nostalgia, you’re acknowledging that the music is past. The roots scene refuses to say that. It wants to recreate it and make if for today. We stood against the concept of nostalgia. Essentially what we were doing was selling ourselves as an original act because the music we were doing was obscure. We did some songs by Elvis and Hank Williams but not the best-known ones. There was a sense of acknowledging the roots but not reveling in the big hits of the past. We were trying to make it in the clubs for an audience that had just gone through punk and alternative music and was open to other things; you had to be new. We didn’t want the band’s success to hinge on a nostalgia for the music. Elvis hairdos lasted through the ‘60s and Elvis was still alive and performing, so rock and roll was still there. Even if it was seen as cheesy, there was continuity. American Grafﬁti stated to America that the ‘50s was past, it was historical. The movie said: it’s over. Nostalgia would be recalling memories of your youth. I hadn’t lived through the rock and roll thing. We felt that the rock and roll phenomenon had been something fun and exciting and we had missed it. We had even 654 The idea of nostalgia, Hayward says, was: Sandmark: always a source of frustration, because every band I was we had our own songs. The songs that I write are just little pieces of my life so that to me eliminates any nostalgic thing, because they are my songs. I’m alive now, it’s new, there’s no nostalgia involved in it. There’s no memories, well, memories of mine but nobody else’s. I’m just selling the expression of a thought and that’s it. When people buy oldies collections, like the ones advertised on late night TV, Hayward feels: In the current rockin’ scene there’s a real interest in groups that do their own original music now because it’s seen as today’s music. I still believe in the music. I think the music itself stands on its own as a music form. We’re trying to test that belief: does the music stand on its own or does it only stand as nostalgia. If it only appeals to people who remember the original music or who still listen to the original music, then the roots scene is a substitute for the original bands. Conclusions In rejecting virtually all of the technology that arrived they are not listening to the music, they’re caught up in their memories of the songs. So what is being sold here is a box full of memories, not a box of music. If you’re doing your own songs in that style, they don’t know what to do, there’s no associated memories for anybody. If you are trying to sell something as a memory, you can forget it to audiences of young people. They don’t have the same memories as we do. It’s a different thought now, a different country. I guess if you are going to present something old as something new you have to present it in a different light, not a modern light, but just a light they haven’t seen. with and after the electric bass, and later forms of music from the “head” music of the hippies onward, roots music rejects the developments that occurred after the 1950s. In rejecting musical commercialism and the cultural habit of throwing out the old to bring in the new, roots music rejects capitalism as an organizing force, preferring to feed on culture’s rejected artifacts: the ﬂea market and preservationist mentality of record collectors. In rejecting nostalgia, roots music rejects collective memory in favor of the value of individual expression and experience. Ironically, it does so in a music and presentation style so heavily coded as 1950s. In short, roots music aligns itself with punk’s 655 rejection of hegemony. Many people have referred to rockabilly as punk music’s retirement plan. Roots music uses the post-modern notion of recycling previous aesthetics and recombining them in a nonlinear manner. In other words, the focus on the 1950s acts not so much as personal nostalgia for something that people lived through as kids but a cultural nostalgia for the modern era. Last Words Hayward: Endnotes 1 Blaustein, Richard. “Rethinking Folk Revivalism.” Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. Ed. Neil V. Rosenberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993: 264. “All of this stuff I just view as an art form, and to me time doesn’t have anything to do with it.” Sandmark: “To ﬁnd an audience, you don’t have to play any kind of game, you don’t need to play something new or even nostalgic, you need to play what you like.” IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Impact of New Technologies on Contemporary Music Management Practices Guy Morrow T his paper outlines some of the possible solutions to the current problems the music industry faces management practices will lead a major shift in focus within the music industry. For ﬁnancial reasons, recorded product will no longer be a manager’s main focus. The industry will become conceptually inverted in that the ‘brand essence’ will no longer be the means to sell recorded product, recorded product will increasingly become the means to sell the brand essence or image. Because the popular music industry has arguably always revolved around musical products that sell because they represent to consumers an identity, ideal or ‘brand essence’, in the era of digital downloading, the abstract ideals, lifestyles or values that a musical product signiﬁes will potentially become more economically viable tools for a music manager than the actual physical recordings. The concept of brand-culture integration will be explored in this paper because it may be argued that due to the impact of new technologies, music managers will increasingly become dependent on the income received from the sale of songs to corporations for use in their advertising campaigns. It may also be argued in conjunction with this increasing dependence on the part of music managers, the advertising industries and their clients due to the new ‘free music’ mentality that is becoming prevalent throughout Western societies. This new attitude has arisen due to the endorsement of new technologies in the ﬁelds of musical production and consumption. An entry point into a discussion of this complex topic will be an examination of the various ways in which music management practices are arguably going to be forced to change as new technologies effectively dissolve the music industry’s status quo. A primary focus will be the way in which managers may use the concept of ‘branding’ in order to counteract the negative effect ﬁle swapping has apparently had on album sales. The concept of branding is fundamental to the role of music managers because, as Woodruff has stated, “a manager’s job is to create the perception that the band is successful” (1) and as Frith stated with regard to musical consumption, “the familiarity of the piece is a surrogate for the quality ascribed to it. To like it is almost the same thing as to recognize it” (13). The diminishing commercial viability of recorded musical product in the digital age suggests that music are also increasingly becoming dependent on the process of brand-culture integration. 657 Klein argued that branding has become the key to corporate success because the process of producing – running one’s own factories, being responsible for tens of thousands of full-time employees – began to look less like a route to success and more like a clunky liability (4). Successful corporations are increasingly producing images of their brands (rather than products or ‘things’) and this has therefore shifted the emphasis from manufacturing to marketing. Klein claimed that the formula of buying products and ‘branding’ them, rather than producing products and ‘advertising’ them, has proven to be so proﬁtable that companies are competing in a race towards weightlessness: whoever owns the least (through having their products made for them by contractors), has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race (ibid). This paradigm shift has far reaching implications for the management of music because music is arguably a means through which such corporations will increasingly create and enhance their brand images. Because the timing of this paradigm shift coincides with the threat of digital downloading, music managers may therefore also increasingly embrace this conceptual shift in their attempts to enhance their artist’s ﬁnancial viability in order to survive. interests quantify a qualitative phenomenon (music) – or rather they have focused on the commerce verses creativity dichotomy. However, this quantitative/ qualitative dichotomy does not form the focus of this paper because marketing is increasingly driving commerce – and marketing is a creative process. This paper therefore aims to analyze the way in which marketers and managers are increasingly selling a qualitative phenomenon (a brand essence) with a qualitative phenomenon (music) – whether this is their artist’s qualitative brand image or that of another business entity. In contrast to the way in which one may argue that culture-producing organizations behave as any other type of organization does, Negus has argued that culture should be seen much more broadly as being the means through which people create meaningful worlds in which to live (62). It is clear that theorists such as Negus believe that culture is more than just a product. However, it may be argued that the paradigm shift from products/manufacturing to brands/marketing has enabled a select group of corporations to free themselves from the corporeal world of commodities through the way in which the brand image attached to the commodities they sell is also ‘more than just a product’. This has started a trend that is leading to a new breed of marketers/business men proudly Popular music theorists have often analyzed the music industry in terms of the way in which commercial informing their consumers that Brand X is not a product but a way of life, an attitude, a set of values, a look, 658 an idea (Klein 25). Therefore non-music/culture related organizations are also considering their products more broadly as being ‘means through which people create meaningful worlds in which to live’. In this, these noncultural organizations are beginning to behave more like cultural organizations. It is for this reason that this paper focuses on the way in which music managers are selling a qualitative phenomenon (a brand essence) with a qualitative phenomenon (music) rather than on the way in which organizations turn popular music into a commodity. 6,800 copies. So that’s a dramatic reduction to at least ¼ of an artist’s income stream (and the income of everyone surrounding the artist). Now the way to deal with this problem is not to become pessimistic and run away and hide, but rather to endorse innovation (Woodruff 5). One solution to this problem involves using new technologies to ﬁght new technologies. However, the argument concerning DVD content being included in album production methodologies in order to counteract the negative effect ﬁle swapping has apparently had on Inﬂuential Australian music manager John Woodruff (the manager responsible for the band Savage Garden’s international success) stated that: album sales is an argument that leads only to a temporary solution because DVD content will increasingly be able to be swapped via the Internet as well. The diminishing commercial viability of recorded musical product has The fact that people are being able to consume recorded musical product for free will fundamentally change the business because there are only four ways to make money in the music business: You can sell tickets, you can sell T-shirts, you can sell records or you can sell songs. They are basically the only four things a manager has to sell in order to get an income to actually run a business. Now the number 1 selling album in Australia 3 years ago was selling around 60,000 to 70,000 copies a week, while the number 1 album in Australia last week sold led some music managers – managers who believe that music is a product like any other – to the conclusion that the musical “products that will ﬂourish in the future will be the ones presented not as “commodities” but as concepts: the brand as experience, as life style” (Klein 9). Woodruff is one such manager. He pointed out that: Disturbed are a Nu-metal band that has sold about 3 million records while receiving no more air play than some of the bands that are getting killed by downloading – because they’re 659 in an age group for which downloading is the ultimate thing. Their management worked out that what the consumers were actually buying was a piece of the band. They were buying a piece of ‘intellectual property’ and it just so happened that this piece of intellectual property contained the eleven audio tracks that would constitute a normal album. So basically there’s a huge shift coming. People are going to need to adapt or they’re going to go under. It’s going to be similar to the shift from vinyl to cassette and from cassette to CD and it’s going to leave the music industry open for young innovative players to establish themselves. I’m not trying to make people who are interested in the music industry feel disillusioned but ask ‘can’t you see the change coming?’ (Woodruff 6) However, in contrast to Woodruff’s point of view, it may be stated that pop music products have always ﬂourished via such a process of signiﬁcation and that therefore music managers can not simply operate in isolation from other business entities because the paradigm shift from products/manufacturing to brands/ marketing does not apply to their business because pop music has always been presented as a concept or a lifestyle – not as a commodity. A manager and artist’s economic survival may well become derivative of their willingness to lend their music, and the identity surrounding it, to other business entities that are caught up in this paradigm shift. Woodruff’s claim that Disturbed’s management found a solution to the threat of digital downloading through the way in which they did not just add DVD content to their album but instead fundamentally sold the band, or the band’s ‘brand image’ off the back of the band’s songs, is problematic because it may be argued that popular music has always operated in this way and therefore this is not really a solution to the problem. Frith has stated that: We all hear the music we like as something special, as something that deﬁes the mundane, takes us “out of ourselves”, puts us somewhere else. “Our music” is, from this perspective, special not just with reference to other music but, more important(ly), to the rest of life (275). Frith argued that an identity is always already an ideal and that a musical identity is both fantastic, because one does not just idealize oneself but also the social world one inhabits, and real, because this sense of fantasy is enacted in activity (274). As a manager, Woodruff is perhaps overemphasizing the role Disturbed’s management played in the discursive construction of the 660 metaphorical link between Disturbed’s sound structure and the identity/ideal, social structure and life style that their brand name represents. Woodruff has stated that when it comes to music management “the passion more than theory is important. If you have the passion then you can ﬁnd the information” (qtd.in Gudgeon 1). Perhaps because this is his attitude towards the theoretical frameworks that have been constructed around popular music, Woodruff is arguably misguided in his belief that the solution to the threat of digital downloading is to use an abstract ideal (or a sense of identity) as a means to still be able to sell musical ‘product’. This is because popular music has always operated in this way and therefore all he has effectively done is theorize pop music in a way that is not dissimilar to the way in which Hebdige argued that the homology model concerns “the symbolic ﬁt between the values and lifestyles of a group, its subjective experience and the musical forms it uses to express or reinforce its focal concerns” (56). A brand name is just a symbol that represents this metaphorical link, a metaphorical link that is discursively constructed or re-constructed in different ways by consumers or audience members when they engage with the discourse surrounding a given piece of music. money in the music business; in that you can either sell tickets, you can sell T-shirts, you can sell records and you can sell songs; and if selling records is not as viable an option as it once was, it is reasonable to assume that managers will begin to focus more on one of the other four ways to make money. The income received from the sale of songs to corporations for use in their advertising campaigns may well become the main source of income that will drive the music industry. Although this practice is not new, in that advertising industries have always sought to place us socially (Frith 18) through superﬁcially engaging with genres, cults and subcultures; the ﬁnancial importance of this practice for music managers is increasing at the same time as it is increasing for the advertising industries and their clients. In some instances, companies are actually getting in ﬁrst and are creating their own pop hits, or they are signing bands for cross-promotional ties. Nike revived Elvis Presley’s career by getting a DJ to remix A Little Less Conversation for a world cup soccer jingle, and Pepsi has started approaching bands for “synergistic” partnerships (Guilliatt 27). It may be argued that at some industry levels there is increasingly ‘no tension’ (or an appearance thereof) between creativity and commerce The fact that consumers are able to download recorded musical product for free will fundamentally change the music business. If there are only really four ways to make due to full brand-culture integration. When arguing in terms of brand-culture integration, it becomes clear that creativity and commerce are no longer considered 661 to be separate, contrasting components of an industry. At the higher levels of the music industry commerce is being driven by a ‘brand ideal’, which is more than just a product, while culture is arguably also ‘more than just a product’. Selected Bibliography Frith, Simon. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York, 1996. In the context of the general trend for today’s best known manufacturers to no longer produce products and advertise them, but rather to buy products and ‘brand’ them, large companies are increasingly attempting to ﬁnd creative new ways to build and strengthen their brand images. As many companies/corporations push towards weightlessness through focusing on marketing rather than manufacturing, these companies are having to screech louder and louder above their competition. As one senior ad executive stated “consumers…are like roaches – you spray them and spray them and they get immune after a while” (Klein 9). Therefore if consumers are like cockroaches, then marketers must forever be dreaming up new concoctions for industrial-strength Raid – and the music industry is increasingly becoming one of their main suppliers of ingredients for such a concoction. This is because there is both an increasing demand for musical product to be used for such an end and because the music industry is increasingly becoming dependent on the income stream this process creates due to the impact of digital downloading on one of this industry’s other main income streams. Woodruff, John. Unpublished and untitled paper concerning music management presented at the Australian branch of the Music Manager’s Forum’s annual conference. Sydney, Novetel hotel, 2002. Negus, Keith. Popular Music In Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press/Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Klein, Naomi. No Logo, Flamingo/Harper Collins: London, 2001. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London and New York: Methuen, 1979. Guilliatt, Richard. ‘Look What They’ve Done To My Song’, Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend Magazine: 8 February, 2003: 27. Gudgeon, Kelly. ‘Managing Bands On The Run’, (Sydney) The Weekend Australian Careers Section: 22-23 Feb 2003: 1. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Great Big Mistake: Fandom as Magical Practice, Stockwell Day and Spoiled Identity Peter Narváez T his paper will argue that in using Great Big Sea’s song “Ordinary Day” to launch his political proximity (contagious magic). In the ﬁrst regard, actions connected by likeness effect the same results in the likeness’s referent. Thus when someone sticks a pin in an efﬁgy for the purpose of injuring the person represented by the efﬁgy, homeopathic thought is enacted. Frazer’s second category, contagious magic, highlights links between things that have been in contact. The previously mentioned efﬁgy, therefore, may contain items from the referent’s person (hair or nail clippings) that are connected to the receiver of the magical action in order to signiﬁcantly increase the efﬁgy’s magical potency. campaign in October 2000, Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, a self-described “big fan” of GBS, committed a signiﬁcant political error. Instead of successfully linking himself and his political party to an internationally popular Newfoundland-Canadian band, Day’s ostensible fandom did not impress voters as genuine, and from the judgement of band members his use of the song was manipulative. The incident highlights the magical qualities of fandom as well as the political power of music.(1) Fandom as Magical Practice Fans act like practitioners of magic. In attempting to achieve a sense of primary social relation with the The actions of fans may be understood as essentially magical. In his classic multivolume comparative study The Golden Bough (1890), Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) reasoned that magic, the formulaic manipulation of the supernatural for speciﬁc ends, develops from a particular kind of associative thinking, namely, that things act in sympathy with one another. Further, Frazer maintained that in magical practices such sympathetic actions are driven by principles of similarity (homeopathic or imitative magic) and celebrity-artist they admire, fans manipulate aspects of their environment and personal circumstances according to principles of similarity and proximity. The social goal of fans is indeed “super,” or beyond, the “natural,” because at their core fan-celebrity relations are characterized by unidirectionality. That is, most often they occur between individuals and mediated personalities who in “reality” are unknown to their admirers. Fans, therefore, develop strategies and tactics to lessen this social distance. The central problem for 663 the fan is one of emotion—how to feel socially closer to persons who you believe you know quite well and care a great deal about, but persons who do not even acknowledge your existence as an individual. simulacra of various kinds (photos, calendars, posters, fanzines, CDs, tapes, DVDs) from mainstream sources (chain stores, Ebay), as well as more esoteric fan networks; making pilgrimages to live concerts; visiting geographical locations biographically connected with The ﬁrst fan strategy involves similitude through emulation, attempting to master the same knowledge that the admired performer possesses by trying to understand and often to relive the artist’s most important experiences and inﬂuences. In these capacities the fan may take on roles of researcher and a collector, actively experiencing mediated performances and seeking out sources of biographical and performance data in order to copy aspects of lifestyle (fashion, hairstyle, habits). While fans entertain themselves through such activities, they may also consciously use these materials to alter their individual identities through what Orrin Klapp has called “identity voyages,” a mimetic process whereby a fan vicariously lives through a performer, imitating their speech, appearance, behaviour, and sometimes adopting their attitudes and ideas as well. the performer; attempting to communicate directly with a performer by post, email, or making one’s presence known in assembly contexts; and by networking with other fans via friendship groups, fanclubs, and “virtual,” or what I prefer to call, “rhetorical communities” that have formed as a social function of the widespread availability of many forms of broadcast and Internet media (Narváez). In sum, a complex convergence of tactics enacting strategies of mimesis and contagion provides experience, information and artifacts that contribute to a sense of fandom. Correct and appropriate usage of these essentials establishes fan status. Usage that is socially approved and deemed authentic may heighten one’s social position within a fan community. Usage that appears bogus or inappropriate, however, can The second major strategy involves the spatial perspective of contagious magic, which I will refer to here as “linkage.” Practices of linkage make connections between performer and audience through: obtaining items that have had direct contact with the artist (autographs; auctioned personal items); acquiring spoil identity and lower status. Great Big Sea and Stockwell Day Often categorized as “Celtic Rock,” Great Big Sea is one of the most popular bands in Canada. Since 1992, the vocal-instrumental group, comprised of Alan Doyle 664 (guitar, mandolin and bouzouki), Sean McCann (tin whistle, bodhran), Bob Hallett (button accordion, ﬁddle and mandolin) and Darrell Power (bass), have sold over 1,200,000 albums. (2) All six of their Canadian CD releases have gone gold (in Canada, sales of 50, 000 units), three of them platinum (in Canada, sales of 100, 000 units), three of them double platinum, and two triple-platinum. Their CDs have been released in the US and various albums are available in Europe, Asia, and Australia. The band has received over thirty East Coast Music Awards, including seven for the coveted Entertainer of the Year Award, and been nominated for a half-dozen Juno awards. Their music has been used on many ﬁlm soundtracks and was featured in the Hollywood ﬁlm, set in Newfoundland, The Shipping News. show] the next morning. And we got on the airplane and Day got there a few minutes later and one of the ﬂight attendants said, I could hear them from three or four rows away, “You’re not the only celebrities on the plane — the band Great Big Sea is here as well!” And he said, “Oh really? I’m a big fan!” And I thought “Yeah!?” [sarcastically] But I didn’t say “Oh Mr. Day!” or anything like that. So anyway, as is often the case with bands, we were not sitting together on the airplane. And I happened to be sitting on the aisle of one row and on the window seat was our guitar technician and stage manager, a fellow named Danny Thomas, who has very long curly black hair. Anyway Day came down the aisle and looked from side to side as you would when you’re looking for somebody, spied Danny, who I guess he thought looked like he should be in the band and said “Oh!” and leaned in over me and introduced himself to Danny. And Danny [who] is not an idiot, quickly realized, he’d heard the same comment I had, realized that Day was faking, had no idea who we were or what we looked like and had picked the fellow with the longest hair on the airplane as being the most likely person. And so, ﬁve minutes into the conversation with Danny it became obvious that Day had no idea that Danny wasn’t in the band and Danny was too polite to During the latter part of October, 2000, while Great Big Sea was engaged in a pre-release promotional tour for their live CD Road Rage, the band encountered Stockwell Day, leader of the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance (formerly the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party or CCRAP), since July 8, 2000. As Great Big Sea member Bob Hallett recalls: We’d played a promo show in Ottawa and we were returning to Toronto on a midnight ﬂight in order to play “Canada AM” [national TV news 665 tell him that he wasn’t in the band. So for fortyﬁve minutes he sat between us and we had this absurd conversation where he assumed I was somebody involved with it, but he had no idea, you know, I had an earring, obviously I must be part of the deal here. But he had no idea that I was in the band and Danny wasn’t. So we had this foolish conversation for forty-ﬁve minutes talking about everything under the sun. … I didn’t want to, you know the guy might become Prime Minister and I didn’t want to make a fool of him, by saying, “By the way, this guy tunes guitars. The rock star’s [Alan Doyle], across the aisle!” I didn’t want to say that to him. (Hallett) Perhaps the only revelation the humorous incident provided for the band was that as an imposter, Stockwell Day appeared to be merely posing as a “big fan.” Besides extensive national media coverage, particularly on TV and video, portraits of the band had appeared on every Great Big Sea CD. Thus band members could only be astonished at Day’s presumptuous misidentiﬁcation of Danny, simply because his image ﬁt the “long-haired” stereotype of male rock stars. When I asked him about his conversation with Day, Danny Thomas characterized Day’s comments as “bullshit,” emphasizing that Day knew next to nothing about the band or its music At the time, Eastern Canada knew little about Stockwell Day, a former funeral assistant, auctioneer, outﬁtter, evangelical pastor and school administrator, now a federal party leader, who had won a Parliamentary seat in a September by-election. The band, like most other Canadians, however, was very aware of Day’s ﬁrst news conference after his election, in Penticton, BC, on September 12, when he roared across Lake Okanagan in a Sea-Doo, climbed on the dock sporting a neoprene wetsuit, and held a dockside news conference. The stunt, later considered one of the Alliance leader’s major gaffes, soon attracted merciless lampooning from the press and particularly from Mary Walsh of the national CBC satiric show This Hour has 22 Minutes, who surpised Day in her own wetsuit. Many felt as did Louis Thomas, GBS’s manager, who said, I mean I watched the whole thing [Day’s campaigning] and I thought it was a joke. I remember [Day] coming down the lake on the Sea-Doo for a news conference and I was like, give me a break here! It almost insults your intelligence cause no one is that stupid. It just annoys me! (L. Thomas). While the members of GBS have maintained a band policy of rejecting political and corporate afﬁliations, having put the kibash on New Brunswick 666 Liberal leadership hopeful Bernard Richard’s Chretien’s campaign entrances. True to her roots, Alexa McDonough of the New Democratic Party made her appearances to the accompaniment of bagpipes and drums. In retrospect, however, the Alliance’s neglect in obtaining permission is perplexing, for in a parallel episode earlier in the same year Day was forced to stop using the 1972 Johnny Nash hit, “I Can See Clearly Now,” for its lyric “It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day,” by the song’s owner Dovan Music, Inc (Taber). campaign use of GBS’s hit “When I’m Up (I Can’t Get Down)”in 1998 (Vaughan-Jackson), and having refused signiﬁcant ﬁnancial offers for afﬁliations from former federal minister and premier Brian Tobin, the Newfoundland Department of Tourism, and Alberta Gas and Petroleum, among others, Louis maintains that if “there were someone that the guys really stood behind on a bunch of levels … maybe that would change” (L. Thomas). In this instance, the choice of “Ordinary Day” No GBS support of that kind, however, developed for Stockwell Day. Yet, possibly because of his identiﬁcation with GBS as a fan and his ostensible conversation with band members on the plane, Day felt conﬁdent that he could use “Ordinary Day” (written by Alan Doyle and Séan McCann), the positive keepyour-chin-up (e.g., “It’s up to you now if you sink or swim, keep the faith and your ship will come in” [Doyle and McGann]) ﬁrst track of GBS’s CD Play, as the Conservative Alliance’s federal campaign song of 2000, without obtaining direct permission from the group. In desiring to adopt a campaign song Day may have been responding to pressures from other parties that were making political uses of music. The Liberals obtained permission and paid for their use of The Black and White Brothers’ song “Put Your Hands Up,” a recording of which accompanied Prime Minister Jean Unfortunately for Day and the Canadian Alliance, actual fans of GBS immediately alerted band may have been inﬂuenced by the Alliance campaign organizing team who reportedly were “big fans of Great Big Sea,” who regularly played the song in the “war room” of the campaign ofﬁce (Brooks). Thus, radio and TV reports at the outset of the Canadian Alliance’s federal election campaign in Lindsay, Ontario, October 23, broadcast Stockwell Day walking into a political rally with speakers blaring “Ordinary Day” by Great Big Sea. A party spokesperson explained, “we played it because we think it is an awesome song and Great Big Sea are an awesome band” (Vaughan-Jackson). Other Alliance ofﬁcials rationalized Day’s choice of “Ordinary Day” by arguing that the song symbolized Day’s “ability to relate to ordinary Canadians” (“Great Big Sea pulls plug …”). 667 members and manager Louis Thomas. While use of the recording was paid for by the alliance through the Society of Canadian Recording Artists and Publishers (SOCAN), as well as through obtaining a synchronic license, which allows for news reportage in contexts where music is being played, Thomas was advised by the band’s attorney that GBS had the “moral right” to stop its political use. Thus Thomas took what he considers to have been the “soft route” with the Alliance. He explains: on the ﬁrst day of a federal election campaign received extensive media coverage, story leads often employing a play on words based on the name of the band and / or the candidate’s surname (e.g., “Great Big Sea Makes Waves Over Song Use” [Halifax Daily News]; “Day’s Use of Song Could Be Great Big Problem” [The Halifax Herald]; “Night on Day?” [Montreal Gazette]; “Great Big Sea Pulls Plug on Ordinary Day” [The Standard (St. Catharines)]; “No Ordinary Day for Stockwell” [The Telegram (St. John’s)]; “Alliance Receives Great Big Rejection from Popular Newfoundland Band” I told the campaign manager, “If you don’t get rid of it then I’m going to get on the phone and I’m going to do every interview I’m being requested to do and I’m going to get the band on the phone doing them, and the band on the television, and I’ll shut this down in two or three days. That’s basically what I said to him.” And they said, “we’ll get rid of it right away.” (L. Thomas) Interpreted in terms of the magical practices of fandom outlined earlier, Day’s attempt to achieve fandom through linkage, i.e, contagious magic, failed because in attempting to contact the band, his self-interest revealed his ignorance of the group’s work. Day failed the test of similitude, i.e. homeopathic magic, as well, for he was unable to convey knowledge of the band or its expressions. Needless to say, Day’s political mistake [Charlottetown Guardian]). Aftermaths of the blunder also proved humiliating. Given Stockwell Day’s predilection for having a campaign song that cited his surname, journalists suggested other alternatives such as: “Day-O,” “On a Clear Day,” “Never on Sunday,” “Day After Day,” “Day After the Revolution,” “Day Begins,” “Day at the Races,” “Day Has Come,” “The Day the World Turned Day-Glo,” “Day in Day Out,” “Day Tripper,” and even blues songster Mississippi John Hurt’s “Stockwell”(Bromstein; “Name that tune”). In November, puns on “Day” inspired Rick Mercer of CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes to successfully develop a national petition to have Stockwell Day change his name to Doris Day, a mocking critique of the Alliance’s proposed referendum formula which would allow national votes on any issue that could muster three percent of the eligible electorate. Mercer needed 350,000; within a 668 month he received over 370,000 (“Doris Day petition hits the mark”). A signiﬁcant embarrassment for the Alliance Party, the Great Big Sea gaffe ultimately had repercussions for many voters, who judged the error as a laughable demonstration of incompetence, which in turn led to the Party’s relatively poor federal election showing and Day’s eventual losing of the leadership (see Harrison). Endnotes 1. I would like to especially thank the members of the Great Big Sea team I interviewed for providing critical information cited in this paper: Manager Louis Thomas, Technician Daniel Thomas, and especially band member Robert Hallett. 2. In January, 2003 Darrell Power left the group for personal reasons. Selected Bibliography Bromstein, Elizabeth. “Night on Day?” The Montreal Gazette. 31 October 2000: A4. Brooks, Patricia. “Day’s use of popular song could be Great Big Problem.” 25 October 2000. Available: http://mlhogan.com/rantandroar/news/00/10/10txt. html Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 3rd edition. 13 vols. London: Macmillan, 1980. “Doris Day petition hits the mark.” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). 17 November 2000. Available: http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view. cgi?/news/2000/11/17/bc_dorisday001116 669 Doyle, Alan and Séan McGann. “Ordinary Day.” 20 May 2003. Available: http://www.greatbigsea.com/themusic/ play1.cfm Taber, Jane. “Campaign Music Pulled.” National Post 25 October 2000: A9. Thomas, Daniel. Telephone interview. 20 June 2003. Great Big Sea. Play. WEA International CD 18592, 1997. Thomas, Louis. Telephone interview. 18 June 2003. Vaughan-Jackson, “Great Big Sea pulls plug on Ordinary Day.” The Mark. “No Ordinary Day for Stockwell: Great Big Sea not amused its popular song used at campaign rally.” The Telegram (St. John’s) 25 October 2000: 3. Standard (St. Catharines) 25 October 2000: C7. Hallett, Robert. Personal interview. 20 February 2001. Harrison, Trevor. Requiem for a Lightweight : Stockwell Day and Image Politics. Montreal : Black Rose Books, 2002 Klapp, Orrin Edgar. Collective Search for Identity. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. “Name that tune.” The Telegram (St. John’s) 5 November 2000: 5. Narváez, Peter. “Folk Talk and Hard Facts: The Role of Ted Russell’s ‘Uncle Mose’ on CBC’s ‘Fishermen’s Broadcast’.” Studies in Newfoundland Folklore: Community and Process. Ed. Gerald Thomas and J.D.A. Widdowson, 191-212. St. John’s: Breakwater, 1991. IASPM03 - MONTREAL From the ‘Nay’ List to the Play List: Increasing Local Music Airplay in New Zealand Without Enforced Regulation Karen Neill O ver one third of the songs heard on commercial radio in Canada are by local artists. Radio environment. These are: (1) the impact of government funded initiatives for local music; (2) the structure of the New Zealand radio market; (3) major record company backing for local product; (4) New Zealand’s isolation from the rest of the music world; and (5) the continuing publicity surrounding local content legislation. First, to put these in context is an overview of the New Zealand radio market. The New Zealand Radio Market stations in countries like Australia, France and Ireland also dedicate a proportion of airtime to local music under quotas imposed on them by local regimes. While supporters claim quotas help local music to prosper, members of the radio industry believe music should be judged on its own merits and stations free to play whatever they want. The question is - would local music survive without content regulation? In 1989 the New Zealand Labour government restructured New Zealand is a place where local music has started to thrive (on a national scale at least) without enforced regulation. This is no mean feat in a country where the population has access to more radio stations per capita than anywhere else on the globe; where restrictions on content and ownership are virtually non-existent; and where radio’s share of the advertising dollar is higher than the United States, United Kingdom and Australia (1). The number of radio stations grew from around 80 prior to deregulation to over 300 today for a population of just 4 million. Figure 1 shows the high number of stations in This paper examines ﬁve factors which have contributed to the success of local music in this unique radio New Zealand in comparison to other radio markets. For instance in Auckland, New Zealand’s main radio centre, the broadcasting industry. Rules and regulations governing ownership, networking and programme content were abolished; commercial inventory restrictions were removed and the FM band extended. Literally overnight, New Zealand became the single most deregulated and competitive radio market on the globe. 671 Figure 1: Radio Stations Per Capita City Population 7,200,000 Number of Radio Stations 4,000,000 3,400,000 40 20 12 8 330,000 1,200,000 20 Greater London Sydney Montreal Auckland New Zealand Christchurch New Zealand there are 40 stations for a population of only 1.2 million; while Sydney, Australia has just 12 stations for nearly three times the population base. Over 90% of New Zealand radio stations are owned by two major conglomerates; The Radio Network (jointly-owned by Irishman Tony O’Reilly and the Clear Channel of the US) and CanWest (a Canadian-owned company). At the time of deregulation there were fears consolidation of ownership would impact negatively on the diversity of programme content, and that New Zealand radio may lose its cultural identity as a result of this. protection and for over 20 years have fought for the implementation of a music quota. But regulation was not conducive to the new, free-market broadcasting environment. So in 1989 the government created state-funded body, NZ On Air, to look after the cultural aspects of broadcasting. One of its briefs was the promotion of New Zealand music – the ﬁrst factor in local music success. NZ Music Success Factor 1 – NZ On Air: The Impact of Government-Funded Initiatives for Local Music Since 1991 NZ On Air has devised several schemes While this paper will show a consolidation of ownership has actually been beneﬁcial for New Zealand music, opponents of deregulation believed local music needed aimed at increasing airplay for local music. One of the most successful initiatives to date is the Kiwi Hit Disc. Hitdisc is a collection of new music by New Zealand 672 artists supplied direct to radio. Track selection is made by NZ On Air in association with radio programmers. Selection criteria are based solely on commercial radio airplay potential. • Funding for programmes which promote New Zealand music on commercial radio. • Involvement in NZ Music Month - one month a year where the broadcasting industry is encouraged to maximize exposure of local product Interviews with radio programmers show Hitdisc is one of the top criteria utilised when selecting local music for the play list (Neill). Part of the success of the scheme is its diversity. Just as record companies target product to speciﬁc radio formats, NZ On Air also targets radio with format speciﬁc discs, including: the original Kiwi Hit Disc (for mainstream radio formats like Pop and Rock); A/C Hit Disc (for adult contemporary formatted stations); Indie Hit Disc (which is designed to break new artists on radio); Iwi Hit Disc (for Maori or indigenous radio stations); and Kiwi Gold Disc (a compilation of classic New Zealand tracks for older formats). Figure 2 shows that between 1998 and 2002 the amount of New Zealand music on commercial radio more than doubled, increasing from 7.14% to 14.70% (Smyth). Part of this growth can be attributed to the opportunities presented by the rapidly expanding radio Additionally, NZ On Air has developed a series of funding schemes and promotional strategies to help record companies - and musicians - get more radio exposure for their music. These include (2): landscape; making deregulation the second factor in local music success. NZ Music Success Factor #2 - Deregulation: The Number of Stations and Formats Available for Playlisting Local Music Without local content regulation, NZ On Air initiatives are the main source of local music promotion. But it wasn’t until 1997 that the impact of these could be tabulated. This was when NZ On Air joined forces with the radio and recording industries to monitor the level of local content on the airwaves. • The appointment of Pluggers or promotional personnel to work the discs at radio. • The Radio Hits scheme which refunds some of the costs incurred by record companies in recording and releasing local product. Critics of deregulation believed more radio stations would equal ‘more of the same’. But deregulation has actually resulted in a greater diversity of programme content. The best example is youth radio formats, which in Auckland grew from two to ﬁve by the late 673 Figure 2: Growth in Local Content Levels on New Zealand Radio 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0% 7.14% 8.68% 10.42% 10.77% 14.70% 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 NZ On Air June Quarter Figures 1998-2002 90s, with the actual number of stations expanding from three to eight (Shanahan). Usually not considered as ﬁnancially viable as adult stations, youth stations survive as part of nationwide networks made possible by the consolidation of ownership under deregulation. National exposure on youth stations has allowed the local music industry to create its own ‘pop stars’, spurring an interest from record companies in picking up local acts. ‘anti’ commercial radio as it didn’t play enough local music (pc 8/5/03). Glading believes commercial radio’s claim that local music was of an ‘inferior’ technical quality to overseas music had validity at the time. He says advances in technology have since allowed the music industry to produce quality local product for radio. The band credited with paving the way for the new breed of successful, local musician is the feelers. James James Southgate, Managing Director of Warner Music New Zealand says after hearing their peers on air, local musicians started writing different genres of music which were more amenable to commercial radio formats (pc 8/5/03). Michael Glading, Managing Director of Sony Music New Zealand, says prior to this musicians were Southgate says the release of their ﬁrst multi-platinum album, Supersystem in 1998, signalled a change in both musician and programmer attitudes towards commercial radio airplay. This album exempliﬁes both the advancements in production quality and the genre move to a more radio-friendly sound. This music mix 674 compares the feelers with New Zealand band the Bats, whose 1987 album Daddy’s Highway is widely regarded as one of the best local albums of the 80s; despite its lack of commercial success and poor production standards. - now he doesn’t and this equals more local programming. Sony Music’s Michael Glading believes foreign ownership has meant commercial radio must play local music in order to create a point of difference otherwise they could just as easily be programmed Bands like the feelers managed to transgress radio formats and were able to be played on both Contemporary Hit Radio and Rock stations. Other formats created by the new environment included Urban (featuring hiphop and dance music), New Rock (playing modern rock music) and Alternative (a format featuring non-Top 40 artists). Some of these formats may not have been ﬁnancially sustainable with small, independent ownership under the old broadcasting regime. out of Seattle (pc 8/5/03). Likewise, he says record companies need to create local success to maintain a viable business in New Zealand or they are simply suppliers of international repertoire. This attitude has enabled record companies to expand local music production, making Output the third factor in local music success. NZ Music Success Factor #3 - Output: An Increase in Local Music Production and Repertoire Although there is no data available on the annual Like diversity in program content, unrestricted ownership became a feature of deregulation beneﬁcial for local music. At this year’s annual Radio Broadcasters Association Conference Chief Executives from both major New Zealand radio companies commented on foreign ownership. CanWest CEO, Brent Impey, says it is far better to be owned by a foreign company as local owners “interfere too much”. The Radio Network’s CEO, John McElhinney agreed, saying when he owned locally he had an overseas programming consultant number of local releases, ﬁgures from the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) show the sale of local recordings has doubled, growing from just over 4% in 1998 to 9% in 2002. According to RIANZ Finance Director, Jennie Allen, the sales ﬁgure should be higher as it does not include New Zealand artists signed to overseas labels; artists which are counted as local content in radio airplay charts (pc 8/5/03). If these artists were to be included, Allen puts the local sales ﬁgure at around 15%. This correlates strongly to the 15.1% 675 local content reached by radio at the end of 2002 (Smyth). Record companies attribute the rise to a growing co-operation between the local radio and recording industries. According to one record company executive, 10 years ago they would try to keep the identity of local artists’ secret…but now ‘local’ is a selling point. However, in a country where it only takes a relatively small number of sales to get a record to ‘Gold’ status, it takes many more to make it ﬁnancially viable (3). This means international repertoire still takes priority under the global Charter of most New Zealand-based record companies. the music world, making Geography the fourth factor in local music success. NZ Music Success Factor #4 - Geography: New Zealand’s Isolation from the Music World Encourages Cultural Creativity Most in the music industry are of the opinion geography has been a difﬁcult barrier for New Zealand music to overcome. This is due to the expense of getting local artists exposure in international markets. But there are beneﬁts to New Zealand’s distance from the rest of the music world. Mark Ashbridge Managing Director of Independent - Australasian record company, Festival Mushroom Records, says the sales performance of international acts like Kylie Minogue determines how much they can invest in return in local acts (pc 8/5/03). This is because record companies are still restricted by the small size of the New Zealand domestic market. The recording industry agrees New Zealand needs a breakthrough act for the international music industry to take notice and for them to start recouping a reasonable return on local investment. Many predict it will be indigenous genre Paciﬁc Pop - that will eventually cement New Zealand’s place in the global music scene. This music genre was generated by New Zealand’s isolation from the rest of Creatively, isolation has seen New Zealand establish its ‘own’ sound - Paciﬁc Pop – with artists like King Kapisi, Chu Fu, Nesian Mystik and Salmonella Dub making a strong impact on both sales charts and radio station play lists. Although the sound could be considered derivative of rap music, there’s a deﬁnite paciﬁc ‘feel’, both in the look of the song (video) and lyrics. Michael Bradshaw, General Manager of BMG Music New Zealand labels it a “unique vibe” (pc 8/5/03). Isolation from the rest of the music world has also generated commitment and support for New Zealand music from the current Labour government. Recently 676 it assured long-term funding for NZ On Air, stating it had become an “institution on the edge of some massive spin offs” (Maharey). Namely, export. New Zealand is forever ingrained in our heads now. What you’ve done is created 15 ambassadors for your country that don’t live in your country. (David Kines - Much Music, Canada). From around the world of music we came as semi or total strangers to share a week of Kiwi hospitality and culture. Eight days later, we left as friends and likely business associates with a deep appreciation and keen awareness of the New Zealand music scene...All of us will no doubt give an extra listen to the next new Kiwi band that lands on our desks. One of the dynamics I really appreciated was the fact that although there was consensus regarding the stand-out bands, there was not unanimity. Each of us took away something a little different… a little personal. Music, regardless of its point of origin, has something unique for everyone. (Jay B Ziskrout - CMJ Network, New York). Despite the success of this, and other initiatives, the issue of content regulation has remained on the political agenda in New Zealand. Ironically, this is a result of the positive publicity surrounding such events, making Hype the ﬁfth factor in local music success. NZ Music Success Factor #5 - Hype! Effect of the Continued Quota Debate on the Public, Programmers and Politicians In November 2002 the Government worked alongside the music industry to host the World Series. This was where international music industry executives were invited to Auckland during the America’s Cup regatta, to listen to a showcase of the best local music talent. International music industry feedback was extremely favourable (“Visitors Make Comment”, APRA). This level of interaction and appreciation of the bands would never happen if you took the same bands and put them in a showcase venue like CBGB’s in New York. For a start, you’d have a really hard time getting an audience... And the bands would be in a foreign place, preoccupied with the difﬁculties of being in a strange city. To bring people like us to New Zealand, to see the bands on their home turf, is a brilliant way of marketing your talent. (John Woodruff - CEO Rough Cut Music, Australia). We’ve seen thirty-odd bands, but we’ve also established an afﬁnity with your country. So when a record arrives on our desk, we know some of the players behind it. That’s the legacy of the week: Each time a new local music act created a stir on 677 Figure 3: Current & Future Voluntary Local Content Targets for New Zealand Radio 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Rock A/C Pop Urban Format March 03 Target 03 Overall Easy Overall the music front, the New Zealand government made noises about regulation; mainly to appease public interest in the debate. Commercial radio responded by increasing local content ﬁgures, stalling legislation. In 2002 the radio industry and government ﬁnally put and end to the debate by agreeing on a ‘voluntary’ code of practice for local music. The new code encourages commercial radio to reach 20% local content across all music formats by 2006. Yearly targets have also been set in place for individual formats to help keep the 20% on track. regulation. But for further growth to occur, David Innes from the Radio Broadcasters Association says there needs to be an increase in the amount of local product being released (cited in Kennedy). However, record companies indicate local output may have reached its peak. They say online and global music piracy has led to an international downturn in record sales which means they are unable to release more local product. Arguments for increased local content ﬁgures need to take into account economies of scale - no matter how well New In its ﬁrst year most formats have exceeded these targets. This shows commercial radio is willing to increase airplay of local music without enforced Zealand radio does in the local content stakes, if the music industry can’t return a proﬁt on domestic product, they can’t increase output. 678 What the music industry needs now isn’t protectionism; its encouragement and innovation in the retail, export and business sectors. If the same emphasis and ingenuity can be placed on these areas - as has been applied to radio in the past – New Zealand music may yet become famous for something other than Neil Finn and Split Enz. Endnotes 1. New Zealand radio’s share of the advertising dollar is 13 percent (The Radio Bureau, 2002). The latest Jack Myers Report places US radio at 7.8% (www. jackmyers.com); while in the UK radio’s share of the advertising dollar is 8% (The Periodical Publishers Association, 2002); and Australian radio 6% (Austereo Report, 2002). 2. For more details of these and other schemes, visit the NZ On Air website http://www.nzoa.govt.nz 3. To reach Gold status in New Zealand a record must sell ﬁve thousand units (RIANZ). This has gradually been lowered from a ﬁgure of 10,000 copies in 1978, reﬂecting the worldwide downturn in record sales (Scapolo). Selected Bibliography Impey, Brent. “Panel Discussion”. 2003 Radio Broadcasters Association Conference. The Centra Hotel, Auckland, New Zealand: 10 May 2003. Innes, David. “Panel Discussion”. 2003 Radio Broadcasters Association Conference. The Centra Hotel, Auckland, New Zealand: 10 May 2003. 679 Kennedy, Paul. “Radio Over-Achieves in the Voluntary Code’s First Year”. Median Strip, 102. February 2003: 14-15. Testament. Festival Mushroom Records, 2003. Nesian Mystik. “It’s On”. Polysaturated. Bounce, 2002. Maharey, Steve. “Panel Discussion”. 2003 Radio Broadcasters Association Conference. The Centra Hotel, Auckland, New Zealand: 10 May 2003. Salmonella Dub. “The Bromley East Roller”. Dub Plates. Virgin, 2001. Selected Discography Neill, Karen. “Hook, line & singer! Essential criteria for maximising the playlist potential of local music on commercial radio: A New Zealand Programme Directors’ Perspective”. Perfect Beat, 5(4): January 2002. The feelers. “Space Cadet”. Supersystem. Warner, Scapolo, Dean. New Zealand Music Charts 1975-2000 – Albums. Wellington: IPL, 2001. 1998. The bats. “North by North”. Daddy’s Highway. Mammoth, 1987. Personal Communications Allen, Jennie. Finance Director, Recording Industry Association of New Zealand. Personal Interview. 8 May 2003. Shanahan, Morris. “Youth Radio Listening in New Zealand: More Choice, More Listening”. Journal of Radio Studies 8(2): Winter, 2000). Smyth, Brendan. “Music: How much?” NZ On Air. January 2003. 3 April 2003<http://www.nzonair.govt. nz/pag.cfm?i=513>. Anderson, Cath. Executive Director, New Zealand Music Industry Commission. Personal Interview. 8 May 2003. “Visitors Make Comment”. APRAP. December 2002: 5. Ashbridge, Mark. Managing Director, Festival Mushroom Records New Zealand. Personal Interview. 8 May 2003. Selected Videography King Kapisi & Che Fu. “U Can’t Resist Us”. 2nd Round Bradshaw, Micheal. General Manager, BMG New 680 Zealand. Personal Interview. 8 May 2003. Glading, Michael. Managing Director, Sony Music. Personal Interview. 8 May 2003. Southgate, James. Managing Director, Warner Music New Zealand. Personal Interview. 8 May 2003. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Dialed Tone: Signature Guitars as Cultural Signifiers Wade Nelson T his paper is part of a larger project and will contribute to the completion of my dissertation of guitar playing and innovation.(Bennett and Dawe. pg 7) As Steve Waksman notes in his book, Instruments of Desire, there have been relatively few academic studies on the electric guitar (Waksman, 1999, pg 10). This paper examines the creation and marketing of signature- or artist-model guitars by instrument manufacturers. In short, what is exactly being offered to consumers by companies such as Fender when they collaborate with a well known and / or respected in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies here at McGill. This project, still in its early stages, looks at the phenomenon of signature model technologies. I’ve found the Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe book, Guitar Cultures, invaluable to this part of the project. “Guitar culture” is a term used by the authors to refer to the guitar makers, guitar players, and audiences who imbue guitar music and the instrument itself with a range of values and meanings through which it assumes its place as a cultural icon.(Bennett and Dawe, pg 1) Electric guitars, as cultural artifacts and cultural signiﬁers, can be read as texts. Indeed, according to Bennett and Dawe, guitarist to produce an instrument that purportedly reﬂects something of that artist’s talent, style, and tone (or ‘signature-sound’)? What do the manufacturers get out of the arrangement? What incentives can be seen for the artists themselves? As such, I focus on one guitar manufacturer’s catalogue, speciﬁcally, Fender’s Frontline publication, and offer a textual analysis of how the signature-guitars are being marketed in / mediated by this publication. According to Bennett and Dawe, “One cannot Equally important in the grounding of guitar culture (…) is the ability of certain instruments, particularly the range of vintage electric guitars, to absorb and thus speak for whole histories underestimate the role of (…) catalogues for the dissemination of guitars”(Bennett and Dawe, pg 7). Although this medium may yet be usurped in importance by the Internet and guitar manufacturers’ respective 682 websites, it is my impression that the printed catalogues are still the primary mediation between companies such as Fender and their targeted consumer. Furthermore, I have chosen Fender’s 2003 catalogue over other manufacturers as it is by far the most prominent and thickest catalogue in guitar shops. Waksman succinctly explains the relationship between the guitarist and the company releasing a signature model guitar in respect to Chet Atkins. their ﬁrst ‘signature-model’ guitar in the 1920s. The ‘Nick Lucas Special’ ($125) was touted in the company’s 1928 catalogue as “an instrument by an artist, for an artist”(Bacon, 2000). Of course, the most successful and long-lived signature guitars carry the names of the aforementioned Chet Atkins and Les Paul. Interestingly, the ubiquity of the Les Paul model guitars have lead to the awkwardly named dual-signature Les Paul guitars, the ﬁrst of which being the Jimmy Page Les Paul, released in 1995. (…)Atkins, for his part, was excited by the possibility of having his name on a guitar, perceiving it as a legitimation of his status as a guitarist of high regard. The association between Atkins and Gretsch was mutually beneﬁcial, and helped to solidify the commercial process begun by the Gibson Les Paul whereby guitarist and guitar lent prestige to one another via the medium of the guitarist’s name, a name that signiﬁed in turn a range of desirable qualities that the guitar would ideally confer upon potential consumers.(Waksman,1999, pg 97-98) Conﬁdent that the artist known as “The Crooning Troubadour” (known for his recordings of “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” and “I’m Looking Over a Four -leafed Clover”) could help sell and bring a certain amount of prestige to their guitars, Gibson introduced In 1988, Fender’s ﬁrst signature model Stratocaster bore the name of Eric Clapton. Jeff Beck’s model followed in 1991, and more than twenty such signature-series guitars have appeared in the last 15 years. As Waksman wrote in regard to Chet Atkins above, the beneﬁts to the manufacturer of such signature model guitars are obvious: the guitarist lends prestige or perhaps their aura to the product being sold through that artists’ name. The signature can signify a skill-set, or rather that something of the artist’s skill or “mojo” will come with the signature on the product. At the very least, what is implied is that the signature sound or tone that a guitarist is associated with is included with the guitar. In regard to the beneﬁts to artists, Waksman writes that 683 an endorsement deal brings not only added income but certiﬁcation that one has earned the reputation and the notoriety to serve as an example to others. Perhaps the ultimate prestige in this regard is the ‘signature’ guitar, in which a famed guitarist lends his name to an instrument in exchange for having some input on the design and some economic investment in the ﬁnal product.(Waksman, 2001, pg 125) In his chapter in Guitar Cultures entitled “Into the Arena: Edward Van Halen and the Cultural Contradictions of the Guitar Hero”, Waksman writes of Edward Van Halen’s disdain for “off-the-rack” guitars and the thus ironic release of his ﬁrst rackable signature model guitar by Music Man in 1991. Van Halen’s negotiation with Music Man and the resulting level of control he had in creating the instrument bearing his name, according to Waksman, “…meant that he could enter the ﬁeld of mass production while still maintaining an aura of personal identiﬁcation with his namesake instrument” (Waksman, 2001, pg 127). Indeed, Van Halen’s subsequent move of his signature model guitar to the Peavey company, who had been making his signature model ampliﬁers, and reputation as guitar hero have assumed signiﬁcant commodity value in conjunction not only with the band’s music but with the electric guitar and its accessories.(Waksman, 2001, pg 127) An honest account of the relationship between the artist and the manufacturer in regard to signature model electric guitars, I believe, is found in an email that I received from John Willis of Fender Consumer Relations: Our Artist Signature Series is pretty straightforward. It is not as if they are “knighted”, or the Signature Series guitar is somehow “bestowed” upon them. These guitars usually come about through contact between the artist and our Custom Shop regarding the building of a guitar. (…) At some point in the discussions, the idea of a Signature Series instrument inevitably comes up. If the guitar is different enough to merit designation as a separate model, our marketing department is always willing to use a well-known name to sell some product! (…) It is an excellent way for them to receive useful product and publicity, and for us to market our instruments with added credibility. (personal communication, June 11, 2002) marked another step in the consolidation of the process whereby Van Halen’s name 684 Of course, this mutually beneﬁcial association goes on with or without the release of a speciﬁc signature model. The consumer completes the triad that catalogues such as Fender’s Frontline mediate between. In their Guitar Cultures chapter entitled “The Guitar as Artifact and Icon: Identity Formation in the Babyboom Generation”, John Ryan and Richard A. Peterson discuss the consumption of electric guitars by the ‘boomers. Simply put, the authors seem to point to hero worship as perhaps the primary factor in electric guitar purchase. As they write, there are varied relationships between consumers and their signature guitars): “I also now own an Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster. It doesn’t mean that much to me; it just seemed like a nice thing to have, plays great and has an excellent sound. Besides, it’s just like Clapton’s” (Ryan and Peterson, pg 97). According to Steve Waksman, The vintage guitar offers the fantasy that at least a narrow aspect of history has been frozen, objectiﬁed, reiﬁed, and thus preserved intact; and the past itself, as much as the guitar, is made available for consumption.(Waksman, 1999, pg 284) Although speciﬁcally speaking of vintage guitars, one can imagine that this applies to both the re-issue of guitars featuring the original speciﬁcations of those played by consumers’ heroes, and thus to the signature models that conform to the artists’ iconic vintage Informants remember their ﬁrst instrument with fondness or disgust, and radiate joy in talking about ﬁnding their ﬁrst ‘real’ instrument. Most often this was like the one that their guitar hero was depicted as playing.(Ryan and Peterson, pg 98) In fact, Ryan admits to his own hero emulation. Although he now has twelve guitars in his collection, he writes that when he does ﬁnd time to play “…it’s mostly the Rickenbacker and it’s mostly impersonating Roger McGuinn, and maybe impersonating a dream”(Ryan and Peterson, pg 97). In addition to his beloved McGuinn signature Rickenbacker, he also has a Fender that doesn’t resonate as strongly for him (showing that guitars. Although the pose-value of owning a visually similar instrument to one’s guitar hero is very real and probably enough for some consumers, I believe that a signiﬁcant number of consumers must be attracted to the signature sound that is inherently and often explicitly promised by a signature model. Ironically, perhaps, this speaks to the standardization and resulting homogeneity 685 of an artist’s unique sound or tone. The aforementioned Edward Van Halen is known for his “Brown Sound”, and the Stevie Ray Vaughn tone is regularly mythologized and scrutinized by guitar publications thirteen years after his death. As such, a signature guitar is in part the result of making uniqueness consumable. Of course, the signature guitar is only part of the signature sound, as the ampliﬁers, effects pedals, strings, picks, etc. are all a component of an artist’s recognizable tone. These other components, of course, are all available in signature models, but this is beyond the scope of this current project. Before I move into a discussion of Fender’s Frontline Catalogue, I must make a bit of a telling confession. I’m a serious guitar poseur, much more interested in the object that is the guitar than acquiring the skill to play it. Frontline has been an evil in my life for many years, only recently having been kept at bay by the receipt of a 1977 Stratocaster for my 30th birthday from 22 of my family and friends. Frontline encourages the emulation of icons ; that is, of both guitarists and guitars. (SLIDE!) Perhaps the most evil section of the catalogue is that of the Custom Shop, or “Dream Factory”, which encourages the reader / consumer to build the guitar of their dreams. Of course, one would imagine that many such dream machines would feature the speciﬁcations based on the guitars of their heroes. I would now like to move through the 2003 edition of the Fender Frontline catalogue and discuss how the signature series guitars are mediated within it. Again, I am interested in the discourses between the artists, Fender, and the consumer as presented in the catalogue. Within the Custom Shop section of the 2003 catalogue, the more limited edition signature series Fenders are displayed. In this section, each guitar is accompanied by a small picture of the artist to whom its signature belongs. As we will see for the rest of the signature guitars, different discourses are targeted to the different consumers or target markets for the guitars. Page 27 of the catalogue, featuring the Robert Cray Stratocaster® (“… a strong persuader, providing the sound, sustain and expression he’s known for….”), the Dick Dale Stratocaster® (which “…honors the pioneer of surf guitar and his unique sound and playing style.”), and the Richie Blackmore Stratocaster® (“Recognizing one of rock’s ground breaking guitarists….”) (Frontline 2003, pg 27). Although the text for the ﬁrst two guitars promises a signature sound, the third guitar seems to have been given to its namesake as a lifetime achievement award. The main section in regard to signature series electric guitars in the Fender Frontline catalogue is 686 that presenting the relatively mass-produced Artist Series. In this section, a full-page picture of its respective artist and a short paragraph linking the two accompanies each featured guitar. To recreate this classic artist’s classic axe, Custom Shop R&D man George Blanda ﬂew out to Cleveland and, with the permission of the Hall of Fame, took rulers, calipers and gauges to Muddy’s Tele. In addition to all the specs and vital statistics, Blanda took rolls of ﬁlm to capture the features of every square inch of the guitar.(Frontline 2000, pg 10) This narrative of the re-creation of Waters’ signature guitar thus can be seen to speak to those who are concerned with having both the visual components and the sonic elements of the guitar reproduced. The ﬁrst artist presented in this section is, appropriately, Eric Clapton. We are simply told by the copy that the Eric Clapton Stratocaster® is “…guaranteed to please all you “Slowhand” fans” (Frontline 2003, pg 80).Perhaps Clapton’s crossover appeal means that more speciﬁc appeals to fans are unnecessary. The next page conﬁdently presents the Muddy Waters Telecaster®. We know you’ll be satisﬁed with this guitar, inspired by the modern blues master’s distinctive tone and trusty Tele. We’ve recreated all its essential specs including the 50s-era Tele body, ‘60s “C” shape neck, and replaced the traditional chrome knobs with vintage amp control knobs – just like Muddy did. Features Muddy’s signature on the neckplate, and comes with our deluxe gig bag. Seen here in Muddy’s favorite Candy Apple Red.( (Frontline 2003, pg 81) The 2000 issue of Frontline explained what was involved in recreating Waters’ guitar. Not all signature model guitars are offered as an appeasement to babyboomers. Indeed, this next slide shows that Fender is also targeting younger demographics. Heralded as a “...simple and powerful design,” the Tom Delonge Stratocaster is a strippeddown, sonically one-dimensional model. Appropriately, the copy presented with Delonge’s guitar directly addresses a particular consumer: “Hey all you Blink 182 fans: this is a down-strokers dream!” (Frontline 2003, pg 82). Page 83 shows the revamped Jeff Beck Stratocaster®. Here, the copy equates the characteristics 687 of Beck and his signature guitar: “Innovative, tasteful, tuneful and visionary…. That’s how we describe Jeff Beck, and his trusty Strat is an integral part of his signature sound” (Frontline 2003, pg 83). In this case, it is clearly stated that one must have Beck’s signature guitar to reproduce his signature tone. Preliminary conclusions As this is part of a larger project that I intend to be occupied with for the next few years, I am not ready to offer conclusions. Still, it seems to me that there is an interesting relationship between the artists, guitar companies such as Fender and the consumer that is This next slide shows perhaps the most “performative” of the Fender signature model guitars. The Stevie Ray Vaughn Stratocaster prominently features the initials “S-R-V” engraved into the pickguard, strongly signifying the artist and his aura. The copy tells us that “Stevie Ray Vaughn collaborated with Fender to produce a signature Stratocaster shortly before his untimely death in 1990”(Frontline 2003, pg 84). I believe that the word “collaborated” is key here, implying that the process involves both the company and the artist, with the former receiving a rub from the latter. By now, you’ve realized that female guitarists are missing from this project. This, for lack of a better excuse, is because there weren’t any women that had signature model guitars with Fender for 2003 (although women are prominently featured throughout the catalogue). In fact, the Bonnie Raitt Stratocaster® was discontinued after 2001. This retired model was featured in the 2001 Frontline, saying simply that it “… emulates her favorite vintage Strat®” (Frontline 2001, pg 25). mediated by texts such as Fender’s Frontline catalogue. Electric guitars serve as cultural artifacts and cultural signiﬁers, and are readable as texts. Furthermore, the electric guitar is iconic in popular culture, and particular guitars that are associated with particular guitarists are more iconic than others. For whatever reasons, the citizens of popular culture often want to possess a piece of such icons. In the case of signature model electric guitars, the manufacturers’ catalogues can be seen to mediate this process. Thank you. 688 Selected Bibliography Bacon, Tony (2000) Electric Guitars: The Illustrated Encyclopedia. Berkeley: Thunder Bay Press. Bennett, Andy and Kevin Dawe (eds) (2001) Guitar Cultures. Oxford and New York: Berg. Ryan, John and Richard A. Peterson (2001) “The Guitar as Artifact and Icon: Identity Formation in the Babyboom Generation” in Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe (eds). Guitar Cultures. Oxford and New York: Berg. Waksman, Steve (2001)“Into the Arena: Edward Van Halen and the Cultural Contradictions of the Guitar Hero” in Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe (eds) Guitar Cultures. Oxford and New York: Berg. Waksman, Steve (1999) Instruments of Desire, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Night of a Thousand Stevies: Queer strategies and the forging of femininity Jason Lee Oakes A sign on the entrance door says that: “Jackie 60 is a club for dominant women, poets, gay men and others who lip synch. This multiplicity is endorsed even in the name, Night of a Thousand Stevies, and the continual repetition and revision of Nicks’ music and persona assures that any singular interpretation is refused. Through this multiplicity, the event encourages a playful subverting of gender, performance, and musical hierarchies. The choice of Stevie Nicks for this subversion is surprising, given that she’s a heterosexual women who--with her frilly clothing, delicately moody music, and overall feminine image--is not who most people think of as a gender provocateur. What’s more, Nicks’ music is played primarily on album-oriented rock stations, a radio format that tends to reinforce traditional gender roles with playlists dominated by so-called “cock rock” and a handful of women rockers positioned as the Other. In this paper, I will consider how and why Stevie Nicks has been appropriated by those at NOTS as a sort of queer icon. lesbians, free-thinking heterosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, fetish dressers, bisexuals, and those who love them.” Entering the nightclub I ﬁnd myself surrounded by Stevie Nicks, not by one but by dozens of Stevies. Inside the dimly lit, cramped performance space, people are wearing chiffon, velvet, and lace, dancing and shaking tambourines made up with ribbons and babies breath. Tonight is the 13th annual Night of a Thousand Stevies, known as NOTS for short. The event is a tribute to Stevie Nicks, the singer and songwriter ﬁrst made famous with the group Fleetwood Mac. NOTS is organized as a serial procession of Nicks impersonators, otherwise know as “Stevies”; each performs a single song before being replaced by the next impressionist, continuing until about 4:00 in the morning. Regular performers in years past have included an African-American runway model who works in Tokyo, a professional cosmologist from Flower Mound, Texas; and a six-foot-six baldheaded punk rocker from New York. The Stevies are a mix of women and men and genders undetermined. They are accompanied by either karaoke tapes, live musicians, or Nicks’ own recordings, with some who sing live and To begin, I’ll take as an example a performer who goes by the name Nicole Nicks. The ﬁrst year I attended NOTS in 1999 she performed the Fleetwood Mac song “Dreams,” written and sung by Stevie Nicks. With her extravagant gown and heavy makeup, Nicole 690 could pass for a female impersonator, even though she’s a biological woman. As she sings the people nearest the stage reach out excitedly to touch her, but it’s not clear whether they’re reacting to her performance or to the Stevie Nicks aura that she evokes. There is also ambiguity in Nicole’s own voice. While she sings along to a recording of Stevie Nicks, Nicole’s microphone is live and her voice is blended together seamlessly with Nicks’ in the sound mix, and also with the chorus of voices singing along in the audience. In the vocal (con)fusion--with the voice widely considered an identifying marker of selfhood and uniqueness--and also in the combining of Nicole’s own ﬁrst name with Nicks’ last name, a kind of star-fan cyborg is suggested that doesn’t ﬁt entirely in either category. Instead of the original studio recording of “Dreams”, Nicole uses a recording of Nicks taped from a live concert. This means that one has to go back four levels to get back to what the song started as, with Nicole performing a live enactment of a sound recording of a live performance of a song that started as a studio recording. With these multiple levels, liveness and mediation are intertwined to the point where the distinction all but dissolves. 691 There are many such examples at NOTS of multiple layering and overlap. The MCs refer to Nicks unironically as “the goddess,” even while her mannered style of singing and eccentric fashion sense are riffed on relentlessly, and frequent jokes are made about her notorious cocaine habit. Performers take an ambiguous stance combining the reverent tribute of a serious fan with a camp aesthetic of exaggeration and parody, leaving the ﬁnal interpretation up to each spectator. This ambiguity extends also to gender, as the performers range from obvious men and women to “gender benders of all persuasions.” Chi Chi Valenti, the main organizer at NOTS, has claimed that “you have to go back four levels to get back to what [some of the Stevies] were born as.” Even the female Stevies can be ambiguous, not infrequently mistaken for female impersonators. Indeed many of the women’s performances are strongly inﬂuenced by the drag queen Stevies who ﬁrst founded NOTS, so that they effectively take on the role female female impersonators, that is, women impersonating men who impersonate women. With this perverse layering of genders, many of the Stevies aren’t easily mapped onto a two-dimensional grid of male/female or straight/gay. Through the “gay and lesbian;” to the contrary, queerness is less a category of sexuality than an approach to sexuality that may be shared by gays, bi’s, trannies, and even heteros. As a once-derogatory term that’s been resituated, queerness still retains its association with the abnormal and the marginal. In the reclaimed version, however, these qualities shift from negatives to being viewed as positive, with marginality indicating an active critique of normalized identity categories (1). As gay men and lesbians have gained some access to these idealized categories--for example, living legally as couples or getting married, having children, or even voting Republican--it’s meant that queerness relies more than ever on agency, in a deliberate refusal of normalized gayness that some fear is in danger of becoming merely a variation on hetero identity. In its early years NOTS was born directly out of queer culture in New York City. Most of the audience--which one Stevie describes as a motley collection of “freaks, geeks, fags, and hags” (2)--don’t ﬁt comfortably either in straight surroundings or in dominant gay subcultures centered in Chelsea and the West Village. The ﬁrst NOTS was held as one of a series of regular theme parties known as Jackie 60, a weekly, rotating tribute night dedicated to icons including Dusty Springﬁeld, Bettie Page, Patti Smith, and of course Stevie Nicks, whose popularity transformed her adoption of interstitial sexualities and genders, these and other binary distinctions are broken down. In this way NOTS could be theorized as a queer event. The word “queer” in this context is not a synonym for 692 tribute into an annual event. Jackie 60 was started in 1990 by Chi Chi Valenti and her partner Johnny Dynell, who ﬁrst met working at the Mudd Club in the 1980s. Dynell says the parties were meant to bring the performative element back to the New York club scene, and to break down boundaries between gay, drag, and women’s club. At Jackie 60 and at NOTS, this queer transversing of categories is also deployed beyond the realms of sexuality and gender, just as it is in queer theory. Performers at NOTS occupy a middle ground not only between male and female, but between production vs. consumption, embodied vs. mediated, and identities conceived as stable and autonomous vs. ﬂuid and relational. Still, gender can be seen as embedded in these other binary alignments. Feminist scholars have long noted that the masculine/feminine dyad is operative in other binaries, with masculinity linked to the default side, and the feminine marked as the Other. Femininity is thus aligned with the second semiotic axes listed above, that is, women as mediated, as consumers, as unstable and mutable. Whereas NOTS destabilizes these neat oppositions, the irony is that this destabilization itself might be culturally coded in gendered terms. Queer, after all, suggests another binary distinction, presumably, between queer and non-queer, and queerness, with its basis in highly mediated and mutable identities, can itself be marked as a feminine subject position. This queer-feminine alliance may help to explain why NOTS, in addition to being a queer event, is also closely linked with femininity. Chi Chi Valenti says that NOTS and the other Jackie 60 parties are produced with the goal of communicating a “female aesthetic.” Before it’s closing in 2000, the parties were held at a nightclub in the meatpacking district called Mother. Chi Chi initially conceived the Jackie 60 parties as a sort of female counterpart to the uptown, Harlem voguing scene, where black, gay men competed, impersonating social types (e.g. businessman, supermodel) through stylized dance movements and visual cues (3). The competitors, through their cultural poaching, exposed naturalized social and gender categories as highly performative, effectively forging identities to which they were otherwise restricted access. Likewise, feminine identities are forged at NOTS, where the verb ‘to forge’ is doubly-inﬂected, referring both to forgery, the act of creating a convincing fake, and to the forging, or making, of a unique entity. Taking these deﬁnitions together one could say that, through masquerade, gender is made for real. While the performativity of gender is most apparent in the cross-gendered performances, even the women are unambiguous in their acting out of femininity. Valenti describes men and women alike as performing “in drag,” meaning that women too must work to perform femininity, taking on the role of female female impersonators. 693 But why choose Stevie Nicks to represent what it means to be feminine? To begin with, the discourse surrounding Nicks has positioned her this way. Journalists and critics have claimed that Nicks was “the ﬁrst women to ﬁnd a feminine way to rock.” Similar views are often expressed by fans, and in published interviews with other female rock musicians such as Sheryl Crow and Courtney Love. What’s more, Nicks’ femininity is highly performative. She is known for wearing frilly clothing--long, ﬂowing dresses; materials such as chiffon, lace, and velvet; and rampant accessorizing with scarves and shawls. In her stage movements Nicks is inﬂuenced by her ballet training, which is evident in her signature move, the Stevie Twirl. This entails an ecstatic spinning in place with arms extended, a ﬂuid circular movement that’s made more dramatic by the shawl or scarf trailing behind. The Twirl is the crowning touch for Nicks impersonators, and it’s executed by nearly every Stevie who gets on stage. In another marker of femininity, Nicks usually appears on stage playing a tambourine. With its circular ﬁgure and supportive musical role, the tambourine has been has coded in rock music as feminine, played by female backup singers and others with a low musical status, and opposed to the phallic, musically-foregrounded electric guitar. Stevie Nicks, however, has reclaimed the disparaged instrument. She famously customizes her tambourines and featured the instrument on album covers and promotional artwork. As with the Twirl, this marker of the feminine is highlighted at NOTS. It’s featured on ﬂyers, stage-set backdrops, and is played by audience members and performers who decorate them as garishly as possible. Nicks, in her songwriting, also uses devices that are coded as feminine. Many of her most popular songs focus on a mysterious female character--”Gypsy,” “Sara,” “Gold Dust Woman.” Fans and critics commonly use words like “haunting,” “vague,” and “elusive” to describe her music. The ﬁrst hit song Nicks wrote, Rhiannon, established her popular image as an “ethereal nymph” (4). The song is based on the legend of the Welsh witch Rhiannon, with lyrics describing an ideal but elusive goddess-ﬁgure who escapes her male suitor. The feminine traits of Rhiannon, and the queerness of her desire not to be pinned down, are communicated both through the text and in musical structure. Except for a brief bridge section, the entire song is based around a circular non-teleological chordal movement, alternating between A minor and F major, so that it’s difﬁcult to ﬁnd an unambiguous cadence point. If one hears the opening chord of A minor as the tonic, then almost the entire song rotates between this chord and a deceptive cadence that never resolves. Meanwhile, the lead guitar and vocal outline the main melody, but in a heterophonic relationship where they seem to chase each other up and down the circuitous melody, never matching up 694 in perfect unison. In the opening phrase of Rhiannon, Nicks sings the accented syllables as sixteenth- or eightnote pickups that anticipate the downbeats on two and four. Just as Nicks never seems to land directly on the beat, she also avoids landing directly on a single pitch. Accented words such as “rings,” “bell,” and “love” are transformed into two-syllable words, beginning on one pitch and then sliding a semi- or whole-tone up or down. The vocal melody of Rhiannon is ﬁlled with a constant stream of non-chord tones including suspensions, anticipations, passing tones, and neighboring tones. Nicks vocal articulation is also indeﬁnite; when she lands on a sustained syllable, the note is usually held with a warbling vibrato that moves around the central pitch, a vocal quality that is exaggerated by many of the Stevies at NOTS. Like the Stevie Twirl and the tambourine, the Stevie vibrato also moves in circular motion, and is by association circuitous and oblique--both key markers of efﬁcacy. Using these various techniques Nicks rarely sings anything “straight.” She is always throwing in weird little melodic ﬂourishes and her vocal quality is nothing if not “queer” (that is, perversely un-”rock star”like). While none of the above musical techniques may be remarkable taken on their own and are certainly not unique to Nicks, their accretion, and the Stevies’ audible identiﬁcation with them (especially the shaky vibrato and twisty melodies), opens her music up to potential queer hearings. This prospective queerness, while only one possible way of hearing Nicks’ music, is supported by the indeterminacy of form, chordal movement, rhythm, and melody, as well as the elusive witch of the song’s lyrics. Given songs like Rhiannon, a well-known piece of pop music folklore has it that Nicks is actually a witch, an image reinforced by her black-clad, unrulyhair, shawls-and-ﬂowing-frock visual presence. At NOTS, the witch mythology is constantly played up with references to Nicks as “the enchantress” and exhortations to “worship the goddess.” For centuries the image of the witch has provided an index of societal attitudes towards femininity, projecting an image of the feminine-as-Other writ large. With their ability to control forces of nature, witches are mediators of the natural sphere, just as women’s bodies have been thought to mediate nature through menstruation and pregnancy. The mystical powers witches possess to cast spells is correlated to women’s assumed ability to manipulate men, using sexual wiles to control and consume them. Witches are portrayed as cackling, hysterical, generally unstable women who have the ability to shape-shift. Likewise women have been stereotypically depicted as less consistent than men, emotionally erratic and physically transformable through natural and unnatural means (e.g. pregnancy, make-up). 695 The above markers of witchiness paint a picture of femininity unbound, rooted largely in a fear of female sexuality that overﬂows strict boundaries. Recently, Endnotes 1. Turner, William B. A Genealogy of Queer Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2000. however, female-centric spiritual movements have reclaimed the word “witch,” viewing it as a stereotype that can be turned on its creators (5). In the reclaimed version, formerly negative qualities shift to being viewed as positive. Hallmarks of the effeminate subject--hysterical, seductive, capricious--are viewed through a new lens--as sensitive, sensuous, and adaptable. While ﬁrst-wave feminists fought patriarchy by trying to gain access to institutions and identity markers linked with masculinity (and, by association, “authenticity”), spiritual feminists take the opposite tact, subverting patriarchy by exaggerating and even ‘camping up’ femininity (6). This feminine agency acts as a refusal of normalized womanhood that’s viewed to be in danger of becoming merely a variation on masculine identity. In conclusion, at an event like NOTS there is an attempt to reconcile femininity and feminism. This goes some way to explaining Stevie Nicks’ contradictory reception. While her witchiness and hyperfemininity may conﬁrm gender stereotypes for more conservative listeners, from another perspective Nicks serves as a model of female, and more speciﬁcally, feminine empowerment. At NOTS, the Stevie impersonators take advantage of Nicks’ polysemous perversity, conﬁrming their transgressive desires through alternate readings of Nicks’ image and queer hearings of her music. 2. This is an effectively pithy description of the NOTS audience, and one that would be probably be acceptable to most attendees. To paraphrase, the audience is a combination of social outsiders (many of whom are self-ascribed outsiders), nerdy types (especially “music nerds”), people with alternative sexualities (“fags” is applied broadly here) and their straight friends who are drawn to queer culture (known as “fag hags”). 3. In 1988 Valenti authored a Details cover story on voguing--before Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning and Madonna’s Vogue--that helped to popularize the dance and music culture. 4. Reynolds, Simon and Press, Joy. The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 5. Eller, Cynthia. Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America. New York: Crossroad. 1993. 6. The Stevies’ renditions could be read as a camping 696 of race just as easily as a camping of gender, as the latter actually implies the former. As deﬁned by hegemonically, normative femininity is by default white femininity, and Nicks’ self-presentation (the ethereal nymph) borrows heavily from images established in 19th-century English literature and Romanticist portrayals of women. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Flowing together or alone?: On self-controlling music participants in the media society Hiroshi Ogawa Japanese traditional music, Noh-gagu and Gidayu-bushi. ‘Nori’ was revived in a new social context. ‘Nori’ refers to the physical and emotional experiences which a person has when he/she enjoys music. It relates to rhythm. The meaning of it is close to that of ‘groove ’, ’ﬂow’, or ‘cool’ in English. Young people in Japan began to be conscious of ‘nori’ in the context of music. For example, at a concert, attaining the sense of ‘nori’ itself came to be a goal of audience. Musicians also began to take care to make audiences have sense of ‘nori’. When the Beatles had a concert in Japan in 1966, the audience, especially girls, were just crying and calling the names of the band members frantically. However, the attitude of audiences today is quite different from that. They know how to liven up the concert and how to enjoy it. They consciously control their ‘nori’. The purpose of this paper is to examine the image of audiences in the media society especially from the viewpoint of controlling ‘nori’. I would like to show a new typology of audiences by using data which was acquired from a questionnaire distributed in Japan in 2002. The research was conducted by a youth culture project (1) which I was involved with. The respondents were16 to 29 years old, living in Tokyo and Kobe. They were chosen by random sampling. The questionnaires were delivered to 1. Adorno’s two types of listener A s Keith Negus pointed out, there has been a lot of discussion about Adorno’s two types of music listener, the person who was dancing at dance hall and was lost in the crowd and the person who was listening to the radio alone in his bedroom (Adorno 52-54, Negus 10-12). Even today these still seem on the surface to be prototypes of popular music audiences. Adorno considered these types to be passive audiences manipulated by the culture industry. Theorists since Adorno, including sub-culture theorists, have been concerned with the activity and passivity of audiences. Some of them have tried to examine how audiences compete against the manipulation of the culture industry. The others have tried to examine how the audience generated the meanings out of music. These discussions on musical audience and those on the other ﬁelds such as television or ﬁlm have many things in common. The discussion speciﬁc to musical audiences was not necessarily sufﬁcient. In this paper I would like to focus attention on ‘nori’ which is speciﬁc to musical experience. The term ‘nori’ began to be used often among young people in Japan in the nineteen eighties. ‘Nori’ is one of the technical terms of 698 Table 1: Types of Audience Editing Concert-goer I. Editing concert-goer III. Editing computer-user Non-editing II. Non-editing concert-goer Computer-user Nonconcert-goer Noncomputer-user V. Non-editing non-concertIV. Editing non-computer-user goer respondents and collected a week later. The total number of respondents was 1,100. 2. Typology of musical audience in the media society ‘editing his /her own tapes, MDs, and CDs with his/her favorite music’. The reason why I chose editing as the second criterion was that today editing was one of typical behaviors of lonely audience(2). We could get four types. Second I divided ‘Editing non-concert-goer’ into ‘Editing For Adorno, his two types of listeners, dancing people and lonely listeners, were quite different and exclusive of each other. The question we have to ask is whether Adorno’s view is appropriate or not. Today the same person not only goes to a concert but listens to the radio alone. So I would like to show the following typology. I tried to make the typology according to typical musical behaviors. First I divided audiences into four types by two criteria that reﬂected the opposite images of Adorno’s audiences. One is ‘going to the concert or the venue more than several times per year’ and the other is computer-user’ and ‘Editing non-computer-user’ by the criterion, whether ‘collecting music in compressed format such as MP3’ or not. Then we got ﬁve types of musical audience. The proportion of each type is as follows. Ⅰ：Editing concert-goer Ⅱ：Non-editing concert-goer Ⅲ：Editing computer-user Ⅳ：Editing non-computer-user Ⅴ：Non-editing non-concert-goer 15.3 15.3％ 7.0% 7.3% 34.1% 36.3% 36.3% 699 Figure 1: Types of Audience 70 60 50 40 FIGURE 1 Types of Audience ％ 30 20 10 0 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Age Editing concert-goer Editing non-computer-uer Non-editing concert-goer Non-editing non-concert-goer Editing computer-user 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Among the teenagers, most of them are high school students, Editing non-computer-users are numerous, but around the early twenties the Editing concert-goers is rising. Around the late twenties the Non-editing nonconcert-goer is in the majority. The Editing computer-user and the Non-editing non-concert-goer are stable in rate through all the ages. 3. Musical behavior of each type rate of purchaser of CDs is the second highest of all, following Non-editing concert-goers. The rate of getting information on music from magazines, CD shops, free papers, and friends is the highest. They actively read magazines, go out on the street, and exchange information with their friends. The Non-editing concert-goer’s rate of purchasing CDs is the highest of all. They also exchange information on music with their friends. They share a lot of characteristics with Editing concert-goers, but the rate What characteristics then does each type have in musical behavior? Editing concert-goers are the most active in their behavior. They use karaoke and rental CD shops and go to clubs more frequently than any other types. The of using karaoke and rental CD shops is lower than any other types. Editing computer-users are less active than Editing concert-goers and Non-editing concert-goers in musical behavior. But as regards collecting and processing 700 TABLE 2 Musical behavior Table 2: Musical Behavior I. Purchase CDs Use rental CD shops at least once per month Go to clubs more than several times per year Sing with karaoke at least once per month Play in a band Total 83.9 46.3 14.9 38.7 14.3 100.0 II. 86.8 17.1 11.8 25.0 5.3 100.0 III. 57.5 41.3 6.3 31.3 5.0 100.0 IV. 60.6 44.0 4.3 35.4 1.3 100.0 V. 59.0 15.8 3.3 21.1 0.5 100.0 Total 65.2 32.1 6.2 29.7 3.6 100.0 Table 3: Sources of information on music (Multiple answer) (%) I. Magazine Radio Television Internet CD shop Karaoke Friends Free paper Total 65.5 41.1 82.7 42.3 72.0 25.6 67.9 14.9 100.0 II. 55.3 43.4 80.3 26.3 59.2 17.1 61.8 10.5 100.0 III. 52.5 40.0 75.0 52.5 61.3 23.8 50.0 7.5 100.0 IV. 47.7 30.8 92.2 16.4 56.3 22.0 55.2 3.5 100.0 V. 32.2 33.4 77.6 11.1 39.2 13.6 37.4 2.8 100.0 Total 45.7 34.9 83.4 21.7 53.1 19.3 50.8 5.8 100.0 701 Table 4: Answer to the question; “Do you select music in order to change your feeling?” I. Very frequently Frequently Infrequently Very infrequently Total (= 100%) 31.0 43.5 16.7 8.9 168 II. 30.7 41.3 22.7 5.3 75 III. 22.5 43.8 26.3 7.5 80 IV. 25.3 39.4 24.8 10.5 371 V. 17.6 38.1 29.4 14.8 391 Total 23.6 40.0 25.2 11.2 1085 P<0.01 Table 5: Answer to the question; “When you are with somebody, do you select music according to the atmosphere?” I. Very frequently Frequently Infrequently Very infrequently Total (= 100%) 21.4 50.0 20.2 8.3 168 II. 25.0 47.4 22.4 5.3 76 III. 19.0 46.8 29.1 5.1 79 IV. 18.6 43.5 30.0 7.8 370 V. 12.3 43.2 29.4 15.1 391 Total 17.3 44.9 27.7 10.2 1084 P<0.01 702 information on music through internet they are the most active. The characteristics of the Editing non-computer-users is that they rely on television more than any other types, but they get less information on music from radio than any other types. Non-editing non-concert-goers are less active than any other types in terms of musical behavior. 4. Musical consciousness of each type like the air around me’. This metaphor implies that music is indispensable as well as music is omnipresent and invisible. The most active types in terms of their musical behavior have the sense of controlling ‘nori’. They control their feeling and pleasure consciously with music. Editing concert-goers occupy the core of the music scene today. They are interested in up-to-date music, and exchange information on music with their friends very often. They are indeed the target of the culture industry. But they are not simply manipulated by the culture industry. There are various struggles between the Next what characteristics does each type have in musical consciousness? We measured the sense of controlling ‘nori’ by asking “Do you select music in order to change your feeling?” and ”When you are with somebody, do you select music according to the atmosphere?” 64 percent of the respondents answered afﬁrmatively to the former question. 62 percent of the respondents answered afﬁrmatively to the latter question. Above all both Editing concert-goers and Non-editing concert-goers show a higher rate on the sense of controlling ‘nori’ than other types. Mostly 75 percent of them answered afﬁrmatively to the ﬁrst question. As for the meaning of music, we showed the respondents eight alternatives and asked them to choose three of them in order. Table 6 shows the rate which they chose as the ﬁrst. Editing concert-goer and Non-editing concertgoer showed the high rate of the answer, ‘Music to me is culture industry and audience. Furthermore not a few of them are making music as well as listening to music. From Adorno’s viewpoint their activity might be pseudoactivity. But I would like to emphasize that the sense of controlling ‘nori’ is characteristic of most active musical audiences today. Non-editing concert-goers are less interested in up-to-date music. They tend to control ‘nori’ by the repertoire they were already familiar with. Editing non-computer-users are music consumers in general. They know up-to-date music from television. They rent CDs, edit their own tapes, MDs, and CDs, and enjoy karaoke without going to concerts. Editing computer-users have a unique musical consciousness. Mostly 30 percent of them answered “no” to the question, “If you have music ﬁles such as MP3, do you need packaged media such as CDs?” That means that not a few of them no longer make a fetish of 703 Table 6: Meaning of music (For me music is: ) (%) Meaning of music / Type As important as culture It allows me to expressing myself It creates an atmosphere It encourages me I ﬁnd it healing and soothing It helps me to be efﬁcient at work Music to me is like the air around me It provides a sense of community Total I. 1.8 15.3 12.9 19.6 16.6 4.3 27.0 2.5 100.0 II. 2.7 13.3 16.0 24.0 13.3 2.7 26.7 1.3 100.0 III. 6.4 14.1 23.1 11.5 19.2 5.1 19.2 1.3 100.0 IV. 4.0 6.5 24.0 25.6 19.4 6.2 12.9 1.3 100.0 V. 3.9 5.7 27.3 17.1 24.9 4.7 15.3 1.0 100.0 Total 3.7 8.6 22.9 20.5 20.5 5.0 17.4 1.4 100.0 Table 7: Answer to the question; “Are you interested in up-to-date music?” I. Much interested Interested Uninterested Much uninterested Total (= 100%) 16.1 39.9 31.5 12.5 168 II. 6.6 19.7 48.7 25.0 76 III. 13.9 29.1 38.0 19.0 79 IV. 14.3 43.1 29.4 13.2 371 V. 9.1 33.4 37.5 20.0 395 Total 12.1 36.5 34.6 16.8 1089 P<0.01 704 Table 8: Answer to the question; “If you have music files such as MP3, do you need packaged media such as CDs? I. No Yes Uncertain Total (= 100%) 13.7 66.7 19.6 168 II. 17.1 55.3 27.6 76 III. 28.8 68.8 2.5 80 IV. 18.8 50.0 31.2 372 V. 16.0 49.2 44.8 395 Total 17.6 50.4 32.0 1091 P<0.01 packaged media such as records or CDs. At the same time their musical experience has a different quality from the physical and emotional pleasure brought about by live performance. Adorno referred to the radio ham as a typical instance of the fetishistic listener. He argues that information, but on the other hand some of them are making music. 5. Conclusions Adorno’s typology of music listener, the person who is lost in the crowd and the person who is listening to the radio It is irrelevant to him what he hears or even how he hears; he is only interested in the fact that he hears and succeeds in inserting himself, with his private equipment, into the public mechanism, without exerting even the slightest inﬂuence on it (Adorno 54). The image of radio ham is quite close to that of Editing computer-users. They are new versions of Adorno’s lonely listeners because of their new fetishism on musical alone is too simple as typology of musical audiences today. ‘Lost in the crowd’ and ’listening to music alone’ are not necessarily opposite and exclusive. Editing goncertgoers are the most active. They have the sense of controlling ‘nori’. Editing computer-user is a new version of lonely listener. Editing non-computer-users tend to rely on television, and are typical music consumers today. I have emphasized the activity of musical audiences today from the viewpoint of controlling ‘nori’. But this does not contradict Adorno’s arguments about passive 705 listeners. Adorno described the listeners of his day in relation to the culture industry, and he evaluated them in terms of his image of ideal listeners, who were ‘experts’ on serious music and could understand the structure of pieces. This paper is just showing part of our project. It will be reﬁned by connecting it with other types of behavior and consciousness, for example the use of mobile phone, identity, self-consciousness, and so on. And ‘nori’ is still my own subject to be studied exhaustively. Endnotes (1) The research was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientiﬁc Research [KAKENHI]. (2) In Japan at the end of the nineteen eighties the person who was interested in special cultural issue such as comic, animation(‘Anime’), music, and so on came to be called ‘Otaku’ Editing is one of characteristic behaviors of ‘Otaku’ as well as collection. ‘Otaku’ is often thought to be unsociable. Selected Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W.. “On the fetish character in music and the regression of listening.” The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Ed. Bernstein, J. M.. London: Routledge, 1991. Negus, Keith. Popular Music in Theory. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Tearoom” – A Programme for Young People Broadcast by a Culture-Oriented Station in the Czech Republic Aleš Opekar ago - on 18th May 1923. Czechoslovakia was second European country after Great Britain to have regular radio broadcasting. Czechoslovak radio originally focused on classical music. In February 1925, an opera performance was transmitted for the ﬁrst time from the National Theatre, and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra was established one year later. It was common for classical music composers to be appointed as directors of the radio. Other stations focusing on different audiences were established during the 1960’s (2). In 2003, there are 345 transmitters broadcasting radio signal in Czech Republic. 136 (39 %) of them belong to the public service radio, 210 (61 %) to private stations. The public service radio has three main nation-wide stations and many regional stations (3). Czech Radio 1 - Radiozurnal is the nation-wide news and current affairs station. The station broadcasts domestic and foreign mainstream popular music (almost 45 % of the broadcasting time). Czech Radio 2 - Praha is meant as a radio for the whole family. The station offers a wide range of informative, educational and instructive programmes as well as entertainment. It broadcasts Czech (Czechoslovak) radio was established 80 years mostly traditional music but also modern popular music What is “Tearoom”? “T earoom” is the name of a new programme for young people on Czech Radio 3 - Vltava, broadcast every weekday between 19.00 and 20.00. Vltava is a culture-oriented public service radio station. The station started broadcasting in a new format in June 2002. The “Tearoom” program was part of the new format. Until 2002, the station had traditionally focused on older listeners. There is no public service radio station designed speciﬁcally for young people in the Czech Republic. There is a wide range of issues ensuing from this fact. The paper focuses on various issues, mainly concerning popular music (1). The paper analyses responses to the programme in letters from listeners and on-line discussions, as well as personal experience and evaluation of the program by its authors and colleagues within the station. Czech radio market in early 21st century 707 (about 35 %). Czech radio 3 - Vltava is a culture-oriented radio station, a guide to the world of art for all generations, especially for old listeners. There were many discussions on the possibility of establishing the fourth public service radio station designed speciﬁcally for young people; however, the project failed due to a lack of available frequencies (4). Until 1989, there were no commercial radio stations in the former Communist Czechoslovakia. The radio market developed precipitately during the 1990’s. At the beginning of the 21st century, there are three nationwide commercial stations: Radio Impuls, Frekvence 1 and Evropa 2. There are three other large-area stations: Radio Blaník, Country Radio and Radio Proglas. There are many local stations, especially in Prague, for instance Radio 1, Classic FM, Radio Beat, Kiss 98 FM, Radio City, Bonton Radio DJ. Only a few stations, such as Country Radio (country & western music), Classic FM (classical music), Radio Beat (classic rock) and Radio 1 (electronic music, rock & alternative) have a distinctive character and image. The rest of the commercial stations more or less resemble each other, playing mainstream popular music hits (5). Old image of Czech Radio 3 - Vltava renamed to Vltava after 1968. Nowadays, it is a nationwide culture-oriented station, offering a wide range of culture and arts-related programmes. The station broadcasts around 68 % of music (about 60 % music in prime time) Around 50 % of the program comprises classical music and opera, from ancient music to contemporary classical. Jazz represents 10 %, the remaining less than 10 % includes world and ethno music as well as other genres of alternative popular music. There is also a long tradition of spoken word programs – a broad variety of formats, ranging from arts news, current affairs and documentaries to literature and dramatic genres, radio plays, poetry etc. The station has to meet the needs of numerous audiences. As you can see in the Appendix I, there are too many different small groups of listeners. We can divide each of the groups mentioned into several subgroups. Within the classical music group (49 %), we can ﬁnd opera listeners, traditional classical music fans, contemporary music lovers etc. Jazz music (10 %) has two different types of audience – fans of traditional and contemporary jazz. Before the Tearoom was launched, the category alternative pop (9 %) comprised ethnic music from all around the world including domestic folklore, chanson and some kind of alternative music, close to classical music. New culture-oriented station Ceskoslovensko II started broadcasting on in the VHF band in 1964, and was In 2001, the average number of listeners of Czech Radio 3 - Vltava reached approximately 65,000 and the share 708 on the market was 0.7 %. Typically, the listeners were over 40 years of age including many pensioners (6). Different groups of listeners usually do not tune in to Vltava daily but selectively throughout the week to catch programs of their preference. Weekly number of listeners was about 148 thousand in 2001. Should we consider average Czech listeners as less arts-oriented than Austrian or Finnish ones? The problem is more complex and is related primarily to the image and character of the respective radio station (7). These aforementioned facts instigated a change. The station came out with a completely new image and new program line-up in the middle of 2002 under a new editor-in-chief, Lukáš Hurník. Tearoom as part of new image of Czech Radio 3 - Vltava not many other possibilities within our cultural station because there are many traditional programs with their established broadcast times (9). The broadcast time of A new image of the station implemented in mid-2002 included the Tearoom program as well as new structure of all program lines (same or similar programs and sound at the same time period during the week), new sound graphics and new promotion strategies. The promotion strategy tried to introduce the station as something pleasant. An association with body massage was one of the ideas (8). Czech radio 3 - Vtltava started to broadcast the Tearoom program every workday from 7 pm to 8 pm. There were the Tearoom program is the time of the main TV news in our country! The advantage of this broadcast time is that it blocks away too conservative listeners who would object to such a program if we placed it in the prime time. What has Tearoom been offering? Each hour-long programme consists of 15 minutes of spoken word and 45 minutes of music. On Monday, 709 Above: The logo of the Tearoom program: “Tearoom, music and style of new generation” Left: The logo of the Vltava station: “Vltava, Czech radio 3” there is “Radioscooter” (various serials) and “Music on the verge “ (ethno and world music surveys). On Tuesday, there is “Cultural happening” (ﬁlm, theatre, performances) and “Diagonals” (music across genres). On Wednesday, listeners can hear “Pick-up” program on various cultural themes and “Ethno Party” (ethno and world music again, but this time with portraits and analysis). On Thursday, there are “Radiotrips” (invitations to clubs, festivals and other cultural events in near future) and “Dance Party” (electronic dance music, club culture scene). Friday offers “The Nineteen” (discussions with personalities) and “Beat Party” (rock music and fusions between rock and other genres). The aim was to keep the cultural orientation of the station - to keep reports, documentaries, interviews etc. in the program, but the content and form of presentation changed to suit young people. The station engaged a 25-year old Kateřina Rathouská to form a team of free-lance reporters and editors for the new programs (between 20 and 30 years of age). The new image of this program is concentrated in short sound advertisement created by one man - young rapper Ondřej Anděra. The text of the spot plays on words like tearoom, tea, time, time for tea, 710 Concentrate please on the period between 7 pm and 8 pm. The dark line represents the oldest period before the establishing of Tearoom. The station broadcasts contemporary classical music during this broadcasting time. The purple line represents the middle period, partly before and partly after establishing Tearoom, and the yellow line represents the latest period after Tearoom was launched. thaw, ethno, techno, folk, rock, step. Responses in letters from listeners programs with music across genres, asked for names of groups and songs, whole playlists and more detailed information, requested more information about web pages, called for a longer broadcasting time, asked for I have analysed over 200 spontaneous mail responses from June 2002 to May 2003. There were circa 90 % of e-mails and 10 % of letters. Almost two-thirds of responding listeners were male. Comments represented 37 %, criticisms 3 %, questions and enquiries 19 %, and responses to competitions 41 %. Listeners often appreciated particular programs: liked a change of the broadcasting time. From the very beginning, Tearoom has been the cause for lengthy discussions on the aforementioned issue of launching a new channel, Czech Radio 4 for young listeners on an independent web site <www.radiotv. cz>. Some said Tearoom should be the model for the possible new station. 711 Evaluation from within the station station are inconsistent, but increasingly approving. We can come to the conclusion that Tearoom was a step in the right direction. It offers unique programs that had not been available on the airwaves before. However, at the same time, we can say that Tearoom is an attempt to substitute a non-existent public service radio station for young people. From this point of view, we can consider Tearoom as “making virtue of necessity”. The proper solution would be to establish a new station for young people. There are two reasons why this has not happened yet: lack of available frequencies, and, according to some, no space on the small Czech market (Bures ?15). The arts-oriented public service station Czech Radio 3 – Vltava tries to substitute this missing station at least for one hour every weekday. There is a common practise at the Vltava station that staff members take turns to listen to programs at home whole day and write an evaluating report. If we excerpt ideas about the Tearoom program, we can generalise: Colleagues appreciated interesting content, knowledge of authors of programs, possibility to learn something new, opportunity to hear music which is not available from other stations (ethno), revival of the station. On the other hand, colleagues criticised: too informal presentation, too many English expressions, sound not in harmony with the rest of the programming, too artless music styles, improper broadcasting time. Results As we can see from the chart showing the number of listeners during workdays at three periods of 2002 (10), the broadcasting time 7 pm – 8 pm has no high ratings. The reason is, as we have said above, this is the time of the main TV news. Anyhow, if we compare the development of ratings during three periods of the year we can see a gradual increase (11). Conclusion Responses from listeners are positive, the listening rate has increased, professional evaluations from within the 712 7. See MEDIA PROJEKT or Hradecký 2002. Endnotes 1. The author of the paper participates in the production of the program. A new team of external authors has been set up to work on the project. 8. See the poster, TV advertisement (Please click Poster to Launch) and Tearoom logo over the station’s traditional logo. The line at the end of the TV advertisement means: Czech Radio 3 - Vltava – will make you feel good! 2. For further details on Czechoslovak Radio history see Prvních deset let, Od mikrofonu or Maršík. 9. For instance, before 7 pm there are reading serials, and after 8 pm operas, dramas etc. 3. Brief survey of the Czech Radio structure can be found e.g. in the Czech Radio Essentials. 10. Please see the corresponding graph oppositte. 4. Voices demanding such a station are numerous and sometimes quite loud – most recently see Bureš. 11. On the other hand, we are aware that there is too few data on listening to work with. These data are usually close to the statistical discrepancy! 5. The situation on the Czech radio market in the early 21st century and a comparison between private and public service stations has been commented on in more detail by a student of the TV and Film Faculty and program manager of a private radio station Lukáš Barczay in his thesis (see Barczay). Selected Bibliography Barczay, Lukáš. Hudba ceských rozhlasových stanic na ˇ přelomu tisíciletí. Magisterská teoretická práce. Praha: Filmová a televizní fakulta AMU. Katedra zvukové tvorby, 2003. ˇ Bureš, Radek. „Blues Ceského rozhlasu“. Ultramix. říjen 2003. 30-38. 6. The comparison with market share of the Finnish station YLE (8 %) and Österreich 1 (4 %) shows that the position of cultural stations on the market could be much better. For a detailed analysis see Hradecký 2002. Czech Radio Essential 1999/2000. Brochure. Praha: ˇ eský Ceský rozhlas, 2000. 713 Hradecký, Václav. “Kulturní rozhlasová stanice – ˇ Ro problém s kulturním vysíláním a utváření publika CRo 3 - Vltava”. Svět rozhlasu, c7, s 47-50, Praha: 2002. ˇ ---. The Segmentation of Programme Preferences of a Cultural Radio Channel. Lecture, Annual GEAR Conference, Wroclav (Poland), 17-20 May 2003. Poland), , Maršík, Josef. Úvod do teorie rozhlasového programu. Praha: Karolinum, 1995. MEDIA PROJEKT SKMO. Research report. Realizace GfK, STEM/MARK, TN Sofres, období 1. 1. – 31.12. 2001. Praha: Media projekt, 2001. Od mikrofonu k posluchaˇ üm. Z osmi desetiletí c ˇ eského ˇ Ceského rozhlasu. Ed. Eva Ješutová. Praha: Ceský rozhlas, 2003. ˇ Prvních deset let Ceskoslovenského rozhlasu. Ed. A. J. Patzaková. Praha: Nakladatelství Radiojournalu, 1935. IASPM03 - MONTREAL South of the Border: Constructing A History of Rock in a Non Anglo Country; The Case of Mexico Julia E. Palacios T he history of rock has been written basically in Anglo countries and for English speaking people. or later, rock was appropriated by the youngsters of these different countries. In Mexico, and as far as I am concerned in other countries as well, kids started singing in English imitating the original artists and reproducing to the note, the original songs. Curiously enough, the ﬁrst local songs that were composed by the local kids were done in English. English was the “ofﬁcial” language of rock; its inﬂections and accents seemed to be an intrinsic part of the whole rhythm. When the local commercialization of rock began and the recording companies opened up to record the new bands of teenagers, at least in the case of Mexico, they got them to sing in Spanish, “so everyone could understand”. Thus, the ﬁrst recordings were basically cover versions of the original hits translated into Spanish, plus some of their own original compositions that they wrote in English and had to be translated as well. What at ﬁrst was a “foreign” musical expression that needed “translation”, soon became part of the local production of popular music and has been that way ever since. Thus, rock has been a very important part of the history of popular music in Mexico and in many other non-English speaking countries as well. Yet, very Fifty years or so after its “historical” birth, rock is a signiﬁcant part of the popular culture of many nonEnglish speaking countries. It is sung in dozens of different languages and has used slang for all sorts of social classes and generations. It has incorporated sounds and rhythms of local and traditional cultures and the words of the songs have been conveying meaning throughout the years to the indigenous listeners that often forget and much more often ignore, that all began in English. And even though in its origins rock and roll was heard and sung in English and was assumed that such was the way it was supposed to be, today, it can be said that there is and “authentic” Mexican Rock, Argentinean Rock, Turkish Rock, Japanese Rock, Israeli Rock, Cuban Rock and so forth, that is composed and sung in Spanish, Turkish, Hebrew or Japanese. In the second part of the ﬁfties and early sixties, rock and roll found itself being absorbed by the lives and cultures, industries and charts of many countries in the Western world that were being touched by modernization and the inﬂuence of the American Way of Life. With speciﬁc variations and probably many similar patterns, sooner 715 little has been written about the local development of rock in comparison to the proliﬁc literature produced by scholars and critics mainly from Britain and the United States. And what is almost totally absent, is the theoretical analysis of popular music done “from outside”. What has been a natural ethnocentrism due to the origins and development of the genre, forgot to see the expansive nature of rock and the impact it had in other countries. Only recently this has been brought to the attention of some Anglo scholars that have looked outside to see what is going on and what has been going on for years in other non English speaking countries. But only recently as well, local rock has been the subject matter of study and analysis in different countries by their own scholars. I believe IASPM has played quite an important role for this to happen. Indeed, the study of rock in non-Anglo countries, Mexico for one, has not been an easy task and often it has been done in solitaire. Juan Pablo González in his paper “Popular musicology in Latin America, 19652000” says: Consequently, in our region, popular music has been viewed with suspicion, treated superﬁcially or simply ignored. (1) What happens then when being a non-Anglo scholar in a non-Anglo country you assume to be ignored, treated superﬁcially, viewed with suspicion and stubbornly intend to construct a history of rock in Mexico? First of all, you have to know English, because the literature is in English. Undoubtedly, the best histories of rock and the most important analysis have been written mainly in this language. Simon Frith´s original Sound Effects is about the only classic translated into Spanish. And recently, Eric Zolov´s seminal work on Mexican rock and roll, Refried Elvis, has been translated as well. There are some histories of rock made in Spain, and dispersed articles here and there, but non with the consistency that the British and American studies have. So, reading in English is a must and the understanding of the historiography of rock as it has been written throughout the years. But then, when the “universality” of rock has been assumed, with its myths and heroes and commercial Popular music has been a slippery ﬁeld of study in Latin America: a region rich in folk music, most of it mediated by the Nation-State, and sensitive to the inﬂuence of a modernity associated with colonial powers, from which rock and pop come. success, a mental and cultural “switch” needs to be made and see what part of all that applies to your local needs. Rock came into non-Anglo countries always as an “external” event, and even though everyone knew who Elvis or the Beatles were and tried to reproduce 716 their own, its analysis sets problems that have to be approached with a completely different perspective. Even the concepts need adjustment. One might think that in a global industrialized world that has clearly universalized the media and its operations, everyone and everything touched by the media goes through the same process, nothing is as false. Roy Shuker´s Understanding Popular Music and Key Concepts in Popular Music are extremely helpful, but often one has to struggle in order to make these concepts ﬁt in our own rock. In the Acknowledgements of Understanding Popular Music he says: immediate impact of rock in other parts of the world besides the US and Britain, there has been a tendency to make a “simultaneous” reading of the phenomenon, assuming that what happened in one place was transferred or “translated”, like the songs, into another. If rock and roll was received in England, for example, by working class kids, in Mexico it was appropriated by middle and upper middle class kids that were the ones that had a closer relationship with US culture. They had access to radio stations that played American music with the Hit Parade, or were able to afford buying imported records. They were the ones that heard about rock and roll from their relatives that traveled to the The fact that I can write this text sitting at my computer ‘down under’ in New Zealand reﬂects the internationalization of rock music. It is also an indicator of a thirty year personal engagement with the music (…). Add to these several periods of the traditional New Zealand OE (Overseas Experience), notably in Australia, England and Canada, which enabled me to experience other versions of the Anglo-American hegemony of rock (…). (2) Certainly, the references to understand this “AngloAmerican” rock, have been well established, but rock is a universal phenomenon with a local understanding. What might be confusing is that with the almost United States, or they were able to do so as teenagers. As a sign of modernity, many of these kids were able to take English lessons, or attended bilingual schools that sprout mainly in Mexico City, where they could assure a bicultural upbringing as well. If rock was a form of resistance, in Mexico it was much more a matter of belonging, of being updated, of experiencing the modern, of having access to the music of the kids that were part of the American dream, including its problems and rebels with or without cause. But even as part of the American dream, rock was also part of what appeared to be a disposable form of popular culture that was being proﬁtable, but not worth of being taken seriously. As an American product, rock 717 was even a politically incorrect expression, a fact that was made evident during the student movements in the second half of the sixties. Other problem that has to be faced when intending to reconstruct a history of rock in Mexico are the sources, which are almost non existent. There is no such thing as an archive of radio programs and there are very few TV programs of those years that were taped. Record companies have not kept old ﬁles and if they happen to have some, they are completely disorganized. I tend to fantasize about a Mexican version of Chapple and Garoffalo´s Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Pay, which seems to be an “impossible dream”. Nevertheless, I trust there must be information about the Latin American branches in the main ofﬁces of the record companies in the United States. Eric Zolov in his Refried Elvis, was able to track some valuable information about the recording industry in Mexico through Variety magazine, which of course is in English and the issues are in the United States. Teen magazines were scarce and lasted only a few issues. But there was a very important one, Notitas Musicales (Musical Notes), a sort of songbook, that had brief specialized sections, that could give a broader view of what was going on. Unfortunately, the National Library in Mexico, in its periodicals section, does not have a complete collection of it and the former publishers threw away their old issues and did not keep any of them. I was able to consult a private collection, that was incomplete itself, but much more complete than the one in the National Library. Since there is very little information reviewed in newspapers and magazines, the oral testimonies of the original rock and roll stars has been for me a prime source of information. The main handicap here is to reconstruct a history that has had no recognition. There is not a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Mexico, and the old rockandrollers get very little media attention because most of them have not continue playing or if they do, it is mostly as a sideline job. They often play in oldies revivals or anniversaries that they organize for themselves, trying to keep it alive. Even the Hard Rock Cafés throughout the country exhibit objects of rock and roll stars from all over the world, only a few of contemporary Mexican rockers, but none of the old Mexican rockandrollers. So there is an ambivalent relationship with the past. On the one had there is what I call a “resentful memory” of a time that is gone by, when they were “rich and famous” but still live out of their youth memories, of something that was lost. And on the other, I ﬁnd what Italian oral historian Luisa Passerini has called the mythbiography. The rock and roll past has been mystiﬁed, as well as their role in it. They recall not precisely what happened, but what was supposed to have happened in order to 718 fulﬁll the myth. And since there is no formal or systematic history about it, and very little has been written, they say what is expected for them to say as former rock and roll stars. Imagine there would be no written history of rock and roll in the USA, and we only had the possibility to recuperate the oral testimonies of the ones still around. What would Little Richard, Chuck Berry or Jerry Lee Lewis say today about their role in the beginning of rock and roll? The lack of formal archives, magazines and documents in general, makes this a titanic task in order to reconstruct dates, events, tendencies and processes. Then, while the scattered sources are found and the research object is being constructed, give meaning to it all. Of course borrowing mainly the theoretical frameworks, again, of the Anglo rock scholars. Finally, when trying to reach an understanding of the history of rock in Mexico, and how it came into the country and was accepted, rejected and appropriated, I cannot disregard of course the history of rock in the United States and Britain, so here I go back to the roots. In my own forthcoming book on the early history of rock in Mexico, I have devoted several chapters to the development of rock in the United States and England. For one, as I mentioned before, there is not much written about it in Spanish, plus I believe it is indispensable to shed light upon what had happened with the music “outside” that ended up falling on our laps “within”. 2 Shuker, Roy, Understanding Popular Music, London: Routledge, 1994, p.xiii Endnotes 1 González, Juan Pablo, “Popular musicology in Latin America, 1965-2000”, in Kärki, Kimi, Leydon, Rebecca and Terho, Henri, Looking Back, Looking Ahead. Popular Music Studies 20 Years Later. Conference Proceedings. 11th Conference of IASPM, Turku, Finland, July 6-10, 2001, p-21 IASPM03 - MONTREAL Queering the Pitch Karen Pegley I would like to begin by thanking the coordinators for inviting me to speak today, in honor of Philip, and uniﬁed female ear by pointing out the straight and queer perspectives, we did not interrogate these categories further. We again ended up with “lesbian identity” and “straight identity” as uniﬁed categories. While we did move the debate from sameness to difference, we did not move far enough to thinking about diversity and we hope that new third wave writings with their emphases on agency and activism will help us understand issues of gender for both girls and boys that are intertwined with, and not extracted from, other social lines of difference. Despite these limitations we believe we helped raise questions around music and difference. We also made a number of other contributions that I’d like brieﬂy to summarize. First, “Growing up Female(s)” was, within musicological scholarship, methodologically unusual: it was an autoethnography for which we interviewed one another about our musical preferences with the assistance and observations by a third party, ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond. This strategy was important not only for what it uncovered about our differences, but the process of returning to those early years, making lists of pieces, and carefully contextualizing them with both joyful and painful memories was moving for us as budding ethnographers. in celebration of Queering the Pitch. Virginia Caputo, my co-collaborator in this volume and I appreciated the tremendous generosity of the editors when we were preparing our article. We thank them for their encouragement and their courage. When preparing what I might say today I found it much easier to speak of the contributions made by my colleagues here [Suzanne, Martha, Jennifer, Paul]: their work has shaped my research, teaching, and thinking on queer topics and beyond. Virginia’s and my contribution was a modest one: straight and queer reﬂections on music and consumption practices. We endeavored to situate music in our lived experience as listeners, performers, and consumers, recognizing ourselves as active agents of cultural practice. We examined how this activity in turn informed our personal sense of gender and the ways we performed gender in shifting and varying contexts. We were motivated initially by the realization that the differences of which we spoke were not evidenced in the musicological literature; instead, we found musical consumption amongst females to be described as homogeneous and restrictive. While our work contributed to interrogating the homogeneity of a 720 This article was offered, in part, as a pedagogical tool, and over the years folks kindly have related that they use this article in their undergraduate courses as a window for students to engage self-reﬂexively with their musico-sexualities and learn about the ethnographic process. In this regard, we believe the article has been successful. Second, it was important for us because it dealt with girls’ subcultures, how we were socialized, when we assimilated and where we resisted, and that area of study has ﬂourished through the 1990s. Moreover, it was one of only a few articles that addressed popular and childhood music, the latter of which is usually discarded or overlooked in favour of music of the world of adults. Our discussion of children’s songs dispelled for us the “naturalism” or “innocence” surrounding this music and the connection with what we had envisioned between children’s songs and a homogeneous “girls culture.” Finally, our article helped push the boundaries within queer musicology, for, while the most important queer debates (and certainly the most prominent ones) to that date addressed rehearing and rereading music by and writings about particular composers (Schubert and Handel, for instance), ‘queeries’ of pop music and children’s music, doubly and triply marginalized within professional circles like the AMS, were welcomed here. Third--and this is a point that could have been taken further in the article--it is signiﬁcant that I came out as a fan of the Bay City Rollers (which was almost as hard, I would add as coming out as a queer). This was important because as the only Canadian contributors to the collection, I would like to have pointed out that part of the reason that I was drawn to the Rollers was precisely because they were *not* American. As such, I was able to enjoy the cultural capital they had as Scots, and feel like since we were all part of the Commonwealth, I had a more signiﬁcant, shared connection with the band than did my American peers. I believed that the Rollers and I stood outside of their US fan base and had a common, if distant, history. This was despite my unsuccessful efforts to ﬁnd a “Pegley” tartan, which I simply dismissed as unimportant. What I didn’t know at the time was that it *was* important: this connection I fabricated with the band was ﬁctitious, unstable, and, at some level, I knew that. But holding that place of instability was part of my Canadian identity even at an early age: in the era of ofﬁcial multiculturalism and bilingualism, I remember standing in my public school classes awaiting my national anthem every morning, uncertain of which language to sing in today. English? French? There we stood, 30 of us, frozen and mute through the instrumental introduction until we heard the ﬁrst words of our anthem. And then some years the languages reversed in the middle. This is a 721 country where national identity is always uncertain (and this has in fact become part of its identity) and where our identity often is produced discursively in relation to that of the United States. We are unstable: our maps changed in 1999 to reﬂect the incorporation of Nunavut, the newest of Canada’s northern territories, a result of an Inuit land claims settlement, and the question of Quebec sovereignty always looms. But this ‘instability,’ of course, is also our power, because it disrupts. For instance: during the last Quebec referendum economic uncertainties raised problems for American investors. I vividly recall one American politician in the news telling Canada to “get it together boys” and regain our security (along with American conﬁdence in our economy). This was personally a moment mixed with anger and pride: Quebec sovereignty was an important debate and I didn’t want the US to determine its outcome. I remember smiling at the television and mumbling: “We’re here, we’re Canadian, get used to it.” In our comedy, in our political stances, and yes, even ironically in Ontario’s new legislation on same-sex marriages, Canada has tremendous potential to differ from, reﬂect upon, irritate and queer the United States, and help reveal how the attitudes of many folks south of the border have become naturalized through the ubiquitous American media. James Allan writes that these days: “it seems very Canadian to be queer, and very queer to be Canadian.” I would like that to be more true. What questions might then arise? How might music be used differently in a more queer country? Or by queers within that queer country? Surely there are better examples than me and the Bay City Rollers. That is where I’d would have liked to have done more, and I hope that reﬂections on Canada and queers has an opportunity to become more visible in future music studies as it has within Canadian ﬁlm and literary scholarship. We just scratched the surface. More importantly, our contribution contributed to opening up discussions on music’s formative power, ethnography, girls and queerness, discussions of which we are very pleased to have been a part. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The BBC and Popular Music Broadcasting in the UK: Digital Radio Strategies Mark Percival F rom 1967 until 2001 in the UK, the BBC had only two national all-music (or music-dominated) broadcasting in a period of increasing competition from the commercial sector. I would argue that a key factor in the development of this strategy is that the BBC can be seen to be using digital radio policy strategically to support its position as a public service broadcaster, in the approach to renewal of its funding charter in 2006. However, even if this were the only motivating factor in the launch of 6 Music, 1Xtra, Asian Network and BBC7, the increase in the number of UK outlets for diverse network radio stations, Radio 1 and Radio 2. Radio 1 targets a 15-24 demographic (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ radio1), whilst Radio 2 sees its audience as mainly over 35 years old (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2). With the launch of two new UK national digital stations (one in 2001 and one in 2002), the BBC is moving towards more tightly formatted radio. The new networks are 6 Music and 1Xtra. 6 Music targets a rock audience in the 30-45 age range, who feel Radio 1 is too young (http://www.bbc.co.uk/6 Music). 1Xtra is a “black music” station, a clear contrast to the often-used radio euphemism “urban” (http://www.bbc. co.uk/1xtra). The new stations are part of a raft of digital network launches, and appear at a signiﬁcant time for both the development of digital radio, and for the future of the BBC. Introduction and context popular music genres and styles marks a genuine increase in choice for UK radio listeners. The BBC funding model The annual BBC television licence fee funds all of the BBC’s activities, including television, radio and online services. It is a legal requirement for any user of television services to buy a licence (1). The cost of the annual licence in 2003 was GBP116, and every home that contains one or more televisions must have a licence (though one licence will cover This paper will discuss the BBC’s digital radio strategy between 2001 and 2003, and explores the BBC’s approach to public service music radio any number of televisions at a single address). The BBC’s charter is reviewed every 10 years and although the British government has the power to refuse 723 the BBC its licence to broadcast, or to radically change the funding model, this has not happened since the incorporation of the BBC into public ownership in 1927 (2). The BBC’s charter is due for renewal in 2006. This is having a signiﬁcant impact on BBC strategy, which is increasing emphasis on the corporation’s public service credentials. A key area in which the BBC can shine in this respect, is in its roll out of digital radio services. analogue radio frequencies to be re-allocated to other services, probably in the commercial communications sector. This will be an attractive potential revenue stream for the government - both telecommunications industry and the government predict a rapid increase in the number and type of mobile communications devices which will require this bandwidth. There is scepticism in some quarters as to how realistic Ratings released for the second quarter of 2003 showed a continuing decline in listening ﬁgures for the national youth music station, Radio 1 (3). The same ratings period shows a signiﬁcant growth in digital radio listening across the UK, both as terrestrial multiplexed broadcasting and as a service available to users of the non-subscription digital television service, Freeview (4). UK government broadcasting policy the government “switch-off” targets are. The BBC in particular will have to demonstrate its public service commitment to universal availability, and in mid-2003 there are documented problems with signal coverage, even in major urban areas like London (6). Selling digital radio The marketing of digital radio has had three main strands. Firstly, it argues that digital radio offers the consumer a greater number of radio stations, and In the long term, UK government policy is to move radio (and television) from analogue frequencies to an entirely digital service over the next 10-30 years. The period of time over which this happens appears to be negotiable, depending primarily on the speed of uptake of digital services, but initial government targets were 10 years for TV and 20 years for radio (5). The move to digital allows more radio services to be offered in less radio spectrum space. It will also eventually allow existing therefore more choice (7). There are echoes here of the UK Conservative Party’s right-of-centre, freemarket position, which assumes that increased competition will always improve breadth of coverage and increase consumer choice in broadcasting. This approach dominated UK radio policy in the 1980s and 1990s, but evidence from the last 20 years suggests that despite an increased number of radio stations, there is little variation in content and style (8). The 724 1980s approach, in the UK at least, has not resulted in increased consumer choice. digital radio products. The ability to send data may become signiﬁcant if digital radio technology becomes embedded in mobile devices, such as mobile phones. The second major strand of digital radio marketing is that the quality of sound on offer is signiﬁcantly better. This approach was dominant in the early years of digital radio (1996-1999), and the positioning of digital radio as an audiophile product makes sense for a number of reasons. Firstly, early digital radio receiving equipment was expensive, and well outside of normal consumer expectations for a mass market product. Secondly, the representations of digital radio were frequently constructed by technicians, rather than marketing departments, with a consequent emphasis of the capabilities of the technology, rather than its potential as a consumer electronics product. The emphasis on the technical aspects of a new product has a number of recent historical precedents, in particular the 1980s launch of the audio CD (9). Digital radio frequencies might then be used to send high bandwidth content such as complex webpages or digital video. Listening to digital radio in the UK The way in which consumers of radio listen is increasingly signiﬁcant. Until the general availability of cable TV services (1970s in North America, 1980s in the UK and much of the rest of Europe), the only way of listening to radio was using an analogue radio receiver. Since the mid to late 1990s there has been a proliferation of technologies allowing consumption of radio or radiolike services: digital radio receivers; digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasting; the World Wide Web. The increased number of potential modes of consumption has been accompanied by an increase in the number of radio stations (digital or analogue) available globally. This increase is particularly noticeable in the UK, where choice of radio services in any given geographical area has been relatively low. 1. Digital radio sets The third strand of digital radio marketing is its potential to offer additional, non-audio services. The bandwidth of digital radio can be used to send non-audio data alongside sound and although early literature suggested that the ability of digital radio sets to display graphic information (images, advertising, track & artist information) would be a major selling point, there is little evidence of this in late-2003 consumer If you, the audio enthusiast, want to buy a digital radio set in the UK, prices start at around 100GBP (10). The 725 number of models is increasing, and includes personal stereo and CD/Digital Radio sets. The 100GBP price point is signiﬁcantly higher than most existing consumer radio products, but comparable to high ﬁdelity analogue FM tuners. 2. Digital Television the UK include the cost of requiring an appropriate PC or Mac, and of having broadband access. Digital radio and the BBC For the BBC it remains politically important to have high ratings, internally in terms of prestige and decisionmaking, and externally in arguments about maintaining A signiﬁcant driver of growth in digital radio in the UK has been digital terrestrial television, under the brand Freeview. Ratings reports in mid-2003 suggest that around 20% of all digital television users have listened to digital radio using their TVs (11). Digital television (whether it’s terrestrial, satellite or cable) has been a signiﬁcant success in the UK. A one-off purchase price of between 60GBP and 100GBP allows access to up to close to 20 non-subscription Digital TV channels (including simulcast broadcast of the 5 UK terrestrial analogue TV channels), and all of the BBC’s digital and analogue radio output. 3. World Wide Web the licence fee system. Typically the BBC needs to: (a) show high ratings without being overtly populist (thus avoiding accusations of dumbing down from the press, and unfair competition from the commercial sector), and simultaneously, (b) supply quality specialist programming showing its commitment to ideals of public service. In music radio (particularly the national youth pop station, Radio 1) this has historically manifested itself in a “ratings by day, credibility at night” approach to programming (12). All national and regional BBC radio output (analogue and digital) is available streaming on the web. In addition, users may listen-on-demand to many shows, broadcast up to 6 days previously. Web access quality is acceptable using a 56k modem connection. However, the barriers to mass market web listening in Digital radio allows the BBC to broadcast specialist programming 24 hours per day without obviously threatening its mainstream music output. It is signiﬁcant that the two national digital music radio stations, 1Xtra and 6 Music, target demographics which have been 726 under-served by existing BBC output: Black and Southern Asian music (1Xtra) and the generation which grew up listening to punk or indie (6 Music). Other BBC digital radio networks are: 5 Live Sports Extra; Asian Network; BBC 7 (comedy & drama). 1Xtra radio stations and includes DJs with no previous radio experience. Playlist genres at launch were hiphop, ragga, drum’n’bass & UK garage. 1Xtra has its own dedicated news team, in an effort to appeal to the core demographic of the station. 1Xtra’s annual budget is around 6m GBP, twice that of the any other BBC digital station. 1Xtra is based in the same building as Radio 1, and has frequent on-air crosstrails from its more mainstream parent station. Station launch: 16 August 2002. Audio clip: 6 Music, Tuesday 24 June 2003, mid-day, BST. Ian Parkinson, Head of specialist music at the BBC acknowledged credibility issues at launch - black urban audiences typically listen to pirate stations (estimated to be around 250 in 2001, mainly in London, South-East England and Birmingham, the UK’s 2nd largest city) (Guardian, 19 August 2002, again). Critical reaction to 1Xtra has been largely positive. From the Financial Times, 24 June 2003: “Most fans of urban music would be lost without the BBC”. In same article, Jenny Abramsky (director of radio & music), at the station press launch, says that 1Xtra is about “Giving people the opportunity to hear new music ... [and this] is at the heart of public service”. This seems unambiguous in positioning the new digital radio stations as bargaining chips in the negotiation for the future of the BBC. In the run up to the launch of 1Xtra, The Guardian (on 20 May 2003) expressed reservations about its potential with the observation that the station’s target demographic (urban, black, 16-25) was amongst the least likely demographic to own expensive digital radio sets. 6 Music The Guardian, on 19 August 2002, notes that 1Xtra is “the ﬁrst national station aimed at a black audience ... an attempt by the BBC to connect with an audience that dismisses it as irrelevant”. Station launch: 11 March 2002 (ﬁrst new BBC On-air talent is drawn from London-based pirate national music station in 32 years). 727 An extended extract from the 6 Music website reads much like a corporate mission statement, though with a more interesting soundtrack. to the model familiar to anyone who has listened to commercial North American radio in general, but US radio in particular. It would be politically unacceptable for the BBC to be accused of following the US commercial radio “6 Music is a network for people who are passionate about pop and rock music. Here you will ﬁnd a rich mix of the contemporary and the classic ranging from The Clash to Sly & The Family Stone, via Beck, Bjørk and Public Enemy. The network also champions some of the best emerging music talent like The Strokes, Turin Brakes, Elbow and many others. Online and on air, 6 Music isn’t afraid to put the boot in. There are strong editorial opinions and music news from our in-house team of journalists, plus insightful, contextual reviews of CDs and gigs, the ﬁnest that 40 years of BBC sessions have to offer, and a continuing search for the best new musical talent.” model. Moreover, the BBC approach to format radio still holds on to notions of public service broadcasting which contrast with the market-research-led approach of UK commercial music radio. In many ways, both 1Xtra and 6 Music are a high proﬁle attempt by the BBC to establish its credibility as a public service radio broadcaster, catering for marginalised cultural groups (1Xtra) and previously ignored age/taste demographics (6 Music). The BBC’s charter is up for renewal in 2006. The charter renewal by the UK government means gives the corporation 10 more years of public funding, through the licence fee. The 18 months since the start of 2002 have seen the BBC announce a series of policy and programming initiatives which re-assert its commitment to a notion of public service. Digital radio is central to (http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/) Strategies this strategy, and is a high proﬁle demonstration of this commitment. It might be argued that the timing of this strategy is opportunistic in that it seems to be designed 24-Hour specialist music programming is new to the BBC and it is evident that the organisation is still learning how to do it. It seems to me, that it is implicit in the BBC approach to style and content on both 1Xtra & 6 Music to ensure that format radio is self-consciously opposed to support the BBC’s case for 10 more years of public funding. However, I would argue that this in no way undermines the broader potential of the strategy to increase choice for radio listeners, and to open up the UK to notions of public service format radio. 728 7. http://www.digitalradionow.com/ Endnotes 1. This is normally deﬁned as the presence of a television tuner, with any suitable input and output - this includes use of TV tuners in PCs. 8. Barnard, S (2000) Studying radio. London: Arnold / New York: Oxford University Press. p54. 9. The audio CD was most frequently marketed as being of superior audio quality to vinyl. Whether or not this is indeed the case is a matter for audiophiles to debate. 2. Crissell, A (1997) An introductory history of British broadcasting. London: Routledge. 3. Radio 1 dipped below 10 million listeners per week at this time. See http://www.rajar.co.uk for ratings updates every calendar quarter. 10. http://www.digitalradionow.com/ - Click on Product Guide. 4. Freeview is a BBC-led consortium offering 11. Wells, Matt (2003) Digital kills the Radio 1 stars. Guardian, Media section, 4 August 2003. http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/ story/0,7558,1011599,00.html subscription-free terrestrial digital television (and radio) services for the cost of a one-off purchase of a set-top decoder box (between GBP60 and GBP100, at the end of 2003). Compatible boxes are available from a number of consumer electronics companies. 12. Barnard, S (2000), ibid, p.135. Quote from Frances Line, Head of Radio 2, 1980s. 5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio, and links from there. 6. McIntosh, Ian. The Guardian, Online section, 17 April 2003, “New digital radio gets a bad reception”. http:// www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,937949,00. html IASPM03 - MONTREAL Beyond the Music: Political Popular Music & Social Justice in an Age of Fragmentation Elizabeth Perea T he project presented in this essay an ongoing work that has challenged my approach to music this distinctive aspect of our community. I analyze the role of popular music and music-centered community in social justice activism. I examine these issues through the frameworks of postmodern theory, philosophy, and ethnomusicology while also providing an understanding of the current political economy of popular music as it relates to this discussion. I provide support for my thesis from my experiences with the community of DiFranco fans referenced above. Preview of inter-action and action scholarship. Speciﬁcally, it has challenged me to begin thinking about music and the communities around music as more than cultural artifacts and more than texts, as is often the case in the discipline of Communication, but as pedagogical sites of transformation. Thus in contrast to previous concerns of communication and cultural studies music scholarship my interest is not whether or not popular music can function counter-hegemonically in today’s corporate dominated music industry, but how contemporary alternative musical communities are forming, what social impacts they are having, and around what ideologies and practices these formations are occurring. These interests began a couple of years ago when I formed what I called the AniProject. The AniProject is an online community of approximately seventy-ﬁve people who had been recipients of an Ani DiFranco online newsletter community. For a number of years we frequently met in chat rooms, exchanged emails and shared our perceptions and interpretations of DiFranco’s music and the world around us. During this time I found the political nature of our conversations and the solidarity that we shared unique compared to other online research I had read. My paper engages Throughout the history of blues, jazz, hip-hop, and rock and roll (and their myriad of sub-genres) music has often been utilized within the political public sphere. So, to say that DiFranco sings about political issues and even galvanizes political interest may be powerful, but it’s not unique. One need only think of the folk music of Woody Guthrie and his comrades and its relationship to the labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s, Dylan and many other artists in the ‘60s. In the ‘70s we heard from the Sex Pistols, the Clash and other politically minded counter-cultural artists. In the ‘80s Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, NWA and Public Enemy brought the political concerns 730 of the U.S. urban streets to virtually every American white middle-class suburban youth with a radio. More recently, Rage Against the Machine rocked the 2000 Democratic Convention and most recently Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, R.E.M., John Mellencamp, George Michael, System of a Down, Jay-Z, Green Day, Mick Jones, Paula Cole, and the Beastie Boys have all written songs opposing the United States invasion of Iraq. Due to recent censorship of U.S. radio airwaves Thurston Moore of the American band Sonic Youth has launched a free MP3 website (protest-records.com) which features underground bands performing anti-war songs (McHone 2003). It’s clear that popular music has always functioned within the political public sphere. Therefore, it is essential that I foreground what is particularly unique about this artist, music, community, and project. Ani DiFranco is one of the ﬁrst U.S. popular music artist of the late 20th century to attempt and succeed at building a career and a business that function virtually completely outside of the corporate-dominated global music industry.1 DiFranco’s political angst and protest music lineage is unmistakable, but what is amazing is that she has attained international notoriety, both in light of her organizational autonomy and its relationship to her counter-cultural messages. Ani’s self-titled debut hit the stands in 1990. Her independent record label, Righteous Babe Records (RBR) has since sold well over a million copies of Ani’s 20 solo albums. Now, thirteen years later Ani also produces the work of the other nine artists on RBR. Part of the reason for her growth in popularity, album sales, and ticket sales has in fact been another distinct facet of this phenomenon: her fans. The grass roots community of supporters that have followed her over the years, volunteered at her concerts, and through word of mouth advertised every CD, are a diverse yet intimate group of music fans who establish bonds quickly, based upon assumed ideological commonalities. Subsequently, the community of fans that I brought together, the AniProject, easily evolved into a community in which music and politics were the central means of citizenship. It became an intimate counter-public. It also became a space of political inspiration. More than just talking about Ani and her music, members sought to politically and socially engage in acts of social justice. The following chat room transcript and email posting are examples of the conversations we had during our time together. Most importantly, they demonstrate the relationship between the topics that we discussed and the social activities in which members engaged. We begin in a familiar place-in front of our computers: It’s Saturday night, about nine o’clock as ﬁve women, scattered across the globe in Houston, California, Melbourne Australia, Illinois, Perth Australia, and Pennsylvania, gather around their keyboards 731 to hang out together, tell their stories, and share their passion for music and meaning. It’s just before Christmas. For those in the states, there’s a chill in the air; the Aussies have their windows open trying to ﬁnd relief from the heat. As is often the case, the topic of conversation is an Ani song. Tara begins and 5 other voices join in: Julie (California) - Hey, my hometown too! Mel – That’s why I had to move to Pennsylvania. Tara – I just got laid off too! Here in Houston! Mel – Yup, downsizing. Tara – We’re hoping that another company will come in and use the facility that the old company had—they built pacemakers. I really need to take off and go visit some employment sites! Thanks for listening to me ramble. You guys are great! Almost a year after this conversation the AniProject got an email from Jess regarding the Asia/Paciﬁc World Economic Forum (WEF) that met in Melbourne Australia on September 11th, 12th, and 13th. The WEF is a self-proclaimed international consortium of 1007 organizations committed to global economic stability. Espousing dedication to global diversity and the interests of participants from throughout all sectors of society, the WEF is in fact populated by a membership of mostly European, American, and Japanese elite businessmen who meet with world leaders and government ofﬁcials to craft business deals and establish relationships with politicians. According to Public Citizen, the WEF is a corporate trade association marketing itself as a neutral party. Its membership is comprised of large, mainly U.S., European and Japanese corporations. Only companies with annual revenues over $1 billion are invited. Eighteen presidents and nine prime ministers Tara (Houston) - There is a song on the Up Up Up album…I can’t remember the name… Melissa (Perth) - Trickle Down? Tara - Yes! Tara - Is this a story of her hometown? Jess (Melbourne) - I don’t know Tara - It is almost the story of my hometown right now! Rachel (Illinois) - Where are you living Tara? Tara - Houston, but I grew up one hour south of here. Rachel - This has been the story for dozens and dozens of towns all over the country. Tara - In my town the one place that everyone works at was just bought out and they are closing it—5000 jobs! Rachel - Closing it to send the work overseas? Tara - Yes! GONE! Mel (Pennsylvania) - Hey, that happened where I used to live too and my dad got laid off. 732 attended the 2002 meetings. Activists concerned with issues of globalization, the IMF, and the WTO view the WEF as a tool of wealthy corporate entities designed to protect their interests often times at the expense of the global environment, labor, and the poor. So, on the night of the 13th of September Jess sat down at her keyboard… bones. Today, morale was quite low and we were all extremely frightened. Blockading was now out of the question. A collective decision was made— all ﬁfteen thousand of us marched through the city. It was awesome. I have never been so motivated and so inspired. We ended the protest on a powerful note. The revolution is well on its way! Take good care, Love Jess Jess was an activist before she came to the AniProject but says that she has always found Ani’s music inspiring and that the conversations we’ve had within the project have been motivating. Other members never participated in social activism until they heard the passionate imploring of DiFranco and the heartbeat of a community of fans moved to create change. This project analyzes three years of community building and social interaction around a speciﬁc popular music phenomenon and the relationships between fans, music, and practices of social activism. I take issue with the more pessimistic readings of popular music production and consumption and argue for a more nuanced understanding of consumption practices in the 21st century. Achieved through the study of particular music communities. Speciﬁcally, the business practices of DiFranco’s label, Righteous Babe Records, her utilization of independent show promoters, the booking Two days ago we began the ﬁrst day of blockades and demonstrations in the streets of Melbourne!…Yesterday things were pretty horriﬁc. As the sun rose, the blockades were building in some areas but empty in others. In a matter of seconds, three hundred riot police set upon a blockade of about a hundred people. We had no hope. There were batons and blood ﬂying everywhere. The sheer brutality was totally unjustiﬁed and entirely unnecessary. I was relatively lucky. My ribs are slightly sore and I have a very bruised left arm. The rest of the second day continued in much the same manner. Our protests were entirely peaceful, but the violence continued. The worst act of violence was carried out last night. A few hundred riot cops attacked a peaceful barricade of less than a hundred people. That attack left two people paralyzed and one in a coma. Forty-ﬁve people were rushed to the hospital with various broken 733 agency of Fleming-Tamulevich, the publicity ﬁrm The Press Network out of Nyack, NY, and a network of indie distributors in the US that includes Koch International, Goldenrod, Ladyslipper, Zango, and Pitside., as well as her contracts with Festival (Canada), P-Vine (Japan), Shock (Australia), and Cooking Vinyl (Europe), and her mail order availability all testify to consumption and production practices that challenge many contemporary assumptions. The success of Ani DiFranco exempliﬁes the power of music communities to support artists and to create alternative means of making and sharing music and ideology. This solidarity and the success of RBR stand in sharp contrast to current theories of social and political fragmentation. Indeed, DiFranco’s clear articulation of socio-political issues experienced on an individual basis by millions of her fans and her appeal to grassroots activists on a global scale marks her as worthy of examination. Eleven years ago Larry Grossberg (1992) called our attention to the political, economic and social fallout of the 1980s. This was a political climate that had not only attacked the post-Vietnam liberal consensus of the 70s and early 80s, but also blatantly embraced the alliance of the state and global corporate interests. The subsequent growth of global capitalism has ﬁrmly entrenched us within a form of transnational neoliberal globalization previously unknown to the world. According to Hardt (2000), instead of disciplining the citizen as a ﬁxed social identity, the new social regime seeks to control the citizen as an inﬁnitely ﬂexible placeholder for identity—a holder of womyness, blackness, hipness, gayness and coolness. We are left with the simulacrum of the social and political—the imitation of identity, being, value, and power. Grossberg (1992) contended that our condition of political fragmentation therefore successfully distanced us from the economic and structural forces often responsible for many of our societal concerns. He argued that it is the commodiﬁcation of this fragmentation that stripped popular culture of its power to function counterculturally. While this political fragmentation and commodiﬁcation has surely changed our socio-political landscape, to evaluate our condition so pessimistically is to stop short of considering and investigating the possibilities that new landscapes create. Surely there is more to this socio-political condition. Derber (1998) reminds us that identity politics has also helped to connect personal identity and politics in a way that makes politics more meaningful for millions of people. By inscribing into our everyday practices political meaning, identity politics has created new forms of political consciousness in experience. The mantra of second wave feminism rings louder than ever before: The personal is political. Taking issue with Grossberg’s pessimism, I argue that our challenge has been to create political, social 734 and cultural alliances and communities within this fractured public sphere. More importantly, I argue that while we in academia have been arguing, these relationships have been forming and thriving—even coming together over something as commodiﬁed as popular music. In this fragmented landscape riddled with deeply personalized conceptions of the political, we ought not be surprised that within some of these music communities people haven’t only been interested in sharing the latest gossip about their favorite performer. They’ve also been interested in social justice. For the purposes of this paper, I embraced Larry Frey’s deﬁnition of social justice: “the engagement with, and advocacy for those in our society who are economically, socially, politically, and/or culturally underresourced” (Frey et al., 1996, p. 110). Striving to embrace a social justice aesthetic, this project is committed to understanding the means by which individuals become reenfranchised by utilizing, internalizing, and sharing popular music. Despite his disdain for popular music and the fact that hell for Adorno is most likely a woman with a guitar, I believe that he addresses precisely this aspect of art when he states, “art may be the only remaining medium of truth in an age of incomprehensible terror and suffering” (1984). As Hartnett (1999) explains; “truth” for Adorno, is not some static metaphysical object that one reaches or acquires, but rather, a process that involves the selfreﬂexive manipulation of aesthetic form in the pursuit of some inexpressible, highly mediated being in itself (as compared to the commodity’s being for others (p. 202). While many cultural practices function as a means of building community, the distinctive nature of music as a form of affective communication warrants further consideration of its ability to facilitate identity, community formation, and individual and communal motivations to action. However, I also contend that in addition to the value of active political engagement, the cohesiveness created through communal music practices becomes the foundation of future cultural and economic transformations and may reveal possibilities for social and global change. Drawing upon the statements of Jacques Attali (1985), the interpretation of music is political and powerful in presenting affective, new possibilities for the formation of agencies of cultural change, and that the creation of music is itself a political act; one that not only expresses culture, but explores the human spirit and social landscape and communicates convictions, desires, and dreams, I contend that music may also offer new possibilities for participating in democracy. 735 Subsequently, the internalization of disruptive noise— or the counter-hegemonic sounds of a society—and the communal exchange of such noise (both lyrically and musically), function as an impetus to action—the reorganization of social relationships and societal institutions. In contrast to Attali’s (1985) claim that through the practices of mass distribution and stockpiling “music has thus become a strategic consumption, an essential mode of sociality for all those who feel themselves powerless before the monologue of the great institutions” (p. 100), I present DiFranco as an empowering rearticulation of that statement. Despite our fears of the commodiﬁcation of music and the emptying of artifacts of meaning and therefore resistant, counter-hegemonic power, DiFranco’s work is an experiment of musical autonomy in an age of corporate industry domination, in keeping with Appadurai’s (1996) observations that the consumption of mass mediated messages can and often does create exclaves of resistant ideology. What is most central to our discussion today is the fact that through the interpretation and internalization of music the imagination, both individually and collectively can be cultivated for social justice activism. Stories of social justice experiences of social activism, their political concerns, and the correlations between these issues and the experience of DiFranco’s music. They also encouraged one another to embrace similar experiences of activism: Conclusion While this paper is just the beginning of my attempts to organize three years of data in respect to social justice discourses and activities, the preliminary ﬁndings demonstrate that the socio-political messages that are frequently the core of DiFranco’s music have had a substantial impact on the individual and collective lives of the members of the AniProject community. Indeed, DiFranco’s music has surely been a mirror of the lives of these women. It has also often functioned as a motivating factor in a number of the socio-political decisions that they’ve made over the years. Indeed, the community engagement with DiFranco’s music and with each other produces an amalgamation of powerful political discourses that function to create what Foucault referred to as “moments of resistance,” There are a multiplicity of factors that contribute to the manner in which we attach meaning to our own identities and the subsequent ways we position ourselves within society. The discourses and experiences we have all From the beginning of our time together members of the AniProject talked about their personal function as a “variety of operations on a [people’s] own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on 736 their own conduct” (Foucault qtd. in Rabinow, 1984, p. 11). While many of these discursive regimes may serve to constitute a subjugated subject who conforms to whatever norms are in effect in society, others may create contradictory meanings and thereby initiate possible moments of resistance. For example, by moving outside of familiar circles, we are often introduced to new discourses, new ideas on religion, politics, or gender roles. These encounters may lead to a rearticulation of our subject identity far different from what we previously embraced. The AniProject community has functioned as a safe place in which individuals who share a passion for music are drawn into discourses and experiences that have become interactive practices of resistance that have motivated the members of this community to take action in the public sphere. However, it is important tomThese realizations should impel us to further study, further conversation, and note that this understanding of music applies not only to the music and communities that nurture ideologies for which we have an afﬁnity. It also applies to music and communities that we mau not be so inclined to encourage, such as the possible relationships between certain music genres and white supremacist ideologies. This reality reinforces Attali’s claim that the political act of music can be levied in numerous ways. However, drawing upon and expanding on concepts put forth by Nietzsche and Foucault, I argue that these practices, and others like them can (though they may not always) fall within a social justice aesthetic. Foucault’s (1984) idea of aesthetics draws heavily upon Nietzsche’s (1956) conception of aesthetics as making one’s life a work of art. To make one’s life a work of art is to embrace activities that improve yourself and your life. What a person may perceive as improvements is completely left up to the individual to decide, but it is through creatively acting upon such choices that one’s life has value. Thus for Foucault “aesthetics of existence” are means of ethical self-formation and can be thought of as a lifestyle of self-improvement. Deleuze (1988) suggests that after foregrounding the repressive consequences of liberation in The History of Sexuality (1978), Foucault sought a “third axis” in addition to power and knowledge by which we could free ourselves of subjectiﬁcation. His answer was an ethical relation to oneself. Thus, it is through artistic, creative activity that we experience ourselves as agents of power. Foucault most often spoke of aesthetics of existence in reference to individual self-formation. However, Thiele (1990) argues that “Foucault translates Nietzsche’s ethos of inner struggle to fashion an aesthetic life into a political ethos” (p 916). I suggest that an understanding ofpopular music as potential pedagogical sites of transformation is an understanding of an aesthetics of political existence that could and does transform 737 social spaces. Simons (1995) alludes to precisely this beneﬁt of Foucauldian aesthetics when he states, “an aesthetics of political existence fashions the polity” (p 123). Endnotes 1. As a qualiﬁcation, let me say that In making this statement I in no way wish to ignore the success of the independent record labels that originated in the 1970s and remained viable and independent for years to come. These labels (i.e. SST and Touch and Go Records) largely emerged from within the punk movement and while to my knowledge, they haven’t sold a million copies of any one artist, they helped to create and have maintained a viable underground music scene that includes music publishing, record production, concert venues and distribution networks. What I’m talking about today builds on these successes and yet moves beyond them. Selected Bibliography Adorno, T. (1984) Aesthetic Theory. Trans. C. Lenhardt (German original 1970). New York: Routledge. Appadurai, A. 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IASPM03 - MONTREAL Pop/rock Music, Cultural Uniqueness and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism Motti Regev T his paper is part of an on-going attempt to theorize the double cultural work of world pop/rock occasions, receive international recognition, gold and platinum discs, as well as prizes of prestige, converting, practically, into a classic of continental rock (Los Andes on-line, Mendoza, June 3, 2003) A second quote comes from the New York based online magazine for rock in Spanish, Rock Clandestino: music styles as signiﬁers of national or ethnic cultural uniqueness, and as a cosmopolitan art form. I’m using for this purpose concepts such as cultural uniqueness, recognition and aesthetic cosmopolitanism. However, before delving into abstract formulation, I want to start with an arbitrary example, taken almost by coincidence from the repertoire of the music scene known as rock en espanol, or Latin alternative. The example is the title song from the most recent album of the Argentinean band Los Enanitos Verdes, called “Amores Lejanos.” This is a plain guitar-rock song. A slight “cha-cha” rhythm, and the Spanish lyrics, are practically the only signiﬁers of anything “Latin” in this song. Here, however, are two quotes about the band, on the occasion of its tour in support of the album. The ﬁrst from the Los Andes online newspaper, published in Mendoza, Argentina, the band’s hometown: More than twenty years of playing together, twelve albums, uncountable gigs through Latin America, make Los Enanitos Verdes one of the most important bands of Latin rock. This trio that was born in Argentina gained the recognition of all the Latin brothers, as well as in its own country, with songs such as “Te vi en un tren,” or “Lamento Boliviano”…(Fabio Larocka, Rock Clandestino, January 26, 2003) As the quotes demonstrate, Los Enanitos Verdes, and Tomorrow….Mendoza will meet again its prodigy sons. When they left this town in the mid 1980s…., they did not imagine that together, their history will take them to trespass frontiers to become Grammy nominees in two consecutive their music, represent for their audiences two things: ﬁrst, the uniqueness of the sound and style of rock in Spanish, by itself a representation of a certain class or life-style faction of the Latino identity in the American continents; second, pride about the band and the genre 743 being actors in the global ﬁeld of popular music, on pair with important names of the ﬁeld. standing invitation to register claims and to bid for the claims’ recognition…with all its universalistic ambitions, the practical consequence of the human rights’ appeal Los Enanitos Verdes are just one example of the much wider phenomenon of national/ethnic styles of pop/ rock whose producers and advocates claim double recognition: recognition of the cultural uniqueness of the identity signiﬁed by the style, and recognition of the musicians as equal actors in the art ﬁeld of popular music. While the ﬁrst type of recognition involves emphasizing difference, the second type involves incorporation of elements from, or even sweeping inﬂuence of Anglo-American pop/rock. The two entwined recognition claims are, in other words, an intersection of two contradictory tendencies: the quest for cultural uniqueness and cosmopolitanism. In what follows, I want to brieﬂy examine the forces that create this intersection and argue that, paradoxically, the claim for recognition of cultural uniqueness creates a global condition of complex inter-cultural connectivity, sometimes even sameness. for the claims of recognition is a perpetual differentiation and divisiveness” (Bauman 2001, p. 141); “Hence the zeal for ‘boundary erecting’: in order to become a ‘right’, a difference needs to be shared by a group or a category of individuals and so become a stake in collective vindications” (Bauman 2001, p. 142) Indeed, late modernity is characterized by constant growth in number and sophistication of actors in the market of collective identities. Variants and faction of ethnic, national, gender, life-style based and other collective identities constantly emerge, claiming social legitimacy and recognition. With the expansion of the human rights discourse, the previously imagined cultural homogeneity of nation states is criss crossed by sub-national and trans-national notions of collective identity of various sorts. But the growing quantity and diversity of groups or Let me say ﬁrst a few words about recognition. In a contribution to a recent issue of the journal TCS that was dedicated to the question of recognition and difference, Zigmunt Bauman (2001) refers to late modernity as the time of “the great war of recognition.” According to him, the sole substance of the human rights principle is “a identities seeking recognition, and the consequent erection of many different types of boundaries, implies that collective entities are intensively engaged in the invention, creation and construction of their own sense of cultural uniqueness or singularity. The question of difference and recognition implies that the collective 744 entities struggling for and claiming recognition, have in one way or another a genuine sense of cultural uniqueness. That is, members of such entities, and symbolic representations of them as singular collective actors, tend to emphasize the particularity of their forms of life, aesthetic sensibilities and judgments of taste. Claiming recognition entails construction of cultural uniqueness. the proliferation of hip-hop styles as representations of the cultural uniqueness of deprived and excluded social entities. But other indigenous or ethnic styles of pop/ rock music also emerge in abundance: electro-dance, ‘alternative’ or ‘metal’ guitar rock, mainstream pop, etc. Whatever the style, making pop/rock music entails a commitment to a set of production, or rather creative practices. This set consists of extensive use of electric Construction of cultural uniqueness in late modernity, however, is not conﬁned to folk- traditional elements. On the contrary. Many of the national and ethnic groupings that erect boundaries in order to emphasize their uniqueness and difference, insist at the same time on the modern day nature of their art works and aesthetic sensibilities. As much as they emphasize their cultural uniqueness, they tend to construct it by creating art works that will enable a claim for equal actorhood in the cutting edge of global art worlds and electronic instruments and their typical sound textures, sonic qualities associated with sophisticated studio and other techniques of sound manipulation, as well as certain techniques of vocal delivery, mostly those signifying immediacy of expression and spontaneity. (I have called this set of creative practices around which pop/rock is organized the rock aesthetic). Making pop/ rock music also entails acquaintance and involvement with recent technological and stylistic innovations, as well as with classic works of the ﬁeld, as sources of inspiration and as reference points of admiration and When it gets to the use of popular music, this means - especially for certain life-style and class factions within nations and ethnicities - having “your own” styles of pop/rock music: pop/rock styles that will signify difference and uniqueness, yet at the same time will have the potential for respect as standing on equal terms with other pop/rock styles on the artistic forefront of the ﬁeld. In recent years this is saliently evident in aspiration. These innovations or classic works are mostly Anglo-American, and even if their sources are elsewhere on the globe, acquaintance with them is often ﬁltered through or mediated by Anglo-American pop/rock. Making a national or ethnic group’s own pop/rock style necessarily involves reliance on a set of creative practices that is essentially universal, and on practices of borrowing, mixture, adaptation and 745 hybridity of stylistic and expressive elements taken from “other” cultures. he calls “the wider shores of cultural experience” (Tomlinson 1999: 202). Put differently, construction of cultural uniqueness through the use of pop/rock styles, is based on openness towards creative practices and stylistic inﬂuences coming from music cultures other than one’s own. Having an indigenous pop/rock music style that signiﬁes contemporary cultural uniqueness, implies that the musicians whose works are recruited for this purpose, are driven by a genuine interest in musics of “other” cultures. They must have a disposition which might be called aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Two important points should be added. Firstly, without intending it probably, the description of aesthetic cosmopolitanism by Urry and by Tomlinson, implies the consumption of “other” cultures by consumers situated in afﬂuent, mostly western societies. It should be stressed therefore that the consumption of western culture by individuals or groupings situated in non western societies should also be understood as an expression of aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Secondly, as a disposition, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is not conﬁned to practices of consumption. Cultural production is also Let me say now a few words about aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is a concept suggested by John Urry (1995), that refers to the emergence of a “stance of openness towards divergent experiences from different national cultures” and “a search for delight in contrasts between societies rather than a longing for uniformity or superiority” (p. 167). A prime example of aesthetic cosmopolitanism according to Urry is mass tourism of late modernity, the practice of ‘consuming places’. John Tomlinson generalizes that aesthetic cosmopolitanism is therefore anchored in consumer culture, in the practice of consumption. He stresses that aesthetic cosmopolitanism is essentially a cultural disposition- it is about having taste for what largely affected by aesthetic cosmopolitanism. That is, if aesthetic cosmopolitanism is about having taste for the cultures of countries, nations and ethnicities other than one’s own, than at the level of production, the contents and ingredients of the things one has a taste for transform to become inspiration and inﬂuence. Put differently, cultural producers who have taste for goods from cultures other than their own, are bound to become inspired and inﬂuenced in their own work by elements from these other cultures. As a disposition, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is a major driving force in the production of pop/rock styles of any type, including those produced or recruited for signifying 746 contemporary cultural uniqueness. In fact, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is inscribed into the most essential consumption and creative practices of pop/rock music. As a result, pop/rock styles that represent the cultural uniqueness of one particular collective entity, come to include components that can also be found in styles and genres that signify the cultural uniqueness of totally different collective entities. While signifying the cultural uniqueness of given collective entities, ethnic and national styles of pop/rock music share at the same time wide common aesthetic ground. As a network of artistic production, pop/rock thus exempliﬁes the inter-connectivity and the element of sameness that underlies the cultural uniqueness of collective entities in late modernity. indigenization. I believe however that by concentrating on difference and particularity alone, we loose sight of a major aspect of contemporary world popular music, namely the complex inter-connectivity between the works, styles and genres that signify cultural uniqueness of different entities. As much as we do not accept arguments about sweeping homogenization, theory should not neglect the fact that world popular music today is also characterized by a major dimension of connectivity, afﬁnity and sameness. Let me say also this. Recent discourse on globalization, and especially on the globalization of culture, has been growingly referring, although with some ambivalence, to cosmopolitanism as a key concept. Ambivalence stems from the fact that the concept of To conclude: claims for recognition involve erection of cultural uniqueness. Contemporary cultural uniqueness involves aesthetic cosmopolitanism, which in its turn leads to inter-connectivity between, and even sameness of cultural products that signify uniqueness and difference. Pop/rock music is a prime example of this circular process in late modern global culture. We should keep this in mind especially because by stressing practices of hybridity, and in responding to theories of sweeping global homogenization and McDonaldization, scholarly discourse on this phenomenon often emphasizes diversiﬁcation and cosmopolitanism is laden with ideological connotations of Western domination, and typically associated with the life-style of certain upper class fractions. However, as used by Ulrich Beck (1999) or by Anthony Giddens (1994), among others, cosmopolitanism refers to the possibility of constituting one world polity, in which many different social and cultural entities recognize the legitimacy of each other. To achieve that, individuals must become cosmopolitans, people who have the ability to live ethically and culturally in both the global and the local at the same time. The cosmopolitan is someone who has an awareness of the world as one 747 place, containing many legitimate cultural others. She is someone who must have a grasp of the legitimate pluralism of cultures and an openness to cultural difference. With these formulations, however, cosmopolitanism is more an ideal ethical disposition than a social reality. It is a condition to strive to in order to enhance global understanding, but is not yet here. Giddens, Anthony. 1994. “Living in a Post-Traditional While cosmopolitanism at the political and ethical realms remains an ideal, I want to argue that at the cultural sphere cosmopolitanism is, to a large extent, already here, practiced by cultural producers and consumers in many parts of the world. Pop/rock music styles of the world are a major case in this regard. The process by which popular music ﬁelds of so many countries have been overtaken by pop/ rock sensibilities, a process I have referred to as the “pop-rockization” of popular music (Regev 2002), is a prime example of cosmopolitanization. By perceiving the music they make or consume as part of the global network of pop/rock music, by having taste for and being open to inﬂuences of music cultures other than their own, and by producing their own local, ethnic, national - or, in short, culturally unique - styles of pop/rock music, pop/rock musicians and audiences are a living and practicing embodiment of aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Urry, John.1995. Consuming Places. London: Routledge Tomlinson, John. 1999. Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Regev, Motti. 2002. “The ‘Pop-rockization’ of Popular Music,” pp. 251-264 in Studies in Popular Music, edited by Dave Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus. London: Arnold Society,” pp. 56-109 in Reﬂexive Modernization, by Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scot Lash Selected Bibliography Bauman, Zigmunt. 2001.”The Great War of Recognition,” Theory, Culture and Society 18: 137-150 Beck, Ulrich. 1999. World Risk Society. Cambridge: Blackwell IASPM03 - MONTREAL Musical Consumption and Subcultural Identities Among Urban Cuban Youth Mario Rey T he presence of two streams of post-Revolution Cuban musical production, represented by the a powerful symbol for self-afﬁrmation, enormous in its capacity to articulate the ethos and fundamental values of the youth group. If a youth subculture recognizes a particular genre as expressive of the experiences of the collective, then its consumption serves as an adaptive cultural mechanism. Thus, the group’s choice of musical repertoire emerges as a focal marker within the larger cultural matrix. Studies have shown that popular tastes vary as a function of social class, age, race, and political orientation, but it remains unclear why a group, in a musically pluralistic society that sustains a wide variety of listening choices, favors a particular genre. This paper examines the signiﬁcance of popular music in the formation and maintenance of cultural collectives island of Cuba and the diasporic pockets in the United States, creates a comparative dimension to the study of Cuban popular culture. Despite their common culture base, these communities are regulated by divergent socio-political frameworks, diametrically opposed ideologies, and strong sentiments of divisiveness that have impeded a dynamic cultural dialogue and musical exchanges. This schism is explored through a comparison of random sample populations from urban sectors, focusing on the trends of popular musical consumption, and its contributions to the formation and maintenance of a national cultural identity among youth. Music production and consumption, including activities such as listening and dancing, create a medium through which identities, and the boundaries that demarcate the collectives are negotiated and mobilized. For youths and adolescents, popular music constitutes the most valued expressive language among the choices offered by culture. It provides a sense of unity through the solidarity of sentiment that can challenge social order and reorder social reality. As a metaphoric expression, popular music represents among Cuban youth, through a comparative analyses of musical preferences among urban listeners. The discussion will address the organization of youth subcultures in Havana, Cuba, and Miami, and the role of music in deﬁning these social afﬁliations, facilitating adherence or rejection of cubanidad, and providing symbols of urban youth identity. Data was gathered from a survey involving listening preferences for categories of popular and traditional musics, and self-evaluations of social dances 749 of subjects residing in Miami and Havana. The degree of correspondence between youths of these communities across two age groups constitutes the primary variable of the research model, which was a 2 X 2 betweensubjects design. The study involved random samples from the two urban groups corresponding to the base culture in Havana, and the diasporic community in Miami, and two age brackets 13-18, and 19-24 yearolds, comprising four subject cells. The mean age for the Cuban youths was 16.2 years for the teenage group and 21.9 years for the post-teenage group, and 17.3 years and 22.3 years for the Cuban-Americans, respectively. The number of subjects was 50 per cell, totaling 200. The subjects were instructed to complete selfevaluations from a broad catalogue of social dances and music genres, using a 7-point Likert scale (1). Listening preferences were obtained from the numerical ratings of 114 genres, subgenres, and variants from the repertoire of popular and traditional song and dance musics. The data were statistically interpreted through correlational analyses. Dance Preferences the preference rating for the dances. The results indicate a strong consensus between same-age groups, regardless of culture-area. The correlation values were all highly signiﬁcant (at p < .01). The correspondence was strongest between the culture-area teenage groups (r = .89), and between the diasporic teenagers and post-teenagers (r = .83). There was also a signiﬁcant correlation between the teenage and post-teenage groups from Havana (r = .74), as well as between the post-teenagers from the two culture subgroups (r = .71). The focal dance repertoire for each subject cell revealed considerable correspondence among all four subject cells. Cuban-American youths, irrespective of age, showed a strong afﬁnity for the top four selections (viz., free-style, slow-dancing, salsa, and merengue), mirroring the choices among the Cuban teenagers (viz., slow-dancing, free-style, casino/rueda, and merengue), and post-teenagers (viz., casino/rueda, free-style, merengue, and hip-hop). Foreign trends were evidenced among the subjects, who nonetheless, demonstrated a clearly bicultural dance repertoire. Musical Preferences The Pearson Product-Moment correlations of the mean self-evaluations were calculated between the adjacent subject cells. These coefﬁcients are indexes of the degree of intergroup correspondence concerning Pearson Product-Moment correlations of the mean listening preference ratings were performed among the four subject cells (all of which were signiﬁcant at p < .05). The age-level correlations were rather 750 comparable, indicating a moderate correspondence in listening preferences between teenagers and post-teen youths within each culture-area. The cross-cultural analyses showed that the strongest correspondence was between the teenage subgroups (r = .70), closely followed by the post-teenagers (r = .69). The appreciable afﬁnity between the Havana and Miami youths may be chieﬂy attributable to the global diffusion of American pop and hip-hop culture. Its popularity among Cuba’s youth is irrefutable. One young informant described this proclivity as “un afan por todo lo que sea americano” (“a desire for anything that is American”) (2). In general, the correlational data for the listening preferences suggest a mildly stronger effect of culture-area than age, with inter-age correlations for the Miami youths (r = .54) slightly higher than the Havana subjects (r = .45). Consequently, there was a greater afﬁnity concerning musical tastes among youths within each culture-area than between age groups. A comparison of the ten highest-rated items for overall listening preferences reveals considerable overlap within each age-bracket. The selections /trip-hop (5.3), Latin pop (5.1), drum & bass (5.1), new wave (4.7), and trance (4.7) for the Cuban-Americans. Post-teenagers were slightly more culture-speciﬁc in their listening preferences. The ten highest-rated responses generated by the Cuban subjects were soft rock (6.1), pop (6.0), Latin pop (5.8), salsa (5.8), balada (5.8), son (5.6), son renovado (5.6), reggae (5.5), rap (5.5), and balada romántica (5.2), as compared to pop (6.3), alternative (6.3), Latin pop (6.1), soft rock (5.9), salsa (5.8), classic rock (5.8), hip-hop (5.8), world beat (5.8), new age (5.8), and R & B (5.7) for the CubanAmericans. Comprising a rather limited repertoire, the preferences of these young Cubans and CubanAmericans are increasingly governed by supercultural, mass-mediated musics. The inter-group comparisons of the diasporic data clearly validated the twin spheres of music-cultural inﬂuence. The effects were most pronounced among the post-teen youths, whose dance and musical preferences inevitably reﬂected the bicultural experience. The popularity of syncretic styles and musical fusions with urban American idioms typify the duality of the Cuban-American musical identity. Salsa and rock coexist as favorite styles in the personal repertoire of young listeners who are not responding to the experience of immigration. Pop-rock Latin fusions as exempliﬁed by local band Bacilos, or encapsulated by the musical code of the so-called “Miami Sound” (with corresponding sample means) elicited by the teenagers were pop (6.4), Latin pop (6.1), soft rock (5.7), hard rock (5.3), salsa (5.3), rap (5.3), merengue (5.3), beat (5.3), cancíon-slow (5.3), and reggae (5.3) for the Cuban subjects; and pop (6.4), house/techno (6.1), alternative (5.9), soft rock (5.8), salsa (5.5), hip- 751 (developed in the 70s from Caribbean-infused R&B), exempliﬁed by the Estefan recording powerhouse, are representative of the younger generation of CubanAmericans. As cultural hybrids, burdened with the ambiguity of fragmented identities, they must strive to maintain a heritage, and reconcile a dual set of values. However, the dialectical of two competing musical cultures results in the young people’s ownership of a Cuban identity that is often tenuous. The ubiquity of American pop, rap, and other foreign commercial imports that have crossed ethnocultural boundaries, has permeated Cuban youth culture. These musical expressions are likely used by young consumers to articulate disenfranchisement and resistance. Viewing all popular music as political in nature, in its broadest sense, has a profound implication for the modes of musical consumption in relation to the mechanisms of social control and group conduct, as music can either reinforce or challenge the status quo. In this context, urban American musical culture may function as an alternative form of collective identity for young dissenting Cubans; a symbolic afﬁrmation of youth counterculture. Directly related to this complex of musical preferences is the organization of youth subcultures in Havana. A subgroup triality based on musical interests was proposed by several consultants. Consequently, a tripartite classiﬁcation of subcultural groups is proposed based on modes of musical consumption and preferences. These socio-musical groups provide a medium of exchange in which conﬂicting or shifting identities are negotiated vis-á-vis the dominant social structure. Denominated according to the central genre, three fundamental music subcultures are identiﬁed, –the salsero, rapero, and rockero types. These designations have a much broader connotation than “enthusiast.” Members of these subcultures adopt a lifestyle, more or less within the parameters of socialist conformity, and a collective identity founded on the eponymous, focal musical genre that functions as a motivational base, creating groups of a certain internal homogeneity and cohesiveness, but differentiated by a complex of visual and behavioral traits that include clothing styles and patterns of conduct. These afﬁliations, which are also deﬁne in opposition to each other, are partially predicated on politico-ideological orientations, racial proﬁles, and geographic location of the consumers. In this context, the three music genres function as identity emblems and fraternizing agents, imparting homegrown and foreign cultural values, which consequently afﬁrm or debilitate the perception of cubanidad (or cubaness). Consequently, active music listening becomes a symbolic activity that carves out an identity space, demarcates psychosocial boundaries, creates ideological spheres, and modiﬁes the listener’s perception of an external reality. 752 The salsero type listens almost exclusively to salsa music, and is not racial motivated. The central repertoire may include salsa, salsa romántica, pop, son, merengue, and timba. The featured artists racism, boredom, and denunciations of police oppression and state authority. However, informants are quick to point out that the Cuban manifestation is a politically-conscious rap that does not tap into the criminality or expression of an alienated reality often associated with US hip-hop music of the 80s and 90s. Rather, those expressions are generally regarded as excessive in their use of profanity, and misogynistic lyrics. While Cuban rap groups, estimated at about 500, are not obligated to over-politicize their music, they frequently address revolutionary issues minus the use of putatively undesirable American elements such as violence, sexism, and materialism. Avoiding that this originally underground movement should be transformed into an antagonistic insurgent movement, the state has softened its posture, which previously included suppressing spontaneous rap happenings. Aware that it is unable to quell its popularity, and by stressing certain aspects of rap as representative of Afrocuban culture, the government now recognizes and assimilates this musical genre through the ﬁnancing of recording projects with the EGREM and sponsoring the annual rap festival in Havana (now approaching its 9th edition). In this manner, the idiom may serve as a vehicle for Afrocuban youth participation in the Socialist Revolution. Although Cuba does not possess a hip-hop recording industry per se (since Spanish-language rap, performing at the Café Cantate Mi Habana, the current center of salsa activity in the Vedado district of Havana, along with NG La Banda, Isaac Delgado, Paulito FG and the recently exiled Manolín compete in popularity with Marc Anthony and the North American and CircumCaribbean salsa performers. Immersed in hip-hop subculture, the raperos are characterized by eccentric hairstyles, radio boom boxes, hoodies, drooping baggy jeans, and behavior referred to as guapetón (“tough”). Centered in the Alamar district of Havana; the number of young raperos is gradually increasing, particularly among afrocubans. For the most part, these youths have turned their backs of the stale salsa aesthetic, and gazing towards the north, they devour the genre that they view as free of tourist concessions, commercial frivolity, and cliché Latin percussion --American hip-hop. Tuning into Miami hip-hop radio stations such as WEDR (FM 99.1), these raperos also fervidly consume new local rap groups such as Anónimo Consejo, Alto y Bajo, Pasión Oscura, Alto Voltaje, and Instinto. Although performers have traditionally exercised self-censorship, lyrics are increasingly critical of the rigid Cuban socialist system, voicing themes such as persecution, social inequalities, 753 by and large, has little market appeal), local rappers have traditionally reproduced hip-hop from the US, or what is essentially American music with Spanish lyrics through a cassette culture. Catering to foreign tastes, however, a contingent of French Cubanophiles have produce Cuban rap intended for export. The successful branding of a native rap sound is spearheaded by the four-member rap group Orisha, the only Cuban presence in the international hip-hop market. Their debut album “A Lo Cubano,” a musical fusion with rumba, son, and Santería ceremonial music, went platinum in Europe and established a reputation outside the island aimed for foreign rather than internal consumption. Their second album “Emigrante,” with references to traditional Afro-Cuban and guajiro (country) music garnered a 2003 Grammy nomination (Best Latin Alternative Rock category). Despite the international success of Orisha, and other state promoted groups that feature salsahip-hop fusions or that sample only Latin rhythms and instrumental breaks from traditional Cuban dance musics, rapero listeners prefer digitized timbres, drum machines, and the music of Dr. Dre, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and Busta Rhymes. However, the disdain that many rappers profess for the traditional salsa and the son notwithstanding, others exhibit an afﬁnity for both, and favor syncretisms in the style of the “newyorican” hip-hop salsa group DLG (Dark Latin Groove). But whatever the preference, the rap movement is a national reality, and hip-hop culture may emerge as a new expression of Cuban popular music. The third type, the rockero is involved in a rock counterculture. He is fundamentally the socalled pepillo, predominantly white, who delights in assimilating the conduct and culture of the yuma, that is, the North American capitalist youth. The most stereotypical members characteristically wear long and earrings, and armed with a guitar, they approximate the quintessential “tipo jipi” (“hippie type”). These youths are generally at odds with the other subgroups, and their musical sphere is clearly the song repertoire rather than dance music, including the pop genres. Initially catalogued as a commercial manipulation of the consumer society and the ideological diversionism of the capitalist complex, wholly incompatible with revolutionary objectives, the state has since readjusted its position regarding hard rock and heavy metal as vehicles of subversive, reactionary values. This is attested by the popularity and incorporation of the group Zeus into the recently restructured impresarial system in Cuba. Group ﬂuidity is not infrequently observed among the youth, as subcultural membership is not mutually exclusive. The raperos, disdainful of traditional salsa in their majority, possess some common interests with the salsa culture. By virtue of theses afﬁnities, members can 754 transcend the group conﬁnes, and manifest themselves as salseros, monitoring themselves according to the shifting contexts, whereas the reverse is less common. However, the characteristics delineating rockero class inclusion are less ambivalent, and the lack of afﬁnity and the social distance with the other subgroups disallows dual-membership or intergroup ﬂuidity. Consequently, the rockero is circumscribed to only one subcultural sphere by virtue of a psychosocial self-segregation. The policies of the Ministry of Culture regarding the socialization of musical production historically has emphasized expressions that impart a revolutionary attitude and promote the values and objective of socialism, such as the socialist realism of the Nueva Trova. The application of these mechanisms or socialist facilism to musical processes, to some extent, has produced a shift in popular tastes; a reverse reaction characterized by a proclivity for foreign tendencies among the youth. The son performer Albita Rodriguez clariﬁed this point for me in the following manner: “They began to mix our Cuban heritage with the Revolution, the Cuban youth began to view the Revolution as a symbol of all Cuba, and consequently, we began to reject all that was Cuban.” Currently, the potential contradictions between the musical meaning of rap and hard rock and Marxist ideology is reconciled by emphasizing their recontextualization within a socialist framework through lyric content and the saliency of certain iconic musical elements. The results of this study, still in its preliminary stages, suggests a kind of cultural synchronization in which the autochthonous expressions are gradually displaced by rock, pop, rap, and other supercultural commercial products in the focal repertoire of Cuban and Cuban-American youths. These tendencies appear rather ironic considering the current appeal and export of popular Cuban music in the international market. It is anticipated that this investigation may contribute to subsequent studies involving the negotiation of collective identities, social cohesion, and the musical subculturization of Cuban youth in both urban spheres. 755 Endnotes 1. A questionnaire booklet was given to the subjects in the language of their choice. The survey involved normative data based on listening preference ratings for 114 items (viz., song types, dance musics, and nondance musics), assessed according to a 7-point scale. Each subject was allowed to complete the questionnaire at his/her pace. The data were collected between the months of August–September 1994, December 1996– March 1997, and December 1998–January 1999. 2. Personal communication with consultant on September 7, 1996. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Real Slim Shady: Mediation and Performance Leenke Ripmeester E minem’s music video The Real Slim Shady centers around the question who is the real mediation is somewhat different as hip hop often seems to celebrate the commodity. Although hip hop sometimes articulates a rock discourse it is foremost, according to Tricia Rose, a hybrid of black music, black oral forms and technology (85). The question, which I would like to pose, therefore, is how mediation functions in the way hip hop produces authenticity. In the case of Eminem this question pertains to his whiteness, to his status of being a white rapper as well. On the one hand, Eminem makes partly use of a (white) rock discourse in order to claim authenticity. Hip hop artists have used a rock discourse both explicitly and implicitly. The sampling of rock music and the musical collaboration with rock artists have been a central feature of hip hop since the beginning.(1) Furthermore, hip hop, like rock, also values itself as an underground culture that positions itself against the mainstream, even though it is inextricably part of it. Moreover, for a white rapper like Eminem a rock discourse becomes even urgent as he needs to prove himself not to be a Vanilla.(2) On the other hand, Eminem draws from performance conventions which are speciﬁc to hip hop. For example, hip hop is imbedded in insult rituals that draw from black oral forms like playing the dozens and signifying’. My main thesis, therefore, will be that Slim Shady? The ﬁrst scene of the video is set in a mental hospital where Eminem, alias Slim Shady (to be named ESS from now on), is one of a group of mental patients who all act lunacy. The video starts with a nurse who calls to the patients: ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?’ Subsequently, all the patients stand up except for ESS. The nurse then remarks to her colleague ‘We’re gonna have a problem here.’ The rap and the video put into play what Roland Barthes has called the hermeneutical code by introducing an enigma, i.e. who is the real Slim Shady? This code dictates that the enigma will be resolved at the end of the narrative and the Truth will be found (75-6). At the end of the story the original Slim Shady will be distinguished from his imitators. This Truth suggests a traditional notion of authenticity, which is a central value in rock culture. Authenticity in rock, according to Keir Keightley, is concerned with ﬁnding a true self and must be seen as a response to the alienation of modernity (133). This alienation is epitomized by forms of mediation like the commodity and mass media that are often rejected by rock culture. However, hip hop’s relation to authenticity and 757 by mediating between a rock discourse and hip hop performance conventions Eminem claims that he is not a sell-out but ‘the real thing’. This brings me back to the question: Who is the real Slim Shady? The question is awkward and impossible for various reasons. Firstly, the question seems unsolvable because it involves an impossibility, i.e. Slim Shady is a ﬁctional character that by deﬁnition is not ‘real’. Secondly, the question seems not to construct an enigma at all since the Slim Shady character is the alter ego of a clearly identiﬁable individual, the rapper Eminem. Indeed, the rapper has constructed in his various works a star identity that is built on three different personalities that can be distinguished through the ideology of individualism. The three personalities range from clearly ﬁctional (Slim Shady), to his stage name (Eminem) which is constructed but does retain some claim to authenticity since it appears to refer to a ‘real person’ (a star) that has a life outside the video’s diegesis, to his name of birth (Marshall Matters, not referred to in The Real Slim Shady) which claims to be the most authentic because it refers to the world ‘outside’ the media industry in which names are ‘given’, not constructed. So the question ‘Who is the real Slim Shady’ dissolves itself as the answer is already contained in what we know about Slim Shady, i.e. the ‘real’ person behind it, i.e. Eminem or Marshall Mathers. So the solution of the enigma ‘Who is the real Slim Shady’ is either too obvious and its suspension therefore redundant, or it really is impossible. Indeed, the question is actually quite puzzling. Eminem starts with the claim that he is the real Slim Shady but he ends with the statement ‘So won’t the real Slim Shady please stand up?’ This would subvert his individualistic claim that he and not somebody else is the real Slim Shady. The implicit question the lyric poses is then whether the Slim Shady character stands for originality or imitation? In other words, what kind of temporality does the video value? Does the Slim Shady ﬁgure stand for repetition as a negative or a positive term? Repetition as a pejorative term Let me ﬁrst discuss how the music video ‘argues’ for originality. This is done most obviously during the second verse. Here Eminem produces the well-known rock discourse that deﬁnes authenticity as an antiestablishment attitude and that marks pop music as inauthentic. For example, he trashes pop rap artists Will Smith: ‘Will Smith don’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records. Well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too!’ In the video the verse is accompanied with a scene where ESS plays himself in the Grammy award show. A reporter (also played and rapped by ESS) interviews him: ‘”But Slim, what if you win, wouldn’t it be weird?” Why? So you guys could just lie to get me here? So you can sit me here next to Britney Spears?’ Authenticity 758 is constructed as truthful (original) and non-conformist and articulates a critique on the falseness of the entertainment industry and pop music.(3) By implication, this rock authenticity is constructed as a celebration of individualism and intentionalism. It considers rock music as an originating founding act performed by the artist as a master-creator. The authenticity constructed here seems to be similar to what Keir Keightley, in his discussion of rock culture, has called Modernist authenticity, which he distinguishes from a Romantic conception of authenticity. Both historical movements articulate a critique on the alienation of industrialization and urban capitalism and celebrate individualism, i.e. rock music as an originating founding act performed by the artist as a master-creator. Romanticism focuses on the community of the artist and its audience. Modernism underlines the artistic integrity of the artist. Romanticism favors the idea of returning to a mythical pre-industrial past, continuing traditions, whereas Modernism pleads for novelty, progress and development through breaking with the past (Keightley 135-7). Rock’s authenticity also implies a critique on repetition epitomized in the commodity. Rock ignores its own status of being a mass media phenomenon in its critique on the alienation of mass society and commodiﬁcation. This critique is an echo of arguments made by cultural critics like Adorno and Jameson who consider repetition a negative or pejorative term because it refers to the standardization of aesthetic production under capitalism. Adorno argues that popular music, which moves in the realm of ‘free’ time, actually reproduces the conditions of the work place, i.e. standardization, which denies the masses any novelty. Paradoxically, although people seek novelty they still want to avoid effort in their leisure time because of the stress involved in their work. Popular music’s standardization ﬁlls this need by denying the effort of participation. So for Adorno repetition in popular music is a pejorative term that refers to the way capitalism naturalizes its own mechanisms and thereby conﬁrms its status quo (310-11). For Jameson repetition is a pejorative term because for him repetition is inextricably linked to the way contemporary society only reproduces commodities, which no longer refer to an original production (132-4). Repetition as a positive term However, the video also favors the idea of imitation in the way it constructs repetition as a positive term. This must be related to the meaning and signiﬁcance of repetition in black culture and black music. In his article ‘Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture’ James Snead analyses the dominance of repetition in black culture. His argument is based on the premise that repetition is inevitably part of culture because culture needs recognizability and a sense of continuity about 759 itself and because inexhaustible novelty is unthinkable. Still, cultures differ in their understanding of time. A culture’s conception of time constitutes a consensus that provides security, identiﬁcation and rightness. Yet according to Snead, this consensus is also a ‘coverage’ in the sense that it both insures against accidents and ruptures and covers up less pleasant aspects. European culture has favored a linear view of history in the name of scientiﬁc progress and the development of the nation state. Black culture instead maintained a cyclical view of history in which repetition was considered to be a constitutive force in the equilibrium of the world. Performance (music, dance, language) is one of the practices in which the perception of repetition is most characteristically articulated in black culture. The music of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ is dominated by repetition. The whole song consists of a repeated loop of a tune played by a harpsichord and a very low synthesizer. The kick is on the second and fourth beat but sometimes the kick is suspended or it makes a variation, for example a kick on the ﬁrst and the second beat. This variation in the beat seems to be an instance of the ‘cut’ which is, according to Snead an important aspect within black music. The cut refers to those moments when the music stops, during irregular intervals and without motivation, in order to return to a beginning of a previous part. The cut both incorporates accidents and ruptures and underlines the repetition of the rhythm: ‘Black music sets up expectations and disturbs them at irregular intervals: that it will do this, however, is itself an expectation’ (69). In this way unpredictability is more or less ‘controlled.’(4) The imagery of the music video addresses the issue of repetition as well in its theme of Slim Shady impersonations. The whole video is populated with men who imitate the Slim Shady character. The mental patients from the ﬁrst scene all think they are Slim Shady (they all stand up after the nurse’s remark) and some of them are even look-a-likes. There is also a scene in a basement where ESS raps to an audience of psychopath, Slim Shady look-a-like fans. In yet another scene ESS raps in a factory with a whole assembly line system on which Slim Shady dolls are manufactured. The recurrence of Eminem in these scenes as the ‘ﬁrst’ Slim Shady also seems to function like a cut in which the line of imitation is stopped in order to return to a beginning of a previous part. Slim Shady is then a ﬁgure of repetition. Rituals of insult: Slim Shady as the Signifying Monkey As I have tried to argue the video produces repetition both as a positive and a negative term. The question is, then, perhaps not whether the Slim Shady ﬁgure means originality or imitation, but how the character mediates both positions. This question must be related to the way the video is imbedded in black insult rituals 760 like the black folktales of the Signifying Monkey and verbal games like signifying and playing the dozens. Playing the dozens is a verbal contest in which one insults the other within the boundaries of speciﬁc formulas deﬁned by formulaic patterns, rhyme and speech rhythm (Abrahams 211). Whereas playing the dozens centers around insulting the adversary’s mother, signifying—in the black vernacular sense of ‘signifying upon someone’—is a game in which the opponent him or herself is insulted (Levine 346). The ritual of insult is also present in the Afro-American folktales of the Signifying Monkey who is, according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a trickster ﬁgure that is always punning, making tropes and making fun of others (52). In The Real Slim Shady imitation is used to insult imitation. For example, in the Grammy award show scene Eminem impersonates Britney Spears in order to make her look ridiculous and artiﬁcial. The video also insults boy bands in the shots where ESS attacks NSync look-a-likes. Eminem fans are insulted as well. They are depicted as a psychopath mass audience of Slim Shady look-a-likes that lack agency. There is a difference, however, in the way the pop stars are imitated and the way Slim Shady himself is imitated. This difference can be explained by the way the relation between the person who insults and the insulted person, is constructed in terms of complicity. That is, although the insult rituals are antagonistic they also imply a community of its participants, or as Roger D. Abrahams puts it: ‘(…) the dozens situation calls for extreme permissiveness, which must apply as much to the audience as to the contestants. Beyond this, one would not play the dozens with just anyone, but someone who was safe to play it with’ (215). Lawrence Levine also describes the insult games as ‘a ritual of permitted direspect’ and ‘symmetrical joking relationships in which two or more people were free to insult each other’ (347). Whereas a rap performer and audience will be permissive of these insult games, a pop performer will not engage in the insult ritual. So Eminem’s imitation of Britney Spears is therefore more seriously aggressive because it is directed towards a performer from a genre in which the articulated disrespect of Eminem is not permitted. Eminem’s insult will not be returned by Britney Spears and this takes away the playfulness of the insult. The Slim Shady look-a-likes by contrast are also an implied audience that is insulted but with less aggressive effects because it is clearly a rap audience, that is engaged in the insult ritual. A clear example of this is when Eminem raps in the factory where the Slim Shady dolls are manufactured. The Slim Shady impersonators are insulted because they are compared to a commodity, a false repetition of the real Slim Shady who is more original. Yet the dolls, like the other Slim Shady look-a-likes, also represent a positive repetition 761 because they are a supportive group backing up Eminem as he raps: ‘And there’s a million of us just like me/ who cuss like me; who just don’t give a fuck like me/ who dress like me; walk and talk and act like me/ and just might be the next best thing but not quite me.’ The Slim Shady ﬁgure aggressively accuses others of being imitations while it simultaneously is a role that can be imitated and appropriated by others in order to counter the insult of being an imitation. Within the insult ritual, originality refers to the verbal mastery of the rapper, to his or her verbal skills. Yet, The is the real Slim Shady, is, however, used to produce the Truth of repetition and imitation. But this Truth is not the outcome of an enigma that gradually has been resolved, but a constitutive structure of the entire music video. In this way the hermeneutical code itself is made ineffective. Conversely, this structure of repetition and imitation is again, paradoxically, used to claim originality. My conclusion therefore is that Slim Shady is itself a ﬁgure of mediation by means of which Eminem claims authenticity by cleverly mediating imitation and originality. He is deﬁnitively a real Slim Shady. Real Slim Shady does not construct this authenticity as a Truth of originality that ultimately refers to the artist as a master creator. Instead, authenticity is constructed by the way the ﬁgure of Slim Shady mediates the two notions of originality and imitation, or of repetition as a positive and a negative term. The Slim Shady character is then like the ﬁgure of the Signifying Monkey, the trickster ﬁgure whose trick, according to Gates is to mediate ‘between two forces he seeks to oppose for his own contentious purposes, and then to reconcile’ (56). This mediation is accomplished by means of a chiasmus. If we would read the video through the hermeneutical code, a deﬁnitive answer is given in the end when Eminem concludes ‘Guess there’s a Slim Shady in all of us, Fuck it, let’s all stand up.’ The hermeneutical code that produces linearity and that seems to lead to the truth of originality, namely who 762 Endnotes (1) For a discussion of hip hop’s use of rock music see George 65-8 and Forman 149-57. Selected Bibliography Abrahams, Roger D. ‘Playing the Dozens.’ The Journal of American Folklore 75. 297 (1962): 209-20. (2) The term ‘Vanilla’ refers to the white rapper Vanilla Ice who had a huge hit with ‘Ice Ice Baby’ in 1990 and became one of the best-selling artists in the history of rap. Many rappers however accused him of selling out, appropriating black culture and thereby silencing black politics. When it became known that the white rapper had lied about his unhappy childhood in the streets of the ghetto (he turned out to have a middle class background instead) he became one of the most notorious examples of inauthenticity. Black rappers like Will Smith and MC Hammer have also been accused of selling out and of being a bounty (black outside, white inside). Adorno, Theodor W. (with the assistance of George Simpson). ‘On Popular Music.’ On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Eds. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin. London: Routledge, 1990. 301-14. Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. London: Routledge, 1999. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Forman, Murray. The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2002. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A (3) For an interesting discussion on the way the Grammy Awards are related to pop culture and rock culture in terms of authenticity, see Auslander 61-111. George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. New York: Penguin (4) European classical music, according to Snead, devalues repetition. Although repetition is undeniably present in European music, it is mainly in the service of developmental structures like harmonic resolution (‘development within stasis’) (72-3). Jameson, Frederic. ‘Reiﬁcation and Utopia in Mass Culture.’ The Jameson Reader. Eds. M.Hardt and K. Weeks. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 123-48. Books, 1998. Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. 763 Keightley, Keir. ‘Reconsidering Rock.’ The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 109-42. Levine, Lawrence W. ‘The Ritual of Insult.’ Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. 344-58. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black culture in Contemporary America. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1994. Snead, James. ‘Repetition as a ﬁgure of black culture.’ Black Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Henri Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Methuen, 1984. 59-79. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Music for Nothing or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect Cheyanne Vanderdonckt and Gilbert B. Rodman U S Senator Orrin Hatch wants to destroy your computer. hard-to-ﬁnd musical obscurities. It would probably be going too far to describe that moment as some sort of idyllic state of truly balanced journalism, but there was clearly a strong current of fan-friendly coverage in the discourse. Today, however, whatever pretense of journalistic balance once existed has been shattered. Pick up the average newspaper or magazine article on ﬁle-sharing, and you’ll see the fans who partake in such practices routinely described as “pirates” and “thieves.” The “gee-whiz” technical articles are now largely about the industry’s efforts to make CDs copy-proof, to subvert ﬁle-sharing networks, or (in Hatch’s case) to destroy computers used for ﬁle-sharing. The most visible victims of ﬁle-sharing in the new discourse are no longer the struggling artists, many of whom have embraced ﬁle-sharing and condemned the industry for its systematic neglect of their art and livelihood. Instead, the new noble heros of the ﬁle-sharing wars are the multinational entertainment conglomerates, whose very future is allegedly jeopardized . . . unless they can ﬁgure out how to transform ﬁle-sharing into a tightly controlled, highly proﬁtable enterprise. In the new discourse, ﬁle-sharing is unequivocally immoral and illegal -- this isn’t even a point to be debated any Speaking at a Congressional hearing last month, Hatch claimed that technological booby traps that would damage or disable computers used for illegal ﬁle-sharing “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.” To be sure, Hatch’s views on combating musical piracy appear to be in the minority, even amongst the more adamant anti-ﬁlesharing camps of the entertainment industry. So we’re not seriously worried about the remote destruction of people’s computers by hacker vigilantes. We begin with this example, however, because it demonstrates how dramatically the public discourse on ﬁle-sharing has shifted over the past several years. Once upon a time -- way back in, say, the year 2000 -- mainstream media coverage of online ﬁle-sharing encompassed a fairly eclectic blend of viewpoints and agendas. For every op-ed column that branded Napster as a grave threat to the livelihood of struggling musicians, one could ﬁnd (albeit not always in the same venue) an equally celebratory feature that gushed about the wonders of the new technology, offered tips on which software had the smoothest interface, or pointed fans to the best ﬁle-sharing networks for locating 765 longer -- and ﬁle-sharing “evildoers” must be met with devastating force. Hatch’s plan to destroy ﬁle-sharers’ computers may be the most extreme example of this discourse, but it’s a telling one. If nothing else, its draconian nature serves to make “lesser” -- yet still substantial -- legal penalties (such as hefty ﬁnes and conﬁscation of pricy computer hardware) seem like “reasonable” compromises by comparison. We don’t want to pretend, of course, that the legal and economic facets of the ﬁle-sharing phenomenon are insigniﬁcant or irrelevant. And, in the larger work-in-progress that this talk comes from, we address such concerns in more detail than we will today. At the same time, however, we believe that the recent discursive shift that equates “ﬁlesharing” with “piracy” is a gross oversimpliﬁcation of the phenomenon: one that transforms the affectively charged soundscapes of people’s daily lives into nothing more than a musical marketplace. In One of the new TV commercials from Apple features a young woman named Nava. She stands alone against a pure white background, an iPod in her hand, tiny bud headphones in her ears, singing along to what the ad tells us is her “favorite song”: the Jackson Five’s “I’ll Be There.” In its own minimalist fashion, the ad lets us see the music in the sway of Nava’s body, the tilt of her head, and the slow ﬂutter of her eyelids. We feel it resonate through her emotionally compelling, yet still clearly amateur, performance. We’re presented with the vision of a body transformed by music -- and we’re offered the chance to transform our own bodies in similar ways. What we don’t get is the actual sound of the “original” song that moves Nava so strongly. Nonetheless, we still know exactly what she’s experiencing as she listens to her “favorite song.” If the ad works, it’s precisely because we know that feeling. We enjoy that feeling. We want that feeling. The series of ads that this example comes from (all of which feature “ordinary” people singing along with their “favorite songs” in sloppy yet endearing fashion) invites us to download our own favorite songs onto our own iPods so that we, too, can enjoy “our” music in the highly portable, fully individualized, and unmistakably pleasurable ways that Nava and her fellow pitch-models do. Apple explicitly invokes the commonplace notion that fans “own” their favorite music but, signiﬁcantly, these ads deftly reframe such particular, we’re troubled by the ways that the social and cultural practices of ﬁle-sharing -- practices arising from and intricately connected to otherwise ordinary facets of musical fandom -- have too often been erased from the discourse in favor of a simple, monolithic set of debates about “who gets paid” and “who gets punished.” This talk, then, aims to provide a modest corrective to that commerce-centered narrative. 766 ownership as something only achievable through a “legitimate” market transaction. The broad range of personal experiences, social practices, and affective investments that most typically lead people to feel that they possess speciﬁc bits of music (and, in turn, that they are possessed by that music) are simply nowhere to be seen in Apple’s world. In Nava’s case, for instance, whatever personal history makes “I’ll Be There” into her “favorite song” -- a love affair, a high school dance, a childhood bedtime ritual -- is invisible to us. For all the affective pleasure we can see in Nava’s face and body as she sings, the joy that she takes in “her” music isn’t presented as a public or social experience. She ﬂoats alone and unconnected in a vast ocean of pure whiteness. The sounds of the young Michael Jackson’s voice -- the public form of the song that makes Nava’s performance a recognizable one for the ad’s viewers -- do not ﬂow through the space where Nava stands: they’re tightly contained inside the headphones that connect Nava’s ears to her iPod. This is her private experience, her private music. And -- most importantly for Apple and their new corporate partners in the online music business -- she’s downloaded “her” song, not from an illegal network of ﬁle-sharing pirates, but from the fully licensed, branded, and corporatized virtual space of AppleMusic.com. In the spotless, antiseptic world of the ad, she “owns” this music, not because of the powerful affective role it’s played in her life story, but because she’s paid Apple $0.99 for it, This new, industry-sanctioned vision of digital music is not about friends or lovers or house parties or nightclubs or road trips or street festivals . . . or any of the other public, social, and/or collective contexts where we frequently stake our initial claims to “our” music. No, the new, industry-sanctioned vision of digital music is about atomized individuals, each of whom buys their own copy of the new Liz Phair, the new 50 Cent, the new Dixie Chicks -- if not at $17.99 per album, then at $0.99 per song. And, of course, once that purchase has been made, the industry’s ideal atomized consumer-individual conveniently forgets one of the principal lessons of childhood: no matter what their parents or kindergarten teachers may have taught them about how to get along with other people, they don’t share with their friends. The industry’s case against ﬁle-sharing depends heavily on the rhetorical tropes of piracy and theft: paint a portrait of ﬁle-sharers as amoral criminals powerful enough to disrupt global markets and it becomes much easier to mobilize support, amongst both legislators and the general public, for the industry’s efforts to eliminate unlicensed ﬁle-sharing completely. If one believes the industry’s take on the situation, the ﬁle-sharing phenomenon is equivalent to a massive, highly coordinated shoplifting spree where, 767 hour after hour, millions of people walk into retail outlets around the world, scoop vast armfuls of CDs into oversized shopping carts, and then stroll back out the door again without paying a penny for any of their ill-gotten goods. In practice, however, such a scenario isn’t even close to the ﬁle-sharing experience that most people have -- or ever had, even in the wildly unfettered days of Napster. In theory, given a high-speed Internet connection and the right software, you can go online and download a perfect, high-quality copy of an entire CD in less time than it will take us to read this paper. But that theoretical model of ﬁle-sharing is more the exception than the rule. Even for fans with fast computers and lots of bandwidth, online ﬁle-sharing is typically not an experience that can realistically be described as “efﬁcient,” “fast,” or “painless.” If you’ve actually used any of the various ﬁle-sharing networks -- from Napster to Gnutella, and everything in between -- you know this already, because you’ve suffered through truncated ﬁles, ﬂawed “rips,” mislabeled songs, slower-thanmolasses transfer rates, impossibly long download queues, mid-transfer system crashes, and other technical difﬁculties that frequently make ﬁle-sharing into a hit-and-miss experience. Most importantly for our purposes here, those difﬁculties give the lie to the industry’s notion that ﬁle-sharing is an “unprecedented” and “novel” form of high-tech theft, precisely because they help to demonstrate the many ways that online ﬁle-sharing is comparable to (and even an extension of) much older -- and now generally accepted -- ways that gets recirculated. For instance, the “ﬁdelity”-related issues in that long list of technical problems reveal a strong similarity between online ﬁle-sharing and home taping. The unpredictable and spotty quality of the MP3 ﬁles that are available online commonly results in a listening experience that’s closer to the hisses and pops and variable sound levels (etc.) of homemade mix tapes than it is to the pristine purity of professional digital recordings. Meanwhile, the various “network”-related issues in that long list of technical problems mean that, if we absolutely must use a market-centered metaphor, the appropriate one is not the unimpeded grand larceny of factory-sealed product: rather, it’s the secondary market practices of scrounging for records, tapes, and CDs at garage sales, thrift shops, ﬂea markets, and retail outlets that carry used music. For many fans, hunting for “their” music is only marginally easier online than it is ofﬂine. If your musical tastes run to, say, 1980s Belgian dance-pop or raunchy 1930s blues tunes, you’re likely to experience more or less the same sort of frustrations and disappointments (interspersed with rare moments of surprising discoveries and blissful successes) if you’re using Bearshare or Kazaa as you are if you’re 768 browsing through the bins at Tower or Virgin or Sam Goody. Of course, one of the reasons why the industry doesn’t like these particular comparisons is that they’re telling reminders of past moments when the industry tried to blame slumping sales on ways that fans recirculated music that they’d already bought. The industry, however, managed to survive the rise of both home taping and used CD stores without visible handicap -- which makes it all the more reasonable to believe that their public hand-wringing about online ﬁlesharing is just another example of crying “Wolf”! instead, the evening’s tunes came to us courtesy of a computer, a cable modem, and Napster. At ﬁrst listen, this may not seem like a terribly signiﬁcant difference, especially since the evening began with a digital version of those shufﬂed CDs: a few hundred MP3s pumping through the computer’s speakers in random order. As the evening progressed, however, different people in the group started shufﬂing in and out of the chair in front of the computer to play “Napster DJ.” While one song was playing, the DJ of the moment would use Napster to try and download other tunes and slide them into the rotation, with each of us (in turn) trying to answer the implicit question: A few years ago -- when Napster was still the ﬁle-sharing network of choice -- my husband and I invited some friends over for an evening of good food, good drink, good company, and good music. It was much like any other casual social gathering on your run-of-the-mill Saturday night . . . . . . well, almost. Once upon a time, the evening’s musical accompaniment would have been provided by a stereo system or a boombox of some sort. We would have had a small stack of CDs set on “shufﬂe” play, or a couple of party tapes compiled especially for the occasion, or perhaps -- if we lived in a city with more interesting airwaves -- the sounds of a local radio station would have ﬁlled the room. On this particular Saturday night, however, there was no stereo; “What is the soundtrack for this moment?” All of which led to a ridiculously eclectic and wholly unpredictable playlist for the evening: Jacques Brel found himself alongside one-hit wonders from the early ‘80s, Flemish rap songs segued into bad Bob Dylan covers, Johnny Cash intermingled with contemporary dance hits, etc. Clearly, the moment had multiple and competing soundtracks -- much as the practice of ﬁle-sharing itself has multiple and competing stories. Late Tuesday night, my girlfriend arrived back in the US after spending seven weeks in New Zealand. Our relationship is already one we’re conducting long distance, but this was a separation that exceeded any that we’d experienced before. And one of the things that 769 she said helped her to feel a stronger bond between us, even from 13,000 miles away, is that she would lie in bed at night before she went to sleep and listen to pieces of the various MP3 compilations I’ve made for her over the course of our relationship. Perhaps not surprisingly, those compilations come from a variety of sources -- CDs I own, CDs I borrowed, MP3s I downloaded, MP3s other people sent me -- but the affective investment that we both have in “our” songs has nothing to do with who (if anybody) paid for them. Or, for that matter, with the question of where and how we encounter them in the rhythms of our daily lives. For instance, when “Absolutely Right” by the Apollas happens to turn up on the satellite radio feed at my local coffee shop, or when “#1 Crush” by Garbage drifts out of a passing car as Margaret sits on her front porch, we still feel the pull of that song as one that we “own” just as strongly as if we’d chosen to play it ourselves. Of course, one of the reasons that people are often willing to pay for music is so that they can (re)produce certain affective states when and where they choose to. Thus, affect can reasonably be said to be one of the things that makes a market for recorded music possible in the ﬁrst place. Despite the industry’s ongoing efforts, however, the reverse is rarely -- if ever -- true: i.e., the mere act of paying for music doesn’t automatically lead to an affective investment in a particular song, album, or artist. And while the industry may not claim to care about any of the uncommodiﬁed ways that people “own” music, they should realize that, without the affective form of ownership, people won’t care enough about music in the ﬁrst place to keep the market aﬂoat. Tampa is not a city with a lot of musical diversity when it comes to radio stations. The one college station in town is run by paid staff (not students) and plays classical music. Two local microradio broadcasters -- both of whom specialized in alternative freeform programming -- were shut down by the FCC a few years ago. And we have more Clear-Channelowned stations than we can count. The one exception to this unrelenting broadcasting blandness is a nonproﬁt community station that offers an eclectic range of alternatives to the commercial pop that otherwise dominates the local radio spectrum. One of the DJs at this station -- a fellow named David -- crafts entire shows out of musical obscurities that he’s chased down online and brought into the studio. And his more devoted listeners join in on the game. For instance, my husband, who is a big fan of David’s show, likes to burn his own mix CDs from our music collection and deliver them to the station. On weeks when he does this, he listens to the show with extra fervor, in the hopes that David will have liked 770 his music enough to actually play it on the air. This is another form of sharing that deﬁes market-centered explanations. The fan discovers something -- a song, an artist, an album -- and then wants to share it with other people who, hopefully, certify whatever value he or she found in that music. Obviously, August can listen to “his” music whenever he wants to, but there’s an extra measure of pleasure for him in hearing David play “his” music on the radio -- especially if David gives August “on air” credit for introducing it to him. And, predictably enough, most of the music that David plays on his show would never get played on any radio station in town. My husband’s music clearly has fans -- and devoted ones, at that -- but if you actually want to ﬁnd it yourself (at least in Tampa, though I doubt that we’re a unique city in this regard), your best bet is to go online. Intellectual property, on the other hand, can be copied, shared, and distributed without diminishing its value at all. In fact, the worth of intellectual property can actually be dramatically enhanced as it circulates more widely. As an idea, a story, a string of code, a song (etc.) is replicated and spread through the culture, its value is often magniﬁed -- and the industry should know this already. It’s why they want “their” songs played on the radio and in clubs and on video channels and at sporting events: they know that before people will buy new music, they typically want to hear it and decide they like it . . . and thus, of necessity, the industry’s proﬁts depend heavily on music circulating freely and widely. What circulates in such moments, however, is not just a commodity or a piece of intellectual property: it’s a set of affectively charged social relationships. For fans, the impulse to buy and the impulse to share are often too tightly intertwined to separate out: the music From a legal perspective, what’s at stake in the ﬁle-sharing debates is intellectual property, which differs from other, more tangible forms of property (like a car) in signiﬁcant ways. “Real” property can’t simply be duplicated: you can’t photocopy your toaster and create a second, fully functioning appliance suitable for preparing bagels or giving to your cousin Dana as a wedding gift. Nor can real property be shared without reducing its value and availability to its owner: if I let a friend borrow my car, we can’t both drive it at once. you buy often becomes the music you simply must tell others about (“you gotta hear this!”), and the music other people share with you can inspire you to make a few purchases of your own. And while this doesn’t mean that all forms of ﬁle-sharing are really noble moments of community-building, it does mean that the industry’s latest Orwellian maxim -- “sharing is theft” -is a philosophy that we should reject as too simplistic. And, even if all the industry really wants to do is to boost their proﬁts, so should they. 771 Endnotes This paper was written for oral presentation by the two of us, and the text below retains that form. We mention this here to offset any potential confusion that the moments of ﬁrst-person-singularity below all come from the same voice. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Creatio ex ?: How do members of pop and rock bands develop musical ideas? Anja Rosenbrock composition [...] requires a rare degree of co-operation from a composer” (103), which may be a reason why research in this area focuses on questioning composers usical composition is often seen as something mysterious and inexplicable (Blum 187-188), a (e.g. Bahle 1936, Bennett 1976). For the purposes of empirical research, it is helpful to divide the question of how composition works into two sub-questions, namely the question of inspiration and the question of reﬁnement. Inspiration, the sudden and perhaps inexplicable appearance of ideas, is largely responsible for the mythical ‘image’ of composition; the reﬁnement of these ideas, their transformation into ﬁnished pieces of music, is at least partially attributed to learnable composition techniques (see Bennett 1976, p. 9), to musical styles developed in interaction with the musical environment, in short, with more or less conscious strategies which can be related to a composer’s biography and learning process. Therefore, calling inspiration the mysterious and reﬁnement the less mysterious aspect of composition is no gross oversimpliﬁcation. Dividing the creative process into these two aspects contradicts the idea that certain composers, such as Mozart, received ﬁnished pieces of music in a ﬂash of inspiration, a view still held by many musicologists (see Andreas 525, Bennett 7): A letter of Mozart which today Inspiration and refinement – composition and creativity M trait it shares with creativity in general (see Weisberg 1989, 15-16; Vaugham 35): While one view of creativity depicts it rather as bringing something new into being by reshaping old material, the ‘archetype’ of creativity is generally seen as a (more or less) Divine Being creating something new out of nothing – creatio ex nihilo (see Barron 10). The mythical quality associated with both musical composition and creativity may be related to the difﬁculty of studying the genesis of an idea with means of empirical research: As (musical) ideas often originate in the mind before taking shape in any outward manifestation, the empirical method of observation does not yield much crucial information; neither does introspection, as the origin of (musical) ideas frequently remains something incomprehensible even to composers themselves (Rösing, Bruhn 516). Therefore, research on the process of composition so far has been scarce: Sloboda explains that “the live observation of composers during a session of 773 is largely considered a forgery (Cook 67) describes how complex pieces of music are conceived as a whole, making a further process of elaboration and reﬁnement unnecessary. Related to the concept of music conceived as a whole is the belief that reﬁnement strategies are the logical consequence of the germinal idea (Gardner 102). Leman (285-288) criticizes such Romantic and mystifying views of musical creativity predominant in the 19th century, which portray music as coming from a supernatural source to certain exceptionally talented people – a depiction of composition which serves as a marketing strategy for music used even today. Even in music, it appears, theories of creativity and inspiration can have a ‘political’ function in the widest sense of the word: If musical ideas are seen as something which certain rare geniuses receive mysteriously from a supernatural source, this means individuals ignored by the supernatural source may as well not even try to compose; musical composition becomes a resource of musical expression available not to everybody, but only to a select few. Moreover, as composers depicted as ‘geniuses’ in the way described above happen to belong exclusively to the tradition of Western Art music, this view also serves as a justiﬁcation of the worldwide dominance of Western art music over both non-European music and popular music: ‘Inspired’ music is seen as superior to ‘uninspired’ music, and therefore the music derived almost exclusively from supernatural inspiration, such as the music of Mozart, must be clearly superior to, say, the music of ordinary people. Therefore, a deﬁnition of composition as an inspirational process in which a ‘genius’ serves as a kind of sheet music printer for a mysterious, external music processor alienates most people from their musical resources; an observance of composition without such pre-conceived notions promises a much more liberating view. One aspect may be an understanding of the elaboration and reﬁnement process not only as a crucial part of composition, but also as something which, at least to a certain extent, can be learnt by everybody. While there is no doubt that sudden, and to a certain extent, inexplicable inspiration exists, it may not be the only explanation for the fact that some people can compose music, while others do not seem to be able to. Bresgen (11) recounts the results of a study of Hindemith regarding musical inspiration, stating that the sudden appearance of a musical idea is something which happens to everybody; however, while most people just forget these ideas, composers know how to turn even simple and trivial ideas into elaborate pieces of music. For Hindemith, the crucial aspect of composition therefore is not inspiration, but the art of elaboration. Nevertheless, without any inspiration whatsoever, musical composition is impossible; therefore, both a sudden ﬂash of inspiration and a gradual reﬁnement 774 process are probably part of every composition (see Hargreaves 150-152; Sloboda 104-115; Cook 67-69; Sachs et al. 551). After objectifying a musical idea by notating or memorising it (Bennett 7), further elaboration involves a search for supplementing ideas (Cass 239; see also Aranosian 73-74); musical ideas are combined and reﬁned through a process of variation, structuring and arrangement. At least partially, this phase of composition relies not only on culturally determined strategies which may be part of a formal education in composition, but also on the composer’s prior musical experience, on pre-existing tonal material which, according to the composer Harold Shapero, is transformed through the composer’s emotional experience (qtd. in Gardner 103). A composer’s pool of musical and sonic experience made through listening, playing and composing, is considered crucial for inspiration just as for reﬁnement: They do not only constitute the material for composition strategies, but also make up the composer’s sonic memory, according to Shapero the origin for many musical ‘ideas’ (qtd. in Gardner 102). As trivial as it sounds, knowing a lot of music, knowing music well, is crucial for composing music; all composition relates to prior musical experience: Csikszentmihalyi stresses the importance of living in a musical environment and spending a lot of time in music-related occupations (1999, 332-333; 1996, 75-79). Such occupations can even include activities associated with, say, rock fandom: (not only) in popular music, an important part of preparing for composition is listening to other musicians’ recordings (see Cohen 146). Weisberg (1989, 145; 1995, 55) describes in relation to Picasso’s Guernica how artists draw on their prior practice and the practice of culture as a whole to create their great works. In this view, creative works are not something entirely new, but a new combination of old aspects which make a limited artistic or musical difference – to quote Toynbee, “the unit of creativity is a small one” (35); creativity is seen as something where the relationship between the creator and his or her creative ﬁeld is crucial (Csikszentmihalyi 1997, 76). Such a view of musical composition can be considered antithetical to the concept of creatio ex nihilo: Not only consciously employed reﬁnement strategies, but even sudden inspiration is seen as strongly inﬂuenced by the ﬁeld; rather than supernatural sources, musical activities of the composer are considered the source of musical works. While there is no doubt that most composition processes involve both inspiration and reﬁnement, neither of them retain their ‘mythical’ status. Composition therefore appears to be largely inﬂuenced by learned techniques and acquired skills; the focus on individual giftedness is shifted to creativity as a social or even a group process, and the ‘superiority paradigm’ of ‘inspired’ music is put into 775 perspective. Observing group composition In contrast to observation notes, documentary videos offer not only more details, but are also more suitable for intersubjective screening (Dehn 21-22; Jorgensen 22, 96, 101). They can be played repeatedly, thus permit a very thorough examination and analysis of complex social processes (Heath 186, 189, 198; Jorgensen 103). However, they should not be mistaken for reality, as every observation video is in some way inﬂuenced by the observational aims of its producer (Denzin 423424; Titon 90). Moreover, the behaviour of the observed may be inﬂuenced by their knowledge of the camera’s presence (Titon 89-91; Dehn 86; Birdwhistell 147). In the present study, ﬁve local bands were video-ﬁlmed during their composition process; to gain background knowledge about the ﬁve cases, all band members were interviewed with regard to their musical experience and the composition practices of their bands. To be able to study composition apart from the pre-conceived notions of genius and creativity described above, the data was gathered and analysed under the research paradigms of Grounded Theory, a method to discover theories about complex social processes which are grounded in empirical data (Strauss 25; Brüsemeister 189-191): In open coding, the material is examined to discover inherent concepts without prior categorisation (Strauss, Corbin 43-55); however, data analysis was necessarily also founded on the previous ﬁeld knowledge of the researcher (Brüsemeister 197-198; see Burgess 21- As described by Rosenbrock (2002a, 2002b), many pop and rock bands compose their music together: Instead of playing readily arranged compositions of single members, the members of such bands contribute supplementing ideas, are frequently responsible for the parts of their own instruments and shape the emerging composition through a shared evaluation process. Green (83) speaks of an “interlinking” of composition and performance; ideas are often developed while the musicians are playing. In this communicative form of composition, the development of a musical piece can be observed from the outside, as ideas take shape in interaction and are discussed between the members. To document and analyse the composition process in pop and rock bands, the method of “passive participating observation” (Diekmann 469) was chosen, which gives the observer time for documentation (Diekmann 470; Jorgensen 55), in the case of the present study time for documenting the process with a video camera. Moreover, the loss of objectivity frequently associated with ‘proper’ participating observation (Jorgensen 56) is relatively smaller if the researcher does not participate in the action itself (Adler, Adler 36). 776 25). In axial coding, categories are compared with regard to the research question; causal connections between concepts are analysed (Dey 104-106). Finally, in selective coding, the “story” behind the social process is assembled along causal relationships (Strauss, Corbin 96-104); a theory emerges which is compared with the pre-existing theoretical framework of the social action to cross-check its validity (Brüsemeister 201; Strauss, Corbin 33-35). While the interviews were coded with means of the qdasoftware maxqda (see Kuckartz), the analysis of the video was far more complex, as, with exception of the ethnographic study of Burckhardt Qureshi, apparently no previous studies used a detailed and rule-governed analysis of observation videos in relation to music as a research method. Therefore, a speciﬁc combination methods was developed the present study, consisting of an ongoing transcription of the music composed and a of a complete dialogue transcription supplemented by a description of relevant visual aspects. A more detailed transcription using the notation of Conversation Analysis (Atkinson, Heritage IX-XVI) and including a description of gestures, gaze and non-verbal communicative resources (see Brüsemeister 236-239) was made of certain dialogue fragments which gave evidence of group structure and group roles (see Heritage 179). Findings were analysed in the context of the interviews to avoid misinterpretations (see Heath 191); cross-checking and triangulation of the different methods was used to enhance the objectivity and truthfulness of the results (see Peräkylä 201). General findings To place the following discussion of inspiration and reﬁnement in the context of the data, some very general ﬁndings of the study are listed here in short. Roughly speaking, these ﬁndings concur with the results of other studies analysing or describing the composition process in pop and rock bands, such as Cohen, Witzel, Hemming and Spieß: In four of the ﬁve bands observed, band members composed their music in a more or less interactive process. Initial ideas were rarely developed in group improvisation / jamming; most were composed outside the group situation by single members who brought them to practice. In this case, the underlying inspirational and perhaps reﬁnement process was lost to the observation by the researcher. However, the following group process, during which jamming was often employed as a method for development and arranging, goes beyond the reﬁning and re-shaping of these pre-existing ideas; by supplying essential supplementing ideas, other band members contributed to the composition in progress in the framework of their own musical experience and style. What followed was a shared process of structuring and evaluation undertaken in the context of the stylistic orientation of the band members. 777 Development of a Cello-Line Asked for the origin of the ideas they brought to practice, all composing band members mentioned solo improvisation or trial-and-error on their instruments; some also stated that they developed ideas in their heads. These ideas did not necessarily occur suddenly or out of nothing; two band members described a very gradual transition from having an earwig to developing their own ideas from the pre-existing material, and suddenly realising that these ideas have indeed become an independent composition. The gradual development of musical ideas in the mind, even though it is apparently not always done fully consciously, seems to be structurally similar to improvisation on an instrument; the question arises whether there is some thing like mental improvisation. Two examples of band composition videos show two very different compositional situations in pop and rock bands. One of them displays a production of a cello line under circumstances which very well can be called inspiration, while the other shows the gradual development of a chorus, steered by an evaluation practice in which all band members involved. Example 1: Inspiration – Finding a Cello line In one of the bands observed, the guitarist has brought to practice a half-ﬁnished song consisting of guitar chords for a verse, a bridge and a chorus and of song lyrics. The band is working on the song by playing the verse repeatedly; later in the rehearsal they will add the bridge and the chorus. Besides guitarist, bassist, drummer and singer, the band has a cello player who contributes semi-melodic accompanying lines to The two following examples taken from the observation the composition; this example will describe how he 778 develops his part for the chorus. As can be seen in the music notes at left, the cello player ﬁrst improvises very scarcely to the chords the guitarist is playing; 3:09 minutes into the recording, he does not seem to know what he will play in the song. After the band has talked for about a minute, they start playing again; rather suddenly, the cello player comes in with an improvisation which will later become his ﬁxed Line 1 (5:20). At 5:51, he tries some variation of the theme, but a musical constant remains. of the chorus, there is no evidence of any conscious composition strategies; the cello player does not reﬂect their quality in any way. Moreover, the cello player works relatively independent; apart from the harmonic framework, he does not seem to derive his idea from any other band member’s ideas, or take suggestions from anybody. In this way, his ideas appear suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere; it seems plausible to call them an inspiration. While the inﬂuence the band and the cello player’s musical background have on his ideas should not be denied, the example illustrates the While the band takes another short break to communicate verbally, the cello player suddenly and with hardly any improvisatory preparation plays Line 2; when the band pick up playing again, he contributes Line 2. Both cello lines are combined to become his ﬁxed part for the verse immediately; throughout the composition process, they are never changed except for a few variations, they are never evaluated, discussed or questioned. While the development of the cello lines cannot be called creatio ex nihilo, as they occur in the preexisting harmonic framework of the guitar player and are prepared with some, albeit very little, improvisation. However, it is partly inexplicable why these particular lines occur in the short time frame and in the shape they occur. Apart from the fact that the cello player probably consulted his lead sheet naming the chords sudden occurrence of a musical idea which cannot be attributed to a speciﬁc source; to some extent, it is inexplicable. Example 2: Gradual development – Finding a chorus The guitarist / singer of another band has brought an intro and a verse to practice; he has written lyrics for the song, which include verse and chorus, but he has no adequate musical idea for the chorus. The band decide they need to look for such an idea; both the guitarist / singer and the bass player improvise on their instruments by themselves, looking for something that could ﬁt. The bassist suggests an eight bar chord sequence symbolised through their roots: B-G-D-A, B-G-D-D. He comments: “No, that’s too cheap. Too simple and cliché.” 779 Finding a Chorus - The Bass Player’s First Suggestion Finding a Chorus - “Rock’n’Roll-Fun” Smiling to himself, the guitarist/singer replies: “Why, that’s a nice sequence of chords.” The bass player plays the sequence again; the guitarist/ singer comments: “You think that this one...? Well, let’s try it. How did you play it?” The bassist replies: “First four [chords], and later three.” He plays it again; facing him, mirroring his posture watching his ﬁngers, the guitarist/singer joins the bass player in playing. When they come to the ending of the sequence, the bassist stops playing and adds: “And here, there’s a classic –” He plays his rock’n’rolllike ending; laughing, the guitarist joins him in a bit of ‘rock’n’roll-fun’. After both of them have stopped playing, the guitarist/singer comments with laughter in his voice: “Oh no, that’s not permitted.” The bassist replies: “It’s a classical quotation.” The guitarist/singer adds: “The harmonies would ﬁt, I think.” In the ﬁrst part of this example, it is already obvious that evaluation is crucial to the composition process of this band; in the framework of their stylistic knowledge of punk rock and rock’n’roll, the musicians evaluate the suggestion of the bassist as being too much of a musical cliché. This evaluation is communicated not only verbally, but also through a meta-musical joke: When he joins his band mate in the ending of the chord sequence, the guitarist exaggerates its 780 Finding a Chorus - Version 1 rock’n’roll-features, thus placing it in the context of the band members’ shared listening experiences. Another conscious evaluation strategy can be seen in the guitarists remark that harmonically, the bassist’s suggestion would be adequate. The chorus is arranged with the whole band to become Version 1 of the chorus, but is later discarded for indeed being too much of a musical cliché. The bassist suggests to reduce the lyrics of the chorus to one line to make it more catchy; he goes on to look for a new chord sequence. When he plays his second suggestion, B-HG, the drummer laughs and calls out: “Fully Ramones!” The bassist reacts by playing his suggestion again and singing the line of his choice with it, thereby developing a rudimentary vocal melody; his face and his slightly bouncy movements in the rhythm of the music strongly suggests he is joking again. The guitarist/singer comments: “Gabba Gabba Hey!” With this comment, he does not only contribute to the joke and prove that like the drummer and the bassist, he has adequate musical knowledge of the repertoire of the band Ramones; he also contributes to the evaluation process of the bassist’s suggestion, agreeing with the drummer that it is rather closely related to the style of the Ramones. Again, the importance of evaluation in the context of the band members’ listening experience is evident. In spite of the verbally and musically expressed doubts of his band mates, the bassist does not give up his suggestion; after some further discussion, he remarks: “That could very well be done as background vocals. 781 Finding a Chorus - The Bass Player’s Second Suggestion – First that Ramones-like line, and then the last line of the chorus as background vocals.” He demonstrates his suggestion by playing his bass and mimicking both lead and background vocals. The guitarist/singer tries to imitate; the bass player corrects him; in a lengthy process, they develop the rhythm and melody of the vocals in cooperation. The band plays this new version of the chorus and arranges it with all instruments and with background vocals into Version 2. After integrating the chorus into the song and practicing it for about twenty-ﬁve minutes, the drummer criticises: “I found the chorus a bit warble-like.” The guitarist/ singer agrees wit him: „I thought so, too. We‘ve got to change things then.“ After a longer discussion, the guitarist/ singer suggests that he could sing all four lines of the chorus. The band agrees to try this solution. The melody he uses for this is the same melody he has sung over the ﬁrst version of the chorus; whether he is aware of this remains uncertain. The new version of the chorus apparently pleases, but the bassist suggests a combination of the two melodies: “You could do both, too. You can sing this [new melody] once, and then two of those [older] lines. ” The guitarist /singer agrees with a comprehending smile: “That’s right!” As a result, the band decides on the Final Version of the chorus as notated oppositte. Example two shows how a piece of music is developed by a group in a gradual, interactive process which largely depends on a framework for evaluation constituted by the band members’ listening experience as well as on their knowledge of harmonic relations. To achieve the best possible results, the band members employ conscious composition strategies; through their verbal and musical communication, the composition process becomes observable and comprehensible: The initial ideas suggested by the bassist are relatively simple; they are purposefully chosen to ﬁt the harmonic frame suggested by the verse. They gradually take shape within group interaction; crucial to their development is the band members’ shared evaluation process. The musicians arrange the chorus while they are playing by making up the parts for their own instruments; the 782 Finding a Chorus - Version 2 Finding a Chorus - Final Version 783 arrangement is comparatively simple and relies heavily on the part of the guitar. It hardly seems adequate to call the chord sequences suggested by the bass player ‘inspiration’, as they are rather common in the context of the band’s stylistic orientation. Further reﬁnement involves the conscious use of composition strategies, lucky ‘accidents’ such as the retrieval of the vocal melody developed for Version 1, and a very thorough evaluating process which relies on the band members’ listening experience. Inexplicable ‘inspiration’ is hardly evident in this process. This, however, does not mean that the music developed this way can be considered ‘uninspired’ or inferior to other music: Preferences regarding style and complexity are part of everybody’s individual musical taste, but not adequate for the evaluation of quality in the context of this empirical study; the quality of this song is that it fulﬁlls its purpose in its speciﬁc musical environment. Not only was the song developed this way a success to a certain extent, being chosen for the sampler of a nationally distributed music magazine; much more important is that the song is composed just the way the band considers adequate in their musical framework, for their audience and for themselves, as was assured in the interactive evaluation process. Taking into account that the song succeeds to meet this criteria, it is even more remarkable that inspiration, in the eyes of many musicologists the core of composition, is obviously not necessary for its development. In short, the example proves that composition without inspiration is absolutely possible. Conclusion The two contrasting examples taken from the observance videos give evidence of the conscious use of learned strategies, of interaction and the importance of evaluation in the group process of band composition. The occurrence of sudden inspiration does not appear to be a necessity; in some contexts, the reﬁnement of simple ideas under the close scrutiny of shared evaluation seems to be far more important to the emergence of a piece of music. However, inspiration does occur in pop and rock bands; neither observation nor introspection have been able to fully explain it yet. Comparing the examples described here with the composition process of ‘great’ composers of classical music and viewing both processes with the values of ‘classical’ music in mind, one might reach the conclusion that while pop and rock bands practice something remotely resembling composition, they are, to repeat the play on words, ‘uninspired’. None of the bands observed produced any kind of elaborate, maybe even readily arranged and structured inspiration in front of the camera. However, it should be taken into account that in contrast to the examples discussed here, most composition processes are 784 not observed and therefore cannot be analysed in retrospect, making a comparison in terms of empirical research almost impossible. The superiority of more or less ‘complete’ inspiration over a composition that is developed in a gradual process of elaboration and reﬁnement can be considered cultural bias, used to proclaim the superiority of Western ‘classical’ music over other forms of music. A closer look at group composition in pop and rock bands depicts them as complex social and musical processes which may or may not involve sudden and elaborate inspiration, but in which social interaction is often crucial. It is evident that composition in pop and rock bands functions differently at least from compositions executed in isolation by single composers; however, important common features between both ways of composing music are clearly visible. A comparison between popular music and ‘classical’ music just as well as between inspiration and reﬁnement encourages thinking in terms of ‘alike’ and ‘different’ much more than in terms of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’. Understanding musical composition – and human creativity in general – as something mysterious impedes all attempts at objective comparisons; empirical research can put the ‘composition myth’ into perspective and can offer new material for a comparison and analysis beyond such cultural bias. Bennett, Stan: The Process of Musical Creation: Interviews with Eight Composers. Journal of Research in Music Education, 1976, 3, 3-13. Barron, Frank: Creative Person and Creative Process. New York [a.o.] (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) 1969. Bahle, Julius: Der musikalische Schaffensprozess. Psychologie der schöpferischen Erlebnis- und Antriebsformen. Leipzig (Hirzel) 1936. Atkinson, J. Maxwell; Heritage, John, eds.: Structures in Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge (University Press) 1984. Aranosian, Christopher M.: Musical Creativity: The Stream of Consciousness in Composition, Improvisation, and Education. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 1981-2, 1, 67-88. Selected Bibliography Adler, Patricia A.; Adler, Peter: Membership Roles in Field Research. Newbury Park, CA [a.o.] (Sage) 1987. Andreas, Reinhard: Kreativität. Bruhn, Herbert; Oerter, Rolf; Rösing, Helmut, eds.: Musikpsychologie. Ein Handbuch. Reinbek (Rowohlt) 1993. 520 - 529. 785 Birdwhistell, Ray L.: Kinesics and Context. Essays on Body-Motion Communication. Norwich (Penguin) 1970. Cook, Nicholas: Music. A very short introduction. Oxford, New York (Oxford University Press) 1998. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly: Das Flow-Erlebnis. Blum, Steven: Composition. Sadie, Stanley, ed.: New Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians - Second Edition. London (Macmillan) 2001. 186-201 (6). Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly: Kreativität. Wie Sie das Bresgen, Cesar: Die Improvisation in der Musik. Wilhelmshaven (Heinrichshofen‘s) 1983. Unmögliche schaffen und Ihre Grenzen überwinden. Stuttgart (Klett-Cotta) 1997. Jenseits von Angst und Langeweile : Im Tun aufgehen. Stuttgart (Klett-Cotta) 1996. Brüsemeister, Thomas: Qualitative Forschung. Ein Überblick. Wiesbaden (Westdeutscher Verlag) 2000. ------------------------------: Implications of a Systems Perspective. Sternberg, Robert J., ed.: Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge (Univ. Press) 1999. 313- Burckhardt Qureshi, Regula: Suﬁ Music of India and Pakistan. Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali. Chicago (University Press) 1995. 338. Dehn, Christopher: Die ﬁlmische Beobachtung als qualitative Forschungsmethode. Eine Untersuchung Burgess, Robert G.: In the Field. An Introduction to Field Research. Herts [a.o.] (Allen & Unwin) 1984. am Beispiel der Filmtriologie ‚Turkana Conversations‘ von David und Judith MacDougall. Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Soziologie, 1997. Als Manuskript Cass, Mortimer: A Note on Music. Arieti, Silvano, ed.: Creativity. The Magic Synthesis. New York (Basic Books) 1976. 236 - 241. gedruckt. Denzin, Norman K.: Reading Film - Filme und Videos als sozialwissenschaftliches Erfahrungsmaterial. Cohen, Sara: Rock culture in Liverpool. Popular Music in the Making. Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1991. Flick, Uwe; von Kardoff, Ernst; Steinke, Ines, eds.: Qualitative Forschung. Ein Handbuch. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt) 2000. 417-428. 786 Dey, Ian: Grounding Grounded Theory. Guidelines for qualitative inquiry. San Diego [a.o.] (Academic Press) 1999. Heritage, John: Conversation Analysis and Institutional Talk: Analysing Data. Silvermann, David, ed.: Qualitative Research. Theory, Method and Practice. London [a.o.] (Sage) 1997. 161-182. Diekmann, Andreas: Empirische Sozialforschung. Grundlagen, Methoden, Anwendungen. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt) 1998. Jorgensen, Danny L.: Participant Observation. A Methodology for Human Studies. Newbury Park, CA [a.o.] (Sage) 1989. Gardner, Howard: Abschied vom IQ Die RahmenTheorie der vielfachen Intelligenzen. Stuttgart (KlettCotta) 1991. Kuckartz, Udo: Maxqda - qualitative Datenanalyse. Einführung. Berlin 2001. Green, Lucy: Music, gender, education. Cambridge [a.o.] (Cambridge Univ. Press) 1997. Leman, Marc: Music. Runco, Mark A.; Pritzker, Steven R., eds.: Encyclopedia of Creativity. Volume 2, I-Z San Diego, CA [a.o.] (Academic Press) 1999. 285-296. Hargreaves, David J.: The Developmental Peräkylä, Anssi: Reliability and Validity in Research Based on Transcripts. Silvermann, David, ed.: Qualitative Research. Theory, Method and Practice. Psychology of Music. Cambridge (University Press) 1986. Heath, Christian: The Analysis of Face to Face Interaction Using Video. Silvermann, David, ed.: Qualitative Research. Theory, Method and Practice. London [a.o.] (Sage) 1997. 183-200. London [a.o.] (Sage) 1997. 201-220. Rosenbrock, Anja: The composition process in pop and rock bands: Musical creativity in groups. Britta, Marlène; Mélen, Marc, eds.: La créativité musicale Hemming, Jan: Begabung und Selbstkonzept. Eine qualitative Studie unter semiprofessionellen Musikern in Rock und Pop. Münster (LIT) 2002. (= Beiträge zur Musikpsychologie 3) - Musical Creativity. Liège (ESCOM conference proceedings on CD-ROM) 2002. ---------------------: Musical identity and composition 787 in pop and rock groups. Kärki, Kimi; Leydon, Rebecca; Terho, Henri, eds.: Looking Back, Looking Ahead. Popular Music Studies 20 Years Later. Proceedings of the Eleventh Biannual IASPM Conference July 6-10, 2001, Turku, Finland. Turku (IASPM Norden) 2002. 98-109. Strauss, Amseln L.; Corbin Juliet: Grounded Theory: Grundlagen Qualitativer Sozialforschung. Beltz (Weinheim) 1996. Titon, Jeff Todd: Representation and Authority in Ethnographic Film / Video: Production. Ethnomusicology, Rösing, Helmut; Bruhn, Herbert: Komposition. 36. (1992), 1, 89-94. Bruhn, Herbert; Oerter, Rolf; Rösing, Helmut, eds.: Musikpsychologie. Ein Handbuch. Reinbek (Rowohlt) 1993. 514-519. Toynbee, Jason: Making Popular Music. Musicians, Creativity and Institutions. London (Arnold) 2000. Sachs, Klaus-Jürgen; Keltenborn, Rudolf; Rösing, Helmut; Cahn, Peter: Komposition. Finscher, Ludwig, ed.: Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Zweite, neubearbeitete Ausgabe. Kassel, Basel, London a.o. (Bärenreiter) 1997. 506-557 (ST4). Vaugham, Margery M.: Cultivating Creative Behavior. Energy Levels and the Process of Creativity. Music Educators Journal, 1973, April, 35-37. Weisberg, Robert W.: Kreativität und Begabung. Was wir mit Mozart, Einstein und Picasso gemeinsam Sloboda, John A.: The Musical Mind. The Cognitive Psychology of Music. Oxford (Clarendon) 1985. haben. Heidelberg (Spektrum der Wissenschaft) 1989. -------------------------: Case Studies of Creative Thinking: Spieß, Ulrich: Rockbands. Ein Modell der künstlerischen Kooperation in Kleingruppen. Hamburg (Ulrich Spieß Verlag) 2000. Reproduction versus Restructuring in the Real World. Smith, Steven M.; Ward, Thomas B.; Finke, Ronald A., eds.: The Creative Cognitive Approach. Cambridge, MA (Bradford) 1995. 53-72. Strauss, Anselm L.: Grundlagen qualitativer Witzel, Thomas G.: Der musikalische Arbeitsprozess von Amateurbands. Eine empirische Untersuchung im Gießener Raum. Rösing, Helmut und Phleps, Thomas, Sozialforschung. Datenanalyse und Theoriebildung in der empirischen soziologischen Forschung. München (Wilhelm Fink) 1994. 788 eds.: Popularmusik im kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurs. Karben (Coda) 2000. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Canonic Implications of Greatest Hits Albums: The Case of Oh What A Feeling Gordon Ross T he recording industry, either knowingly or unknowingly, creates a canon by virtue of the defunct group. However, while the compilations may represent a particular band or artist, the collections of various hits is skewed toward the record company that released the collection. For example, Sony’s Best Of Country Music (1991) features only Sony, or Columbia, recording artists. Primarily, Greatest Hits albums are released for marketing purposes and any historical importance the songs may occupy is overshadowed by the desire to increase the bottom line. That being said, there are compilations available that endeavour to chronicle and preserve recordings and present them in an historical context. The Smithsonian Institute, Rolling Stone magazine, and labels like Rhino Records have released collections that are reasonably historically deﬁnitive, adequately representing either speciﬁc genres or an artist’s career. But for the major record labels, all in all, compilation albums are a proﬁtable venture. Prime time for releasing Greatest Hits albums is during the Christmas season, with forty percent of CD sales occurring during that period (1). Elvis’ 30 #1 Hits, Sir Elton John’s Greatest Hits 1970-2002, and the Rolling Stones’ 40 Licks were all released during the last quarter of 2002 along with collections by U2 and Nirvana. In addition to the contractual obligation some existence of the recording as a tangible artefact. Once the active life of a song has expired, it is placed in an archive that is picked over and culled for future Greatest Hits or Best Of compilations. The songs that have become hits are gathered together in one collection that is often marketed as “deﬁnitive” or “essential.” Greatest Hits albums are available for all genres of recorded music, and collections of so-called hits by Beethoven and Mozart enjoy popularity alongside Best Of albums by contemporary pop music artists. Budget-priced CDs recycle hits from every decade of the twentieth century and all styles of popular music, offering the “best of” Motown, “top hits” of 1970, “greatest love songs,” etc. In addition to collections of hits from a particular decade, the work of individual artists is presented in a similar manner. Most often, artists will release a Greatest Hits album toward the end of their recording contract generally as a requirement for the number of albums stipulated in the contract, and many times the compilation will outsell any other albums in the artists’ catalogue. As well, Greatest Hits albums can be released to increase career momentum mid-way through a contract or to generate revenue from recordings of a 790 Greatest Hits albums serve, they also draw customers into record stores that ordinarily avoid shopping through the back catalogue. For the consumer, Greatest Hits albums offer a convenient way to have all the hits in one place. The biggest complaint from the record buying public is the lack of substance in many new releases. The hit song is placed along with so-called “ﬁller” songs that do nothing more than take up space, so having a CD entirely composed of hits appeals to the majority of consumers. Aside from the marketing aspect of Greatest Hits albums, these collections create implications for canonical perceptions either by offering a narrow view of an artist’s creative output or a recycled representation of a decade or genre. The same songs appear again and again in isolation from other songs in an artist’s recorded repertory and serve as identiﬁable markers for authorship, performance, style, and genre. The Canadian recording industry operates in the same manner as its American counterpart, and as such, Best Of compilations by Canadian artists are readily available in any record store, but it is only within the last thirty years that Canadian popular music has risen to compete on an international level. Because Canadian popular music is a relatively new concept, Canada’s popular culture industry has largely been driven by the American model. Geographic proximity means the standard of quality for pop culture items like ﬁlms, broadcasting, and recordings is set by American producers and, as a result, Canadian popular culture exists somewhat subserviently to the models presented by American standards. Moreover, there is uniformity between Canadian and American popular culture, which translates to the music industry as a sameness of sound, form, and aesthetics embedded in the commodity of the recording. Canadian popular music has fought a long battle with indifference, partly due to the ambivalence of its audience, broadcasters, and the record companies themselves. Not until after 1970 did the major labels consider Canada to be a marketplace that was indeed viable (2). And yet, despite the success of the Guess Who and other acts at this time, Canadian artists were treated as secondary to American acts on the same labels. Canada struggled with this sense of indifference and in an attempt to qualify and validate the popular music industry; the Juno Awards were created in 1970. Originally designed as the Canadian counterpart to the Grammy Awards, the Junos were something that would recognize Canadian music in the same manner the Grammys recognized American talent. In 1996 a four-CD set was released to commemorate the twenty-ﬁfth anniversary of the Juno Awards titled Oh What A Feeling: A Vital Collection of Canadian Music. Five years later, in 2001, a second compilation was released to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Junos, 791 with the title Oh What A Feeling2: A Vital Collection of Canadian Music. Both sets purport to include and present the epitome of Canadian popular music. After the production of the ﬁrst box-set, it was recognized by the producers that Canadian music history had indeed been chronicled—albeit subjectively. They felt they were creating a history of music that would set the standard for future compilations and, at the same time document, and preserve Canadian popular music. In essence, a canon of Canadian music history was created that has possibly been recognized as being authoritative among those that purchased the compilations; in other words, a collection of “really good stuff.” The Oh What A Feeling sets are not the only collections of recorded Canadian popular music. There have been other compilations released. BMG Records issued the four-CD set Made in Canada: Our Rock and Roll History in 1990 that featured early Canadian pop music artists like Luke and the Apostles and the Ugly Ducklings. Being primarily rock music from the 1960s and 1970s, Made in Canada nevertheless does its part in establishing a small segment of Canadian pop music history and it qualiﬁes itself by being only “our rock and roll history” rather than “a vital collection of Canadian music.” The latter designation suggesting some sort of comprehensive compilation that encompasses the entire corpus of Canadian music and this is somewhat misleading. The Oh What A Feeling collections contain an audio history of Canadian popular music that is presented ﬁrst and foremost as being “vital.” The presence of the word in the title automatically pre-supposes an authenticity about the music that attaches historical value and importance of some kind to each song. Unlike the Made in Canada recordings, the all-encompassing term “Canadian Music” is added and suggests the compilations are a collection that would include all the various genres of music found in Canada. Additionally, Oh What A Feeling’s commemorative aspect maps an aesthetic quality to the music that would not otherwise be present. The overt suggestion that all the songs are Juno winners places value on the songs and legitimizes their inclusion in the collections. However, of the 153 songs on both Oh What A Feeling compilations, only nineteen are not Juno winners so the preponderance of those that are overrides those few that are not. The duality of the collections as both an historical, “deﬁnitive” collection of Canadian popular music and, at the same time, a commemorative collection of award winners allows for the inclusion of songs that fall under one category and not the other. The collections were intended to reﬂect both Juno Award history and that of Canadian popular music (3). Songs like Crowbar’s “Oh What a Feeling,” the ad hoc title track of the collection, are found owing to criteria outside the singularity of award status. Crowbar’s song was included due to the 792 fact that it was a hit for the group, they are recognized as being inﬂuential in the history of Canadian popular music, and “Oh What a Feeling” was the ﬁrst release after the legislation of the Canadian Content Regulations (4). The criteria for deciding which songs to include and which ones to omit were agreed upon primarily by two individuals. Larry LeBlanc, Canadian editor for Billboard magazine, and Randy Lennox, an executive at Universal Music, were the producers of the compilations, and chose the material that was to be immortalized. Larry arguably had the most input and in email correspondence and telephone conversations he notes that when it was decided to undertake the Oh What A Feeling project, initially a list of songs was drawn up that would encompass seven CDs (5). This was far too cumbersome to produce and virtually unsellable and thus required the list to be pared down. A choice was made not to include Juno winners from other genres like country, jazz, and classical, as well, popular music from Quebec was not included except for those artists that had cross-over popularity in English Canada like Celine Dion or Pagliaro. This was an effort to make the collection manageable from a production standpoint and attractive to the marketplace (6). At the same time, an effort was made to exclude the inﬂuence of the major record labels. Politic interference in that form would have impeded the production of Oh What A Feeling and the producers felt that unnecessary time and effort would have been added to the already substantial task of assembling the collection. However, LeBlanc notes that generally the labels were ambivalent toward the production of Oh What A Feeling. It was viewed as folly or a kind of “non-event” that the labels had little time for or interest in (7). Issues such as copyright and permission played a role as well, in choosing which songs would be included. For example, Neil Young’s ubiquitous “Heart of Gold,” from his 1972 album Harvest is not found on the ﬁrst box-set. Because of the popularity of “Heart of Gold,” Young frequently holds back the recording and will not allow it on any compilations (8). This meant that a different song was needed to represent Neil Young’s contribution to Canadian music history and, instead, “Helpless,” from the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album Déjà Vu (1970) was included. LeBlanc notes that “Helpless” was the next obvious choice primarily due to its reference to Canada in the subject of the lyrics, rather than a song that achieved higher chart status or sales, such as “Old Man” (9). When asked to contribute to the second box-set, Young acquiesced and allowed “Heart of Gold” to be used (10). Other problems, like some interference from the major labels and artists’ management, contributed to the choice of music and for some artists, a political bias made it difﬁcult to acquire certain songs. 793 Bryan Adams was hesitant about allowing any of his earlier material to be used because he wanted to be known as a contemporary artist and felt that his older material would paint the wrong picture to his audience. After much wrangling over the telephone between the Oh What A Feeling producers, Adams’ manager, and Adams himself, it was ﬁnally agreed that “Cuts Like A Knife” could be used for the ﬁrst box set and “Summer of ’69,” subsequently, for the second (11). However, there is deeper signiﬁcance in Adams’ initial refusal. His feud with the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) and his ambivalence toward the Canadian Content Regulations both proved to be difﬁcult because he did not want to be involved with any project undertaken by either group (12). As such, Adams was blackmailed, somewhat, into allowing the inclusion of “Cuts Like A Knife” and “Summer of ‘69” when it was pointed out that the collection beneﬁted children’s charities and none of Adams’ music would be on the compilation. In an attempt to save face and public opinion, the songs were allowed (13). Initially, projected sales of the ﬁrst Oh What A Feeling collection ranged from 20,000 to 40,000 units. However, the popularity of the ﬁrst box-set far exceeded what the producers had hoped for. The ﬁrst Oh What A Feeling set sold 250,000 copies and the second has sold 110,000 so far. This means that a large percentage of the consumer marketplace was interested enough in these sets, for whatever reason, to purchase a copy. Interestingly, it is quite difﬁcult to ﬁnd copies of either set in used-CD stores, which is a telling indication of the popularity of both. People bought the collections and kept them. And LeBlanc’s choice of material becomes validated. The existence of Oh What A Feeling as a chronicle of Canadian popular music, then, goes further than just a tasty collection of Canadian rock. It becomes not only an aural, historical document, but a canon of reception as well. This pre-supposes an a prioric set of values irrespective of any sort of musical analysis or inherent meaning. For many “boomers” these collections, especially the ﬁrst one, offer a trip down memory lane and provide a permanent record of past times that can be revisited again and again—Canadian music history notwithstanding. Joseph Kerman notes that canons are created by critics, repertories by performers (14). It could be argued that these compilations fall into the former category, but while critical inﬂuence may be present, the larger element of reception was considered particularly by the producers of the collection. This means the collection has a material presence that overshadows the musical content somewhat. The compilation was designed with a speciﬁc audience in mind, something that skews the choice of material toward its intended recipient. However, in order to consider the collection to be a canon of reception an acceptance of the 794 distinction between effect and reception must ﬁrst be acknowledged. As Mark Everist notes: “One important preliminary distinction needs to be made: between ‘effect’ and ‘reception.’ … Wirking (effect) focuses on the textual and musical aspects of the process, while Rezeption addresses the reader—in the broadest sense, the recipient of the text” (15). Marcia Citron goes further when she states: “So this involves dealing more speciﬁcally with aesthetics along with a greater attention to history and to collectivity in the sense of a public or audience” (16). This means that the audience can be a determining factor in the creation of a canon. While musical value may exist in other works that have a smaller popularity with the audience, massive acceptance by the public should not be overlooked. The collections were designed for a speciﬁc purpose with the highest regard for the audience they would reach. This kind of open-ended aesthetic allows for the inclusion of songs that were unable to achieve number one chart status or even top ten. For example, A Foot In Cold Water’s “(Make Me Do) Anything You Want,” only reached the number twenty-one position in 1972 on the CHUM radio charts and A Foot In Cold Water are not Juno winners, but the song is included because of its representation of Canadian music in the ﬂedgling years of the record industry—albeit from LeBlanc’s point of view (17). Insofar as canons represent an objectiﬁcation of the music, and the notion that recordings have contributed to canonization in a way that previously was not foreseen, (18) the Oh What A Feeling compilations add to this canon of reception in a manner that both validates Canadian popular music history and, at the same time, detracts from that history by presenting a myopic view. Clearly, Canadian music history becomes seen as only encompassing the genres that are included in the Oh What A Feeling box-sets, however a true history of Canadian popular music would include the music that was left off. Notwithstanding the encompassing claim of the title, or the speciﬁcity of the content, Oh What A Feeling does represent the most visible element of Canadian popular music. The collection has accomplished what the producers desired—to be popular and sell a large quantity to the consuming public—and it subjectively chronicles Canadian music history, however myopic that may be. 795 1990 album Waking Up the Neighbours as being Endnotes 1. Mulholland. “non-Canadian” because of the involvement of the record’s producer Robert “Mutt” Lange. 2. See Richie Yorke, Axes, Chops, and Hot Licks. 13. LeBlanc interview. 14. Kerman, 37. 3. LeBlanc email. 15. Everist, 379. 16. Citron, 165. 17. Hall, s.v. “1972.” 18. Kerman, 44. 4. LeBlanc interview. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. Selected Bibliography Citron, Marcia. Gender and the Musical Canon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. Everist, Mark. “Reception Theories, Canonic 10. Ibid. Discourses, and Musical Value.” Rethinking Music. Eds. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist. Oxford: 11. Ibid. Oxford University Press, 2001. 378-402. 12. CARAS is a major sponsor of the Juno Awards and Bryan Adams has taken issue with the CanCon regulations largely due to the designation of his Hall, Ron. The CHUM Chart Book 1957-1983: A Complete Listing of Every Charted Record. Toronto: Stardust Productions, 1984. s.v. “1972.” 796 Kerman, Joseph. “A Few Canonic Variations.” Write All These Down: Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 33-50. LeBlanc, Larry. “‘Oh What A Feeling’ collection.” Email to the author. February 8, 2002. ---. “‘Oh What A Feeling’ collection.” Personal interview with the author. February 16, 2002. Mulholland, Garry. “Lifetimes’ Achievement.” December 20, 2002. Independent.Co.Uk. <http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/ features/story.jsp?story=363269> Yorke, Richie. Axes, Chops, and Hot Licks. Edmonton: Mel Hurtig Publishers, 1971. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Hell Bent for Leather: Masculinity, Heavy Metal, and Rob Halford Katrina Rudmin L ondon, OntarioBlack of leather toughness, has many His look was called “leather-dude-on-a-hog”(Burk 42), and “black-leather-and-bondage”(Loder 14). Leather played the most important part in his, and his band’s, image. Halford’s leather look has a history, one that is tied to the histories of masculinity and homosexuality. It is possible to trace the history of masculinity because it is a cultural construct, not grounded in biological fact. Masculinity is a performative social practice (Butler 136), constructed and reproduced by various signiﬁers, gestures, enactments and so on. This practice creates the appearance that an element of choice joins these signiﬁers into the performance of gender (Coates 52). But the term ‘masculine’ means more than just a categorical sex difference, it is also the way men differ among themselves. At any point in time there are many masculinities operating, some which are dominant over others. The dynamics between masculinities are always shifting, as versions of masculinity change. The history of leather is part of the history of masculinity. In our culture, dressing all in leather was originally done by people, usually men, who rode motorcycles, because it protects the body in case of a fall. The look came to be associated with bikers and their version of masculinity. In the 1950s, bikers were mostly connotations, rebellion, sadomasochistic sex, and masculinity. Rob Halford was known in heavy metal for his vocal stylings, but also for his outrageous leather outﬁts. He was the epitome of snarling heavy metal hypermasculinity, and yet for all his tough behaviour, there were recurring jokes and suspicions as to his sexuality. Although he came out ﬁve years ago, it is not that there was something essentially gay about him that shone through his performance, it is that he made masculinity too obviously a performance. In this paper, I will look at leather and its place in the history of masculinity through homosexuality and heavy metal, and how Halford’s unique use of it was a threatening sign of the performative nature of gender. Rob Halford was the lead singer of British heavy metal band Judas Priest from 1973 to 1992. The biggest part of his image was leather because he always wore it, on stage and off. Any reference to him almost always included a mention of this leather. He was known as “the band’s snarling leather-daddy ringleader. . . [whose] trademark [is] S&M bond-age wear” (Alfvegren 38), as an “outrageous leather-clad persona”(Chirazi 44), and as the band’s “High Priest of Cow-use”(Simmons 6). 798 disillusioned veterans of World War II. Thom Magister describes them as: resisted. By rebelling, they threatened gender, home, and social order. Michael Bronski points to the root of their threat: “Single, too masculine, and without an damaged by the war and [feeling] that they could ‘never go home again.’ Tortured and tormented often beyond anyone’s comprehension, they drifted together in a mutual loss of innocence. They had been mere boys when they left home to serve Uncle Sam in his great war against the Axis nations. Six years later they came home broken men with nowhere to go and no reason to go there. (93) This sense of purposelessness was felt by many veterans, not just the ones that formed motorcycle gangs. Many men felt a sense of anticlimax at their return to civilian life after demobilization (Cohan 45). The aggressive masculinity these veterans attachment to a woman who might domesticate him, the male rebel could only cause trouble”(61). It was the rebel’s excessive masculinity and singleness which allowed him to resist the breadwinner role, and that is what made him dangerous. It is also around this point that the roots of leather’s more sexual connotations begin. Before the twentieth century, heterosexuality had not been a prerequisite for masculinity. Masculinity was in outward working-class appearance and performance. Gender and sexuality were relatively independent. In the late nineteenth century, American businesses were reorganizing into large corporations. This changed the nature of labour, as large segments of the work force became white-collar and formed a new middle-class. The masculinity of the white-collar worker was threatened by the more physical masculinity of the working-class man (and later the biker), because the clerical work done by the white-collar man had previously been considered feminine. To reafﬁrm the masculinity of the middle-class man, masculinity came to be deﬁned by exclusive heterosexuality (Cohan xiii). Men were no longer deﬁned by their work, but by their sexuality. Domesticated breadwinners could still be ‘real men’ as long as they did not have sex with other had performed in wartime was seen as excessive in post-war America (46), especially compared to the newly dominant masculinity of the domesticated male breadwinner. The image of danger that surrounded bikers and their leather stemmed from their threatening refusal to conform to this post-war domesticity. They saw the truth in Gore Vidal’s observation, “Once a man has a wife and two young children, he will do what you tell him to. He will obey you” (qtd. in Ehrenreich 29), and 799 men. The new identity of the homosexual was now the negation of manhood. Homosexuality was seen as failure of masculinity. Dr. Lionel Ovesey came up with this equation: “I am a failure = I am castrated = I am not a man = I am a woman = I am a homosexual” (qtd. in Ehrenreich 25). The association between male homosexuality and femininity was internalized and manifested itself in presentations such as ‘drag’, where gay men dressed up as women. Stereotypes of gay men in the 1950s were of effeminacy, even though many gay men were not effeminate. This became problematic for the gay rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, because the image of the queen reﬂected a femininity which is designated inferior in a misogynistic culture (Bronski 100). Gay men wanted to express and present themselves as more than just drag queens. During the movement for gay liberation, the queen still existed, but more gay presentations emerged, including a more masculine image. While this new image adhered to traditional masculinity, it was still threatening to hegemonic masculinity because it put a larger emphasis on male sexuality and did not try to pass as heterosexual (Graham 179). The new image comprised of ripped black jeans, tight-ﬁtting T-shirts, ﬂannel shirts, leather caps, vest, harnesses, and boots, and was designed to show off the sexualized male form (Bronski 102). The emergence of the leathermen and the Castro Street clones, in jeans and T-shirts, moustaches and cropped hair, indicated a deﬁnite cultural shift away from femininity. It came to the point where homosexuality was signiﬁed more by macho clothing, like denim and leather, rather than by feminine style drag (Edwards 47). While homosexuality was still feared and stigmatized, because of the new masculine image it could not as easily be used as the negation of manhood. Gay men were trying to show that they could be homosexual and still be ‘real men,’ and in the process were showing how much of being a ‘real man’ was in appearance and performance. One of the most extreme forms of masculine gay presentation was the leatherman, which is the style Halford appropriated. This look was associated with sado-masochistic sex, and also with the recently emerged biker culture. connection: Magister illustrates the The worlds of S/M, leathermen, and leatherbikermen were intertwined. Gay bikers and straight bikers commingled with little conﬂict. Their commonality was leather, Harley-Davidson bikes, and painful memories of a war that had disﬁgured them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. (97) 800 The leatherman’s dress was a combination of motorcycle and S/M gear. Full regalia consisted of black leather jackets, chains, heavy studded leather belts, thongs and straps, black leather jeans or chaps, heavy boots, a black leather shirt, a chain on the left shoulder of the jacket, and a black leather cap (Graham 175; van Lieshout 19). On the leatherman, the leather worn to cover and protect when riding motorcycles was combined with leather that exposes ﬂesh and eroticizes the body. Among gay men, there were those who felt distaste for this manifestation of hypermasculinity. It was too conspicuous, too blatantly sexual, and made no attempt to pass as heterosexual (Graham 164). One gay man was quoted as saying, “If you’re a guy why don’t you just act like a guy? You’re not a female, don’t act like one. That’s a fairly strong point. And leather and all this other jazz, I just don’t understand it I suppose” (qtd. in Connell 156). This comment expresses disapproval for gay men who are hypermasculine, as well as for those who are effeminate. Bending the rules of gender performance can be shocking and threatening even to people who share a particular identity. Bending the rules of gender in popular music was no exception. Elvis Presley’s early appearances on television caused enormous public outcry, because of his sexually suggestive dancing. He was the ﬁrst male star to display his body as a sexual object, through his dancing. According to David Shumway, this had the effect of feminizing him, because, before him, only women were displayed as sexual objects (131). Shumway also sees the Rolling Stones as the next stage in the feminization of male rock stars: Jagger’s open shirt and tight pants together with the camera’s much tighter hold on his body sexualizes him even more than Elvis had been. Furthermore, Jagger’s jeans are tight enough to make the bulge of his penis plainly visible. Does the era of cock rock begin exactly at the moment of transvestite rock? This combination reappears with a vengeance in heavy metal. (139) The contradiction of cock rock and heavy metal is that they were both born of the feminizing sexualizing of male bodies. The conﬂicted nature of expressions of hypermasculinity being produced by feminizing sexualization is visible throughout heavy metal. The hypermasculine appearance of heavy metal bands were combinations of masculine and feminine sexuality. Metal costumes, described by Shumway as “outﬁts best described as leather lingerie. . . sexualize the body. . . in terms of a new set of conventions in which the feminine is once again subsumed by the masculine” (140). Any concern for fashion, even masculine fashion, feminizes 801 men (Frith and McRobbie 422). In the split between a feminized outward appearance and masculine aggressive behaviour, it is masculinity that dominates in heavy metal. The sexualization of the male body is an important part of heavy metal’s performance of masculinity. The language used in a record review is indicative of this, “Judas Priest sucks off HM’s cliches [sic]. . . the Priests are not just boring metal jerk-offs” (Farber 55). Robert Walser sees in performance, “metal musicians typically appear as swaggering males, leaping and strutting about the stage, clad in spandex, scarves, leather, and other visually noisy clothing, punctuating their performances with phallic thrusts of guitars and microphone stands” (109). E. Ann Kaplan ﬁnds that in heavy metal videos: power, while the masculine behaviour aggressively denies any femininity. Such an excess of male sexuality in a homosocial environment can easily become a homoerotic display. A homoerotic spectacle of male prowess works to assert a male-dominated sexual order which attracts men eager to celebrate male power at the same time as it works just as hard to produce the appearance of heterosexuality. Homosociality tends to exist alongside extreme homophobia. According to Walser, while gay heavy metal fans may have read heavy metal videos as erotic fantasies, straight fans resisted the homoerotic implications and identiﬁed only with the power and freedom depicted (115-6). Straight fans were also very critical of glam metal bands, like Poison, who wore makeup and other feminine markers. Within the residual aggressive masculinity of heavy metal, men using the male body is deliberately set up as object of desire: zoom shots pick up male crotches and bare chests in an erotic manner and instruments are presented as unabashed phallic props. The camera focuses aggressively on the performers’ bodies as they stand front-stage. . . often cutting in and isolating, deliberately garishly, crotches, buttocks, widespread legs. (102) In both examples male bodies are explicitly displayed as sexual objects, as an afﬁrmation of male sexual symbols of femininity were marked as homosexual, called ‘glam fags’ (130). The homoeroticism of hard bands generally passed in heavy metal because, as in most homosocial environments, homophobia and misogyny were common (Jensen Arnett 42; Friesen 281), and neutralized the threat of homosexuality. This is the arena to which Halford belonged. Although metal’s popularity was beginning to wane in the early 1980s, Judas Priest were still one of the most popular bands of the genre (“Reader’s Poll” 39). At the same time, there were many jokes and comments questioning 802 Halford’s masculinity. In a Creem proﬁle, Halford is quoted as saying, “I would not look tougher in a tutu sitting on a moped!” (“Creem’s Proﬁles” 39), as though refuting a charge that he would. A record review that includes a photo of Judas Priest is captioned, “Few know that Rob Halford is really Clare Grogan in leather!” (Fernbacher 55). Grogan was the female lead singer of contemporaneous band, Altered Images. A reader quote in the 1983 Creem Reader’s Poll says, “Rob Halford should trade his leather suit for a tutu” (“Reader’s Poll” 39). Another article commented on Halford’s choice in food, “OMIGOD, it’s salad dressing and quiche, fergodsakes” (Goldstein 33). Two years earlier Bruce Feirstein had published a book entitled Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. There also existed suggestions that Halford was gay. In a feature about the band, a photograph of Halford singing into a microphone was captioned, “No thanks! I never accept wieners onstage, even if they do have toasted buns!” (32). A reader’s letter about Halford was given the title “Graceful, adj.: Like a Pretty Ballerina in a Beautiful Pink Tutu,” and the accompanying photo was captioned, “He’s blithe! He’s glad! He’s joyful! He’s debonair! He’s cheerful! He’s merry! He’s. . .” (12). Another article addressed the matter of sexuality in its title, “Judas Priest: Leather Studded Dudes, Or. . . “ In the interview, the ﬁrst question asked of Halford was, “Are you a gay right-wing biker into S&M?” (Simmons 6). Reporters, critics and fans suspected that Halford was gay, or at least not as tough and masculine as he made himself out to be. The source of the jokes and comments about Halford’s sexuality and masculinity was his leather. Although leather was common wear in heavy metal, it was usually combined with denim or other fabrics. Judas Priest were different in their exclusive and excessive use of leather. Sylvie Simmons states that: “There are varying degrees of metal, but none so abbatoired and leathered and heavy as Judas Priest” (6). Black leather was listed as one of the band’s hobbies (“Creem’s Proﬁles” 39). Kurt Loder wrote that Halford was “unique in the annals of heavy metal, not so much for his searing vocals as for his black-leather-and-bondage image, which appears to have been lifted straight out of Kenneth Anger’s classic rough trade ﬁlm, Scorpio Rising” (14). The difference in appearance between Judas Priest and other contemporaneous heavy metal bands is comparable to the difference between the leathermen and the other new masculine forms of gay male presentation in the 1970s. Halford’s usage of leather was seen as unusually extreme. Adam Bregman refers to “glass-shattering screamer Rob Halford’s excessive ﬁxation on studded leather” (60), and Skylaire Alfvegren sees the band personiﬁed in “leather piled on to the point of absurdity, astride a beast of a motorcycle, Rob Halford was Judas 803 Priest” (38). Halford himself admits to the extremity of his look: of unaware and heavily homophobic metal audiences with titles like “Some Heads Are Gonna Roll,” “Ram It Down,” “Eat Me Alive” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’,” and The metal scene back then didn’t have a deﬁnitive look, it was just whatever you put on your back. So I just went for the leather look. And having a compulsive-obsessive personality, when I go for something I just go for it, blow it all out of proportion. So I went to Mr. S in London, the local S&M shop, and went mental putting on 20 pounds of leather with whips and chains. (qtd. in Chirazi 44) Even though he used symbols of masculinity, he used them in excess. Excess is culturally coded as feminine and threatens the stability of the masculinity being performed. It was the excessiveness of the leather, and all the associations with male sexuality that it carried over from gay culture, that signaled some sort of gender deviance in Halford’s performance of masculinity. His excessiveness was especially troublesome because it signaled the very performativity of masculinity, that there were certain ways to act like a man, but even a man could overdo it. The truth is that Halford is gay, and had realized it from about age twelve, but didn’t come out until 1998. Looking back, some critics saw his performance with Judas Priest as possibly gay. Greg Burke wrote, “Halford left the closet several years ago, after fronting a generation strutting the stage in full motorcycle-leather-boy regalia” (42), while others saw it as blatant and pointed to the use of leather. Alfvegren wrote, “The leather, so much leather, and so much raging, snarling masculinity aimed in a nongender-speciﬁc direction -- like Freddy Mercury’s, Halford’s sexual orientation seemed as obvious as a red hankie in a rear pocket” (38). What signaled homosexuality to others, Halford sees as the opposite. He thought it was ironic, being “dressed head-to-toe in leather, clinking chains and handcuffs and whips and driving around on a HarleyDavidson -- the epitome of macho masculinity and I’m a gay man” (qtd. in Powell). By wearing leather Halford wasn’t trying to act straight or gay, he was just trying to act metal. He says, “It’s because the sincerity of the performance, the genuineness of what I was trying to create, was detached from the gayness of it all. All it was about was, ‘This looks right for the music’” (qtd. in Burk 42). His performance was authentic, and not just onstage. He says, “Quite honestly there’s not a great deal of difference in how I am offstage” (qtd. in Simmons 8). Acting metal on stage, he was just being himself, but acting metal also means acting like a sexualized heterosexual male. No matter how sincere, his performance was just that, a performance. His manner has been called ‘vaudevillian’ 804 (Suter 51), emphasizing the theatrics and artiﬁciality involved. Heavy metal’s theatrics of hypermasculinity and male sexuality expressed through leather, which try to establish a spectacle of masculine dominance and power, in fact, point to the performativity of masculinity. The masculinity produced in heavy metal is simply part of the performance, and like any masculinity, it is deﬁned by certain lines which are not meant to be crossed. Crossing those lines threatens the stability of the masculinity, and those that threaten, like Halford and glam metal bands, are met with ridicule to diffuse the threat they pose. In Halford, we have a gay man who was acting like a hypermasculine straight man who was appropriating the image of a hypersexualized gay man. These multiple layers of masculine performance, in the theatrical and artiﬁcial space of heavy metal, became apparent in Halford’s excessive leatherman-style costume. Halford made heavy metal’s gender contradictions too clear: the feminizing sexualization of the male body, the homoeroticism of hypersexualized men performing for other men in a homosocial environment. Men who were attracted to heavy metal’s performance of male power didn’t want to be confronted with the idea that being a man was just a performance. To quote Skylaire Alfvegren, “For two decades, Halford acted as the very embodiment of heavy metal, strutting all its excesses and contradictory dooﬁness” (38). Cohan, Steven. Masked Men: Masculinity and the Coates, Norma. “(R)Evolution Now?: Rock and the Political Potential of Gender.” Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. Ed. S. Whiteley. London: Routledge, 1997. Chirazi, Steffan. “Q & A with Rob Halford.” The San Francisco Chronicle 19 April 1998: 44. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Burk, Greg. “What the Hell?” LA Weekly 18 August 2000: 42. Bronski, Michael. The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998. Selected Bibliography Alfvegren, Skylaire. “Breaking the Law: Rob Halford Outside the Metal Machine.” LA Weekly 10 April 1998: 38. Bregman, Adam. “Nudist Fuckin’ Priest, Dude.” LA Weekly 27 August 1999: 60. 805 Movies in the Fifties. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1997. Heavy Metal Music, 1985-1991.” Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World. Ed. J.S. Epstein. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. Connell, R.W. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California, 1995. Frith, Simon and A. McRobbie. “Rock and Sexuality.” On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Eds. S. “Creem’s Proﬁles: Judas Priest.” Creem 14.7 (1982): 39 Goldstein, Toby, “Judas Priest Eaten Alive: The Edwards, Tim. Erotics and Politics: Gay Male Sexuality, Masculinity and Feminism. Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities, Vol. 5. Ed. J. Hearn. London: Routledge, 1994. “Graceful, ed.: Like a Pretty Ballerina in a Beautiful Pink Tutu.” Creem December 1986: 12. Gunpoint Confessions.” Creem 16.2 (1984): 32-3. Frith and A. Goodwin. London: Routledge, 1990. Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. New York: Anchor, 1983. Graham, Mark. “Identity, Place, and Erotic Community within Gay Leather Culture in Stockholm.” Journal of Homosexuality 15.3-4 (1998): 164-79. Farber, Jim. “Judas Priest: Defenders of the Faith.” Creem 15.12 (1984): 55. Jensen Arnett, Jeffrey. Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation. Boulder: Westview, 1995. Fernbacher, Joe. “Records: The Further Adventures of Judas Priest and the Flivver of Doom.” Creem 14.6 (1982): 55. Kaplan, E. Ann. Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 1987. Friesen, Bruce K. and W. Helfrich. “Social Justice and Sexism for Adolescents: A Content Analysis of Lyrical Themes and Gender Representations in Canadian Loder, Kurt. “Judas Priest: Evangelists of Heavy Metal.” Rolling Stone 18 September 1980: 14. 806 Magister, Thom. “One Among Many: The Seduction and Training of a Leatherman.” Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practices. Ed. M. Thompson. Boston: Alyson, 1991. Powell, Betsy. “A Gay Man in Heavy Metal’s Macho World,” The Toronto Star 7 April 1998: Entertainment. “Reader’s Poll.” Creem 14.10 (1983): 39. Shumway, David R. “Watching Elvis: The Male Rock Star as Object of the Gaze.” The Other Fifties: Interrogating Midcentury American Icons. Ed. J. Foreman. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1997. Simmons, Sylvie. “Judas Priest: Leathered, Studded Dudes or…” Creem 18.1 (1986): 6. Suter, Paul. HM A-Z: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal. London: Omnibus, 1985. Walser, Robert. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover: Wesleyan University, 1993. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Glenn Gould and Recording Technology: Linking Popular and Classical Recording Practices Paul Sanden I n 1964, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould ended his live performing career and began earning his In this paper I will compare Gould’s ideas, and some of his recording practices, with recordings and recording practices of The Beatles. In doing so, I will demonstrate that Gould and The Beatles, who inhabited such different musical aesthetics, actually shared a common aesthetic with regard to recording (1). Gould’s arguments for the beneﬁts of recording technology took many forms, and expressed many different ideas. At the core of them, however, was the notion that due to the nature of the recording process, and the many hands involved in the production of the resultant recording, the identity of the individual would become blurred, and the distinctions between performer, producer, composer, and audience would become less and less important. In his book, Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology, Paul Théberge discusses the emergence of what he calls the hyphenated musician: the “singer-songwriter-producerengineer-musician-sound designer,” who can create an entire record by himself or herself, in a home studio (221). In his writings in the 1960s, Gould was exploring the very beginnings of this amalgamation of roles. By exploring several facets of Gould’s argument, we can arrive at a general understanding of his entire recording aesthetic. living as a musician entirely in the recording studio. He had become increasingly drawn to the studio in recent years, and was convinced that the future of music lay in recording, not in live performance. Around this time, Gould was also engaged in a lot of writing and speaking about the future of music—a future which he expected would be increasingly affected by the implications of recording technology. In several public addresses, publications, and radio and television broadcasts, Gould explored themes related to the nature of recorded music. Many ideas surfaced periodically throughout Gould’s writings and broadcasts, and I have singled out a few of the more prominent ones for discussion in this paper. In order to engage in this discussion, however, I think it is necessary to expand the boundaries somewhat: Gould was concerned with so-called “classical” music, or music of the Western Art tradition. What strikes me as I read Gould’s ideas about technology in music, is that many of these ideas would seem equally at home in a discussion of popular music, or more speciﬁcally in a discussion of the rock music tradition which arguably began with The Beatles in the mid-1960s—the same time that Gould began seriously exploring these ideas. 808 Gould describes the structure of musical society as comprising four distinct groups: composers, performers, listeners, and managers (“An Argument for Music in the Electronic Age” 224-5). Gould’s manager camp consists of concert hall managers, artist managers, and those involved with the administration of performing artists, but also record producers, sound engineers, and those involved with the administration of recording artists and recording sessions. According to Gould, the managers are out of touch with the world of music in general, and the listener, an anonymous face in the dark concert hall, is left listening to music without participating in any way in its presentation. The performers and composers, unlike the glorious composer/performers of old like Mozart and Beethoven, who would perform double duty, are now specialists in only their individual ﬁelds, and no longer have enough contact with one another. Gould felt that these distinct roles and all this lack of contact were unhealthy for the future of music. In Gould’s view, as I mentioned before, recording technology could blur all of these distinctions, and bring the different groups closer together. He offered several examples of these blurred distinctions, and I will focus on two of them which most clearly represent some common ground between his classical tradition, and The Beatles’ popular, or rock tradition. In Gould’s ﬁrst example, the distinction between record producer and performer is blurred, through the creative use of splicing. Now, some explanation of creative splicing is needed. Typically, in a recording session in the early 1960s, and earlier, the ultimate goal was to capture a complete performance from beginning to end. Jason Toynbee calls this the documentary mode of recording (70). In classical recordings, splicing was frowned upon for all but the smallest corrections, and the record producer’s role in this process was to be as transparent as possible. In many cases, this “purist” attitude still dominates classical recordings. In this scenario, though, the producer is ultimately still responsible for the general quality of the recording. So, in the recording tradition that Gould and The Beatles inherited, the producer and performer had very clearly deﬁned roles: the performers concerned themselves with the quality of their musical performance, and nothing more. The producer concerned himself with drawing the best possible performance out of the performer, and capturing that performance on tape. Any technological matters, such as the splicing I mentioned, were the responsibility of the producer and the engineer. Beginning sometime in the mid-1960s, Gould would use the splice to shape his interpretation of a piece of music, rather than just to correct mistakes. According to several accounts, his normal recording practice was to record several takes of a piece, each with a different interpretation—different phrasing, 809 different articulation, sometimes a different tempo. Then he would sit down with all of the recorded takes, and shape yet another interpretation of the piece from a combination of takes. Gould often talked about this process in his 1965 recording of the A-minor fugue from the ﬁrst book of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier (“The Prospects of Recording” 52; Gould and Burton; Gould and McClure 57-8). He described how he began the recording with Take 6, and 14 measures into the piece, he switched to Take 8. After some measures of Take 8, he switched back again to Take 6. The difference between the two takes was mainly in character and articulation, but is subtle enough that it is not immediately evident on ﬁrst listening to the recording. I have found another example of this creative splicing technique in Gould’s recorded output, which is very easy to hear. Many of Gould’s musical scores are housed in the Glenn Gould Archives at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa, and in many of those scores he marked all of the edit points for his recordings. After looking through a few of the scores of pieces Gould recorded in the mid-1960s, I came across his score, and his producer’s score, of Beethoven’s eighth piano sonata, the Pathétique, which Gould recorded in 1966. Both scores contained the same editing marks. In the third movement of this sonata, according to the edit marks in the scores, Gould alternated between three takes: Take 7, Take 8, and Take 10. Upon listening to the recording, I have discerned that Take 7 was used for the quietest, lightest moments in the movement, and had a very delicate character. Takes 8 and 10 were often used interchangeably for the same types of musical material, but had very different characters. Take 8, which opens the movement, is very dry and detached, and bears Gould’s trademark clarity and precision. Take 10 is played in a more legato fashion, and has much more sense of urgency. I will ﬁrst play the opening theme, from Take 8. It will be followed by the same theme from Take 10, later in the movement. Note especially the difference in the articulation of the left hand. Listen carefully—it is very short. So Gould has interspersed the different takes throughout the movement as he saw ﬁt, using the splices to shape his musical interpretation. Gould argued that without the beneﬁt of what he called “post-taping afterthought” (“The Prospects of Recording” 53), he would never have been able to come up with this particular interpretation. The Beatles, in their recording of “Strawberry Fields Forever” in 1966, employed this same creative splicing technique. The ﬁnal version of this song as we know it is a combination of two very different takes. The Beatles recorded two versions of this song, with two very different instrumentations (2). The ﬁrst version, which was represented on the ﬁnal recording by Take 7, contained guitars, percussion, and mellotron, and was 810 a rather sparse and pretty rendition of John Lennon’s song. The second version, Take 26, was scored to include cellos and trumpets, and was a considerably heavier rendition. You’ll hear it very soon. A few days after recording the second version, John approached producer George Martin and explained that he liked the beginning of Take 7, and the end of Take 26. The two takes were in different keys and different tempos, but by slowing down Take 26, George Martin was able to combine the two recordings into one. The ﬁnal interpretation was arrived at through the employment of a creative splice. Now, if you listen closely, you can hear the change of speed, and the change of orchestration. The second part, take 26, actually ended up a bit slower, and a bit lower in pitch, than take 7. So how does this actually change the roles of the performer and the producer? Well, as I explained, decisions concerning where to splice had once been the domain of the producer. By inserting themselves in the process, Gould and John Lennon crossed the boundary, so to speak. On the ﬂip side, by making the splice a creative tool, these artists have relinquished some of the creative, artistic responsibilities to the producer and engineer, who are still involved in this splicing process. It is well-known now that producers and engineers, especially in popular music, are a crucial part of the creative process, as explained in books like William Moylan’s The Art of Recording, and Albin Zak’s Poetics of Rock. In the 1960s, however, this was new territory. I should also mention that the performing responsibilities of the producer often reached beyond the technological in popular music. For example, Brian Wilson produced and performed on Beach Boys recordings. George Martin, of course, began performing on Beatles albums as well, playing keyboards on “In My Life,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “Being For the Beneﬁt of Mr. Kite,” and several others. The second scenario Gould envisioned was one in which the distinctions between the roles of performer and composer were blurred, through the use of recording technology. Now, before I get into this, some preliminary explanation is required. The performing composer, or the composing performer, was not a new concept. Many of the great European art music composers, as I mentioned, like Mozart, Beethoven and Liszt, performed both roles. Likewise, in popular music, artists had been performing their own songs for years. In jazz, improvisations are at once performances and compositions. Recording technology, however, offered a new twist on the whole performer/composer hybrid, and this new twist was what excited Gould. Gould was excited about music which was composed in the recording studio, with the help of recording technology, 811 so that the very act of composing the piece relied on the act of recording it, or, in a sense, performing it. Gould was really referring to the already existing genres of electronic music, like the musique concrète of composers like Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Simply put, musique concrète was constructed by manipulating segments of recorded tape: splicing, reversing, ﬁltering, and altering the speed of previously recorded segments of sound. This musical tradition did not consist of writing out scores to be realized by performers. The recording was the performance. So, in composing this music— in constructing the recording—artists like Pierre Schaeffer were also, in a sense, performing it. The act of composition and the act of performance are one and the same, through the use of recording technology. This music only existed in the fringes, however, and Gould predicted that, eventually, musique concrète and other forms of electronic music would enter the mainstream. Obviously, this prediction did not come true, at least in the way that Gould had hoped. Gould was concerned with the classical music tradition, and in those circles electronic music has gained relatively little ground in the ensuing decades. In popular music however, as we know, the situation is quite different. Now we dance to music which is created entirely electronically, and in many ways the modern DJ does live what Pierre Schaeffer was doing in his sound lab in the 1950s, manipulating bits of recorded sound to create something new. They are in the same instant composers and performers. Gould began speaking and writing publicly about the implications of recording technology around 1963. In 1966, The Beatles recorded Revolver. “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from Revolver, is an explicit example of a rock song that was partially composed and performed simultaneously, through the use of recording technology. The seagull like-sound at the beginning, the long chord which followed it, and the other high-pitched, swirling sounds which interject throughout the song, are tape loops (3). Sounds were recorded onto tape, over and over again, until the tape became saturated with sound. Each tape was then played repeatedly, in a loop, sometimes sped-up, sometimes backward. All of the loops were fed into the mixer, over top of the main track. These different loops were faded in and out, recorded in this live mix, resulting in the song I just played for you. George Martin, The Beatles, and recording engineer Geoff Emerick literally performed the mix, to borrow a term from William Moylan, combining the acts of performance and composition. Within a few years of Gould’s ﬁrst statements, one of his hopes had come true—the new electronic performer/composer had reached the mainstream. Unfortunately for Gould, it happened in popular music, for which he really cared very little. This sort of thing caught on, of course, and 812 today we have entire sections of our record stores devoted to completely electronic popular music. Similar sections in our classical music stores consist of a handful of CDs, if such a section even exists. with his publications, interviews, television and radio broadcasts, and The Beatles, with their records. Several issues arise from this brief discussion, which would beneﬁt from further study. For example, in all of Gould’s published, and some unpublished, materials, I These two scenarios have offered a very brief and introductory investigation into this topic, but I believe it has been sufﬁcient to demonstrate that despite the very different musical aesthetics of Glenn Gould and The Beatles, they shared a common aesthetic with regard to recording. Perhaps we could call it a creative recording aesthetic, in that these artists were interested in the creative possibilities afforded them by recording technology. Both Glenn Gould and The Beatles succeeded in breaking free of the documentary aesthetic which had previously governed the recording process. Other recordists had also investigated the creative possibilities of recording technology. In the classical camp, conductor Leopold Stokowski and producer John Culshaw had both advocated for the creative use of recording technology; and in the popular camp, the list can begin with Les Paul, Phil Spector, and Brian Wilson, and go on for quite some time. Gould and The Beatles were, however, the most prominent recordists to explore this aesthetic, and most interestingly to me, they explored it at the same time. In the mid-1960s, they put the issue of recording technology in music “on the map,” so to speak; Gould, have only found three mentions of The Beatles, and in none of them does Gould concern himself with matters of recording technology. Instead, he focuses on his intense dislike of The Beatles: an opinion formed, it seems to me, on Gould’s idea of what constitutes wellcomposed music. Perhaps Gould was not aware of the recording techniques that The Beatles were using, or perhaps he disliked their music so much that he didn’t care about their recording techniques. I believe it would also be beneﬁcial to investigate the themes of live vs. recorded music inherent in this discussion, and the related issue of authenticity in performance and on record, all in the context of Gould’s and The Beatles’ work. Inherent in all of Gould’s arguments, and in his desertion of the concert stage, is his belief that recorded music is far superior to live music. The Beatles also left the concert stage, in 1966, because they felt they could make far better music on record than they could live. I had hoped to include some of these issues in my paper today, but time restrictions have limited me to what I have already presented. I have attempted to demonstrate, through this topic, that a discussion of performance practice, or in 813 this case recording practice, need not be conﬁned to a speciﬁc genre. Too often in our discussions about music, we place classical music on one side, and popular music on the other. Or, we categorize even further, separating the Baroque from the Romantic, and the Rock ‘n’ Roll from the Hip-Hop. These labels are essential, and we must consider these genres independently in order to fully understand them. We may gain something, however, if we are willing to overlook the labels every now and then and consider it all as music. 2. My account of the recording process of “Strawberry Fields Forever” has been taken primarily from Lewisohn, 87-91. Endnotes 1. I explore this theme in much greater detail in my Masters thesis, “Glenn Gould and The Beatles: Creative Recording, 1965-1968,” University of Western Ontario, 2003. 3. My account of the recording process of “Tomorrow Never Knows” has been taken primarily from Lewisohn, 70-2. Selected Bibliography Beatles, The. “Tomorrow Never Knows.” On Revolver. Parlophone, 1966. ________. “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Parlophone, 1966. Gould, Glenn. “An Argument for Music in the Electronic Age.” Convocation address given to the University of Toronto on 1 June 1964. Printed in The Art of Glenn Gould: Reﬂections of a Musical Genius, ed. John P. L. Roberts, 222-32. Toronto: Malcolm Lester Books, 1999. 814 ________. The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. Preludes and Fugues 17-24, by Johann Sebastian Bach. CBS Masterworks, 1965. and Crafting the Mix. New York: Focal Press, 2002. Théberge, Paul. Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover and London: ________. “The Prospects of Recording.” High Fidelity Magazine, Apr. 1966, 46-63. Partially reprinted in The Glenn Gould Reader, ed. Tim Page, 331-53. New York: Knopf, 1984; Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1990. Wesleyan University Press, 1997. Toynbee, Jason. Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions. London: Arnold, 2000. ________. “Piano Sonata no. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 (Pathétique),” by Ludwig van Beethoven. On Beethoven Sonatas. CBS Masterworks, 1967. Zak, Albin J. III. The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Selected additional publications by Glenn Gould about music and technology Gould, Glenn, and Humphrey Burton. “Bach and Recordings.” Conversations with Glenn Gould—with Humphrey Burton, no. 1. BBC Television, 1966. 39 min. Glenn Gould Archive of the National Library of Canada, MUS 109, DUB-V 197. ________. “Forgery and Imitation in the Creative Process.” Lecture given to the Summer School of the University of Toronto on 2 July 1963. Printed in The Art of Glenn Gould: Reﬂections of a Musical Genius, ed. Gould, Glenn, and John McClure. “Glenn Gould: Concert Dropout, in Conversation with John McClure.” Recorded interview. CBS Masterworks, 1968. Printed in Glenn Gould 7 (Fall 2001): 46-60. John P. L. Roberts, 205-21. Toronto: Malcolm Lester Books, 1999. ________. “Strauss and the Electronic Future.” Saturday Review, 30 May 1964, 58-9, 72. Lewisohn, Mark. The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. London: Hamlyn, 1988. Reprinted in The Glenn Gould Reader, ed. Tim Page, 92-9. New York: Knopf, 1984; Toronto: Key Moylan, William. The Art of Recording: Understanding Porter Books, 1990. 815 ________. “(Take Four) An Epistle to the Parisians: Music and Technology Part I.” Piano Quarterly 88 (Winter 1974): 17-9. Reprint, “Music and Technology.” In Page, 353-7. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1989. Payzant, Geoffrey. Glenn Gould, Music and Mind, revised ed. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1984. Scott, Howard H., Thomas Frost, et al. “Recording Gould: ________. “The Grass is Always Greener in the Outtakes: An Experiment in Listening.” High Fidelity Magazine, Feb. 1975, 16-22. Reprinted in Page, 357-68. Théberge, Paul. “Counterpoint: Glenn Gould & Marshall ________. “What the Recording Process Means to Me.” High Fidelity Magazine, Jan. 1983, 56-8. Original date unknown. McLuhan.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 10, no. 1-2 (1986): 109-27. A Retake Here, a Splice There, a Myth Everywhere.” High Fidelity Magazine, Feb 1983, 55-56, 80. Gould, Glenn and Jonathan Cott. “The Rolling Stone Interview: Glenn Gould.” Part I, Rolling Stone, 15 Aug. 1974, 38-46; Part II, Rolling Stone, 29 Aug. 1974, 4452. Gould, Glenn and Marshall McLuhan. “The Medium and the Message: An Encounter with Marshall McLuhan.” In Roberts, 238-52. Selected publications by others about Gould’s recording practices Bazzana, Kevin. Glenn Gould: The Performer In the Work. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Kazdin, Andrew. Glenn Gould at Work: Creative Lying. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Toward a Phenomenology of Contemporary Music Video: Programming, Consumption and Analysis Patricia Schmidt T both his paper offers a binary model for the analysis of current music video. The ﬁrst half focuses their consumers, and in turn, a deeper grasp of the phenomenology of contemporary music video. The analytical model I present today, with its twin concerns of consumption practice analysis, on the one hand, and text analysis on the other, reﬂects the current interdisciplinarity of popular music studies. Recent scholars, including Adam Krims, Nicholas Cook, and Andrew Goodwin, demonstrate an appreciation of an interdisciplinary approach as required by our particular media. Let me here suggest, although I return to this point in my conclusion, that to understand a certain approach as inherent to a medium is to broach the phenomenology of that medium. Speciﬁcally, to understand the music video medium as demanding of a certain methodology implies at least an implicit conception of its phenomenology. It is to this aim, toward a greater phenomenological understanding of the most current music video medium, that I have developed this binary analytic model. The look and content of MTV has changed since the days of Devo and Culture Club—I suspect that the medium has as well. This carries deﬁnite implications for the identities negotiated through music video consumption. on the consumption practices of teenagers, its prime target audience. Here, my work with teens in the northeastern United States informs an analysis of contemporary music video programming and also teenage consumption practices which reveal interpretive limitations triggered by the content of the audio/visual object even as they suggest a supremely imaginative engagement with it. I will use the term music video matrix to refer to an ‘interconnecting network’ of information and texts, where there is the possibility for a temporal or personal distance from the hierarchies of the physical world. It will become clear that the many deﬁnitions of the term help us to simultaneously discuss the sometimes autonomous character of the audio/visual object while also allowing for the complex of objects and information constitutive of the music-video text. The second half of this model discusses the possibilities digital technology offers us in our analysis of the audio/visual object. By linking these two approaches, we come to a more speciﬁc and accurate understanding of videos in the lives of 817 The ﬁrst half of this analytic model tackles the consumption of music video by teenagers—the manner in which they produce meaning during their consumption practice, and the ways in which their meaning-making is restricted or guided by textual characteristics. I am currently conducting an ethnography of teenagers’ consumption practices around contemporary music video. This ethnography is based in the northeastern United States. The interviews constitute an ethnography of practices around a medium I regularly consume. I belong to the ﬁrst generation of MTV viewers—my perceptions of popular culture have been deeply affected by the medium and its content. Recent ethnomusicology has moved toward an acceptance of ethnographic research on the part of investigators who already participate in a given culture. In popular music studies, a similar impulse has been expressed as the position of the fan/scholar. Put simply, Middleton explains that in this model the analyst doubles as “‘informant’ and ‘critical outsider’.” “The role of the ‘scholar-fan’,” he writes, “becomes vital,” (Middleton 108). My role as both a fan and a scholar of music videos guided my early research and assumptions about the medium. The ethnographic material I’ve collected since then has served two purposes. First: these interviews act as a continuous check to the assumptions I made and continue to make about the medium and teenage consumption practices. Second: the most important contribution of this material has been its role as the determining factor in my choices about research methodology and analytical procedure. Through these interviews, I observed three interlinked aspects of music video programming and consumption: (1) When aired on television channels such as BET or MTV, videos play in groups, (2) When consumers watch/listen to music video on these channels, they most often listen to or watch more than one at a time, and (3) Music videos have an extremely short shelf-life, both on television and with audience members. Traditional video analysis either studies single video clips in isolation, or applies an interpretive model to a collection of temporally dispersed video clips. A concerted review of music video programming on channels like BET and MTV, however, reveals the degree to which contemporary videos air in groups, and this is the ﬁrst of my three observations. While it may have been possible to describe videos as ‘individual’ when MTV adhered to a ‘ﬂow-based’ programming model, it would seem impossible to now regard any single video as autonomous when focused on consumption practice. I suggest that music videos, as consumed audio/visual objects, acquire meaning in relation to the other videos aired around them. This also applies to music video matrices. Put another way, current programming processes represent a realization, or actualization of 818 the dialogical construction of meaning we, as human subjects, participate in constantly. For example, Pink and her video Family Potrait aired at the same time as Christina Aguilera’s Dirrty. While the video Family Potrait deals with the extreme sense of loss a child feels in real time by Aguilera’s Dirrty. One of my interview subjects referred to J.Lo as the superﬁcial counterpart to Pink—citing the video content of Family Potrait and J.Lo’s Love Don’t Cost A Thing. Just as the analysis of a contemporary video must account for the proximal videos within a programming group, so must it account for the viewing practices of consumers, and here I turn to my second observation. In an examination of my own consumption practices, I realized I rarely watch just one video. Indeed, it’s far more likely that I will watch something between three to ﬁve videos before changing my activity. I belong to a different generation of music-video consumers than the teenagers I’ve worked with, but this practice does not seem limited by age, although certain groups of teens offer differing estimates of the number of videos watched per sitting. My interview subjects all reported that when they watch music video, their viewing time would almost always include more than one. Signiﬁcantly, those who regularly watched music video discussed a difference in their perception of video watching, and other TV watching. This distinction primarily manifests itself as an intention to watch videos, to catch up on the ‘news’. Interestingly though, this intention has a physical result in the viewing practice—when regular video consumers intend to watch videos, they change channels if they don’t like something, but importantly, they change to another video channel. We may understand this as during her parents’ divorce and a disillusionment with the American, 1950s sitcom family-stereotype, Aguilera’s Dirrty expresses a possibly deviant female sexuality centered around woman-on-woman boxing, stripping, and underground, underage prostitution. The extreme disparities between the subject matter of these videos, and the character or self-image that the two stars adopt, actually help to deﬁne the viewer’s sense of each video. Furthermore, knowledge of other works by each artist may contribute toward the individualization of the videos at hand. In Pink’s earlier work, in particular “Hazard to Myself,” she lyrically articulates a position contra mainstream pop images of women. Among other lyrics, she writes: “Tired of being compared/ to damn Britney Spears/ She’s so pretty/ That just ain’t me.” Here, Britney Spears may be understood as symbolic of an image or style representative of Hollywood bubblegum, substance-less lyrics and a weight-obsessed, belly-baring female who must be attractive to succeed. If competent in this extra-video material, that is, if this knowledge informs the video matrix of a given consumer, she might likely deﬁne the substance of Pink’s Family Potrait as a statement against such music, embodied 819 a creative grouping or regrouping of videos, separate from the programming philosophies of the individual channels, brought about by an individual’s interchannel surﬁng. I would suggest, as an aside, that this is a perfect example of the need for ethnographic interviews. My methodology, developed out of the two observations discussed above, aims for a realistic reﬂection of livevideo viewing, something which I believe is crucial to a study of consumption practices and meaning production. When teenagers meet with me in groups to discuss videos and the viewing process, I present clips as they occur on MTV, VH-1 or BET, not individually. At any one time, they are shown multiple videos from the same program aired on a single channel. When I present a text analysis in tandem with ethnographic material, my analysis will account for adjacent videos viewed in the same session, or airing in close temporal proximity—and this may be understood as an attempt toward the groupings created through the inter-channel surﬁng to which I referred above. Guiding these choices is my third observation: music video’s short shelflife, particularly in the minds of consumers, seems to greatly effect the meanings produced in consumption (and this may possibly be related to their function as ads)—consequently, teens need to be shown current music videos. This approach fosters an understanding of the increasingly relational meanings between videos, and among video channels. The discourse teenagers generate around certain videos in their everyday lives hinges on these relational meanings, and to isolate a video clip is, in effect, to generate a discourse which operates somewhere outside of general consumption practices. Earlier in this paper, I referred to a primary concern of my work: to understand the manner in which teenagers produce meaning during their consumption practice and the ways in which their meaning-making is restricted or guided by textual characteristics. The ethnography and methodologies I present above lead me to an understanding of certain types of meaning production on the part of teenage consumers. Primarily, I understand, through their discourse about popular music video, their supremely imaginative engagement with multiple texts and the ways in which those texts act as virtual locations for identity construction. But this discourse also reveals a preoccupation on the part of teenagers with the music; put simply, they always talk about the beat. Richard Middleton and Adam Krims both discuss this issue in similar ways. The other half of this analytic model, then, concerns itself with speciﬁc textual analysis of the images, words and sounds of music videos. Following Cook, I am concerned with the emergent meanings generated from the interaction of these media. While music video analysis poses many challenges, three main issues 820 seem extremely signiﬁcant: 1) Managing, in analysis of the whole, the relation of its parts, 2) Addressing the temporal dimension, and 3) Finding a graphic representation which affords the greatest level of speciﬁcity. In the last ten years, Andrew Goodwin, lyrics) in Noreaga’s video, Nothin’. The usefulness of any analysis I might offer increases enormously through the help of the same technologies used to make the music videos in the ﬁrst place. To be interested in using the technologies of a medium to analyse it is not to become mired in a discussion of authorial intent or compositional essence, as much as it is to desire of a graphic representation in the same operating language as the object of study. My second point about the usefulness of digital technology as a mode of analysis concerns the perception or imaginary of this operating language, speciﬁcally, of material which is digitally produced and edited but represented analogically, just as almost all digital material in the human world is. As my brother, an engineer and reluctant ‘computer-person’, recently argued about the use of the word digital in everyday language, it often stands as a misused synonym for the word electronic. But I would argue that it is not in the everyday use of the word, digital, but in the imagined concept ‘digital’, that we may ﬁnd the importance of analysing music videos with digital technology. In his recent work, Abstracting Reality, Mark Wolf makes clear that to conceive of digital technologies always requires an abstracting of information into bits, what he describes as a “semiotic shift from the indexical to the symbolic” (Wolf x). And this abstraction is best understood as a quantization of information, described by Wolf as “the Nicholas Cook, and Alf Björnberg have made great strides in analyzing image, words and music together. Similarly, both Björnberg and Carol Vernallis have introduced methodologies that go a long way toward addressing the temporal dimension of music video, and the need for graphic speciﬁcity. Toward a possible model for video analysis, and building upon this previous work, I’d like to suggest a mode of analysis which I believe reﬂects both recent changes in the production values of music video, and also changes in the way young Americans may be thinking about or imagining modes of visual and aural representation. Digital technology may aid music video analysis in two ways. The ﬁrst is as a tool for the analysis of the interaction of image, sound and lyrics—and here I’d draw a parallel with the ways producers and editors use digital media. Furthermore, this tool for analysis, that is, for the enhancement of the scholar’s understanding of the audio/visual object, may greatly enhance our ability to communicate with one another in settings such as we ﬁnd ourselves now. I want to communicate to you how gesture, image, edit or cut, camera movement, and narrative work with the musical content (including 821 process in which an analog range of values is made to ﬁt into a ﬁnite number of discrete levels or units, usually equal in size, so as to be represented more simply” (4). In contemporary digital technology, that of computer systems and CDs and DVDs, (what we may understand as one of the most historically-recent semiotic shifts to the symbolic), people place faith in the quantization and reconstitution of information. What’s more, they place that faith in technologies whose level of speciﬁcity often removes those technologies from their comprehension. The sounds we listen to and the images we see, whether it’s a recent Neptune’s hit or Ang Lee’s The Hulk, are increasingly digital in nature, and as these images and sounds saturate our daily lives, they become naturalized. It is this naturalization of the digital that speaks to the environment in which the images and sounds of music video operate (Wolf 21-23). Digital musical technology, as Andrew Goodwin explains, made its mark on the music industry through the sampling of analogue sounds. In light of the possibilities afforded by digital technology today, this may seem paradoxical, although this process—of moving from an analogue technology to a digital one reproducing the effects of the older analogue technology, to, ﬁnally, effects or methods more appropriate to the digital medium—is quite common for technological advancement in general. Perhaps this process results from our willingness to embrace new technology but a concomitant lethargy to think outside the paradigms of established technology. As I simultaneously use both analogue and digital technology for music video analysis, I wonder whether I, too, am lethargic in my ability to think outside the paradigms of analytical techniques wed to analogue media, or, like today’s video and music producers, I represent an existence which straddles the ﬁne divide between analogue and digital worlds. In conclusion, I return to my binary framework to suggest directions for the methodology. Unequivocally, ethnography offers us an understanding of the function of music video in everyday life and the role the medium of music video plays in broader pop music discourse. Including ethnography as a key component of music video analysis challenges pop music scholars to reconceive of the signiﬁcance of reception studies for text analysis and, following Krims, the fundamental manner in which we deﬁne analysis. Digital technology as a tool for analysis offers us a greater speciﬁcity in analysing media interactions. Beyond that, it suggests a way of asking broader questions, for example, about genre conceptions. Adam Krims recently detailed a comprehensive genre system for rap music. The speciﬁcity offered by digital technology in the analysis of the multimedia of these songs would provide a crucial counterpart to his arguments: Does music video support 822 this genre system? Does it point in other directions, which, rather than genre, isolate certain directors or artists? Might it actually reestablish genres following different criteria than that offered by Krims? We might also imagine digital technology helping us to elucidate patterns in the relationship between programming and reception: when one video which emphasizes the archetype of ‘good girl’, or another emphasizing ‘hot stud’, leaves the TRL countdown, does another take its place? Are these patterns, most often noticed in images, observable in more discrete multimedia processes? Finally, this methodology as a whole constructs a phenomenology of contemporary music video: through it we understand the way that issues of time, duration, and history are constituted in the medium and that the medium is inextricable from its televisual home. In Dancing in the Distraction Factory Andrew Goodwin divides the history of MTV into three phases. I have signaled perhaps yet another phase in this paper today. But implied by his divisions and explicit in mine is the argument for a concurrent shift in the medium itself, a phenomenological change. If so, the most apparent implication of this understanding would be that our analytical methodologies should remain as ﬂuid as the media themselves, especially if we are to understand the subjects constituted through music video consumption. Middleton, Richard. “Popular Music Analysis and Musicology: Bridging the Gap.” Reading Pop: Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism. Eds. Jeffrey Kallberg, Anthony Newcomb and Ruth Solie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Goodwin, Andrew. Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Cook, Nicholas. Analysing Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Christenson, Peter G. and Donald F. Roberts. It’s Not Only Rock and Roll: Popular Music in the Lives of Adolescents. Mass Communications and Journalism, ed. Lee Becker. New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc. 1998. Selected Bibliography Björnberg, Alf. “Structural Relationships of Music and Images in Music Video.” Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 347378. 823 Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 104-140. Vernallis, Carol. “The Aesthetics of Music Video: An Analysis of Madonna’s ‘Cherish’.” Popular Music 17/2 (1998): 153-185. Wolf, Mark J. P. Abstracting Reality: Art, Communication, and Cognition in the Digital Age. New York: University Press of America, Inc., 2000. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Alternative Jazz Pedagogy: An examination and analysis of the teaching methods of Barry Harris Andrew Scott 97-132). Intermusicality, Monson’s clever re-working of literary criticism’s “intertextuality,” suggests that different people experience texts (in this case musical texts) differently (Kristeva 69). Arguing against an a priori reading of text, intertextuality disputes notions of single authorship and single interpretations of text (Ibid). Intertextuality suggests, 1) text interpretation is agent sensitive and dependent upon the reader’s/ listener’s familiarity with a reference, composition, or musical quotation, 2) previous experiences with text colour perception and impact the learning, performance, and interpretation (among other facets) of a musical moment, 3) all texts are pamplisets (Derrida 25) and have a dialogical relationship with other texts, and 4) as any given text is a “new tissue of past citations,” textual meaning is constituted through its relationship to other texts (Barthes “Theory” 39). These manifestations of intertextuality bear signiﬁcance to Harris’s clinics, and his overarching pedagogical method. This paper is taken from a much larger work exploring Harris’s pedagogical methodologies. In the interest of brevity, I immediately begin unpacking Harris’s pedagogical approach. In my ﬁnal section, I attempt to Introduction P ianist/composer/pedagogue Barry Harris has traveled the world teaching music theory and jazz improvisation. An educator for nearly sixty years, Harris has developed a highly structured approach to jazz pedagogy. Although numerous approaches to, and methodologies of, jazz pedagogy exist, I propose the following threefold argument for why Harris’s teaching initiatives are particularly salient. 1). Harris’s methods are accessible and based on overarching simplistic musical principles, 2) his methodology helps students go beyond the “lick box,” by teaching the process of jazz improvisation, instead of focusing on such ﬁnal product manifestations as transcriptions, scores, “licks”, “riffs,” and digital permutations, 3) Harris explicitly connects his methodology, and its resultant sounds, to a set of players (Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, Bud Powell), and to a repertoire of real music (Bebop). In this paper, I explore Harris’s teaching methods. Intermusicality receives considerable breadth in this paper as a key pedagogical springboard and communication device of Harris (Monson “Saying” 825 marry my research conclusions to musical transcription/ analysis, offering a Geertzian “thick” descriptive reading of Harris guiding students through a “twelvebar” blues form in the key of C Major as a ﬁnal section (Geertz 1973). This reading demonstrates Harris using humour, bodily movement, intermusicality, and student involvement to create an improvised jazz line. My analysis includes not only musical notation, but also declamatory speech syllables and bodily gesture. Intermusicality to the texts. For example, at a recent clinic Harris said, “Sonny Rollins said this.” Harris then played a Major 7th arpeggio whose ﬁrst pitch (the root) was preceded by the note located one semi-tone below. “Now this says to me that I should learn all of my arpeggios and be able to play them with an added half step below,” continues Harris. For Harris, the signiﬁcance and “meaningfulness” of the aforementioned musical gesture (Major 7 arpeggio approached from a semitone below) is it’s intertextual and historical relationship to an earlier Sonny Rollins solo. Instead of instructing Some positivistic schools of thought argue for an a priori reading of a piece of music or work of literature. Conversely, Monson’s concept of intermusicality suggests musical texts are in a constant state of play with one another (1996: 97-132). Monson argues that musical quotation, transformation, and allusion are techniques paramount to African-American music making (1996: 97-132). By utilising one (or more) of these aforementioned techniques, Monson suggests players pay homage, index irony, or criticise previous musical texts (1996: 97-132). Intertextuality inﬂuences and helps constitute the meaning of individual musical texts, deﬁned here as any musical piece or improvisation. Harris is cognisant of the dialogical relationships that exist among musical texts. In clinics, Harris plays with intertextual relationships, and with student relationships students to practice all Major 7 arpeggios with an added half step below, Harris presented the line as a canonised improvised gesture and indexed it to a signiﬁcant ﬁgure in jazz. By encouraging students to experiment with the line (moving it in semi-tones and starting on different beats in the bar, for example), Harris helps students engage in a dialogical trope with an earlier moment in jazz history. And presenting the line as a living musical gesture that lies on an improvisatory continuum, Harris teaches values arguably more important to jazz improvisation than rote memorisation of a line, lick, or pattern. Speciﬁcally, Harris teaches the relationship this line has to the overarching jazz tradition; the process through which the line is learned; the process by which the line becomes assimilated into a musical lexicon; and the process by which students learn to musically expand upon the line (modulating it in semi-tones and 826 beginning on different beats in the bar). Taking and manipulating phrases from jazz history is a key tenet of jazz improvisation argues Berliner, “ﬁgures were once associated with particular soloists or repertory genres like the blues but have since been passed anonymously from generation to generation and put to more general use” (102). This emphasis on process and intertextual musical relationships lies at the centre of Harris’s pedagogical methodology, and posits his techniques as unique from other teaching philosophies. A Complex Web of Sounds In Western Art music ensembles and many jazz big bands, individual musicians are encouraged to forfeit individual agency for the ensemble (Jarvis 7074). According to Adorno, “The ﬁrst step in learning to play chamber music well is to learn not to thrust oneself forward but to step back. What makes a whole is not boastful self-assertion but self limiting reﬂection”(87). Here, Adorno argues that the ensemble, the conductor, and the composer are more important to music than the individual musician. Accordingly, the individual player is encouraged to metaphorically “step back” for the musical good of the ensemble. According to Harris’s clinics are noisy events. Student participation in sound production is paramount. Everyone is Susan McClary, forfeiting individual agency for the musical ensemble is a product of Western musical thought (136). By deﬁning music as “the sound itself,” the physicality involved in “both the making and the reception of music” has ostensibly been erased (136). Conversely, ensemble passages at Harris’s clinics do not utilize the disembodied aesthetic of a Western Art music performance. Instead, ensemble performance is nuanced by individual participation. At a recent Toronto clinic, a saxophonist executed an ensemble phrase with a distorted timbre. It was clear to Harris that the saxophonist did not usually play with such an exaggerated sound, but was trying to match the intensity and volume of the ensemble. Harris stopped the player saying, “you’re a soft spoken cat, so let me hear that same sound in your horn.” The player played encouraged to make music, offer vocal encouragement, ask questions, and help other students learn. Unlike such pedagogical contexts as the university classroom, there is no clear delineation of roles. Harris subverts such binaries as student/teacher, novice/experienced professional, by encouraging student agency and participation. When the ensemble at Harris’s clinic plays simultaneously, they do not play as one musical voice. Individual rhythmic and timbre concepts are apparent. The ensemble sounds like twenty individuals playing together, and not twenty individuals playing one sound. That Harris does not comment on this sonic discrepancy is perhaps signiﬁcant. 827 the line softer and more easily. And when the ensemble played the phrase together, the saxophonist continued to play with the softer sound. He exhibited his individual agency rather than attempt to blend with the ensemble. Harris approved. By imbuing the ensemble line with his own sound and agency, the student saxophonist was arguably incorporating “grain” or his own physicality into the music (Barthes “Grain” 188). The Body and instrument by practicing “ﬁngering” a line before articulating it on their instrument. In his most recent Toronto clinic, Harris spent considerable time with a tenor saxophonist who was having difﬁculty understanding one of Harris’s multi-layered phrases. Harris asked the student to 1) practice ﬁngering the line in the air, away from the horn, 2) practice “keying” or ﬁngering the line on the horn without blowing air through the horn to generate sound, 3) practice playing the line. Harris’s point was multi-fold. Obviously, Harris was trying to get the student to slow down and concentrate effectively on the phrase at hand. But perhaps more importantly, Harris wanted the student to utilise both perceptual and enactive learning. By learning the line synchronically, exploring the line’s relationship to music and the body, the student learned to relate both mentally and physically to the phrase. Further, multiple repetitions engage muscle memory. Harris hoped that through a combination of physical muscle memory and mental engagement with the line, the student would be able to execute it properly. He was correct. After practicing the phrase silently, and “keying” the horn, the student executed the phrase ﬂawlessly. Transcription and Analysis Harris involves his entire body when making music. He encourages students to do likewise. Bodily involvement includes foot taps, thrusting shoulders, straightening arms and ﬁngers in order to back phrase or articulate straight eighth notes, vocal singing/groaning/ moaning, head bobbing, and a myriad of other physical gestures. I suggest Harris uses physical movement and vocal interaction as a pedagogical strategy. Many jazz musicians strive to achieve an equivalent co-ordination between mind and instrument that they experience between mind and speech. Sudnow has termed this phenomenon, being “singably present” within the music making process (87). Berliner calls the phenomenon “the singing mind,” a place where jazz musician mind and body is “so tightly joined as to be fully absorbed in the performance’s immediate progress” (189). Harris instructs students to co-ordinate their mind The more ways you have of thinking about music, the more things you have to play in your solos (Barry Harris). 828 In this next section, I offer a thick description of Harris leading the class through a “twelve-bar” blues form in the key of C Major. This section is best understood if read in tandem with my accompanying transcription. The analysis demonstrates many of Harris’s key pedagogical devices in action. With the drummer keeping time (articulating four beats on the ride cymbal, and beats two and four with the hi-hat/sock cymbal), the bass player “walking” (clearly delineating chord tones from the overarching harmonic movement), and the piano player “comping” (playing chords as dictated by the composition), Harris begins singing phrases to the class. The phrases are sung as wordless pitches. The ﬁrst phrase is taught in antecedent/consequent fashion. Harris teaches this phrase backwards, singing the consequent phrase (3,1) ﬁrst. This consequent phrase is located on the ﬁrst two eighth notes of bar I. The antecedent phrase is 5,6,1, which Harris sings as a triplet pickup to the ﬁrst bar. As the next phrase begins on the “and” of four, bar I, Harris suggests students intone a declamatory “hey” on the “and” of beat two, bar I. This vocal syllable incorporates the body into the learning process, and enables students to “feel” the approaching phrase. Harris, who is not playing piano at this point, punches his ﬁst in the air along with his vocal syllable. He encourages singers in the clinic to do likewise. Bar II clearly demonstrates the relationship between dominant chords and diminished seventh chords. Harris’s line starts on the root of the IV chord (F7) and then articulates the root of F# diminished seventh chord. Superimposing the F# diminished note over the F7 overarching harmony, adds the inner motion (F, F#, G-5th of C7 bar IV) to the line. After singing the next phrase (Bar III), Harris suggests that this line demonstrates why students should know chord inversions; the line is a descending C7 arpeggio in third inversion. While many pedagogical methods encourage students to learn chord inversions, Harris inspires students by indexing an example of a chord inversion to a performative context. The next phrase begins on an offbeat (the “and” of beat two bar IV). As expected, students experienced difﬁculty entering on the syncopated beat. Most miss the entrance entirely, while others rush the beginning of the phrase. Harris instructs students to say, “I saw a pud-dy cat” after the phrase in Bar III. The duration of this vocal phrase helps lead students to the introductory pick-up note of the next line. The next phrase alters the overarching of harmony of C7 by outlining a C Augmented triad. Harris suggests that in bar IV of the blues, the C7 chord is “going home.” In other words, the C7 chord is no longer functioning as tonic chord of the composition, but as dominant V7 chord leading to IV (F7). Because of the tonicizing tendency of V7 chords (internal resolution of 829 ^3 ^7 to ^1 ^3 of tonic chord), Harris encourages adding “some teeth” to the V7 chord to make the resolution to IV7 more satisfying. The augmented ﬁfth (G#) note offers one example of additional “teeth” on a chord. The pickup note (Db, “and” of beat II) is an antecedent to the augmented triad. Harris encouraged students to experiment with different antecedent phrases before settling on the Db. Suggested trajectories included scalar, arpegiation, and chromatic. The resultant Db pitch was the ﬁnal reduction of a chromatic enclosure technique (semitone above, semitone below) between F7 and F# diminished, instead. Harris explains that superimposing an F# diminished sound over the F7 at this compositional juncture directs the ear towards tonicization to C7 (Bar VII). The phrase in bar VII starts on downbeat II. Some students, however, have difﬁculty ﬁnding their entrance for this phrase. Harris begins singing a clichéd blues lyric: “she’s gone,” and stomping his foot on beats IV (Bar VI) and I (Bar VII) to coincide with his vocal intonation. Students are encouraged to do the same. Here, Harris is indexing bodily movement and vocal syllables to the music making process. In this example, Harris uses the spatio-motor trajectory of a foot stomp (Baily and Driver 1992: 59) to help students ﬁxated at the sensimotor stage of development overcome a musical obstacle (Seitz). The next phrase, beginning in bar VII, illuminates numerous theoretical concepts unique to Harris. The phrase that begins on beat II of bar VII is simply Harris’s C Bebop scale, starting on the 7th degree of the scale. Harris indexes chord tones (1357) to strong beats (1234) in order to make lines “sit right.” This is one of Harris’s favourite exercises. Here, Harris asks students to descend through the C Bebop scale dropping one chord tone and one-eighth note each descent. Bar VII demonstrates a practical application for this exercise. The melodic gesture begins on beat two of the bar. Accordingly, students have to drop suggested by a student. By encouraging student agency and participation, Harris involves students in the learning and teaching process, and underscores the uniqueness of this pedagogical event. Harris’s attempts to involve students in the pedagogical process can also be viewed as his formation of an “authentic n public sphere” (Gilroy 215). By clouding the student/ teacher delineation (“I’m just the oldest student in the class”), Harris subverts established binaries and helps create a public educational sphere “counterposed to the dominant [educational] culture” (Gilroy 215). Harrisinstructsstudentstoinvokeadeclamatory Harris instructs students to invoke a declamatory statement in order to help ﬁnd the entrance to the next phrase. Bar VI functions twofold. First, the phrase is a blues cliché or lick. Harris does not teach the phrase as a lick, however. Harris explains how the inclusion of the F# note in this phrase comes from the relationship 830 two beats (1 and the “and” of one) and two pitches (C and B natural) from the overarching C Bebop scale in order to make the line rhythmically and harmonically resolve. The overarching C Bebop scale acts as what Schuller calls a “seed pattern,” valuable for its ability chuller to be “varied, manipulated, augmented, diminished, fragmented, regrouped into new variants” (58). The C Bebop scale does not resolve to C (the root of the scale), but to C#, the third of the A7 (Bar VIII). Once the ensemble lands on the C#, Harris stops the class. He asks, “What is the important arpeggio found on the 3rd of a dominant chord?” Guitarist Alan Kingstone, who has attended many of Harris’s sessions, quickly answers, “diminished.” Harris is pleased. Kingstone answered correctly and quickly. Harris begins speaking in a soft mocking voice, chiding the rest of the class for not being as “quick on the draw” as Kingstone. “Why aren’t you all that fast, “ Harris asks a few students rhetorically. “You all better get it together.” Harris’s theoretical point here is that all dominant chords are related to a diminished seventh chord built from its third degree. From the diminished note, Harris instructs the class to approach every chord of the C# diminished seventh chord (written in my transcription as Db diminished seventh) from a half step below. Harris calls this “running up the diminished.” Approaching chord tones from half steps indexes the Sonny Rollins line, which Harris used for pedagogical purposes earlier in the day. Further, an examination of which notes are struck on the strong beats of this bar (C#, E, G, Bb—a C# diminished seventh chord) offers a clear example of Harris’s superimposition of diminished harmony over dominant chords. Harris uses chromatic pitches to obscure, but arris not usurp, the sound of the diminished chord. I see a parallel here to the “tree of elaboration” (Middleton 201). Middleton describes this elaborative tree as the distribution of various elements of the basic structure around the line (201). Elaboration can take on many trajectories, such as ornamentation, chromatic halfsteps, appoggiatura, and cambiata. The overarching point, however, is that the line is “prolong[ed]” by any combination of these “higher-level connectors” (201). Prolonging is key here, as Harris extends the sound of a four-note diminished chord over an entire bar, with the inclusion of chromatic pitches. Bars IX and X further demonstrate this point. Although a D minor 7th arpeggio is used to prolong the line, the important musical gesture here is the internal descent: D, Db, C, B (^5, ^b5, ^4, ^3 of G7), which occurs across these two bars. Here, key pitches are borrowed from the related diminished harmony. On the D-7 chord (Bar IX), Harris utilizes the C# from the E diminished chord built on the supertonic of the D Minor Sixth diminished scale. The descent of C to B (^4 to ^3 831 of G7) in Bar X is another example of borrowing. Here, the G7 chord can be understood as a B diminished chord taken from the C Major Sixth diminished scale. And just as tonic chords can borrow diminished notes, so can diminished chords borrow tonic notes. In this example, note C is the tonic. C can be borrowed by the G7 (B diminished chord) for additional “colour” or “teeth.” The borrowed C note then resolves to B natural, the third of G7. The ﬁnal phrase of the improvisation, over Bars XI and XII, demonstrates Harris’s use of one scale with additional chromatic notes over multiple chords. Harris addresses the class rhetorically: “if you are playing modally [using modes] on this composition, how on earth are you going to play this progression [I VI II V]?” Harris’s point is that many schools teach jazz students to learn their modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian) and apply them to jazz improvisation. In a progression like I VI II V (Bars XI and XII of the blues), a modal approach requires students to play four scales, one every two beats. Harris suggests, “The cat who plays one scale over four chords, while everyone else is playing four scales, has got everybody beat.” Accordingly, Harris instructs students to play through this entire progression using a G7 Bebop scale with additional chromatic pitches. Having learned Harris’s rules for the addition of chromatic pitches and understanding how to make chord tones line up on strong beats, the class is able to execute this intricate Bebop phrase easily. Conclusion I have examined only a few of Harris’s alternative pedagogical theories and methods in this paper. I have addressed Harris’s theoretical concepts, and examined the role that intermusicality, process, and the body play in his teaching philosophy. Whenever possible, I tried to connect his ideas to real music (transcription), show his teaching methods in context, and explain why his theoretical concepts and teaching practices are both unique and salient. One secondary aim of this paper is to expose Harris’s methods to a larger audience. Although he travels the world educating musicians, Harris works mainly out of rehearsal spaces or community centers. Rarely, with the exception of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, does Harris teach at a university. I am troubled by this marginalization of Harris. Although his piano playing with Stitt, Gordon, and Hawkins is heard in many jazz history classes, his role as a teacher and pioneer of a jazz methodology is largely dismissed. I suggest this marginalization of Harris is yet another manifestation of academia’s treatment of non-Western musicians as “source materials,” and not as valid interlocutors (Romero 53). Problematizing foreign and local scholarships, Raul Romero argues (rightly) 832 that academia privileges music scholarship it views as “pure” or “impartial” (53). The situation becomes increasingly problematic, argues Romero, when “those who validate what is important and what is not, are those situated at the ‘center’ of scholarship production (53). I am producing scholarship with this paper, however, my role is not to usurp Harris’s authority, act as intellectual gatekeeper, or afford currency to his theories. Instead, I hope to illuminate, comment upon, and (with luck) expose many of Harris’s key educational concepts to the scholarly audience often denied to Harris. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Creating A Collector Constituency: The Historical Development of Record Collecting The 78 Era Roy Shuker A fter a brief preliminary discussion of the development of recorded sound and the century produced the ‘sound recording’ in its various historical formats. Cylinders and their successors, 78s, along with the equipment necessary to play them, became an important part of mass, popular culture. The gramophone became a major fashion accessory of the day, and sound recordings became collectables. [More recently, the technology of that era - gramophones, emergence of a gramophone culture, and a snapshot of the collectors of the pre-vinyl age, I turn to the context that shaped the emergence and subsequent development of a collecting constituency. While there is frequent overlap between them, especially through their respective roles in shaping taste and discrimination (canon formation), for convenience I distinguish here between four aspects of this context: phonographs, needles - has also become very collectable]. Collecting was already a prominent part of the social life of the new middle classes, during the mid to late (1) sites of production: the role of the recording companies; (2) sites of appreciation: record preservation societies; (3) sites of acquisition: music retail, and the second-hand market; (4) sites of mediation: the music press. The rise of gramophone culture nineteenth century (see Bloom, 2002: the collector’s cabinet of curiosities, etc). A mix of capitalism and consumerism, increased leisure time and disposable income, and nostalgia, made collecting a signiﬁcant aspect of social identity for the middle classes of Europe, Britain and its colonies, and the United States. The state art galleries, museums, and libraries of the Victorian era owed much to the generosity of those collectors who endowed and funded them (Herrmann, The commodiﬁcation of sound and its reproduction as a cultural and economic artifact around the turn of the 1999). Record collecting as a social practice was a logical extension of such activities. 834 The Early Record Collectors largely in this genre, in part as classical music was already a well-established and valued art form. (ii) Those collecting within ‘popular music’, often collectively termed ‘Early American music’ or ‘old time music’, and including jazz; big band; c&w; r&b; and ‘ethnic’ musics. Collectors active during the period 1903 to circa 1950 and the advent of vinyl were collecting primarily 78’s, although in some cases cylinders as well. This group established ‘record collecting’ as a major form of collecting, with its own set of collecting practices, associated literature, and appreciation societies. These collectors had a shared interest in sound recordings as signiﬁcant cultural artifacts, with associated notions of discrimination, musical canons, and rarity. They also shared the dominant characteristics of collectors more generally, albeit with particular inﬂections of these: the thrill of the chase; obsessiveness, linked to accumulation and completism; at times a preoccupation with rarity and economic value; and a concern for cultural preservation. The last often involved self-education and public/vernacular scholarship, drawing on the collection as a resource. These traits were subsumed into collecting as a signiﬁcant aspect of social identity, involving the acquisition of and cultural capital, overlaid with a patina of nostalgia. While the classical collectors valorised the aesthetic qualities of recordings, the ‘popular’ collectors more frequently valued scarcity, combined with associated notions of authenticity. In this paper, I shall draw on both groups for examples of collecting practices. 1. Sites of Production: Record Companies The recording industry took off around the turn of the century. In 1896, the ﬁrst phonographs aimed at the home entertainment market were introduced by Edison and the Columbia label in the United States. In 1899, 151,000 phonographs were produced in the U.S. alone, and there was now a “steady if limited supply of discs and pre-recorded cylinders” (Gronow, 1983: 54-5). By 1900, several large commercial recording companies The genre interests of these early record collectors can be divided into two broad groups, with little overlap between these: were operating on a stable national basis, and listening to the various new ‘talking machines’ was a popular pastime. [A strong link between hardware and software was established from the start of sound recording, (i) Those collecting in the classical repertoire, especially, vocal (opera). Initial collecting interest was with companies marketing both their models of the phonograph and the recordings to be played on it]. A 835 range of marketing practices emerged. While these were oriented towards the general market, most also targeted the music collector. the very successful subscription service introduced by HMV in 1931. This collected subscription advances for great but as yet unrecorded classical compositions, making them only when the required/commercially The most obvious marketing strategy was the production of catalogues and other advertising material [both of course now very collectable in themselves, and linked to a keen interest in collecting antique phonographs, etc; see Fabrizio and Paul, 1999]. Victor, Zonophone and Columbia all published catalogues and monthly record suppliments from the early 1900s. These alerted retailers and collectors to what was available, and also to what was not; consequently, collectors often lobbied companies to release recordings of particular repertoire/performers. viable number of subscribers had been reached (a strategy especially appropriate in the depression years; see Chanan, 1995:80). Picture discs were ﬁrst produced in the 1920s, by companies in Germany, Great Britain, and the U.S. The best-known are those later released by Vogue, in 1946-7, in a limited series (of 74) which became highly collectable. Picture discs appealed to collectors who wanted a fuller collection of their preferred performer(s), and also had the appeal of a bounded series, with at least the possibility of completion. [Usually available An important strategy was the production of ‘celebrity’ discs (by better known artists), which were sold at a higher price, adding to their cultural cachet. The Gramophone Company of Great Britain released a number of these between 1920 and 1925. They featured different coloured labels, representing different prices, “which in turn reﬂected the eminence of the performer(s)” (Copeland, 1991: 39; and see illustrations therein]. Perhaps the best-known example of this music industry practice is the well-documented Red Seal recordings. A related marketing practice, since it frequently featured celebrity recordings, was commercially, picture discs became part of the industry’s promotional apparatus in the 1980s]. In sum, early retailing strategies/formats aimed to create and serve record collectors, with industry practices reinforcing the notion of collecting as a selective process. 2. Sites of Appreciation: Societies & Clubs Record appreciation societies were similarly important for fostering collecting as a selective activity, involving the acquisition of discrimination, discernment, and 836 cultural capital. This was especially the case in relation to classical music, and, in particular, opera singers. mail order; and a variety of second-hand sources. Sheet music retailers quickly moved into selling recorded A major example of such groups were those who were part of the UK Gramophone Society. A number of local groups came together in 1923 to form a national association, linked to a new publication, The Gramophone, edited by Compton McKenzie (see later: music press). A 1933 survey of the Society showed it to have 33 member societies, with approximately 1,500 members. Four had existed prior to 1914, but most had formed during the previous few years. Initially there was an emphasis on .the intricacies of sound reproduction and its technologies, but later there was a marked shift towards musical appreciation: “The new societies are generally small groups of intelligent music lovers… it is the aim of nearly every society to effect an interchange of ideas on nearly every type of music, thus promoting an all-round appreciation of the musical art” (The Gramophone, 1936, v14,n158, p.86). Among many collectors of early popular music, discrimination was not so much on aesthetic grounds, as on a preoccupation with authenticity and the aura of the artifact: in some cases the more obscure the better. This led to a preoccupation with rarity, condition, and economic value. Again, however, one’s collection provided a major source of cultural capital - although among collecting peers rather than a larger social group. Somewhat music, and mail order was available from the late 1890s. (See record company catalogues, and the adverts .in early issues of The Gramophone; and the jazz oriented Melody Maker, 1926-). In the case of the classical repertoire, they were the main source [Perhaps the culture of classical collecting did not associate with a ‘down market’ practice of scavenging through thrift stores, etc?!] paradoxically, however, while many early collectors were prepared to pay more for scarcer recordings, typically In the United States, the hot jazz clubs of the 1930s played a similar role for their sub genre (see Lopez, 2002). 3. Sites of Acquisition more pleasure was derived from obtaining an item very cheaply, usually from a seller who had no idea of its ‘real’ value. Recordings in the popular repertoire were also available Where did the early record collectors obtain recordings? Two main sites were utilized: conventional retail, including through retail music shops, but their circulation was more restricted. Jazz and blues records had a limited 837 distribution and sales through the 1920s and much of the ‘30s, as most record stores were limited in the labels they sold. The buyers were almost exclusively poor blacks, and the few records sold often were played on inferior equipment, resulting in damage or destruction. Consequently, as Hilbert later observed in his guide to prices for such material: “There are many jazz and blues records that exist only in a handful of copies” (Hilbert, 1988: Intro). Wexler, cited in Lopez, 2002:161. And one gets the impression that some collectors gave their collections the higher priority!). Through the 1930s, hot jazz clubs ran swop meets, and some began to run auctions. By the early 1940s there were jazz record stores, which usually had a bin or two of used records in addition to new stock. But the hunt aspect remained vital, as Harriet Hershe (in 1940)shows in her lament on life married to a hot jazz A few original collectors of popular genres brought off the shelf as the recordings were issued. Later, used records could easily be found by ‘junking’ or canvassing, searching a neighbourhood house by house, asking occupants if they had any old records (often holding up a 78 to make clear what sort of records were sought (Hilbert, 1988: Intro). collector: “He collects every available record in every available spare moment… he can make the necessary excursions to the darkest part of the city and countryside, canvass the basements of second-hand stores, and Salvation Army outlets… He goes about with a haggard, hazy look, a copy of Downbeat in one hand, and a record catalogue in the other” (Music and Rhythm, 1940: 33- There developed among collectors of early American/ old time music a major emphasis on this hunt aspect of collecting, with frequent tales of canvassing, trawling for material, and ﬁnds of rare recordings: “We were record collectors, ﬁerce and indefatigable. To discover, in the back of some basement in far Rockaway, a carton of unopened, still-in-original wrappers sets of Black Swan - a label owned by W. C. Handy and responsible for Ethel Waters ﬁrst recordings – was an experience second only to orgasm” (Jerry 4; cited Lopez, 2002: 159). This last experience hints at the importance of the music press to the record collector, to which I now turn. [An aside: There are LOTS OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS that I’d welcome help with: when did music retail chains emerge? The development of mail order? More on second-hand/specialist record shops? Record Clubs? When were ﬁrst record fairs/ conventions?] 838 4. Sites of Mediation: The Music Press showed them to be largely a broad cross-section of the professional middle classes. The Gramophone reviewed new releases, disseminated information on technical developments in sound reproduction, and encouraged record companies to produce and the public to buy “serious music”, a label essentially equated with the classical canon. We tend to take for granted an extensive literature serving record collectors, including general guidebooks; discographies; critics ‘best of’ and consumer record guides; and collector-oriented magazines. Together these are involved in creating and maintaining a set of collecting practices and conventional wisdom, especially notions of the canon – what is/should be collectable. Early collectors had far less available to them, and often produced the forerunners of today’s plethora of publications. Here I refer brieﬂy to several of these early efforts, which consolidated a number of central themes in collecting. Several early collector guides also offered advice and information to the classical collector. EMG Hand Made Gramophones Ltd. published a series on “The Art of record Buying” (available free prior to WW2; the last appeared in1940). Johnson (1954) refers to it as “Probably one of the ﬁrst selected record catalogues to be issued, and one of the best”. More signiﬁcant was Morton Moses, The record collector’s guide: American celebrity discs, ﬁrst published in 1936 as a 44 page pamphlet. Moses’ Guide to Celebrity Discs Publications on recordings of classical music strongly emphasized discrimination, almost entirely predicated on aesthetic criteria, although with some reference to condition.. This is particularly evident in the editorial columns and other contributions in The Gramophone (UK, 1923-), where collecting becomes part of cultural capital and upward social mobility. It has justiﬁably been viewed as “the ﬁrst magazine in any language to treat recorded music as seriously as the great British literary reviews examined the written word” (Le Mahieu, 1988: 73). After selling an impressive 500 copies a month in its ﬁrst year, by the late 1920s its sales had reached 12,000 per issue. Its own survey of readers (in 1931) The period Moses covered was that “between the release of the ﬁrst Columbia celebrity discs in April, 1903, and the issuance of the ﬁrst complete Victor catalogue in January 1912” (p.7); i.e the era of acoustical recording. He set out to inform and educate his readers: “Anyone with an interest in opera and its greatest stars should ﬁnd this information valuable. To know how many records an artist made, what selections he sang, 839 how old he was at the time, cannot be regarded as unimportant. To be stimulated by this knowledge to a further investigation of the achievements of some of the world’s most talented musicians would be an even greater compliment of the purposes of this book’ (Preface). The entries are arranged alphabetically by artist, from Bessie Abbot to Nicola Zerola. Moses refers to the increasing scarcity and increasing value of many of these recordings, especially where the master recordings were soon destroyed. The greater number of Columbia records included in his book fall within this category, In a fuller version of the book, published in 1949, Moses observes that “the interest in collectors’ recordings has increased tremendously” since his earlier guide. The Rise of Discography (Referring to Jazz as an example) The early recording companies were frequently very unsystematic in their practices (Semeonoff, 1949:2). While, as mentioned above, some catalogues were produced, there was a general lack of these, especially from the smaller companies, along with a failure to keep thorough records of releases. There was also the ephemeral nature of such material. This lack of systematic and accessible information on releases made collecting a challenge, a detective-like activity adding to the thrill of the chase – the hunt for elusive or even unknown or unrecorded items. In so doing, it fostered discography as an important aspect of collecting. The volume illustrates the esoteric nature of collecting and the role of specialized knowledge. The would-be collector of rare recordings must learn to distinguish between ﬁve types of Victor labels: the early Monarch (10 inch) and De Luxe (12 inch) labels; the Grand Prize label, adopted December 1, 1905; the Patents label, adopted in 1908, with three variants to the endings of the patent numbers at the bottom of the label; the NoPatents label, adopted in 1914; and the Victrola label of subsequent single and double faced issues. Moses listings are selective, but his guide is also an example of early discography, to which I now turn. In 1934, the French critic Charles Delaunay was the ﬁrst to publish a comprehensive discography, a word he coined. [His Hot Discography was published in English in 1936]. In 1935 the ﬁrst such British compilation was published: Rhythm on Record, by Hilton Schelman, assisted by Stanley Dance. These two books were “a basis for and inspiration to later works of similar character”(Godbolt, 1984: 175). Through the later 1920s and through the 1930s, hundreds of discographies of early jazz and jazz related recordings were produced by collector enthusiasts, often in home-produced 840 magazines, sometimes in the pages of Melody Maker, Hot News, and Swing Music. At times, heated Selected Bibliography Bender, Jeff (2000) “Album Art. A Brief History of the Picture Disc”, The record colelctors Guild. A website for the record collector. On line at http://www/ arguments raged over attribution and provenance of particular artists and recordings, and the intricacies of various label’s notation/cataloguing practices. This vernacular scholarship provided an essential resource for major compilations to come (e.g. those by Brian Rusk in the U.K.). recordcollectorsguild.org/article_picdisc.html (accessed 2/12/01). In conclusion, the emergence and development of record collecting runs broadly parallel to the development of the sound recording industry, (in relation to both formats and sound reproduction); music retail, and, above all, the music press. The historical developments and examples, only sketched here, laid the groundwork for later collecting practices. Bloom, Philipp (2002) To Have and to Hold. An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting, Woodstock; New York: Overlook Press. Copeland, Peter (1991) Sound Recordings, London:The British Library. Day, Timothy (2000) A Century of Recorded Music. Listening to Musical History, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Gelatt, Roland (1956) The Fabulous Phonograph, London: Herrmann, Frank (1999) The English As Collectors. A Documentary Sourcebook, New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press/London: John Murray. Chanan, Michael (1995) Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music, London: Verso. 841 Docks, L.R. (1980; 6th. edition, 2002) American Premium Record Guide. Johnson, William W. compiler (1954) The Gramophone Book. A complete guide for all lovers of recorded music, Issued by the National Federation of Gramophone Fabrizio, Timothy and George F. Paul (1997) The Talking Machine. An Illustrated Compendium 1877 - 1929, Atylan, PA: Sciffer Publications. Societies, London & New York: Hinrichson Education. Kenney,William Howland (1999) Recorded Music in American Life. The Phonograph and Popular Memory, Fabrizio, Timothy C. (1999) “Ordinary people: The Talking Machine in Real Life”, ARSC Journal, vol. 30: 20-23. 1890 – 1945, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koenigsberg, Allen (1969; 2nd, edition 1988) Edison Fabrizio, Timothy C. and George F. Paul (2000) Antique Phonograph Gadgets, Gizmos and Gimmicks, Atylan, PA: Schiffer Publications. Cylinder Records, 1889 - 1912. With an Illustrated History of the Phonograph, New York: Stellar Productions. Fabrizio, Timothy C. and George F. Paul (2000) Discovering Antique Phonographs, Atylan, PA: Schiffer Publications. LeMahieu, D.L. (1988) A Culture for Democracy. Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain Between the Wars, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Godbolt, Jim (1984) A History of jazz in Britain 19191950, London: Quartet Books. Lopez, Paul (2002) The Rise of a Jazz Art World, Cambridge: CUP. Gronow, Pekka (1983) “The Record Industry: the growth of a mass medium”, Popular Music, vol.3, pp.53-77. Melody Maker, (U.K. 1926-). Moses, Morton (1936) The record collector’s guide: Hilbert, Robert (1988) Winning Bids. Actual Prices Paid for Jazz and Blues 78 RPM Recordings, Florida: Pumpkin Productions. American celebrity discs. New York: Concert Bureau, College of the city of New York. [An updated version was publishedby Dover Publications, New York, in 1949]. 842 Moses, Morton (1977) Collectors Guide to American Recordings, 1895-1925, Dover Publications, New York. [A further update]. Semeonoff, Boris (1949) Record collecting: a guide for beginners, (with a chapter on collecting jazz records, by Alexander Ross), Chislehurst, Kent: Oakwood Press. The Gramophone (UK, 1923-) Thompson, Emily (1996) “Machines, Music and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1877 - 1925”, in three parts: part one, Antique Phonograph News, November-December, 1996, pp.39. Welsh, Walter and Burt, Leah (1994) From Tinfoil to Stereo: The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry, Gainsville: University Press of Florida. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Fragments of a Musical / Narratological Practice: Reading Pop Music as a Narrative, Musicians as Characters Gianni Sibilla T his paper will explore the possibilities of reading the practice of pop music as a social narrative words, I will try to demonstrate that by using this method of analysis we can understand something of popular music texts that other approaches leave unsaid and unexplained. The path followed to seek these answers will tread through ﬁve steps: through the tools developed by narratology. In other words, in these pages I will try to give an answer to two questions. 1. Is it possible to use narratology to read the practice of pop music? 2. Why is it useful to read songs and musicians as narratives? 1. What is Narratology; ﬁrst, I will give a brief outline of the scientiﬁc studies of narratives, of the main streams of approaches used to understand what a story is. The ﬁrst question is obviously the most generic and general one. It deals with theoretical and methodological issues: what are the tools developed to study traditional forms of narratives such as novels and ﬁlms? What are their values? Do these tools work if applied to musical texts? Can musical texts, as they appear in media, be read as narratives? The second question follows the ﬁrst one; nonetheless, it aims at a more speciﬁc target. Given that the answer to the last two sub-questions is afﬁrmative - narratological tools do work with musical texts, read as narratives - I will try to explain why this approach is useful. In other 2. The narrative texts and media of pop music; in a second place, I will make a description of the texts and places through which pop music is the telling of a story. 3. Musicians as characters and narrators; in a third place, I will identify musicians as the Narrative “stars” of music, and I will analyze their position as both characters and narrators. 4. The narrative levels of pop music. At this level, I will outline to different levels of narration of pop music; 844 5. The role of record industries as the “implied narrators” of pop music will be the last step of this path; record industries impose and manipulate pop texts and musicians as stories and characters to make them more comprehensible to the audience, and so to sell records. which derives it approach from Russian formalism (for example Propp’s study of structure of fables) and from structuralism. This is obviously not the place to discuss in detail the different approaches of structuralistic studies such as those of Barthes and Genette or the generativist school of Greimas (1), but a point is clear: these study have moved identiﬁed their privileged objects of study Finally, I will make an example to further clarify the way this method can be used to understand the narrative communication of pop music. This example will be the analysis of Eminem’s music video Without Me. 1. What is narratology? in novels and ﬁlms. Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse is probably one of the ﬁnest examples of how all these sources can be used to outline a narratological study of novels and audiovisual texts (2). This book well exempliﬁes the ﬁrst value of narratology: the formalization of elements. Narratologists have Narratology is the studies of stories, of their elements, their structures and their rhetorical forms. The ﬁrst example of systematic study of the way a story works was certainly Aristotle’s Poetic. It focused on Greek tragedy, but more than two thousand years later the philosopher’s work is still considered the founding text for the study of narratives, and his pages are still quoted by scholars with many diverse backgrounds. In the last decades narratology has developed mainly from two sources: literary theory and semiotics. On the ﬁrst side, for example, we have the so-called “Chicago school” well represented by Wayne C. Booth and his ground work The Rhetoric of Fiction, which expanded the work of more “traditional” critics such as Northrop Frye. On the other side we have semiotics, identiﬁed a series of elements which recur in every thing we call a “story”. These elements, disposed through three levels, can be combined in an almost inﬁnite set of ways and through different media: Ø Story: the basic elements: characters, ambient, events; Ø Discourse: the combination of the story elements in a plot, or a fabula; Ø Narration: the actualization of story and discourse through e presence of “voice” that embodies the act of narrating the story. The second value of narratology can be identiﬁed in the orientation toward practice. In other words, to narrate 845 a story in a proper way, so that it can communicate some information efﬁciently, we have to follow a set of rules of composition. This tendency is exempliﬁed by those manuals of creative writing based on narratology but orientated to a practical goal: writing a novel, or a movie script. In this last ﬁeld, the most interesting example is Robert McKee’s Story (3). The third value of narratological approach is the attention to social dimension. Narratological tools have been used by sociologist and psychologist to read narration as a form of reworking and sharing of experiences. In a general way we can summarize that narration is a metaphor useful to understand recurring situations of every type of communication. As Paul Ricoeur states in Temps et Récit, there is no culture without the telling of stories (4). 2. Pop music as a social narration branch of popular music (6), is spread through a great variety of texts that reach an audience through different channels, from the recorded song to public performance, from radio broadcast to music videos and TV programs, from ﬁlm soundtracks to internet webcasts and ﬁle-sharing. In other words, pop music is a powerful narrative tool because a music performer can tell a story through a great variety of different media. Pop Music is a social experience of sharing of messages structured in a narrative form. From this perspective, the key word is intermediality: the use of different media to diffuse and reinforce a message, mixing the musical language with that of radio, press, cinema, television, and new media. Therefore different forms of musical narration and different narrative languages are created, according to the media used. Music videos are the most vivid example of this process: a hybrid text that mixes of Narratology has focused mainly on novels and ﬁlms. These are narrative texts in which, as Wayne Booth would say, the rhetoric dimension is inescapable (5): an author is trying to impose a ﬁctional but credible world to its readers/viewers. Pop music is surely a narrative phenomenon, but more complex than literary or audiovisual communication. It is an wider phenomenon: the practice of pop music, since this macro genre emerged in 50’s as a speciﬁc musical and televisive language to narrate a story related to a song and a performer (7). In ﬁg. 1 we can see a ﬂow chart that represents pop performers’ narrative practice. This diagram represents the modes enabling the pop message’s diffusion. Starting from recordings and performance of the record, the narrative message of pop spreads through a media web, which is composed 846 Figure 1. Pop music as media system: each of the six nodes is related with every other node. For example, a song becomes a performance, gets reviewed on the press, and is broadcasted on radio, TV… But also radio a performance for radio or TV becomes a record, and so on. Pop music media system can be read as a narrative process: the six narrative levels (red arrows) act on every text of pop music diffused in the nodes of this web. of radio, visual communication, new media and the music press. Each node of this web: “star” is the artist-performer. This media system, responsible for the diffusion of the creates one or more speciﬁc typologies of pop music text; creates a particular language, which is derived from the contamination between musical language and medium language; Contributes to the building of a wider narrative, whose pop message, can be viewed as a narrative process: the musician is both a character and a narrator telling his own tale through his actions, his interpretations of songs in records, in performances, and on different media. A musician is himself a narrator: telling different stories through songs, performances or music videos, he 847 rhetorically tries to impose a “weltanschauung”, a view of the world. The musician is also the character of a story: his public story as performer and “star”. From this perspective, Pop music is a story which is continuously being told through songs, performances, videos, in which musicians auto-represent themselves in a both autoreferential and ﬁctional way. music texts (i.e. a music video to a song, or a printed advertisement and/or record cover to a record); 4. Intertextual level: the relation of the text with other texts belonging to the same or to different media (i.e. songs or music videos of the same artist, texts of the same musical genre, etc); This narrative process works on six different levels, as shown in ﬁg. 1. Each musical text is, on its own, a micro narration that contributes to a macro narration. Each text is a narrative, a single story, which is part of a wider narration, the career of the artist. This wider narration is made by a large group of texts: songs, albums, videos, performances, etc. Each text is part of an intertextual web of narrative meanings which relate one to another. A pop music text, in this perspective, deﬁnes its meaning through its placement in a medial situation at the following levels. 5. Intermedial level: the life of a single text through different medias (i.e. a song or a performance reviewed in the press, broadcast through radio, TV and/or over the Internet); 6. Macro narrative level. The contribution of a single text to the telling of its author’s career story (for example, how a musical video deﬁnes the narrative of its performer, a narrative which is also built through albums, performances, etc). In other words, each pop music text (a record, a 1. Contextual level: the speciﬁc context in which a particular pop music text is placed; placing the musicians’ narrative action in a context, 2. Textual level: the narrative characteristics of the speciﬁc language of the musical medium itself (musical, verbal, audiovisual, etc.); 3. Paratextual level: the way a pop music text acts or is intended to be a complement to other related telling it through the languages of a text, surrounding it with a paratext, framing it in series of intertextual relationships with other texts, diffusing it on different medias, performance, a music video…) creates a narrative by: 848 and by making it a contribution to a wider narrative, namely, that of a musician’s career. and Spice Girls, they create artist, launching them on market with aggressive intermedial promotional strategies planned in narrative terms. In this process we have to outline the role of recording industries. Artists are both characters and narrators of musical stories, but many times they are not alone. Record industries not only produce and distribute records. They manipulate, in some cases they create artists. They decide marketing strategies for every record, and for the artist’s career: which image they should have, how they should behave to communicate with their audience, etc... In other words, they address the artist’s narrative moves. They act as hidden narrators of musical stories. This role of record industries is easily understandable in terms of their goal. This is, of course, to sell as many records as possible. But to sell a product is certainly not enough saying “buy this, it’s good”. You have to pack it and frame in a story, making it easy to for possible consumers to understand. This is a true marketing rule for selling many products, from toothpaste to cars. But it ﬁts particularly well pop music, which is a product of the cultural industry. What recording industries do is to manipulate musical stories. Through their promotional department, they diffuse news gossips; organize interviews and reviews about artists. In some case, that of “boy bands” and “girl bands” such as the notorious Backstreet Boys 3. Eminem’s (non) musical narration: Without Me In order to provide a speciﬁc example of how this narrative and intertextual process works in pop music in the mass media, Eminem’s music video Without Me has been chosen as an illustration. To analyze this video the aforementioned analysis schema will be used. Moving from contextual, textual, paratextual, and intertextual elements to the intermedial and narrative attitude of the text, I will explain what kind of narrative meaning is built into this video, and which fruition path the text suggests to its spectators. Contextual elements In the last few years Eminem has become one of pop’s most popular, debated and controversial icons. This rapper from Detroit, Michigan, has sold several million records. But, most notably, he has built himself up into a public character by the large-scale use of mass media. He dubbed himself Slim Shady, singing and performing the events of his troubled private life in public: his mentally unstable and abusing mother, the violent relationship with his wife Kim. In doing so, he clearly blurred the division between reality and ﬁction, imposing an intermedial narration set in order to shock rather than 849 make music worth listening to. The Without Me video is one of the best examples of this attitude. This song was released in spring 2002, and was intended as the opening single for the album The Eminem Show, released some weeks later in May 2002. In the same period, a music video was produced. Textual elements Figure 3. Eminem as Slim Shady in his Robin- like costume This video has a simple storyline made complex by a great variety of other elements plotted into the narration. The main story sees a boy buying Eminem’s record when his mother is not around. Dr. Dre, the rapper’s mentor, calls his protégé: they have to go and save the boy from listening to the record. Eminem dresses up in a Robinlike costume and becomes Slim Shady (ﬁg. 3). Together with Dre, he travels around the town and arrives just in time to stop the boy from playing the CD. This story, represented with comic-like style, is interspersed by performances of Eminem singing on a grey background and in a variety of other settings: in a hospital emergency room (which brings to mind the TV drama E.R.); in a talk show dressed as his mother; in two reality shows similar to Real World and Survivors; giving an electroshock to a man; variously dressed as rival artist Moby (ﬁg.4), as an Elvis impersonator, as a wrestling ﬁghter and, ﬁnally, as Osama Bin Laden speaking and dancing to a CNN–like channel (ﬁg.5). In other words, the narrative part of the video serves as a framework for the diverse performance sequences Figure 4. Eminem as Moby... Figure 5. ... and Eminem as Osama Bin Laden speaking to TV Channel “EM” that compose the text itself. The video itself has a strong “concept” that holds all these material together: portraying Eminem as a controversy-maker, someone who’s able to say what he thinks, and therefore someone who is necessary in our hypocritical society. This concept 850 Figure 6. Scheme of Without Me’s narrative process is related to the chorus of the song: “It feels so empty without me”. Paratextual and Intertextual levels to tell what he wants to say, but to show it. Therefore, in this reversal of positions, the record almost becomes a paratext to the music video. At this point the manner in which music becomes a secondary element in this music video becomes evident. The original idea behind music videos is that they are paratext: they complement songs on a visual level, and they act as a narrative commercial for a record. In this case, the music video becomes more important than the song itself: Eminem is not only able The video also draws much of its force on an intertextual level. The images themselves are full of implicit and explicit references to other videos of the rapper, such as the Robin-like dressing that was presented in several other clips. Intermedial and Macro narrative levels From this perspective, the video is the top third of 851 an intermedial iceberg whose submerged body is represented by a variety of Eminem’s performing activities that are quoted and represented in the course of four minutes of images. The video itself has the clear intention of creating controversy, and so is designed to be debated by the other media, such as newspapers and magazines. Eminem’s attitude can be fully understood if his video is read as a meta-narrative. Without Me is a representation of Eminem’s public life (8). It is a ﬁrst-person narration, a me-narration ﬁlled with what seem to be personal details: his friendship with Dr. Dre, his ﬁghts with his mother, his angry reply to public rivals, his endeavor to afﬁrm himself as someone who is shocking because he says and does what he thinks. In other words, Without me is a dramaturgical mise en scène of the rapper’s story in which music is an excuse for verbal and non verbal communication of performance. By using images, performance and non-musical elements, the Without Me video deﬁnes Eminem’s symbolic universe (see Fig.6). 4. Conclusions 1. The strategies behind the practices. Every text has a narrative strategy, designed by record industries and artist to communicate something to an audience. Narratological tools help us unveiling this strategies; 2. The role of different media in narrating pop music; one of the peculiarities of pop music is that is not a medium, but it uses different media. In this perspective pop music narrates the same stories in different ways, according to media used. 3. The role of non-musical elements in the communication/ evaluation of pop. As shown by the analysis of Eminem’s video, many non musical factors contribute to the musical narration. Reading pop texts as narrative help us to place these factors in the frame, evaluating their contribution to our perception of musicians and songs. 4. The way pop music is designed and lived as experience of sharing a message. Finally, reading pop music as a narrative helps us understand the fruition path that a text proposes to its listener/spectator, creating a communion between artist and audience. At the end, isn’t that what To sum up, we can now outline at least four reasons why is not only possible, but useful reading pop music as a narrative system. Applying the tools developed by narratology to pop music texts helps us to understand: pop music is supposed to be, sharing something with someone? 852 (6) This essay is not the space where to discuss the Endnotes (1) For an introduction to these issues, see Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1986). . question of the relation between “pop” music and “popular” music. Therefore, I refer to my I linguaggi della musica pop, (Milano: Bompiani, 2003, 17-29), where I have extensively analyzed the matter. (2) See Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 1978. Chatman further developed his work in Coming to Terms (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1990). (7) For a reading of music videos as narratives and for a reconstruction of the academic debate on MTV, see Gianni Sibilla, Musica da vedere. Il videoclip nella televisione italiana (Roma: Eri-Rai/VQPT, 1999). (8) Eminem is probably one of the smartest performers on the scene nowadays. The same narrative attitude focused on the representation of his personal life can be found in several other texts of his production, especially music videos. In Stan he depicted the story of a stalker obsessed with his success. In Cleaning Out My Closet he can be seen digging his grave to his much hated mother, and so on. (3) See Robert Mc Kee, Story. Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (New York: Harper Collins, 1997). (4) Paul Ricoeur, Temps et récit (Paris: Seuil, 1983). For a further discussion of this assumption, see my PhD dissertation, Racconto, Argomentazione, Associazione. Forme e funzioni retoriche narrative e non-narrative nei testi audiovisivi contemporanei, (“Narration, argumentation, association. Rhetorical narrative and non-narratives forms and functions in contemporary audiovisual texts”), discussed in 2000 at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. Selected Bibliography Auslander, Philip. Liveness. Performance in a mediatized culture. London : Routledge, 1999 Barthes, Roland. “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits”. Communications, Vol. 8 (1966) (5) Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, 2° ed.) Frith, Simon. Performing rites. Evaluting popular music. 853 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 Bompiani, 2003 Genette, Gerard. Figures III. Paris : Seuil, 1972 --------. Musica da vedere. Il videoclip nella televisione italiana. Roma: Eri-Rai/VQPT, 1999. -------. Seuils. Paris: Seuil, 1987 Toynbee Jason. Making Popular music. Musicians Martin, Wallace. Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca/ London: Cornell University Press, 1986. . creativity and institutions. London: Arnold, 1996 Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse. IthacaLondon: Cornell University Press, 1978. -------. Coming to Terms (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1990). Mc Kee, Robert. Story. Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Harper Collins, 1997. Ricoeur, Paul. Temps et récit. Paris: Seuil, 1983. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, 2° ed. Shuker, Roy. Key concepts in popular music. London: Routledge: 1998 Sibilla, Gianni. I linguaggi della musica pop. Milano: IASPM03 - MONTREAL Machismo, mediation, maquiladoras: a Stephen Patrick Morrissey Mystery Colin Snowsell L ast month, Morrissey’s seven-year trek through the desert of no major record deal seemed to come to contemporary irrelevance to lambaste him with adjectives and accusations so outlandish and colourful it has seemed, at times, as though a sizeable ﬁnancial reward has been offered for the author of the most damning and damaging Morrissey story. Is he racist? Does he support anti-immigrant violence by skinheads? Does he pretend to be a vegetarian, secretly eating roast chicken at night? Was his celibacy thing an act? Why won’t he out himself? Might he secretly be happy not, in fact, miserable or depressed? Did his late1990s love of the TV show Friends – and reported friendship with Matthew Perry – make a mockery of all the independent and transgressive things for which people once thought he stood? Could the man who wrote a song called “Sorrow Will Come In the End” – a song that seems to fantasize about cutting the throat of the former drummer who successfully sued him for an equal share of Smiths’ performance royalties – continue to serve as de facto magi of all misﬁts? 1 According to Nielsen SoundScan, Maladjusted debuted at No. 61 on The Billboard 200, and has sold just 86,000 copies to date in the United States (Cohen 2000). Morrissey still complains – to deaf ears, mostly – that these poor record sales were attributable to then record label Mercury’s failure to promote the record, and not the an end with the announcement that Sanctuary Records had resurrected an old reggae imprint, Attack Records, in order to release what will be the ﬁrst new Morrissey recording since 1997’s Maladjusted (Ananova 2003). Aged 44, and self-exiled in Los Angeles, Morrissey has become as distant from the drab Manchester suburbs that shaped his paradoxically depressing yet optimistically witty lyricism as he has from his glory days as lead singer for The Smiths, days that started in 1983 and ended abruptly in 1987. Indeed, for most of the past few years, all but the most desperate long shot gamblers have been sensibly betting that what started off as a sojourn would end as a death march. Morrissey, it seemed, hadn’t set off, Moses-like, to the Promised Land of a major that would grant him the wide, massmediated exposure and publicity he so craved. Rather, for much of the past ﬁve years, it has looked like he was pushed into the desert by a next generation of record company executives for whom The Smiths was, at best, only ever unfashionable and whiny music that seeped through the doors of older sisters’ rooms. A handful of loyalists aside, the media has felt sufﬁciently certain of Morrissey’s permanent unpopularity and 855 quality of the record itself. What most casual observers believed was that the artist was locked in a gentle if accelerating decline that only a full-out Smiths reunion could reverse. As Morrissey has long since vowed this will never happen – and since he seems intent on former band member throat cutting – to a recording industry in the middle of corporate restructuring he had become remarkably easy to dispense with. When Mercury dropped Morrissey it was assumed that all but the most fanatical of his cadre would (if they hadn’t already done so), pack up and move on (Many of them to Belle & Sebastian and later Coldplay, we were told). So, when Morrissey moved to California, he seemed to be gamely playing the role written for him – that of washed-up eccentric English pop star, alone with little to do but rue and rail against the crepuscular in a city that produced a ﬁlm, and a boulevard about sunset. Morrissey didn’t resurface until 1999 when it was announced he would headline at the inaugural Coachella music festival in southern California. Alongside such chart-topping acts of the year – Beck, Chemical Brothers – Morrissey’s named seemed so incongruous that the music press decided to investigate. What they found was that Morrissey still had an audience. 35,000 fans, a sizeable portion of them Chicano, were in attendance. As Michael Bracewell wrote about the festival, “To anyone arriving from Britain, watching these fans not only trying to push towards the stage, but actually try to climb on to it, it would be difﬁcult to align the sight in front of your eyes with last year’s reports in the British press that Morrissey was out of fashion.” (1999). There were two lessons to be learnt from this, one unarguable, the second murky. Regrettably, the music press focussed more on the murky while choosing to skim over the other one. If you were looking to pinpoint a moment when the discourse surrounding Morrissey came of the rails, you’d be hard-pressed to ﬁnd a better instance than this. The ﬁrst and forgotten point was this: Morrissey’s supposed unpopularity never happened. Sales were down as his original – predominately British – fan base aged, but in California, in particular, the fan base he had cultivated as solo artist was not only intact, but among certain demographics had continued to grow. He’d lost a record deal as a result of a mid- to late 1990s restructuring of the record industry. He’d lost some access to the media, as a result of the simultaneous fracturing of the pop world, and consolidation of an “alternative” radio format that was sonically harder and lyrically less subtle than Morrissey’s previously deﬁnitive version of alternative. But the dip in North American popularity was never such that he was in a position to need to mount anything resembling a comeback. Yet the media who covered Coachella was the same media who believed that lack of record deal necessarily and automatically equated decline in popularity. And 856 so grasping about for an explanation as to why a then 40-year-old unsigned and supposedly disgraced artist could still draw 35,000 fans – an explanation, mind, that still ﬁt within their narrative of washed-up has been – they reported that Morrissey had become miraculously – and suddenly – big with Chicanos (for an example of the problematic discourse in initial reports about Morrissey and Latinos see, for instance, Select 1999). This was the second point, and it remains a murky one at best. What’s most disconcerting about the “Morrissey and the Mexicans who love him!” story is that it owes its origin to a not-so-subtle continuation of Morrissey mockery. Initially the story was told as a way of highlighting just how far Morrissey had fallen. Indeed, the success of the story seemed attributable to a discourse that delighted in the image of poor, fumbling Chicanos ﬁnally getting around to Morrissey – ten years after everyone else did, and then not even the legendary Smiths-era Morrissey but an overweight, overblown nincompoop of a man with a third-rate bar band where Johnny Marr once had been. In order to make the story stick, the media needed to establish just how backward Mexican American culture was. In doing so, the story conﬁrmed the neoracist image of Chicanos as backwards, pre-modern, associated more with their old country, where they truly belong, then where they currently live. By showing that Morrissey was contaminated with Mexicans, the media reconﬁrmed the correctness of its initial assessment. Indeed, it seemed to show that things were worse than even they had imagined. For not only was Morrissey unpopular, but, God help him, he was popular…with Mexicans. The media does deserve some respect for the nifty trick of reporting that Morrissey’s fan base was Chicano without ever questioning what this might mean for their initial assessment of the singer as racist. The story has been around long enough that several Chicano journalists and academics have recently begun pointing out what should always have been obvious: That Chicanos had not suddenly discovered Morrissey. That in Los Angeles, Latinos are not even a minority. According to the 2000 United States census, 44.6 per cent of the total population claim Hispanic or Latino origin while only 31.1 per cent claim white (non Hispanic/ Latino) origin (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Also it’s important to consider that Morrissey was among the most frequently played artists on KROQ radio, whose pioneering modern rock format gave it among the highest listenership in the southern California radio market.2 Principally Morrissey was big with Chicanos because he was given the most exposure in a market where Chicanos were the majority. I say principally because there are other reasons, which I’ll just touch brieﬂy on. These are the reasons that have led to some embarrassingly essentializing statements, 857 and some comically and tragically doomed excursions in search of Morrissey’s Inner Mexican. For a while it seemed only a matter of time before some mad social scientist would scream “Eureka!” upon discovering the Morrissey gene in every Spanish-speaking person worldwide. That said, Morrissey’s, post-Smiths aesthetic direction did (and does) resonate enormously with some groups of Latinos. In 1991-1992 Morrissey signalled a break with the commodiﬁed image of The Smiths by adopting a rockabilly look, hiring a rockabilly band to support him, and, to a lesser degree, developing a rockabilly sound. Your Arsenal, the 1992 record that signalled this break, was not a fey or a twee or in any way a jingle jangle record. Produced by Mick Ronson, the record was loud, the lyrics aggressive and controversial, the overall feel Live at Leeds-era Who. Understandably, many old Smiths fans were bewildered and felt betrayed by this new direction. At the same time, the tougher rockabilly direction played surprising well with a new generation of fans in North America. That record both killed The Smiths, and gave Morrissey, particularly in North America, a new career and a new audience. It’s difﬁcult now to know how many of those fans in California in 1991 and 1992 were Chicano. No one was looking at the audiences, then. But during Morrissey’s 2000-2001 world tour, as many people were Latino hunting as they were watching the stage. Fan reviewers to the unofﬁcial Morrissey Internet home morrissey-solo.com reported that during the California and southwestern United States shows an estimated 75 per cent and upwards of attendees were, or at least looked, Latino (see, for instance, Morrissey-solo 2002). Four years of stories telling Latinos they are genetically programmed to listen to and grow to love Morrissey may have something to do with this, but, again, it’s become hard to pinpoint which came ﬁrst: the phenomenon, or media reports of the phenomenon. In any case Morrissey has become aware of his new audience and increasingly has played to it: Last year, for instance, Morrissey opened a series of stadium shows for Mexican rock en espanol band Los Jaguares; on stage he wore a Mexico belt buckle; during a 2000 swing through Mexico his band appeared in Mariachi outﬁts, tour posters and advertisements for southern California were printed in Spanish, a recent (2000) DVD-only collection of videos was titled Oye Esteban, Stephen being the singer’s long since discarded ﬁrst name; he wrote an anti-maquiladora song called “Mexico,” which is expected to appear on the forthcoming record (see Appendix one); famously, he told one of his audiences “I wish I had been born Mexican.” And, he began his 2002 world tour with three shows in Arizona, including a stop in border town Yuma.3 In a good article that tries to explain why so many of his Chicano friends listen to Morrissey, journalist Gustavo 858 Arellano (2002) wrote in the Orange County Weekly: The most striking similarity, though, is Morrissey’s signature beckoning and embrace of the uncertainty of life and love, something that at ﬁrst glance might seem the opposite of macho Mexican music. But check it out: for all the machismo and virulent existentialism that Mexican music espouses, there is another side—a morbid fascination with getting your heart and dreams broken by others, usually in death. of this, why does Morrissey, matter? Even if there’s space to remember a band that made, depending on how you count them, ﬁve or six very good albums, doesn’t mean, that there’s room for the band’s former singer whose solo offerings stand accused of falling short of the mark set by The Smiths. He can’t – or, at least he shouldn’t – be important now solely because he once was. What I want to argue is that although the aesthetics, the critical popularity, and the fan base of Morrissey may have changed, the singer’s underlying The doomed romantic, and doom generally, are, of course, themes not at all foreign to the Morrissey lyrical canon. Arellano goes on to compare Morrissey’s music to Mexican rancheras. When they’ve been interviewed for the by now dozens of stories on the Morrissey Chicano connection his Chicano fans recite one or more of the reasons I’ve just listed. The responses are often so uniform, it’s very difﬁcult to know if they’re saying what they believe or what they’ve heard or read so many of their peers say. In any case, none of these reasons seem really to explain anything. I mean, if Chicanos like rockabilly why listen to Morrissey? There are lots of things available to Chicanos that sound rockabilly… for instance, rockabilly. The same for rancheras. Pointing to demographics, KROQ and an accidentally Chicano friendly sound is ultimately, and frustratingly, to point back to the question of why? And also, why does any purpose has remained the same. This is important to grasp if we are to understand what it is that has made Morrissey the ﬂame to which successive generations of discontented youth with closeted literary aspirations are, moth-like, attracted anew each year. And why the ardor of the Latino fans is in now way secondary to the passion of the Original Smiths Fans. The video evidence of the two ﬁrst-ever North American Morrissey solo tours – ’91 and ‘’92 – is fairly conclusive proof of this fervor. It shows wave after wave of fans – most of them young men – scrambling over each other, through security and around or over barricades to reach the stage and embrace the singer. The sheer frenzy seems to transcend the mere pop star/ fan relationship. Or rather it surprises us because so seldom do we glimpse what pop should be. As Simon Reynolds (1990) writes, in an article about Morrissey: “Fanaticism is the true experience of pop, 859 not discrimination and broad-mindedness.” Morrissey shows deﬁne fanaticism. They make Beatlemania seem restrained. The statistics are equally amazing. In ’91 Morrissey sold out the Hollywood Bowl in record time, breaking the previous record held by The Beatles (New Musical Express 1992). The point I’m getting it here is that across time (20 years now) and space, his fans have canonized, fetishized, and consumed Morrissey to fantastic degrees. The typical Morrissey fan has used him as the catalyst and inspiration to take control of lives that may otherwise have seemed beyond their control. These fans – the fans Morrissey was trying to cultivate and to whom he intends to communicate – are allowed through him to imagine an identity that does not replace or erase identities ﬁxed by race or space, but that shifts, disrupts and plays with these categories. The degree to which his followers refashion themselves in accordance with their interpretations of his aesthetic and political project is such that for the majority of Morrissey’s intended fans, the primary marker of identity becomes not their ethnicity, not their sexuality – but Morrissey himself. Asked after the release of The Smiths eponymous debut what he thought about popular music, he replied: people’s lives do change because of songs. For the most part products are disposable, but just for that extra one song that changes your direction in life, the importance of popular music cannot be stressed enough. Music is the most important thing in the world (Worral 1983). In May of this year, just prior to the announcement of his signing to Sanctuary, Morrissey put together a compilation of his favourite post-pub songs, the ﬁrst of a new series released by DMC called Under the Inﬂuence: In the liner notes, he complains dramatically, “I am at the mystery of savages who shape radio and television with a dreadful nothingness” (for a listing of the songs selected for the album, please see appendix two). In a much-heralded 2002 appearance on the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, Morrissey responds thus to the host’s prompting about the current state of music: “All executives in the music industry in America should be,” and then words perhaps seeming insufﬁcient to him for the ﬁrst time in his life, he makes a motion with his right arm that the audience interprets and cheers as the universal shorthand for machine gunning to death. In the spring of 2003 Channel 4 in the UK premiered a new documentary about Morrissey – called The It’s a matter of life and death to me. Music affects everybody and I really think it does change the world! Everybody has their favourite song and Importance of Being Morrissey (see Morrissey-solo 2003). In it, U2’s Bono notes that Morrissey requires what he terms ‘friction’, that Morrissey works best on 860 the radio alongside Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit. Morrissey, no doubt, would agree. For the past seven years as fans clamoured for an Internet only release, and indie record labels offered him small deals, he has steadfastly refused to become the head of a fashionably unfashionable secret society, beloved by middle-aged middle managers nostalgic for spent youth. He needs – and he knows he needs – the culture industry to save the world’s youth from the culture industry. As much as his fans love him, he loves more those who are not yet his fans. In a frequently quoted Smiths lyric (“Rubber Ring” 1986). Morrissey admonishes the future selves of his current listeners thus: “don’t forget the songs that made you cry/ and the songs that saved your life/ yes you’re older now and you’re a clever swine, but they were the only ones that ever stood by you.” As touching as it is, the lyric is frequently mobilized wrongly, to promote nostalgia. Which is precisely the opposite of what Morrissey seems to want. Rather than cultivate nostalgia for his former band, he has eschewed it. He has always held out for the chance to be massmediated in a way that does more than just preach to the converted, that reaches outside his audience, to have a shot at inspiring others to be different the same way David Bowie, the New York Dolls, James Dean and hundreds of other mass-mediated rebels inspired him. I’m not trying to portray Morrissey as the leader of some rebel alliance, the only gallant left with the courage to oppose the oppressive regime that has given us American Idol. The list of opponents is long, and millionaire, Porsche-driving Morrissey, who lives in an L.A. mansion next door to Johnny Depp, seems the wrong candidate to lead the indie charge against the corporate recording industry. Yet the consumption of Morrissey by fans all over the world – not just Chicanos – has largely and consistently served as a cultural contestation by people on the margins for a number of reasons – race, gender, sexual preference, class, personal choice. The self-described outsider’s outsider, Morrissey’s canon has been devoted to all those who are, who imagine themselves, or who feel afﬁnity to those who, like the singer himself, consider themselves the world’s maladjusted and un(der)-empowered. When he sang the lyric “I am a living sign” (“Vicar in a Tutu” -1985) he was suggesting much more than a way for his fans to comb their hair. He was signalling that if the son of Irish immigrants to Manchester, a man his childhood friends recall as “that nutter in the corner” could nonetheless re-arrange his identity and his social world through the consumption of mass-mediated artifacts then anyone else could as well (Berens, 1986). In response, members of a variety of groups, all of whom might possibly consider themselves as oppressed have used Morrissey as the cornerstone and cohesive in the construction of imagined identities 861 and imagined communities. Morrissey wants a new audience that loves him for the same reason Smiths fans once did and his Chicano fans still do – not because he was unique, but because his uniqueness symbolizes possibility, hope, a sort of euphoria for life. Mark Simpson, author of the forthcoming book Saint Morrissey, argues that Morrissey’s biggest achievement was in perverting a generation to believe that pop music matters (Select 2000). He did this, no doubt, but I think a far greater achievement was in convincing his audience through pop music that each of them as individuals mattered. Morrissey continues to want to instill in his audience the conﬂict between loathing for what exists and hope for what could be and that however they could they should “throw life’s instructions away.” “This story is old,” Morrissey sang in 1987 (“Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”) when, in fact, the story was relatively fresh, “but it goes on.” If a resurgence in Morrissey provides the singer with more mediated exposure to new markets and new generations, and if youth, wherever they are, whatever their social situation, continue to ﬁnd through him and his music something resembling hope then here’s hoping the story goes on for a long time to come. Endnotes 1. In 1997, the Smiths’ drummer (Mike Joyce) and the bassist (Andy Rourke) won what had been a decadelong legal battle against Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr for an equal share of performance royalties. They argued that they had not been informed that while Morrissey and Marr each received 40 per cent of royalties, they received but 10 per cent each. Arguing that The Smiths were legally only ever Morrissey and Marr, the singer was famously branded by High Court Judge Weeks in his ﬁnal ruling as “devious, truculent, and unreliable.” Rourke settled out of court for British £83,000 in 1989. Joyce was awarded British £1 million. While Marr has paid his half of the award, Morrissey has to date refused to pay, even after having exhausted all avenues of appeal (See, for instance, BBC 1998). The song Sorrow Will Come in the End was omitted on the U.K. version of the record, as the record company feared a libel suit against it from Joyce. The lyrics are included in the ﬁrst appendix, below. 2. Los Angeles’s KROQ radio station pioneered both the “modern rock” and the “alternative” format in North America. Although the station began in 1968, it was during the decade that began in 1978 that the station became known for its new format (Hagie 1998). It success transformed it into a station currently with 862 the second highest audience (12 years plus) share in its market, and its alternative format has been much imitated (Deeken 2003) In 1987, for instance, The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” (from the album Strangeways Here We Come) was the second most played song after The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” (Howard 2003). 2003 from http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_ 788021.html?menu= Arellano, G. (2002). “Their charming man: dispatches from the Latino Morrissey love-in”. in Orange County Weekly, vol 8, no. 2, September 13-19. Retrieved September 17, 2002 from http://www.ocweekly.com/ ink/03/02/cover-arellano.php 3. It is difﬁcult to identify originary sources for much of the evidence offered to support Morrissey’s Mexican connection. Many of the incidents and anecdotes were ﬁrst reported by Morrissey fans to the forum at Morrissey-solo.com. For articles that sum them up, much as this essay itself does, see Arellano 2002; Klosterman 2002. Berens, J. (1986). “Spirit in the dark”. Spin, September. Retrieved December 17, 2001 from http://arcane. morrissey-solo.com/smiths/interviews/1986/spirit.htm 4. U.S. and Canadian versions of The Smiths also included the track “This Charming Man”. Bracewell, M. (1999). “Heaven knows I’m not miserable now”. The Times Magazine, November. 6. Retrieved 5. U.S. and Canadian versions of Meat is Murder also include the track “How Soon is Now?” December 17, 2001 from http://arcane.morrissey-solo. com/moz/interviews/1999/times.htm BBC (1998). “Morrissey misery over court verdict.” BBC News, UK, November 6. Retrieved June 10 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/209224.stm 6. U.S. and Canadian versions of Viva Hate also include the track “Hairdresser on Fire”. CBS (2002). “Interview with Morrissey” on The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn, September 12. Available online from Mrs. Shankly’s mp3/video of the week for loaﬁng oafs. [http://mrsshankly.homestead.com/ﬁles/ Selected Bibliography Ananova (2003) “Morrissey lands ﬁrst album deals for six years.” Ananova, June 6, 2003. Retrieved June 10, currentmp3.html] Retrieved November 1, 2002 from http:// mrsshankly.homestead.com/files/others/kilbornintv.html 863 Cohen (2000) “Morrissey planning U.S. tour.” Billboard Online, January 6. Retrieved June 10 from http://www. morrissey-solo.com/news/2000/770.shtml Morrissey-solo (2002). “Yuma, Az. – Convention Hall (August 11, 2002) Post-show” Morrissey-solo, August 11. Retrieved August 12, 2002 from http://www. morrissey-solo.com/article.pl?sid=02/08/07/164210 Deeken, A. (2003). “Mediaweek Top 50 Market Proﬁles: Los Angeles” in Mediaweek.com: the online news magazine of the media. Retrieved September 12, 2003 from http://www.mediaweek.com/mediaweek/ top50/losangeles.jsp Reynolds, S. (1990). “Miserabilism:Morrissey”. in Reynolds, S. Blissed Out. London: Serpent’s Tail. New Musical Express (1992). August, 22. Hagie, S. (1998). “The Unofﬁcial ALT.FAN.KROQ FAQ History of KROQ” in The Unofﬁcial KROQ Web Page. Retrieved September 12, 2003 from http://www. geocities.com/SiliconValley/1008/kroqhist.html Select Magazine (2000) “Interview with Mark Simpson” Select, July. Available online from marksimpson.com Retrieved October 10, 2000 from http://www.marksimpson.com/pages/select_ interview.html Howard, E. (2003). “KROQ Top 106.7 Countdown of 1987” in Earl Howard.com. Retrieved September 24, 2002 from http://earlhoward.com/kroq_1987.htm Select Magazine (1999) “Untitled”. Select, December. Retrieved February 2, 2002 from http://www.morrissey-solo.com/news/1999/625.shtml Klosterman, C. (2002). “viva Morrissey!”. in Spin, August. 88-92. U.S. Census Bureau (2000). “Los Angeles Country Quick Facts from the U.S. Census Bureau” . U.S. Morrissey-solo (2003). “’The Importance of Being Morrissey’: full transcription (by a Yank)” in Morrisseysolo.com, June 15. Retrieved June 15, 2003 from http:// www.morrissey-solo.com/articles/03/06/13/0246207. shtml Worral, F. (1983). “The cradle snatchers”. Melody Census Bureau. Retrieved September 20, 2002 from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037. html. 864 Maker, September 3. Retrieved December, 13, 2001 from http://arcane.morrissey-solo.com/smiths/ interviews/1983/cradle.htm They just use a different name You lied And you were believed By a J.P. senile and vile Appendix One Lyrics to songs referenced above. “Sorrow Will Come in the End” You pleaded and squealed And you think you’ve won But Sorrow will come To you in the end And as sure as my words are pure I praise the day that brings you pain So don’t close your eyes (Morrissey/ A. Whyte 1997) from the Morrissey album Maladjusted (1997) Legalized theft Leaves me bereft I get it straight in the neck (Somehow expecting no less) A court of justice With no use for Truth Lawyer ...liar Lawyer ...liar You pleaded and squealed And you think you’ve won But Sorrow will come To you in the end And as sure as my words are pure I praise the day that brings you pain Q.C.’s obsessed with sleaze Frantic for Fame They’re all on the game Don’t close your eyes A man who slits throats Has time on his hands And I’m gonna get you So don’t close your eyes Don’t ever close your eyes You think you’ve won OH NO “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” (Morrissey/ Marr) from The Smiths album Strangeways, Here We Come (1987) last night i dreamt that somebody loved me no hope - but no harm just another false alarm 865 last night i felt real arms around me no hope - no harm just another false alarm so, tell me how long before the last one? and tell me how long before the right one? I could sense the hate of the lonestar state And a small voice said, “What can we do?” It seems if you’re rich and you’re white you’ll be alright I just don’t see why this should be so If you’re rich and you’re white this story is old - I KNOW but it goes on this story is old - I KNOW but it goes on “Mexico” you’ll be alright I just don’t see why this should be so In Mexico I lay on the grass and I cried my heart out for want of my love Oh, for want of my love (Morrissey/?) played live during 2002 tour; currently unrecorded, but expected on forthcoming album In Mexico, I went for a walk to inhale the tranquil, cool, lover’s air I could taste a trace of American chemical waste And the small voice said, “What can we do?” Oh, for want of my love It seems if you’re rich and you’re white you think you’re so right I just don’t see why this should be so If you’re rich and you’re white In Mexico I went for a walk to inhale the tranquil, cool, lover’s air then you’ll be OK I just don’t see why this should be so 866 In Mexico, I lay on the grass and I cried my heart out For want of my love “Rubber Ring” And you’re a clever swine But they were the only ones who ever stood by you The passing of time leaves empty lives Waiting to be ﬁlled (the passing ...) The passing of time Leaves empty lives Waiting to be ﬁlled I’m here with the cause I’m holding the torch In the corner of your room Can you hear me ? And when you’re dancing and laughing And ﬁnally living Hear my voice in your head And think of me kindly Do you Love me like you used to? “Vicar in a Tutu” (Morrissey/Marr) from The Smiths’ album Louder Than Bombs (1987) A sad fact widely known The most impassionate song To a lonely soul Is so easily outgrown But don’t forget the songs That made you smile And the songs that made you cry When you lay in awe On the bedroom ﬂoor And said : “Oh, oh, smother me Mother...” The passing of time And all of its crimes Is making me sad again The passing of time And all of its sickening crimes Is making me sad again But don’t forget the songs That made you cry And the songs that saved your life Yes, you’re older now (Morrissey/Marr) from The Smiths’ album The Queen is Dead (1986) I was minding my business Lifting some lead off A roof of a Holy Name church It was worthwhile living a laughable life When I set my eyes on a blistering sight Of a vicar in a tutu He’s not strange 867 He just wants to live his life this way He just wants to live his life this way And I am a living sign A scanty bit of a thing With a decorative ring That wouldn’t cover the head of a child As Rose collects the money in a canister Who comes sliding down the banister But a vicar in a tutu He’s not strange He just wants to live his life this way Appendix Two Discography and Videography of The Smiths and Morrissey The Smiths LPs The Smiths – released February 1984 Reel Around the Fountain/ You’ve Got Everything Now/ Miserable Lie/ Pretty Girls Make Graves/ The Hand The monkish monsignor With his head full of plaster Said : “ My man, get your vile soul dry-cleaned” As Rose collects the money in a canister As natural as rain He dances again and again and again And a vicar in a tutu He’s not strange He just wants to live his life this way that Rocks the Cradle/ Still Ill/ Hand in Glove/ What Difference Does it Make?/ I Don’t Owe You Anything/ Suffer Little Children/This Charming Man Hatful of Hollow – released November 19844 William, It Was Really Nothing/What Difference Does it Make?/ These Things Take Time/ This Charming Man/ How Soon Is Now?/ Handsome Devil/ Hand in Glove/ Still Ill/ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now/ This Night Has Opened My Eyes/ You’ve Got Everything Now/ The next day in the pulpit With freedom and ease Combatting ignorance, dust and disease As Rose collects the money in a canister As natural as rain He dances again He’s not strange Accept Yourself/ Girl Afraid/ Back to the Old House/ Reel Around the Fountain/ Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want Meat is Murder – released February 19855 The Headmaster Ritual/ Rusholme Rufﬁans/ I Want the One I Can’t Have/ What She Said/ That Joke 868 Isn’t Funny Anymore/ Nowhere Fast/ Well I Wonder/ Barbarism Begins at Home/ Meat is Murder Take Time/ Rubber Ring/ Back to the Old House/ Hand in Glove/ Stretch Out and Wait/ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want/ This Night Has Opened My The Queen is Dead – released June 1986 The Queen is Dead/ Frankly, Mr. Shankly/ I Know It’s Over/ Never Had No One Ever/ Cemetry (sic) Gates/ Bigmouth Strikes Again/ The Boy With the Thorn in His Side/ Vicar in a Tutu/ There is a Light That Never Goes Out/ Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others Eyes/ Unloveable/ Asleep Strangeways, Here We Come – released September 1987 A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours/ I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish/ The Death of a Disco Dancer/ Girlfriend in a Coma/ Stop Me if You Think The World Won’t Listen – released March 1987, U.K. only Panic/ Ask/ London/ Bigmouth Strikes Again/ Shakespeare’s Sister/ There is Light That Never Goes Out/ Shoplifters of the World Unite/ The Boy With the Thorn in His Side/ Asleep/ Unloveable/ Half a Person/ Stretch Out and Wait/ That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore/ Oscillate Wildly/ You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby/ Rubber Ring/ (cassette only) Rubber Ring You’ve Heard This One Before/ Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me. Unhappy Birthday/ Paint a Vulgar Picture/ Death at One’s Elbow/ I Won’t Share You Rank (Live – recorded at the National Ballroom, Kilburn, West London, October 1986) – released September 1988 The Queen is Dead/ Panic/ Vicar in a Tutu/ Ask/ Rusholme Rufﬁans/ The Boy With the Thorn in His Louder Than Bombs – released April 1987, North America only Is It Really So Strange?/ Sheila Take a Bow/ Shoplifters of the World Unite/ Sweet and Tender Hooligan/ Half a Person/ London/ Panic/ Girl Afraid/ Shakespeare’s Sister/ William, It Was Really Nothing/ You Just Haven’t Earned it Yet, Baby/ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now/ Ask/ Golden Lights/ Oscillate Wildly/ These Things Side/ What She Said/ Is it Really so Strange?/ Cemetry Gates/ London/ I Know it’s Over/ The Draize Train/ Still Ill/ Bigmouth Strikes Again …Best I – released August 1992 This Charming Man/ William, it Was Really Nothing/ What Difference Does it Make?/ Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/ Girlfriend in a Coma/ 869 Half a Person/ Rubber Ring/ How Soon is Now?/ Hand in Glove/ Shoplifters of the World Unite/ Sheila Take a Bow/ Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others/ Panic/ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want Again / How Soon Is Now? / This Charming Man / What Difference Does It Make? / William It Was Really Nothing / Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others / Girlfriend In A Coma / Hand In Glove / There Is A Light That Never Goes Out / Please Please Please Let Me Get What I …Best II – released November 1992 The Boy With the Thorn in His Side/ The Headmaster Ritual/ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now/ Ask/ Oscillate Wildly/ Nowhere Fast/ Still Ill/ Bigmouth Strikes Again/ That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore/ Shakespeare’s Sister/ Girl Afraid/ Reel Around the Fountain/ Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me/ There Is a Light That Never Goes Out Want / That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore / I Know It’s Over / Sheila Take A Bow / I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish / Still Ill / Shakespeare’s Sister / Shoplifters Of The World Unite / Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me / Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before Morrissey LPs Viva Hate6– released March 1988 Singles – released May 1995 Hand In Glove/ This Charming Man/ What Difference Does It Make?/ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now/ William, It Was Really Nothing/ How Soon Is Now?/ Shakespeare’s Sister/ That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore/ The Boy With The Thorn In His Side/ Bigmouth Strikes Again/ Panic/ Ask/ Shoplifters of the World Unite/ Sheila Take a Bow/ Girlfriend In A Coma/ I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish/ Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me/ There Is a Light That Never Goes Out Bona Drag – released October 1990 Picadilly Palare/ Interesting Drug/ November Spawned a Monster/ Will Never Marry/ Such a Little Thing Makes Such a Big Difference/ The Last of the Famous Very Best of… – released June 2001, U.K. only Panic / The Boy With The Thorn In His Side / Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now / Ask / Bigmouth Strikes International Playboys/ Ouija Board, Ouija Board/ Hairdresser on Fire/ Everyday Is Like Sunday/ He Knows I’d Love to See Him/ Yes, I Am Blind/ Lucky Alsatian Cousin/ Little Man, What Now?/ Everyday is Like Sunday/ Bengali in Platforms/ Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together/ Late Night, Maudlin Street/ Suedehead/ Break Up the Family/ The Ordinary Boys/ I Don’t Mind if You Forget Me/ Dial-A-Cliché/ Margaret on the Guillotine 870 Lisp/ Suedehead/ Disappointed Side/ Glamorous Glue/ We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful Kill Uncle – released March 1991 Our Frank/ Asian Rut/ Sing Your Life/ Mute Witness/ King Leer/ Found Found Found/ Driving Your Girlfriend Home/ The Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye/ (I’m) The End of the Family Line/ There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends Vauxhall and I – released March 1994 Now My Heart is Full/ Spring-Heeled Jim/ Billy Budd/ Hold On to Your Friends/ The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get/ Why Don’t You Find Out for Yourself/ I Am Hated For Loving/ Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning/ Used to Be a Sweet Boy/ The Lazy Sunbathers/ Speedway Your Arsenal – released July 1992 You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side/ Glamorous Glue/ We’ll Let You Know/ The National Front Disco/ Certain People I Know/ We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful/ You’re the One for Me, Fatty/ Seaskick, Yet Still Docked/ I Know it’s Gonna Happen Someday/ Tomorrow World Of… – released February 1995 Whatever Happens, I Love You/ Billy Budd/ Jack the Ripper/ Have-A-Go Merchant/ The Loop/ Sister I’m A Poet/ You’re the One for Me, Fatty/ Boxers/ Moon River/ My Love Life/ Certain People I Know/ The Last of The Famous International Playboys/ We’ll Let You Beethoven Was Deaf (Live – recorded at the Zenith, Paris, December 22, 1992) –released May 1993, U.K. only You’re the One for Me, Fatty/ Certain People I Know/ National Front Disco/ November Spawned a Monster/ Seasick, Yet Still Docked/ The Loop/ Sister I’m a Poet/ Jack the Ripper/ Such a Little Thing Makes Such a Big Difference/ I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday/ We’ll Let You Know/ Suedehead/ He Knows I’d Love to See Him/ You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Maladjusted – released August 1997 Maladjusted/ Alma Matters/ Ambitious Outsiders/ Southpaw Grammar – released August 1995 The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils/ Reader Meet Author/ The Boy Racer/ The Operation/ Dagenham Dave/ Do Your Best and Don’t Worry/ Best Friend on the Payroll/ Southpaw Know/ Spring-Heeled Jim 871 Trouble Loves Me/ Papa Jack/ Ammunition/ Wide To Receive/ Roy’s Keen/ He Cried/ Sorrow Will Come In The End/ Satan Rejected My Soul Is Like Sunday/ Sister I’m A Poet/ Disappointed/ Will Never Marry/ The Last Of The Famous International Playboys/ Lucky Lisp/ Michael’s Bones/ Interesting Drug/ Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference/ Sweet The Best Of… – released September 1997, U.K. only Suedehead/ Sunny/ Boxers/ Tomorrow/ Interlude/ Everyday Is Like Sunday/ That’s Entertainment/ Hold On To Your Friends/ My Love Life/ Interesting Drug/ Our Frank/ Picadilly Palare/ Ouija Board, Ouija Board/ You’re the One for Me, Fatty/ We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful/ The Last of the Famous International Playboys/ Pregnant for the Last Time/ November Spawned a Monster/ The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get And Tender Hooligan/ Ouija Board, Ouija Board/ Yes, I Am Blind/ East West/ November Spawned A Monster/ He Knows I’d Like To See Him/ Girl Least Likely To/ Piccadilly Palare/ Get Off The Stage/ At Amber/ Our Frank/ Journalists Who Lie/ Tony The Pony/ Sing Your Life (Album Version)/ That’s Entertainment/ The Loop/ Pregnant For The Last Time/ Skin Storm/ Cosmic Dancer/ Disappointed CD Singles Box 1991-1995, vol. 2 – released September 2001, U.K. and Europe only My Love Life/ I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty/ There’s My Early Burglary Years – released September 1998 Sunny/ At Amber/ Cosmic Dancer/ Nobody Loves Us/ A Swallow On My Neck/ Sister, I’m A Poet/ Black-eyed Susan/ Michael’s Bones/ I’d Love To/ Reader Meet Author/ Pashernate Love/ Girl Least Likely To/ Jack The Ripper/ I’ve Changed My Plea to Guilty/ The Boy Racer/ Boxers A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends/ We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful/ Suedehead (Live)/ I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty (Live)/ Pregnant For The Last Time (Live)/ Alsatian Cousin (Live)/ You’re The One For Me Fatty/ Pashernate Love/ There Speaks A True Friend/ Certain People I Know/ You’ve Had Her/ Jack The Ripper/ The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get/ Used To Be A Sweet Boy/ I’d Love To/ Hold On CD Singles Box 1988-1991, vol. 1 – released July 2000, U.K. and Europe only Suedehead/ I Know Very Well How I Got My Name/ Hairdresser On Fire/ Oh Well, I’ll Never Learn/ Everyday To Your Friends/ Moonriver/ Moonriver (Extended)/ Interlude/ Interlude (Extended)/ Interlude (Inst.)/ Boxers/ Have-A-Go Merchant/ Whatever Happens, I Love You/ Sunny/ Black Eyed Susan/ Swallow On My Neck 872 Best Of… – released November 2001 The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get/ Suedehead/ Everyday Is Like Sunday/ Glamorous Glue/ Do Your Best And Don’t Worry/ November Spawned a Monster/ The Last of the Famous International Playboys/ Sing Your Life/ Hairdresser On Fire/ Interesting Drug/ Certain People I Know/ Now My Heart is Full/ I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday/ Sunny/ Alma Matters/ Hold On To Your Friends/ Sister I’m A Poet/ Disappointed/ Tomorrow/ Lost Fether, J. (Producer) & O’Brien, J. (Director). (1996). Introducing Morrissey. [Film]. (Available from Warner Reprise Video) Morrissey (Performer) 2000. ¡Oye Esteban! [Music videos ; DVD only] (Available from Warner Reprise Video) Morrissey (Performer). (1992). Morrissey: The malady lingers on. [Music videos]. (Available from Warner Reprise Video) Under the Inﬂuence… - released May 2003 album compiled by Morrissey for DMC Records 1. ‘Saturday Night Special’-Lesa Cormier & The Sundown Playboys/ 2. ‘Trash’-The New York Dolls/ 3. ‘Woodpecker Rock’-Nat Couty/ 4. ‘So Little Time’Diana Dors/ 5. ‘Breaking The Rules’-Ludus/ 6. ‘One Hand Loose’-Charlie Feathers/ 7. ‘Great Horse’Tyrannosaurus Rex/ 8. ‘(There Goes) The Forgotten Man’-Jimmy Radcliff/ 9. ‘De Castrow’-Jaybee Wasden/ 10. ‘Judy Is A Punk’-Ramones/ 11. ‘Arts & Crafts Spectacular’-Sparks. . ‘Swan Lake’-The Cats/ 13. ‘All That Is My Own’-Nico/ 14. ‘Hey Joe’-Patti Smith/ 15. ‘Death’-Klaus Nomi Morrissey (Performer) 1992. Live in Dallas. [Live concert recorded Dallas Starplex Amphitheatre, June 17, 1991]. (Available from Warner Reprise Video) Morrissey Videography Broad, T. (Director). (1990). Morrissey: Hulmerist. [Film]. (Available from Warner Reprise Video) IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Bu Vatan Bizim” [“This Land is Ours”]: Nationalism in Turkish Rap in Diaspora and in the Homeland Thomas Solomon practiced by members of the Turkish “guestworker” [Gastarbeiter] community especially in, but not limited to, the cities of Berlin and Frankfurt (Diesel 2001; Kaya 2001; Robins and Morley 1996).(1) Rappers who use the Turkish language are also active in Holland, Switzerland, England, and the United States. In Europe, especially in Germany, Turkish hip-hop was created in a context of socio-cultural marginality, reﬂecting very real experiences of racism and social exclusion (Çag˘lar 1995; Çınar 2001; Kaya 2001; Robins and Morley 1996). Turkish hip-hop nationalism must be understood in this context, where the hyper-nationalism and tough stance are rhetorical devices deployed in response to physical and psychological attacks by neo-Nazis and other xenophobic, racist far-right groups. An example of this kind of reactive discourse in Turkish rap from Germany is the song “Defol Dazlak” (“Piss Off, Skinhead”) by the group Karakan Turkish-language rap and hip-hop is a transnational movement. Accounts of the history of Turkish rap describe how it started not in Turkey, but in Germany, (“Blackblood”) from Nürnberg. This is an early song from one of the groups that would later be part of the well-known Cartel project, which I will discuss Introduction A number of writers have discussed Black nationalism in African-American rap (Allen 1996, Decker 1994, Gardell 1998, Zook 1992). A relatively new area of study is nationalist discourse in rap music outside the U.S. Some of the papers in Tony Mitchell’s edited volume Global Noise (2001) open up this area of inquiry (see especially the paper by Urla [2001]). This paper is intended to be a case study on nationalist discourse in Turkish rap. I compare explicitly nationalist Turkish rap lyrics by rappers living both in Turkey and in the Turkish diaspora in Germany, and I suggest that there are both similarities and differences between nationalist discourses in Turkish rap in songs from these two different settings. Turkish rap in the Turkish diaspora 874 Defol dazlak gözüm görmesin seni Sevmem zaten senin milletini Dilini tipini s¸u sog˘uk ülkeni Defol çekil git duymayayım sesini Köpekler gibi sürüde gezersin Ama bana satas¸ırsan yumrug˘u yersin Sag˘ sol sag˘ bir tane tekme Kel kafa bizi yahudi zannetme Biz Türküz ya özgürüz ya ölürüz Kimin kimi kovacag˘ını görürüz Yıkıl önümden tiksindim sizden Ne oldug˘unuz belli tarihinizden Salak dazlak bak elimde tabanca Kafamı bozarsan sıkarım alnına Yıllardır sizden çektig˘im yeter S¸imdi geberteceg˘im sizi teker teker Piss off skinhead! get out of here! I don’t like your kind Your language, your type, this cold country of yours Piss off, go away, leave, I don’t want to hear you Like dogs you cruise in a pack But if you provoke me, I’ll smack you Right, left, right, and a kick Bald head, don’t think we’re Jews We’re Türks, we’re free or we die We’ll see who’ll kick who out Get out of my way, you all make me sick Who you are is clear from your history Stupid skinhead, look there’s a gun in my hand If you piss me off, I’ll ﬁre at your forehead I’ve had enough of putting up with you for years Now I’m going to rub you all out one by one Chorus: Defol defol defol defol Defol dazlak gözüm görmesin seni Defol defol defol defol Sevmem zaten senin milletini ... further below. Over an aggressive-sounding sample from Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady,” the two members of the group rap angrily about taking revenge on neo-Nazis who attack Turks living in Germany. While the majority of songs by German-Turkish rappers using nationalist discourse can be characterized Piss off, piss off, piss off, piss off Piss off skinhead! get out of here! Piss off, piss off, piss off, piss off I don’t like your kind ... as invoking cultural and political nationalism, a few groups, such as Frankfurt-based Sert Müslümanlar, whose name translates as “Tough Muslims,” make an Islamic religious identity part of their discourse as well. This is at least in part an “ethnicized” Islam (Swedenburg 2001:57, 77) or “cultural Muslim identity” 875 (Kaya 2001:159, Vertovec 1998:101), with what Alex Hargreaves describes as “affective identiﬁcation with doctrinal detachment” (1995:121, quoted in Vertovec and Rogers 1998:2), “making their Muslim identity more a matter of culture than religion” (Vertovec and Rogers 1995:18). An example of this is the song [depressed speaking voice:] Ah gurbet ah Yaktın harcadın bizi Suçumuz neydi? Müslümanlıg˘ımız mı? Türklüg˘ümüz mü? Yoksa insanlıg˘ımız mı? Allah rahmet eylesin Oh, living away from the homeland, oh You’ve ruined us, you’ve done us in What was our fault? Our being Muslim? Our being Turks? Or was it our being human? May God have mercy [agitated speaking voice, sounds of large ﬁre and a crowd:] Ölenler kalbimizde yas¸ıyor Yavrularım yanıyor! Kurturan yok mu? Yardım eden yok mu? I˙nsanlık bu mu? Yavrularım yanıyor! [sobs] The dead go on living in our hearts My children are burning! Can no one save them? Can no one help? Is this humanity? My children are burning [sobs] [rap:] Bizler Müslüman kardes¸iz, kardes¸iz Hep beraber olup gavurları yeneriz Ne haber getirdin gene bana? Ey Müslüman nöbette kim buralarda? Al eline tabancayı çık dıs¸arı [onomatopoeia] tabancayı çek Cek çek çek çek Acıma hepsini vur tek tek ... We are Muslim brothers, we’re brothers Together we’ll defeat the unbelievers What news have you brought me again? Hey Muslim, who’s standing guard here? Get your pistol and go outside [onomatopoeia] draw your gun Draw it, draw it, draw it, draw it Don’t feel sorry, shoot them one by one ... 876 “Solingen,” about attacks on German Turks by neoNazis, speciﬁcally the ﬁrebombing of a house in Solingen in May 1993 in which ﬁve Turkish citizens were killed — three girls ages 4, 9 and 12, and two women ages 18 and 27. In this song, as the group’s name suggests, the rappers equate Turkish identity with Muslim identity, and suggest that the unity of a shared Muslim identity is a way to ﬁnd strength. Related to the idea of an Islamic identity is the desire of some rappers to show solidarity with Turkish and Muslim minorities elsewhere in Europe, both diasporic and indigenous. Examples of this are Sert Müslümanlar’s song “Bosna” (“Bosnia”) about the state of the Muslim minority there during the 1990s Balkan wars, and the title song of the German-Turkish group Bovdead-R’s cassette Kosova Dramı (“The Tragedy of Kosova”). This idea of solidarity among Muslim minority Stances such as the one taken in this song are understandable, given that “European Muslim youth identities are often forged in reaction to negative and essentialist representations of both Islam and migrants” (Vertovec and Rogers 1998:15). Such a “strong ‘Muslim’ identity … often does not necessarily entail an enhanced knowledge of Islam nor an increased participation in religious activity” (Vertovec 1998:101). Besides the more general appeal to a Muslim cultural identity, however, songs like these are speciﬁc to the experiences of Turks living in Germany, especially the second generation born and brought up there in the 1970s and 1980s. Making rap is for these young people a practice for the creation of diasporic identities, as they negotiate through rap both their understanding of their place in German society and their relationships with the homeland of Turkey (Çınar 2001; Kaya 1996, 2001). peoples may also be invoked in calls for unity of the different ethnic groups living within the Turkish state. A number of songs make this quite explicit, listing the ethnic groups Turk, Kurd, Laz, and Circassian and calling for members of these different groups to work together to move the Turkish state forward. This call for unity can be heard in Sert Müslümanlar’s song “Bu Vatan Bizim” (“This Land is Ours”), in which the group criticizes the civil war in the predominantly Kurdish region of southeast Turkey, saying that the Kurdish versus Turkish conﬂict is a conﬂict of brother against brother, and that the land belongs to all the peoples living there. Absent, however, in this call for unity in diversity under the banner of the Turkish state is speciﬁc inclusion of Jews and Christian minorities that remain in Turkey such as Greeks, Armenians, and Syriacs. One line in the song reminds the listener that the 9th of September 877 Verse 1: Hey sen kulag˘ını aç beni dinle Saygısızlık yapma sakın nesline Kanında var senin yıldızla hilal Ulu önderimiz Mustafa Kemal Ondokuz Mayıs bin dokuz yüz ondokuz I˙stiklal savas¸ını bas¸latıyoruz Türk, Kürt, Çerkez ve Lazlar Düs¸manı Anadolu’dan söküp atarlar Dokuz Eylül I˙zmir’e bayram olur I˙çimizde sevinç, alnımızda gurur Unutma bu toprak kanla yog˘ruldu Bu ülke kaç kan verilipte kuruldu O zaman bu s¸iddet bu kavga niye? Bütün dünya gülüyor halimize Kardes¸, düs¸man olamaz kardes¸e Farkında deg˘il misin? kurs¸unun ailene Bizim düs¸manımız sınırlar dıs¸ında Yag˘ sürüyoruz ekmeg˘ine as¸ına Var artık sende bunu farkına Barıs¸ içinde devam edelim yolumuza Teknik ve bilim, iyi yetis¸elim Avrupa’yı sollayıp ezipte geçelim Kardes¸e yas¸amayı artık ög˘renelim Yararına olmaz kavga kimsenin Hey you, listen up, listen to me! Don’t disrespect our race The crescent moon and star are in your blood The leader of our nation is Mustafa Kemal On the 19th of May, 1919 We’re starting the war of independence Turk, Kurd, Circassian and Laz Uproot the enemy and throw him out of Anatolia The 9th of September is Izmir’s holiday The joy inside of us, the pride on our brow Don’t forget that this land was kneaded with blood So much blood was given when this country was founded So why this violence, why this ﬁght? The world is laughing at our plight A brother shouldn’t ﬁght with his brother Don’t you realize it? your bullet is pointed at your family Our enemy is outside our borders We’re making it easy for them You should understand this Let’s continue down our road in peace With technology and science, let’s grow up well Let’s pass up Europe and defeat it Let’s teach our brother how to live Fighting beneﬁts nobody Chorus: Bu vatan bizim, hepimizin This land is ours, it belongs to all of us 878 Bu vatan bizim, kıymetini bilelim Bu vatan bizim, hepimizin Kemig˘i sızlamasın s¸ehitlerimizin This land is ours, let’s appreciate it This land is ours, it belongs to all of us May the bones of our martyrs not ache Verse 2: Ezan sesleriyle çınlayan bu vatan Altında binlerce s¸ehit kefensiz yatan Yok dünyada güzellikte rakip olan … is a special day for the Turkish city of Izmir. This holiday commemorates the day, in 1922 during the Turkish war of independence, that the Turks pushed back an invading Greek army and entered Izmir (Greek Smyrna), on the Aegean coast. Including this line in the song is not just an assertion of the territorial integrity of the Turkish state, but can also be seen as a sort of thumbing the nose at the very small Greek minority that remains in Turkey today. Another song by Sert Müslümanlar, “Allah’u Ekber Bizlere Güç Ver” (“God is Great, Give us Strength”), makes this idea of Muslim brotherhood even more explicit, evoking not just the Kurds as belonging to the wider Muslim community, but also the two main branches of Islam in Turkey, the Sunni and Alevi. The Alevi are a heterodox Islamic sect and quasi-ethnic group in Turkey. Like other Shi’a, they regard Ali as the ﬁrst rightful heir to Muhammed. But their form of Islam incorporates numerous heterodox religious practices, with devotional rituals including music and dance, that It is especially signiﬁcant that in this song from the mid 1990s the group should make it a point to stress that the Alevi and the Sunni are brothers. This song came shortly after an incident in July 1993 that became known as the Sivas Massacre. In the Anatolian town of Sivas a large group of Alevi intellectuals had gathered for a conference. After Friday prayers, a crowd of Sunni protesters gathered at the hotel where the conference participants were staying and set it ablaze, killing 37 people, including Alevi intellectuals, writers and artists. The Sunnidominated local police and emergency services stood by, without rendering aid to those trapped This country, reverberating with the sound of the call to prayer Under it thousands of martyrs lying without burial shrouds Its beauty has no rival in the world … ultimately have their origins in central Asian pre-Islamic shamanistic practices. For these and other reasons, they are often regarded with suspicion by the majority Sunni. It is estimated there are 20-26 million Alevis in Turkey (Clarke 1999:2), roughly one third of the population, including a large number of Kurdish Alevis. 879 [Song begins with sound of call to prayer, overlayed with the sound of machine gun ﬁre.] Chorus: Allah’u ekber bizlere güç ver Allah’u ekber Müslümanlara güç ver God is great, give us strength God is great, give Muslims strength Verse: Bundan sonra Müslümanlar için konus¸uyor Pa pa pa Müslüman olmaya bak Bırakalım savas¸ı yas¸ayalım insan gibi Bu senin sonuncu s¸ansın kaçırayım deme sakın Bırakalım bu pis silahları elimizden Hepimize sesleniyorum ve lütfen Kürt, Alevi, Sünn-i kardes¸iz hepimiz çünkü Kardes¸ kardes¸i öldürmekten zevk mi alıyon? Sen bu yaptıklarından hiç mi utanmıyon? Ne oldu bize giris¸iyoruz birbirimize? Biraz düs¸ün tas¸ın gebereceksin belki yarın Evlerde çoluk çocug˘unuz bekliyor Babamız ne zaman geliyor diye ag˘lıyor Çocug˘u babasız mı bırakmak istiyon? ... in the hotel. This incident, as well as others in the city of Istanbul in 1995, had the result of raising consciousness about the distinctness of Turkish Alevi identity both in Turkey and in the Turkish Alevi disapora, especially in Germany (Kaya 1998; Olsson et al. 1998). The call for unity in diversity of ethnic groups in Turkey This is spoken for Muslims Bang bang bang, look what it’s like being a Muslim Let’s abandon the war, let’s live like humans This is your last chance, don’t miss it Let’s leave these ﬁlthy weapons behind I’m talking to all of us and please Because Kurd, Alevi, Sunni, we’re all brothers Does a brother take pleasure in killing his brother? Aren’t you embarassed by what you’ve done? What has happened to us, that we’re ﬁghting? Thing about it carefully, you could die tomorrow Your wife and children are waiting at home “When is father coming home?” they’re crying Do you want to leave your children fatherless? … is not always phrased in terms of a common religion, however. In their song “Kan Kardes¸ler” (“Blood Brothers”), which appeared on the Cartel album, Karakan name the same four ethnic groups — Turk, Kurd, Laz and Circassian — that Sert Müslümanlar name in “Bu Vatan Bizim,” but without making any reference to Islam. 880 Türk, Kürt, Laz ve Çerkez Ayrımcılık yaparsak kaybedeceg˘iz Uyan artık katıl sen de Cartel’e ... Besides explicitly nationalist content in song lyrics, Turkish nationalism is also sometimes evoked in the musical backing tracks over which rappers deliver their lyrics. Besides using samples and motifs from Turkish folk and pop music — which while indexing Turkish identity are generally politically neutral, or at best ambiguous — Turkish rap producers sometimes use musical motifs from the mehter Ottoman military band (also known as the “janissary band”) repertoire. This music has been embraced by Turkish ultra-nationalists in Turkey as an emblem of Turkish national identity, since it recalls the days of Turkish power and glory during the Ottoman Empire. As one Turkish friend of mine remarked, “The fascists love that music.” An example of this is the title track from Sert Müslümanlar’s album Ay Yıldız Yıkılmayacak (“The Crescent Moon and Star [the Turkish ﬂag] Won’t Be Brought Down”), in which the main musical motif is the melody of the mehter march “Ceddin Deden,” played on a block ﬂute. For the cassette release in Turkey of another one of this group’s albums, Dönelim Vatana, the Turkish record company licensing the album from Germany also included on the cassette as an extra track an instrumental techno dance arrangement of this same mehter march. This suggests that the record company thought that listeners of Sert Turk, Kurd, Laz and Circassian If we separate we’ll lose Wake up and join with Cartel ... Müslümanlar’s nationalist raps would also appreciate this techno version of mehter music. From diaspora to homeland Since the mid 1990s, Turkish rap made in Europe has spread back to the homeland itself, and a two-way ﬂow of people, recordings, and information has continued between the homeland and the diaspora. Rappers from Europe come to Turkey to perform, and may do guest spots on recordings by rappers based in Turkey, and the latter likewise perform abroad, especially in Germany. Rappers in Turkey thus get ideas and practices not only directly from U.S. rappers, but also as mediated through Turkish rappers in Europe, especially Germany. While there had been some hip-hop related activity in Turkey before 1995, hip-hop and rap really took off in Turkey that year. It was in August of 1995 that the German-Turkish rap project Cartel came to Turkey for a concert tour to support their album. Cartel’s cultural nationalism was intended to address the condition of Turks in Germany, but was not intended to be ultra-nationalist to the point of fascism. The members of Cartel made it clear in their song lyrics and in interviews they gave to the Turkish 881 Defol dazlak dedik [tarrag˘ı](3) yedik Biz Türküz deyince fas¸ist bilindik media that their defense of Turks in Germany was part of a larger project against all ultra-nationalism, but this ﬁner point was missed or ignored by many, and Cartel’s aggressive music was embraced by Turkish ultra-nationalists who directed their own anger toward separatist Kurdish movements in Turkey (Cheesman 1998:202-203; Çınar 1999, 2001; Diesel 2001; Kaya 2001:183-185; Robins and Morley 1996; Stokes 2003).(2) Like many other German-Turkish rappers, the members of Cartel were explicitly against antagonism between ethnic Turks and Kurds (Kaya 2001:185-186), and one of its members was in fact a Kurd. At least one of the groups participating in the Cartel project, Karakan, had encountered this same problem of being misunderstood as ultra-nationalist in Germany, even before they came to Turkey as part of the Cartel tour. In “Kan Kardes¸ler,” one of their songs on the Cartel album, they complained about how their defense of Turkish rights in Germany in songs like the above-discussed “Defol Dazlak” had been mistaken there for fascism. The songs on the Cartel album introduced Turkish-language rap, and the idea of Turkish nationalism in rap, to a new group of young people in Turkey who quickly adopted the idea of making rap in Turkish. Inspired largely the media-hyped tour We said “piss off, skinhead” and we got fucked We said “we’re Turks” and they thought we were fascists of Cartel, the Turkish rap movement in Turkey grew rapidly in the late 1990s. But in this “second wave” of Turkish rap, rappers in Turkey transformed Cartel’s progressive cultural nationalism (Kaya 2001:182-188) into a reactionary political nationalism incorporating a distinctly Turkish cultural racism (Belge 1995:129), which regards with deep suspicion anyone living within the borders of the Turkish state who does not identify as an ethnic Turk. When Turkish rappers in Turkey adopt nationalist attitudes in their lyrics, it becomes not a defense of the rights of an oppressed population of minority Turks within Germany, but an attack directed at groups within Turkey itself who do not necessarily identify themselves as ethnic Turks, e.g. Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, etc. This can especially be seen in the different attitudes shown by rappers in Germany and Turkey toward the Kurds and the civil war in southeast Turkey that began in 1984 and continued through the 1990s. In contrast to the German-Turkish rappers’ calls for peace, that brother should not ﬁght against brother, as in the songs discussed above, rappers in Turkey tend to adopt a militant stance, cheering on the Turkish soldiers and asserting that the separatists will be defeated militarily. Turkish rappers in Turkey insist that “vatan bölünmez” — “the motherland won’t be partitioned” — 882 speciﬁcally dismissing Kurdish separatists’ aspirations for a separate state of Kurdistan, which would include a sizable chunk of southeastern Turkey. The very words “Kurd” or “Kurdish” do not, as far as I know, appear in any Turkish rap lyrics made in Turkey, though references to the armed conﬂict in the southeast of the country may be otherwise quite explicit. Not using the ethnic label may be from a desire not to give the “enemy” the satisfaction of naming them, but it may also be a holdover from the time when to use these words (and also, especially, the word “Kurdistan”) was forbidden in public discourse in Turkey. The song “Vatan” (“Motherland”) from 1998, a collaboration between several groups, illustrates this. Over a musical sample from a wistful ballad by the famous Turkish songstress Sezen Aksu, the raps move ... Bizanslı s¸as¸ırma, sabrımı tas¸ırma Geliyor sille Türk rap’inden suratına Kartal gibi havalanırım göklere Gökler benim, ay-yıldız benim simgem Affedemem vatanıma yanlıs¸ yapanı Otuz bin askerin canını alanı Hatırası var s¸ehidin unutmadım Yapılanların hepsini hatırladım Gözümün önünde ag˘layan bir küçük çocuk “Baba” diyor babasının künyesine Mezar tas¸ına sarılmıs¸ neden niye? Sordum bunu kendime ... from warnings to ﬁgurative “Byzantines” (understood to be bad guys here, since the Turkic founders of the Ottoman Empire conquered the historical Byzantines in 1453) to references to contemporary armed conﬂict in language drawing on that typically used to talk about the civil war in the southeast. The number thirty thousand used in the song is the number usually ofﬁcially given for the number of people killed in the ﬁghting in the southeast (not all of them actually Turkish soldiers, as the rapper disingenuously claims). Like many nationalist Turkish raps made in Germany, this verse, written and rapped by a Turk living in Turkey (in this case, the Izmir-based rapper Yener), invokes the ay-yıldız, the crescent moon and star of the Turkish ﬂag. But while this kind of evocation serves as ... You Byzantine, don’t be mistaken, don’t try my patience A slap is coming to your face from Turkish rap I take wing like an eagle The skies are mine, the moon-star is my symbol I can’t forgive someone who makes a mistake towards my land Who takes the life of thirty thousand soldiers The martyrs’ memory lives on, I haven’t forgotten I remember everything done There is a little child crying in front of me Calling “Daddy” to his father’s identiﬁcation tag He hugs the gravestone, why? I asked myself this ... 883 a way for German Turks to assert national identity and community pride in a foreign context, when performed in Turkey it has the effect of excluding those living within Turkey who might identify with the symbols of other nations. Similarly militant discourse can be found in the song “Türküz Hepimiz” (“We’re All Turks”) by the Istanbul rapper Kahin. When he says “We’re All Turks,” at ﬁrst it may look like a call for brotherhood similar to that of the German-Turkish rappers discussed above, but it quickly becomes clear in the song that the rapper takes for granted the hegemony of a mono-ethnic Turkish state in which loyalties to no other ethnic groups will be tolerated. One ﬁnal example will put this discussion back in a larger European context, though in a different way from that in which I started. In Istanbul rapper Umut Ertek’s “I˙talya Duy Sesimizi” (“Italy, Listen to Us!”), the rapper delivers an angry rap over a beat using Turkish percussion reminiscent of belly-dance music. This song refers to events in late 1998. Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdish separatist group PKK, turned up in Rome in November 1998 and requested political Verse 1: Türkiye’min toprag˘ı bir bütün bölunmez Ay yıldızlı bayrak dalgalanır inmez The land of my Turkey is a whole, it will not be divided The ﬂag with the crescent moon and star waves, it will not come down Deneyenler oldu da Mehmetçik önünde Vermedi yinede s¸ehit düs¸se bile Dualarda bas¸ladı asker yolculug˘u Kanlı bir pusuydu mezarlıg˘ın yolu Karlı dag˘lar arasında çatıs¸malar içinde Elbet bitecekti bu is¸in sonu Even when some tried, Turkish soldiers stopped them They didn’t give it up, even if they died as martyrs for the country The soldiers’ journey started with a prayer The road to the grave was a bloody ambush In skirmishes in the snowy mountains Of course this has to end Chorus: Türküz biz hepimiz ay yıldızsa simgemiz Vatan borcu ug˘runa ölen s¸ehitlerimiz Gözü yas¸lı analar bekler asker yolunda Tek bir söz ag˘ızlarda: “Feda olsun vatana” ... We’re all Türks, the crescent moon and star is our symbol For the sake of duty to the country, our martyrs dying Mothers wait teary-eyed for their soldier Just saying this: “It’s worth the sacriﬁce, for the motherland” ... 884 Chorus: Türkiye Türkiye Türkiye Türkiye I˙talya duy sesimizi Turkey, Turkey Turkey, Turkey Italy, listen to us! Verse: Dog˘udan batıya bölünmez Türkiye Küçükten büyüg˘e verelim el ele Kaç s¸ehit verdik biz bu vatana Ne olursa olsun vatan sag˘olsun I˙talya I˙talya duy sesimizi Bu gelen sesler halkın sesi Vatanı bölmek isteyenler kırılsın elleri Halk çile çekti bu olay bitmedi Türkiye bölünmez s¸ehit asla ölmez Kan kırmızı bayrag˘ım Feda olsun bu canım Bos¸una ug˘ras¸mayın bölünmez bu vatanın Aksa da kanım, koyulas¸ır bayrag˘ım ... asylum in Italy. Turkey immediately demanded Öcalan’s extradition, but Italy refused, as Italian law prohibits extradition to countries that have the death penalty.(4) The rapper uses the familiar imagery of the ﬂag and martyrdom for the country, and reminds Italy, and whatever other countries he perceives might be sympathetic to the Kurdish desire for self-determination, that the country will not be divided. I don’t want to give the impression that all Turkish rappers rap constantly on nationalist themes. Many rappers studiously avoid this topic entirely. Two contrasting examples of non-nationalist rappers are Istanbul DJ and rapper Mic Check of the “one-man group” Silahsız Kuvvet (“Unarmed Forces”), whose Conclusions From east to west, Turkey will not be divided From children to adults, let’s work hand in hand We’ve given so many martyrs to this land Whatever happens, bless the motherland Italy, Italy, listen to us! This sound coming is the voice of the people May the hands of those who want to divide the land be broken The people are suffering, this trouble isn’t over yet Turkey will not be partitioned, martyrs never really die My ﬂag is blood-red May my life be sacriﬁced for it Don’t struggle in vain, this land won’t be partitioned If my blood ﬂows, my ﬂag gets darker ... 885 rapped social commentary stays away from nationalist themes, and Ankara rapper MC Ender, who solidly sticks to the party rap and mack rap genres. Nationalist rap has, however, become a distinct genre within the larger ﬁeld of Turkish rap. While there are obvious parallels with the Black nationalist rap of American rappers associated with the Nation of Islam and its splinter group the Five Percent Nation (Decker 1994, Gardell 1998), Turkish nationalist rappers don’t draw directly on the symbolism developed by NOI rappers. Rather, they invoke images and situations speciﬁc to their experiences, such as the Turkish ﬂag, the words of the Turkish national anthem, the civil war in southeastern Turkey, etc. In conclusion, I want to suggest that there is not just a single “nationalist” position or discourse in Turkish rap. Rather, rappers take many different approaches to nationalism, both in the diaspora and in the homeland itself. Rappers may take, among others, cultural nationalist approaches or political nationalist approaches. Their songs may be inclusive or exclusive of identities other than ethnic Turk. They may or may not evoke a shared Muslim religious identity as part of the Turkish identity they construct in their songs. I would further suggest that these different approaches are the result of the speciﬁcity of individual rappers’ experiences and subjectivities, though this needs to be further explored through not just the discussion of songs as media texts as I have done here, but through an ethnographic approach engaging with these rappers as individuals through interviews. 886 3. This word is partially bleeped on the recording. The Endnotes Note on orthography: The Turkish alphabet contains several characters not included in the character sets of most standard fonts. This is further complicated by differences between keyboard mappings used by different fonts and computing platforms (i.e. Windows and Apple Macintosh). Following the practice often used on Turkish-language websites, for this CD-ROM publication, in the Turkish texts in this article I have used the following substitutions: I˙ for the “capital I with a dot over it,” g˘ for lower case “soft g,” and S¸ and s¸ respectively for upper and lower case “s with a cedilla under it.” expression I’ve translated “we got fucked” literally means in Turkish “we ate dick.” 4. Öcalan left Italy in January 1999 for an undisclosed location; he was apprehended in Kenya the following month and turned over to Turkish authorities who brought him back to Turkey for trial. References Ag˘aog˘ulları, Mehmet Ali. 1987. “The Ultranationalist Right.” In Turkey in Transition: New Perspectives, edited by Irvin C. Schick and Ertug˘rul Ahmet Tonak, 177-217. New York: Oxford University Press. Allen, Ernest, Jr. 1996. “Making the Strong Survive: 1. 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Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Müzik [cassette]. 1999. Ertek, Umut, “I˙talya Duy Sesimizi,” Adım Adım Türk Urla, Jacqueline. 2001. “’We Are All Malcom X!’: Negu Gorriak, Hip-Hop, and the Basque Political Imaginary.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, edited by Tony Mitchell, 171-193. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Kahin, “Türküz Hepimiz,” [Various Artists,] Underaposse. Umut Plak. 2002. Rap. Kanbay Müzik Üretim 21017 [cassette]. n.d. [1999 ?]. Vertovec, Steven. 1998. “Young Muslims in Keighley, West Yorkshire: Cultural Identity, Context, and ‘Community.’” In Muslim European Youth: Reproducing Ethnicity, Religion, Culture, edited by Steven Vertovec and Alisdair Rogers, 87-101. Aldershot: Ashgate. Karakan, “Defol Dazlak,” on King Size Terror, Ultimatum. Blunt Records 51000-222. 1994. Karakan, “Kan Kardes¸ler,” Cartel. Mercury. 1995. Nefret/Yener/Statik/Ses, Vatan [single]. Istanbul Vertovec, Steven and Alisdair Rogers. 1998. “Introduction.” In Muslim European Youth: Reproducing Ethnicity, Religion, Culture, edited by Steven Vertovec and Alisdair Rogers, 1-24. Aldershot: Ashgate. Sert Müslümanlar, “Ay Yıldız Yıkılmayacak,” “Bosna,” “Solingen,” Ay Yıldız Yıkılmayacak. At-Ek Müzik Yapım [cassette]. 2000 [re-release in Turkey of an album ﬁrst Zook, Kristal Brent. 1992. “Reconstructions of Nationalist Thought in Black Music and Culture.” In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo, 255-266. Boston: South End Press. Sert Müslümanlar, “Bu Vatan Bizim,” “Mehter Mars¸ı (Techno),” Dönelim Vatana. released in Germany in the mid-1990s]. Underground Records. n.d. [1998]. Discography Bovdead-R, “Kosova Dramı,” Kosova Dramı. Modem At-Ek Müzik Yapım [cassette]. 2000 [re-release in Turkey of an album ﬁrst released in Germany in the mid-1990s]. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Making Sense of MIDEM Richard Sutherland involved one might reasonably expect MIDEM to be a high-proﬁle, glitzy event and yet, unlike famous counterpart, the Cannes Film Festival. But although it has a certain measure of glamour and is far from secret, it attracts relatively little attention outside the music business. Nor does it involve the larger part of the business—the ﬁve or six major multinational labels are conspicuous in their near absence here. Introduction F irst, I should start with some background. The acronym MIDEM stands for le Marché International du disque, de l’edition musicale (although it now incorporates music video as well). MIDEM is a trade fair for the music industry, arguably the most prominent internationally. An annual event, it usually takes place over ﬁve days towards the end of January in Cannes, France. Since it began in 1967, the event has grown in popularity and last year attracted over eight thousand participants from about 90 countries (midem.com), down somewhat from its peak in the late 1990s when it regularly attracted over 10,000. MIDEM is a music market for the buying and selling of music—not actual records, but rights-to recordings, music publishing, distribution and licensing. And while it includes a number of elements: conferences, seminars, artist showcases and receptions, the focus, the heart of MIDEM is what the name suggests, the market which takes place on the trade show ﬂoor of the Palais du Festivals, as well as in the restaurants, bars and hotel rooms of Cannes and the surrounding region. Within the independent music sector the event is widely known and regarded as the premier event of its kind. But few outside the industry have ever even heard of MIDEM. The most obvious reason for this is that there are relatively few attractions for those who aren’t directly involved in the music business. The entrance fee is high—minimally several hundred dollars (more for an exhibitor)—and the travel and hotel costs make MIDEM too expensive to attend casually. The concerts are small, often restricted only to delegates and there are only a few by well-known artists. In fact, recording artists in general are not much of a presence at MIDEM and without them there’s little here of interest to the fan or the popular press. Nobody really comes to MIDEM to see the showcases and few pay attention to Given its location and the nature of the business the showcase lineups when planning their time here. 891 Rather, to quote a recent Billboard article, participants “need to know who’s going, what they’re selling and what they’re buying.” (“Let’s Make a Deal”) There are a number of things that are interesting about MIDEM. First, the event offers us a site to look at some of the activities that constitute working in the business of music and the way in which those who do understand One might expect that with such a concentration of people from the music industry that aspiring recording artists would come to hand out demos and get heard by the right people. However, there’s little of that either. Certainly, there are many tapes or discs handed out and a great deal of acquisition of masters and recordings for release but for the most part everything is handled by various agents or intermediaries—go-betweens as Bourdieu calls them (1993). In fact, what’s most surprising about MIDEM in general is how extraneous music and musicians seem to be in the whole event. these activities. This is underscored by the way in which MIDEM presents itself and is thought of by those in the industry. In addition I think MIDEM is especially useful as a window into the nature of independent music companies and the place they occupy in the industry. I don’t think I can exhaust the possibilities for analysis offered by MIDEM here but I will try to look at its main features: the dominance of independents and the marginal status of artists. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1986, 1993) a number of authors, notably Antoine Hennion (1983, Perhaps there’s a comparison to be made with our present situation: a conference which is ostensibly about popular music but spent in giving and listening to papers on the subject. Musical activity here is also relegated to the evenings; music is the subject but it’s not the point, not the purpose of the gathering. The same goes for MIDEM, even though what is being bought and sold there is music. MIDEM is about the music industry, not about music itself. If we understand that, we can begin to look at what function MIDEM can serve for its clientele and why marginalizing artists serves a necessary function for the event and its participants. 1989), Negus (1992, 1999, 2002) have highlighted the importance of looking at the music industry as a cultural mediator. Negus in particular emphasizes the distance between production and consumption which is the space that the cultural industries occupy (2002). The music industry concerns itself with both production and consumption but its center lies somewhere between the two. MIDEM highlights this because what goes on here is neither production nor consumption, at least not as we would usually think of them. MIDEM is in the middle of the process. As such, it is the natural habitat of the middleman, the cultural intermediary. MIDEM 892 affords us an opportunity to look at the some of the practices that deﬁne this role separate from those aspects more directly concerned with either production or consumption. Talking Up MIDEM: ‘High Commerce, High Culture, High Living’ high costs) are meant to ensure that nearly everybody in attendance is an active participant in some way. MIDEM might be usefully compared with the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is another international gathering of yet another cultural industry (publishing), and has also been noted for its emphasis on the industry rather than Trade fairs are gatherings of businesses based around unifying factors such as geographical location or a common industry. They are usually a peculiar mix of business and pleasure, much like a county fair, except that the line between the carnies and the customers is much less marked. Trade fairs are also interesting in themselves in that they constitute a sort of special event for workers in an industry. Certainly such gatherings are presented as useful business venues and no doubt they are. But they are also outside the daily round; they constitute a kind of festival as well, with opportunities to socialize and to reafﬁrm one’s participation in a larger industry. They are sites of display, as well as of exchange and at a certain level they celebrate the industries of which they are part. As a trade fair MIDEM partakes in all these things. Even in an industry which would seem to offer more than the usual amount of glamour day to day, MIDEM is a special event. It is a place of business, liberally mixed with pleasure. But unlike a country fair, there are few if any pure spectators there, the conditions that govern attendance (the lack of attractions and the the creator. In a short piece on the book fair, Martin Amis (1993) describes the atmosphere of Frankfurt, somewhat facetiously as at once “an event of scarcely conceivable glamour”, “a clearing-house for ideas, for creativity, for the exchange of geopolitical truths” and “the arena of super-deals, of mega-business”: “a vertex of high commerce, high culture and high living” (pp. 127-128). Much of what Amis has to say about Frankfurt can be usefully applied to the way MIDEM is discussed as well (even down to details such as the “weary regretful air” of past participants when reminiscing about it or the propensity of the super elite to eschew the exhibition hall in favour of suites at the luxury hotels). This is very much the type of descpription which both MIDEM the organization and its participants use to present the experience to the outside world. The ‘high culture’ is most apparent in the self-important tone set by the Reed-MIDEM Organization. From 893 the bunker-like ediﬁce of the Palais des Festivals, the uniformed hostesses who greet and register participants, the tight security and photo ID the ﬁrst impression one might take away is extremely serious earthbound airline. Access to the Palais is tightly restricted and to enter one must run the gauntlet of dozens of security guards. Even inside the apparatus of the trade show is always highly visible. MIDEM as an entity never fades into the background, retaining a fairly central presence in ordering and shaping the event. MIDEM’s literature on itself is fairly pompous, even by trade fair standards. This from the organization’s CEO Xavier Roy on the occasion of the event’s 30th anniversary. Evidently, there’s an emphasis on the international here and an identiﬁcation with the music industry as a global one. But when the organization isn’t celebrating itself quite so overtly there’s a clearer appeal to what it sees as its purpose and its market. “To expand your business, you need contacts. To ﬁnd new business, you need contacts. To spot hot new acts and trends for your territory, you need contacts. Welcome to MIDEM..” (MIDEM Organisation. http://www.midem.com About MIDEM) Likewise, participants’ representations are shorter on grandiloquence. Instead they focus on the ‘high-living’ “The unique capacity of MIDEM to bring together all facets of the global music industry has made a signal contribution to its international expansion and development. MIDEM has enormously facilitated the industry’s internationalisation…” (MIDEM ‘96, p. 11) Or try this statement. and ‘high-commerce’ aspects, alternating between fondly recalling the hedonistic possibilities of the event and recommending a no-nonsense business attitude, consisting of meticulous preparation, unwavering focus and perpetual movement (“wear comfortable shoes” is a recurring piece of advice). (Billboard “Deal”) Here is a description of Canada’s quintessential MIDEM participant, Al Mair of Attic Records, from Tom Silverman “I believe that MIDEM is an event which has given a new and highly signiﬁcant meaning to the term “world music”…” (Ibid.) of Tommy Boy Records (an accomplished MIDEM veteran himself) nicely combines both aspects. The classic image of Al is 11:30 AM, the fourth 894 day of MIDEM at the Canadian stand, after four, eighteen-hour days of schmoozing. His eyes are pinned open but still twitching (lest he miss a potential deal) and his hands are trembling from shaking 7,648 hands. But the third cup of espresso is just kicking in. He’s gonna make it. (p.43, Attic Records) Silverman is clearly suggesting that all this partying, wining and dining is actually hard work and serious business. Moreover, one gets the sense that if you ultiply Al Mair by 7,648 you will have a good sense of the general atmosphere that prevails at MIDEM. Doing Deals speciﬁcally around the conditions of the deal: how high is the royalty? How big is the advance? But there are also concerns about the partners themselves. For the buyer it’s crucial that the seller actually has the right to sell the master or title in question. For the seller It’s important to make sure that a potential partner has a good track record and with the ability to properly exploit the product and maximize revenues. International partners must be chosen with care. Many of the other points are similar to those found in recording contracts such as reserves, the percentage of the sales base, auditing provisions, the length of the agreement, the territory and, of course, the actual recordings involved. The scope of the agreement may What emerges from various descriptions of MIDEM, including this one, is the primary importance of the “deal.” The deal constitutes the focus of all the networking that goes on at MIDEM and is the basis for most of the relationships that develop there. This is what MIDEM is for. The deal is a transaction between the buyers and sellers of rights to music in various forms: compositions, masters and so on. The motivation is fairly clear: for the seller, to increase the market for your product by ﬁnding foreign distribution-for the buyer, to acquire potentially commercial material for sale in your own market. In purely business terms, there are a number of considerations that go into ﬁnding the right partner. Many of these focus cover only a speciﬁc recording or it may cover the entire output of a label. Another set of considerations involves the disposition of the rights and ancillary revenues from the recording such as mechanical royalties, neighbouring rights or performing rights, not to mention the right to license the master for use in ﬁlm, television or commercials within the territory? All this points to the complex arrangements covered by the term “deal.” But, less formally, a deal also establishes a relationship with another company. It becomes the basis for a number or overlapping distribution networks throughout the world and as we said this has immediate practical value for the independent record company. 895 The deal is a perfect example of a transaction that lies at the center of the mediation process carried on by the music industry. This is why it’s also at the heart of an event like MIDEM. The deal is neither about production or consumption. The artistic aims of the producer or artist are not concerns here. The agreement has little to do with the conditions under which the title or master is to be produced; this has already been done beforehand. The seller may have been involved in its production but this is usually not the case and is extraneous to her role here. Nor is the buyer the consumer. Consumption has not yet taken place and there are still a few steps yet to go in the before we reach the consumer. The buyer may, in line with Hennion’s description of many music industry professionals (1983), stand in for the consumer by anticipating demand and tastes but this isn’t the same thing. What motivates the buyer at MIDEM is the music’s commercial potential, which is not at all what motivates the actual consumer. would involve a stronger presence for the artists) nor, even less, a site of consumption (which would entail having more venues for the fans). This is why the artists, and even music itself, so often seem to take a backseat at the event. Mediation and Legitimacy While attending MIDEM isn’t strictly necessary in order to carry on international business it does provide a good deal of practical value as a convenient forum for meeting potential licensees or licensors from most parts of the world. In fact, the activity carried on at MIDEM is probably best understood as an intensiﬁed and more spectacular version of the kind of activity the industry carries on all the time. The music industry is structured by agreements and contracts of this kind, between artists and labels, labels and distributors, distributors and subdistributors, publishers and songwriters. Negotiating the ways and means in which music will be distributed, packaged, used and paid for is the industry’s function. The deal merely establishes some of the conditions under which certain musical commodities are distributed or brought from producer to consumer. It directly concerns only those in mediation, which is the essential function of the music industry. As a result, an event like MIDEM, which is for and about the music industry rather than music, naturally privileges this kind of activity. MIDEM is neither a site for production (which Establishing and maintaining relationships between the parties in these agreements or between labels and the media is another aspect of this. Given the centrality to the industry of agreements and relationships rather than practices of either production or consumption, MIDEM is not so much a departure from the industry’s normal business but an 896 intensiﬁcation of it. Highlighting the role of the cultural intermediary through the transaction of the deal is also a way of celebrating the industry itself. In celebrating and privileging the mediating function of the recording industry, events like MIDEM serve to legitimate the industry and its function. serious players in the music industry and because one aspires to that status oneself. Marginalizing artists and fans is also part of this, an exclusionary practice that is meant to establish the credentials of the participants as bona ﬁde music industry professionals, different from artists and certainly more than mere fans. More importantly, MIDEM helps to legitimate its participants. At one level it establishes them as independent record companies with the stature to think and, to some extent, to operate on an international level. This also helps them to establish legitimacy at home with artists and distributors - with artists because it suggests they can at least begin to give them international exposure, with distributors because it may broaden the scope of their client’s catalogue and help make money. The question of legitimacy as a concern for cultural industries derives in large part from discussions of legitimacy in art, the commodity in which these industries trade. Pierre Bourdieu in particular has been important for raising legitimacy as a central concern for artistic production. For Bourdieu, artistic legitimacy is manufactured according to the conventions and rules by which a particular ﬁeld of cultural production operates (including commercial consdiderations). Legitimacy resides not only in the artist and the work but is constantly borrowed from or conferred by cultural MIDEM’s own legitimacy as a forum for international business is closely intertwined with its participants’ need for legitimacy. The event’s value is directly related to the calibre of its participants; its target is also its product. For MIDEM to work, the participants have to believe in themselves and each other as serious businesses. Without this, the dealmaking and networking that make up almost all of the activity here could not proceed because there would be no perceived value in pursuing it. If one attends MIDEM, it is to make contact with intermediaries, who themselves borrow credibility, on credit as it were, through their own associations with other established artists or intermediaries. It is the network of relationships comprising the whole ﬁeld of production that maintains this legitimacy, rather than any particular ﬁgure within it (Bourdieu, 1993). This suggests that for the cultural intermediary, the extent to which they are connected to the ﬁeld as a whole is very much their stock in trade. Events such 897 as MIDEM or Frankfurt play on this on a practical and symbolic level by providing not only a means to establish relationships with a wider sphere of contacts within the recording industry but also by announcing themselves as such. Attendance at MIDEM, as we have suggested is supposed to make you someone worth being connected with. subordinate to commercial success. I don’t say this to suggest that the industry is against art, simply that as an industry its primary concerns will for the most part be commercial. One’s credibility in the popular music industry then is related to achieving commercial success. And for the most part achieving such success means using Bourdieu’s ideas on artistic legitimacy are useful in pointing out the importance of one’s relation to the entire ﬁeld of production and of the importance of commercial considerations in legitimacy but in other aspects his theory is inadequate to describe many of industries involved in popular culture. Discussing, ‘high’ art pursuits such as literature and ﬁne art, Bourdieu identiﬁes the disguising of commercial interest as an important rule in these particular ﬁelds. But as Hennion (1982, 1989) has pointed out in the ﬁeld of production constituted by the popular music industry legitimacy is conceived often quite explicitly in terms of commercial success, not in ‘pure’ artistic terms (however, impure Bourdieu may show such terms to be). the machinery of the industry to good effect - having in place the necessary distribution and promotional networks that provide access to consumers, as well as having access to material, the songs or recordings, that will appeal to them. Such networks cannot guarantee success but they are without a doubt necessary. As a cultural intermediary it is one’s access to these networks that allows for the possibility of success. And, again, it is this kind of access, through establishing such networks via deals that MIDEM is meant to give its participants. The Precariousness of the Independent This brings us to another important aspect of MIDEM, which is its domination by independents. It’s easy to It’s undeniable that even in the popular music industry, artistic legitimation is a concern but this is, I think, conﬁned to the outside - to production and consumption. For some artists and some fans, it’s an issue but within the the industry itself, such concerns are almost always explain the near absence of the major labels. They constitute in themselves the kinds of international distribution networks that participants at MIDEM are trying to construct. MIDEM has little to offer the major labels on either a practical or symbolic basis. There may be a 898 need for legitimation on a personal level but this operates within the corporate structure of these companies. The majors themselves don’t have that issue as businesses and those who work for them can also borrow from the credibility which size brings. at best. With such a precarious position in a business as volatile as the music industry the status of an independent is always somewhat in doubt in a very real sense. The need to build distribution networks through deals and agreements is tightly linked with the need to demonstrate this connectedness, to afﬁrm one’s status On the other hand what MIDEM offers independents is an opportunity to construct an international distribution framework. There are more than a few independent labels who rely on international distribution or foreign material to be viable companies. And unlike the major labels who can rely on an existing international network both to acquire and distribute material, independents must rely on a series of relationships with their various counterparts in other territories to accomplish the same tasks. This is the event’s practical signiﬁcance but its importance within the industry isn’t simply a result of its utility. MIDEM isn’t strictly necessary for achieving international distribution and it would hard to credit the notion that independents channel all their activities of this kind into ﬁve days every January. Much of MIDEM’s importance is ritual. as a signiﬁcant player in the business. Such legitimation is key, as Bourdieu suggests, to their ability to function effectively as mediators. I hope this goes some way toward explaining some of the peculiar features of MIDEM-why an event populated for the most part by independent music companiess displays such a relentlessly commercial and commodiﬁed face. Both Negus (1992) and Hesmondhalgh (1998) have questioned common perceptions that independent labels are generally more authentic, less commercially motivated than their major label counterparts. The tone and purpose of a predominantly independent event such as MIDEM is yet more evidence of an equally commercial motivation among these smaller labels. Half an hour at MIDEM would be enough to dispel the notion in any And rituals matter, because they can help identify and reinforce a sense of community and of belonging in the international music industry. This is particularly important and problematic for independent labels. Independents are somewhat marginal within the industry, accounting collectively for only about 10-15% of the total market case. Far from it, MIDEM has perhaps less emphasis on artists and more on business than many of the major labels’ sales conventions because for independents it’s precisely their ability and credibility as businesses that is at issue. 899 Antimusicology of the Pop Song” in Popular Music 3. Edited Selected Bibliography Amicone, Michael. “MIDEM U.S. Indies Proﬁt From Face-toFace Deals” Billboard, 0062510, 1/19/2002, Vol. 114, Issue 3 by R. Middleton and D. Horn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hennion, Antoine. “An Intermediary Between Production and Consumption: The Producer of Popular Music” Translated and Adapted by Geoff Bowker. Science, Technology and Human Values 14, 4: 400-424. 1989. Amis, Martin. “Frankfurt” in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1993. Attic Music Group. Caught in the Attic: 20 Successful Years (CD Booklet). Toronto: Attic Music Group, 1993. Hesmondhalgh, David. “The British dance music industry: a case study of independent cultural production” British Billboard Magazine. “Let’s Make a Deal: Who’s buying and selling at MIDEM 2002” Billboard, 00062510, 1/19/2002, Vol. 114, Issue 3 MIDEM Organisation. Thirty Years of Music, Thirty Years of MIDEM. Paris: Reed-Midem Group, 1996. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Production of Belief’ Translated by Richard Nice. in The Field of Cultural Production. Edited and Introduced by Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Negus, Keith. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. Clark-Meads, Jeff, Pride, Dominic. “29th MIDEM Boasts a Record Year” Billboard, 00062510, 2/18/95, Vol. 107, Issue 7 Negus, Keith. Producing Pop. London: Edward Arnold, Duffy, Thom. “International Execs Declare Their ‘Indie Advantage’ During Tough Times” Billboard, 00062510, 1/19/2002, Vol. 114, Issue 3. Negus, Keith. “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries and the Enduring Distance Between Production and Hennion, Antoine. “The Production of Success: An Consumption” Cultural Studies 16, 4: 501-515. 2002. 1992. London: Routledge, 1999. MIDEM Organisation. MIDEM. http://www.midem.com. Accessed July 2, 2003. Journal of Sociology, 49, 2: 234-251, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Spinning Feminism: Feminism in the Media Coverage of Destiny’s Child Samantha C. Thrift I n the center of the full-page article on the pop/R&B group, Destiny’s Child, is a large image of three, feminist group. The following analysis shows that a variety of ‘replacement words’ are used to describe the Feminism articulated by Destiny’s Child (i.e., in their lyrics & interviews) – words such as ‘Girl Power,’ ‘Empowerment,’ ‘Independence,’ and ‘Strength.’ I argue that the choice to use these replacement words resonates with the backlash-inspired distancing from the feminist label, as epitomized by the caveat “I’m not a feminist, but…” Since replacement words are much less politically loaded than the ‘f’-word, the coverage does not challenge the patriarchal status quo directly – instead, it covertly articulates what are quintessentially (mainstream) feminist principles. The media’s consistent use of alternate terminology indicates that in popular music culture, feminism exists in absentia, deﬁned by what it is not, rather than what it is. In the coverage of Destiny’s Child, ‘feminism’ signiﬁes something Other than women’s ‘independence,’ ‘empowerment,’ and ‘strength.’ (1) Girl Power attractive young women wearing bikini tops and broad smiles. The bold headline proclaims: “We are girl group, hear us roar.” In italicized print running above the headline, the paper announces that, “Destiny’s Child have come clean. They are feminists, but not in a man-hating kind of way.” The photograph’s caption announces, “Girl empowerment: Destiny’s Child’s Kelly Rowland, Beyoncé Knowles and Michelle Williams” (Mechling D8). Move over, Helen Reddy – Destiny’s Child is in the house. And yet, the media’s positioning of Destiny’s Child as the new faces of feminism feels a bit uncomfortable. Are the hot-pant wearing, bratopped women of this group the representative faces of contemporary feminism? This paper stems from a larger project that considers how feminism is articulated in popular culture, as evidenced by a case study of Destiny’s Child. And while ‘popular culture’s’ articulation of ‘feminism’ is a joint effort between Destiny’s Child’s texts and the media discourses surrounding them, this paper focuses speciﬁcally on the negotiations over feminist meaning that occur as a result of consistently-made semantic choices in media coverage of the self-identiﬁed ‘Girl power’ is used in association with the current batch of youthful female pop performers who market their sexuality as a sign of their empowerment and maturity. 901 Originally, girl power was targeted at a pre-teen audience who were sold a message – by the Spice Girls – that being unique and individual was liberating. Those who embrace the term, posit that young girls and women will use this lite-version of feminist politics as a segue to a more full-blown Feminist identiﬁcation. Sheila Whiteley remarks that, “[t]heir emphasis on ‘being who you wanna’ has demonstrably shaped the experience of their young fans…[T]hey have presented a more pragmatic and practical side of feminism…” (227). However, ‘pragmatism and practicality’ of girl power as a feminist mantra does not extend to its concomitant wardrobe, as the mantra became part and parcel of the bare midriffs and up-to-there skirts worn by the Spice Girls and other teen idols. Now, ‘girl power’ tends to refer to the hypersexualized performances of female pop stars. In one example, the wet-lipped and smokyeyed singers grace the cover of a teen magazine. The urgent, yellow letters running underneath them proclaim, “girl power: they rock!” (16 cover). If one were to replace the references to ‘girl power’ with the word ‘feminism,’ the headlines would seem unrealistic, even laughable, because of the very different meanings feminism and girl power communicate in contemporary pop culture. Although girl power is commonly assumed to be comparable to (if less grown-up than) women’s empowerment, the phrase has effectively eliminated ‘feminism’ from popular vernacular and disclaimed feminism’s complexity and history. Popular media hold up the infantilizing mantra of ‘girl power’ as a panacea for the feminism being sought by young girls and women. In the end, girl power constitutes a simpler, less political version of its big sister, Feminism. Only two excerpts in the coverage question the sexually charged context of girl power. These are the voices that most clearly articulate the manifest link between girl power and hypersexualized pop performances by women. In an Edmonton Journal newspaper article, Saenz-Harris states that, “[a] decade ago, Selena was considered provocative, with her skin-tight pants and glittery bra tops. But Destiny’s Child, Britney, Christina, and J. Lo make Selena look conservative. These young women exude a sexy star power that they call ‘girl power’” (Saenz Harris F1). In addition, a Montreal journalist notes that, [t]o many young girls, empowerment’s new face was popularized not by feminists but by the pop group Spice Girls, who donned platform shoes and miniskirts and spouted Girl Power to a mostly pre-teen audience. The catchy phrase caught on as a mantra for young girls, clearing the way for teen idols like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Destiny’s Child. (Capeloto A1) As pop culture’s version of feminism, girl power allows 902 performers and their emulating fans to occupy two, opposing cultural spheres at once: girls and women can strive to conform to the mould of ideal femininity wrought by patriarchal culture, while paying lip service to feminist principles of independence and empowerment. Empowerment meaning shifts with the term. Clearly, ‘empowerment’ does not carry the same political baggage as ‘feminism.’ Moreover, through its association with sexualized femininity, in pop music the notion of women’s empowerment has altered signiﬁcantly. Where once it referred to women’s political and economic equality, it now points to a paradigm in which women enact conventional performances of sexual desirability seemingly of their own volition. As Saenz Harris states, “[t]ake, for instance, the role models offered by the pop music world. Its biggest female stars, in the guise of female empowerment, equate sexual power with strength and success.” (F1) The combined factors of sexual packaging and empowered rhetoric culminate in a clear, albeit deceptive, message to fans: female power is sexual power. Independence The media’s use of the term ‘empowerment’ in their coverage of Destiny’s Child comes closest to denoting traditionally feminist politics of all the terms discussed here. The majority of the references to empowerment are positive, as they describe the appeal DC holds for young female fans. For instance, one reporter observes that, “young women […] appreciate D-Child’s ability to combine ﬂagrant sensuality with sisterly empowerment.” (Gold F4) Another notes that, “[DC’s] lyrics have been embraced by women who don’t usually look to pop songs for injections of empowerment.” (Mechling D8) Last, in the example cited earlier, “[t]o many young girls, empowerment’s new face was popularized not by feminists but by the pop group Spice Girls…” (Capeloto A1) This ﬁnal example in particular, explicitly correlates empowerment and feminism, since it connects feminists with the promotion of women’s empowerment. However, the media’s use of the term empowerment instead of ‘feminism’ is not a one-for-one trade: the Given the runaway success of Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women Part I,” it may be said that the young trio has reinvigorated the appeal of being ‘independent’ for a generation of women. Heavily associated with the sensual appeal of Destiny’s Child, women’s independence is recast as a sexy commodity. For example, Destiny’s Child grace the cover of teenStyle magazine’s Fourth of July issue. Wearing patriotic, shiny, sequined bikini tops that contrast with their expanses of softly muted skin tones, the women casually gaze at the viewer, while the caption 903 shouts, “Destiny’s Child: Celebrating Independence.” The media conveys an image of sexualized independence, thus harnessing the subversive potential of women’s economic, social, and political independence – a move that echoes the high degree of sexualization subsuming ‘girl power’ and ‘empowerment.’ For the most part, the members of Destiny’s Child express politically correct and prescriptive deﬁnitions of their ‘independence’: For what their responses lack in originality, they make up for in earnestness. The members of Destiny’s Child heartily embrace their position as role models for young women. Here, they articulate admirable qualities that girls probably should emulate. If taken to heart, Destiny’s Child give young girls tacit permission to be assertive, opinionated, intelligent and industrious, while managing not to upset the predominant gender order. Questions about Destiny’s Child’s independence also revolve around its consequences for male/female “‘We believe that women should have respect for themselves and demand respect from other people. If men call you names, you should be able to stick up for yourself and be independent. There’s nothing wrong with being independent.’” (Beyoncé in Women Who Rock 33) [How do you deﬁne an independent woman?] [Beyoncé] ‘A young lady who has her own ideas, her own mind. Someone who works really hard. Someone with strength, goals, respect for herself. She knows what she wants and works hard to achieve whatever that is.’ [Michelle] ‘Someone who isn’t scared to share her beliefs with the whole entire world.’ [Kelly] ‘Spiritual, conﬁdent, has a beautiful heart, and is smart – mind, body and soul.’ (Khidekel and Rosenberg 113) interaction and create a forum in which DC reassures fans that they do not subvert the dominant, heteronormative paradigm. In this example, the women of DC articulate a reassuringly heterosexual discourse, when asked, [Q] With the songs ‘Survivor’ and ‘Independent Women,’ do you think you might intimidate men a bit? [Kelly] ‘No. I think if anything they should be happy that we are independent women and we don’t have to depend on them for anything and everything. […]’ [Beyoncé] ‘When you listen to this album, there’s not one song that talks badly about guys. Guys are our friends. Destiny’s Child have experienced love and some good guys, so they’re being written about.’ (www.bbc.co.uk/totp/artists) 904 Beyoncé’s quick assurances that the group members like men (love them even) identify an unstated tension existing at the intersection of heterosexuality and female independence. Anti-feminist theories express concern regarding the extent to which women will go to claim their independence, insinuating that women’s independence denotes compulsory homosexuality. Time and again, interviewers’ questions frame Destiny’s Child’s feminism as a potential threat to the heterosexual norm, thus setting the stage for DC’s reassuring responses. Strength The performers’ bodies are not exempt from the media’s strength discourse, most probably because their bodies are inscribed with visible signs of strength. Several excerpts refer to the strenuous physical regimen the women undertake, enumerating their accomplishments: 500 sit-ups, thirty minutes of treadmill, nine hours of dance practice, and so on. During interviews, Beyonce, Kelly, and Michelle have referred to their strong bodies and the motivations for developing them as such: … Don’t even get them started on muscle tone. ‘We’re gonna start jogging and doing sit-ups, so by the next video we can have big muscles,’ plans Beyoncé. ‘We want to be like Tina Turner.’ She lifts up a leg. ‘My legs are kind of muscular, but the rest of me is not.’ ‘Oh, hush, Beyoncé’ says Kelly. ‘She’s a brick house’ (Dunn 58). A woman’s well-developed musculature bespeaks her power and discipline – her body literally becomes ‘empowered.’ In this reading, the power and discipline shown by women is admirable insofar as it is directed inward, her energies channeled toward her ‘self-improvement.’ The chiseled physique is held tight and narrow by the invisible corsetry of ideal feminine performance. As is evident in nearly all their videos, however, the ‘strong woman’ needs not only a ﬂawlessly muscular body, but also a pleasingly Media texts frequently use the term ‘strong’ to describe DC’s image and gender politics in a positive and approving light. In terms of a feminist politics, the word is used to evoke a ‘strong woman’ type, wherein the feminine remains highly disciplined: emotionally, physically, and mentally. For instance, readers are told that DC’s voices perform “calisthenics,” “melismatic gymnastics,” and “muscular harmonizing.” Their songs have “ever-present strong woman anthems” that should “make you feel good and strong” (www.bbc.co.uk/totp/artists). The New York Times is sympathetic to Destiny’s Child’s feminism, stating that “…femininity is still being reconﬁgured to make sense when [women] show such strength…Serious muscle is required to compete for the limited, if increasing, spots women still can claim” (Power 1). 905 feminine shape. The covert heteronormativity of this uncompromised and conventional femininity is underscored by Beyonce’s comments, which soften the impact of the ‘strong woman’ type Destiny’s Child has come to embody: means you stand up for women. Destiny’s Child deﬁnitely does that.’ (Kot) In previous interviews, the group have denied being feminists, saying they don’t want to be mistaken for man-haters. But they clear that up and say that in the proper sense of the word, they are in fact feminists. ‘We understand what feminism means to us,’ says Beyoncé, ‘it means speaking up for women.’ (Mechling D8) These last two excerpts exemplify the struggle over the meanings of ‘feminism.’ Destiny’s Child’s reclamation of the feminist label, in conjunction with their efforts to articulate non-dominant meanings for feminism shows subversive thinking that is rare in the mainstream. The media’s preference to maintain the status quo is evidenced in the persistent avoidance of the term ‘feminism,’ the sexualization of potentially feminist rhetoric, the frequent deference to heterosexual discourses, and the reliance on watered-down diction when referring to quintessentially feminist principles. Conclusions “‘[w]e’re not just these strong women with hearts made of stone that can never be cut. On this album we address that, and we’re way softer on men, ’cause there are good guys out there. We don’t want to be known as a group that just talks badly about men or all about women’” (Kot). Feminism There are two excerpts from the media coverage that name and attempt to deﬁne feminism in relationship to Destiny’s Child’s performance. In both cases, the journalists evoke the stereotypical rendering of feminism-as-man-bashing. The members of Destiny’s Child, in turn, oscillate between agreeing with the journalists and defending the term ‘feminist,’ by articulating an alternate meaning: [Q] You’ve been described as a feminist group, and on this album, it sounds like you’re easing off on some of the male bashing. [Beyoncé] ‘Deﬁnitely. I think the word feminist is misunderstood. I think it’s basically a word that The media’s acknowledgement of the feminist meanings in the cultural production of Destiny’s Child is evidenced throughout their coverage. However, the 906 media effectively neutralize DC’s feminist associations by using replacement terms. In the end, when Destiny’s Child assumes the feminist mantle, one must ask, what has been reclaimed? Throughout the coverage, ‘feminism’ has been replaced with more ambiguous terms such as ‘empowerment’ and ‘girl power.’ Although the replacement words are, in some ways, synonymous with ‘feminism,’ their method of deployment shifts meaning considerably. As the preceding analysis has shown, these terms refer to the media promulgated image of sexualized femininity that is supposed to visually incarnate women’s empowerment. At once, the replacement words refer to feminist ideologies and to a sexual locus of female power – ﬂuxing between poles of meaning. Destiny’s Child, then, is left to claim a word that is both empty and full of meaning. Since the replacement terms come to exemplify feminist meanings, and ‘feminism’ is excluded from the pro-woman discourse, then ‘feminism’ is sent to the margins of signiﬁcance. The core of feminist beliefs are then represented by ‘independence,’ ‘empowerment,’ ‘strength,’ and so on. ‘Feminism’ is Othered – signifying that which the primary, centered terms do not. Given the dual meanings of the replacement terms, ‘feminism’ is also subject to a rather schizophrenic interpretation. On one hand, ‘feminism’ is rendered meaningless – that is, it no longer denotes women’s independence, strength, and empowerment. Here, on the margins, ‘feminism’ is the stereotype: radical, man hating, prescriptive and stiﬂing. On the other hand, ‘feminism’ refers to the sexualized, pro-woman discourse at the center of the popular media’s reporting on DC’s gender politics. Subjected to patriarchal hegemony, ‘feminism’ is subtly re-conceptualized, ultimately signifying a belief system wherein a woman’s sexuality is her only source of cultural capital. Overall, the tug-of-war occurring between the press and the women of Destiny’s Child may be characterized as a negotiation over feminist meanings. The media circumvents traditional feminist identiﬁcations, in quiet deference to inaccurate stereotypes perpetuated by the current anti-feminist climate. Destiny’s Child seems somewhat unsure of the ‘correct’ position to back: pop princesses or feminist role models? In combination, traditional feminist ideologies are bombarded and at last co-opted by the dominant discourses of feminine sexualization, infantilization, and heteronormativity. When the women of Destiny’s Child ﬁnally reclaim the ‘feminist’ identity, many familiar with the history and politics of the feminist movement might wonder what exactly that means. A regrettable fact is that, in the popular milieu, the term has lost much of its established signiﬁcance. This unnecessary, but readily observable side effect is illustrated by the following excerpt from Laurie 907 Mechling, who celebrates Destiny’s Child’s feminism: Endnotes [t]he group’s position as the world’s hottest girl band signals the ascendancy of a new and improved you-can-have-your-cake-andeat-it-too feminism. In years past, women-forwomen musicians have taken one of two routes – either presenting themselves as clunky Rosie O’Donnells of the music world (e.g. Queen Latifah) or shilling themselves as sequined parttime private dancers (e.g. Lil’ Kim) and calling it feminism. Destiny’s Child, on the other hand, inhabit a realistic middle ground, where women slap each other encouraging high-ﬁves and then go shopping for halter tops. (D8) With their token gestures of sisterly encouragement, women resume their stereotypically feminine activities. After decades of consciousness raising, struggle, and history making, it appears that high-ﬁves and haltertops constitute practical expressions of women’s agency and empowered female subjectivity and that acts like Destiny’s Child are coming to represent the face (and bodies) of the ‘new feminism.’ Christian, M.A. “Destiny’s Child: Hot, sexy singing group soars to the top.” Jet online! (2001, May 14): www.jetmag.com. (1) In this analysis, the media coverage of Destiny’s Child’s feminism consists of ﬁfty-four texts, including thirty news briefs and articles and twenty-four interviews and their accompanying visuals. In total, 314 excerpts were drawn from the coverage and were organized according to three emergent themes of diction; the hypersexuality debate; and spinning feminism. Within each of these, numerous subthemes are represented. This paper presents my analysis of the ﬁrst theme. As a thematic category, diction refers to the popular media’s pervasive use of replacement terms when addressing and discussing Destiny’s Child’s feminism. Selected Bibliography Capeloto, A. “Obsession, for girls.” The Gazette (Montreal) (2001, March 6): A1. Dunn, J. “A date with destiny.” Rolling Stone 869 (2001, May 24): 52-62. Gillings, A. “Destiny’s Child: Soul survivors.” Essence 908 (2001 June 7): www.essence.com/features. www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/artist.area/destinyschild. No author. “Girl power.” 16 magazine (2001, Spring): Gold, K. “D-Child reinvents girl power.” Vancouver Sun (2001 September 12): F4. No author. “On the couch…” (2001 April 14): www.bbc. Gold, K. “Booty power: New girl order.” Vancouver Sun (2001 March 17): D5. Powers, A.. “In tune with the new feminism.” New York Kaplan, A. “independent women: destiny’s child!” teen beat (2001 May): 62-65. Times Section 2 (2001 April 29): 1. co.uk/totp/artists. 59. Khidekel, M. and Rosenberg, C.. “A date with destiny. COSMO girl!” 3(3) (2001 April): 110-113. Saenz Harris, J. “Little women.” Edmonton Journal (2001 June 20): F1. Whiteley, S. Women and popular music: Sexuality, Kot, G. “For Destiny’s Child, life is a soap opera.” CDNOW (2001 May): www.cdnow.com. identity and subjectivity. London: Routledge, 2000. Mechling, L. “We are girl group, hear us roar.” National Post (2001 June 11): D8. No author. “Destiny’s Child.” Women who rock (2001 Fall): 33. No author. “Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bills’ isn’t having a dig at ALL guys.” (1999 July): IASPM03 - MONTREAL Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris: Introducing Chanson to Anglophone Audiences Chris Tinker F rench popular music has never really achieved the kind of critical or commercial success in the as corny and outdated. Take Charles Aznavour, the epitome of the French romantic singer ﬁgure, who was parodied in the 1970s by the British comedy group, the Goodies, as ‘Charles Aznovoice’. It is often assumed that French rock, in particular, can never achieve the quality and authenticity of the supposedly ‘original’ Anglo-American model. For example, Philip Silverton, writing in the British weekly The Observer even claims that ‘French is a language that just does not rock’. Nevertheless, British audiences and critics have occasionally succumbed to the exotic charm of Frenchlanguage songs - hits such as Serge Gainsbourg’s erotic ‘Je t’aime moi non plus’ (‘I love you, me neither’), banned in 1969 by the BBC for being too obscene, Vanessa Paradis’ ‘Joe le taxi’ (1986), and, more recently, Alizée’s ‘Moi… Lolita’ (2002), to name a few. These exceptions tend to conﬁrm the general assumption of the Anglo-American pop industry that English-speaking audiences are unwilling to accept songs in the original French. In order for a French artist to sell in the English-speaking world, French lyrics are often absent, as can be seen in the recent successes of French electronic dance/Techno artists such as Daft English-speaking world that is enjoyed by, for example, the French ﬁlm industry. The somewhat inward-looking French pop music industry for a long time did little to promote French music abroad. However, producers, supported by public authorities and professional organizations representing authors and artists, created the Bureau Export de la Musique Française (French Music Export Bureau) in 1993, and further export ofﬁces were set up in Brazil, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. French records sales abroad indeed rose from 1.5 million in 1992 to more than 39 million in 2000. Despite such progress, the hegemonic status of the English language has always represented a signiﬁcant obstacle for French pop music. Subtitling and dubbing may be fairly effective and efﬁcient means of translating ﬁlm for a mass audience, but they do not lend themselves well to pop music which is delivered to audiences through an ever-developing variety of electronic media. In any case, when French pop has, for example, crossed the English Channel it has generally been dismissed by cultural commentators 910 Punk, Air and Stardust. Otherwise, French pop music has had to be written with English lyrics in order to travel, for example the 1970s discos classics of Cerrone and Patrick Hernandez. Over the years, several French songs have nevertheless been translated into English, achieving signiﬁcant commercial success. Anglophone audiences may indeed not realize that Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ (1969) actually started life in France as ‘Comme d’habitude’ (1967), sung by Claude François. While certain artists like Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour were willing to perform their songs in English, Jacques Brel, the Belgian-born singer-songwriter who epitomizes the golden age of chanson during the 1950s and 60s, sang only in French on the few occasions when he performed in the English-speaking world, for instance during his concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall in the later 1960s. Brel rather left it to other Anglophone writers and artists to translate, adapt and perform his songs for English-speaking audiences. Scott Walker and Marc Almond devoted entire albums to Brel in 1968 and 1991 respectively. The most successful and popular Englishlanguage cover version of Brel to date is ‘Seasons in the Sun’, whose original title was ‘Le Moribond’ (The Dying Man, 1961) which was a huge chart hit in 1974 for the Canadian singer, Terry Jacks, on both sides of the Atlantic, and in 2000 for the Irish boy band, Westlife who achieved the much prized Christmas Number 1 in the UK singles charts. One of the most innovative examples of English-language adaptations of Brel is arguably the musical revue, Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris (1968), created by Eric Blau, the writer/translator of the songs, and Mort Shuman, the successful rock ‘n’ roll songwriter for Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and many others. Shuman, who became Brel’s friend, was entrusted to introduce his songs to American audiences using theatre; an appropriate form given that Brel’s stage performances were themselves often theatrical. Indeed, following his retirement from the concert hall in the late 1960s, Brel went on to star in a series of ﬁlms and stage productions. Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris, a plotless four-person revue, based on a selection of Brel’s songs, was initially staged at the Village Gate in New York in 1968, and still retains a cult following. The musical continues to this day to run in small theatres and cabarets throughout the English-speaking world. In 1975 a ﬁlm version of the musical was produced, directed by the French Canadian, Denis Héroux, this time starring Shuman and Stone along with Joe Masiell, who had also appeared in the original New York stage show. Brel, who had enjoyed watching the stage production, participated in the production of the ﬁlm version, appearing in person as an onlooker. He also performed in the original French his own hit, ‘Ne me quitte pas’ (‘Don’t leave me’) – a song already known to English-speaking audiences through 911 the translation, ‘If you go away’ (Rod McKuen, 1966). While the stage production of Jacques Brel is alive and well… was relatively simple with minimalist scenery and few props, the ﬁlm is at times a dizzying spectacle, a succession of music video-type vignettes. It is often tempting for cultural critics to regard cover versions and screen adaptations as pale imitations of the original. Brel’s biographer, Olivier Todd, highlights the difﬁculty of translating lyrics faithfully, and of reproducing Brel’s own powerful performances (Todd, 320-324). However, this paper will begin to interpret the process of adaptation more constructively, not as an exercise in simply re-encoding the meaning of a source text, but as a complex creative process. Lucy Mazdon, in her book on Hollywood remakes of French ﬁlms, discusses the complex processes of adaptation in terms of crossfertilization: aesthetic, temporal, spatial, and cultural. Mazdon acknowledges the concerns expressed by critics against the process of cross-cultural adaptation. The ‘adaptation is seen to decentre the work, to threaten its identity and that of the author’. However, she rejects the ‘insistence upon the immanent superiority of the source text’, along with ‘sterile binaries and reductive value judgements’, and instead offers a constructive reading of the adaptation process as ‘a description of exchange and difference’. (3, 26-27) In the light of Mazdon’s approach, a constructive reading of this ﬁlm adaptation could highlight its nostalgia for the exotic other, particularly for European, French-speaking culture; its fetishization of the ﬁgure of the artist, intellectual and musician; its attempt to raise the cultural status of French chanson; and its construction of a domestic social agenda. Indeed, the translation or adaptation, ideologically motivated, creates in the culture in which it is produced what the translation studies scholar, Lawrence Venuti, terms the ‘possibilities for cultural resistance, innovation and change at any historical moment.’ (68) In terms of nostalgia, the mise en scene features many of the clichés of European Francophone culture, both urban (cobbled streets, the metro, the café), and rural (an elderly man wearing a beret). These stereotypes largely reproduce those in Brel’s own repertoire of songs, for example, ‘Bruxelles’ (‘Brussels’) which evokes the hustle and bustle of the Belgian capital at the turn of the last century. The ﬁlm also represents the world of the café which was also exploited on one of Brel’s album covers. Jacques Brel (Barclay, 1964) represents Brel sitting in a café, smoking, drinking beer, and looking pensively. While the café is also identiﬁed in the ﬁlm as an integral and traditional feature of community life in France, it is also seen as space speciﬁcally designated for artists and intellectuals, as it was on the Parisian left bank particularly during the 1950s and 60s. Brel’s appearance as a lone ﬁgure sitting in a café smoking 912 conﬁrms commonly held Anglo-American stereotypes of French intellectuals and artists as souls tortured by existential and romantic concerns – the kind of image which was also exploited by the US singer-songwriter Scott Walker, for example, on the cover of his ﬁrst solo album, ‘Scott’ (Fontana 1967). Although the ﬁlm represents a nostalgic utopia in the world of the French café, this is ultimately elusive. While the accordion waltz (valse musette) of the song ‘Amsterdam’ plays in the stereotypically French café, the presence of the jukebox suggests the growing inﬂuence of North American popular/mass culture upon French speaking culture. This inﬂuence itself continues to be the subject of ﬁerce debate in France. At times the ﬁlm self-consciously represents and parodies US cultural identity through the inclusion of reductive clichés such as the all-American bartender, and the narrator of the song, ‘Le Dernier repas’/‘The Last Supper’, who orders hamburgers, hotdogs, and potato chips, rather than the more traditional fare on offer in Brel’s original song. Indeed, the ﬁlm version of the song may be interpreted as a humorous anti- capitalist/consumerist critique of the US, as the dinner guests gorge themselves on food, and are served Coca-Cola from bottles which are kept on ice as if they were ﬁlled with champagne. While the ﬁlm provides a somewhat stereotypical nostalgic representation of French community life and café culture, along with an equally clichéd representation of the USA, it also insists on the importance of the artist, musician and intellectual within French culture. What is curiously distinctive about the French chanson tradition is the way in which it blurs and challenges the traditional division between high and mass/popular culture. While popular European Francophone singersongwriters (mostly male) of this period (Brel, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, Serge Gainsbourg) sold millions of records and topped the charts in French-speaking countries, they were at the same time identiﬁed as poets within a literary tradition, given that their songs tend to foreground lyrics. Although the ﬁlm attempts to a certain extent to introduce Brel and chanson to a wider, non-francophone audience, it still tends to identify Brel as a high-culture artist for a rather limited middle- to high-brow audience in possession of cultural capital. In fact, it was one in a series of ﬁlms, made by Ely Landau’s American Film Theatre in the mid-1970s. These ﬁlms were based on high quality adaptations of contemporary drama (Genet, Ionesco, O’Neill and Pinter, among others), combining the talents of distinguished actors and directors including Alan Bates, Peter Hall, Katharine Hepburn, Glenda Jackson and Lawrence Olivier. Subscribers would go to a local cinema once a month and see the ﬁlms. The series lasted two years and generated a total of fourteen movies, very few of which have been seen since. 913 Viewed within the context of the AFT series, Jacques Brel is alive and well… attempts to raise the cultural status of Brel’s work and of French chanson in the USA, and in so doing constructs an implied reader/ viewer, interested in European literary and avantgarde culture. Although Brel’s songs, unlike those of other socially committed French singers of the period such as Leo Ferré and Jean Ferrat, tended not to deal with contemporary social issues affecting France, Jacques Brel is Alive… constructs something of a contemporary social and political agenda for a North American domestic audience. Given the post-Vietnam context within which the ﬁlm was produced, it is perhaps understandable that, of Brel’s social themes, anti-militarism is particularly prominent. Indeed, the antimilitarism is encapsulated in the title Jacques Brel is Alive… which was humorously inspired by the rumours circulating after the Second World War that many Nazis had escaped to South America. It also refers to rumours circulating in France during the late 1960s that Brel was seriously ill. One of the most domesticated of Brel’s songs in the ﬁlm is arguably ‘Marathon’. While the original song ‘Les Flamandes’ (The Flemish women) effectively resists embourgeoisement (a middle-class outlook), one of Brel’s recurrent themes, ‘Marathon’ provides in list form a selective history of the Western World major events with a strong focus on the USA, from the Prohibition era to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust (a technique used more recently in Billy Joel’s song ‘We didn’t light the ﬁre’, 1989). The ironic jollity of the music and vocals, together with a ﬁlm sequence made up of archive news footage, provides a parody of mediatized, ofﬁcial histories of US and Western history. More generally, the ﬁlm challenges the existence of such coherent histories/narratives with its surreal imagery, and disruptive and disorientating editing techniques, particularly in evidence during the opening few minutes. Resembling a series of music videos, this ﬁlm, ﬁlled with psychedelic imagery, may also be situated in terms of the ‘fantasy-cum-ﬂower-power’ musicals/rock operas of the time, to use Hayward’s term, especially Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Godspell (1973) which also feature cruciﬁxion scenes. In attempting to domesticate Brel’s work and provide it with a North American social agenda which audiences can readily discern, the ﬁlm highlights the differing approaches to social taboos in French and Englishspeaking cultures, particularly where death, religion and sexuality are concerned. A key taboo which the ﬁlm attempts to negotiate is that of death, a subject which ﬁgures heavily in French chanson – less so in Anglophone popular music. This may partly explain why Terry Jack’s and Westlife’s ‘Seasons in the sun’ tackles death less explicitly than does Brel’s original song ‘Le Moribond’ (‘The Dying Man’). Although death 914 is a comparatively taboo subject in Anglophone popular song, the medium of the ﬁlm musical provides a possible outlet for its representation to Anglophone audiences. Jacques Brel is alive… also features the kind of anticlericalism and open attitudes towards sexuality which have been present in French culture since Rabelais. However, the inclusion of these in the ﬁlm is rather inspired by the social and sexual liberation in Western societies during the 1960s and early 1970s. Thus, the authority of organized religion in North America, particularly the evangelical wing of Christianity, is questioned through a clash between a group hippies and a Salvation Army brass band. Furthermore, the representation of female nudity comes in the wake of the relaxation of censorship laws in the US during the late 1960s. The director of the ﬁlm, Denis Héroux was already well-known, if not infamous, for his erotic ﬁlm successes in French-speaking Canada such as L’Initiation (1970) and Valérie (1969), a ﬁlm which was one of the ﬁrst in Quebec to show nudity and challenge the authority of the Catholic Church. Although Jacques Brel is alive and well… engages with the social and sexual liberation in Western societies, the extent of this is somewhat limited. While the representation of female nudity is in itself certainly problematical, so is the reproduction of Brel’s gay male stereotypes in ‘Au suivant’ (Next) and ‘La Chanson de Jacky’ (‘Jacky’). While the ‘possibilities for cultural resistance, innovation and change’ in Jacques Brel is Alive… may be restricted, the ﬁlm nonetheless brings a whole new set of meanings and readings to the artist and his work. It is hoped that the foregoing discussion has shown some of the processes of exchange and difference at play, as Brel’s work and the ﬁlm adaptation appear to inform each other and enter into an implicit dialogue. By moving from a monocultural perspective towards a wider intercultural and comparative viewpoint, we can only develop our understanding of his signiﬁcance even further. 915 Selected Bibliography 1966 Original Off-Broadway Cast. Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Sony, 2002. Grode, Eric. “STAGE TO SCREEN: American Film Theatre & TV Theatre in Sept.” Playbill. < http://www.playbill.com/ features/article/76222.html > 2 August, 2002. Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, New York/London: Routledge, 1996. Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Dir. Denis Héroux. Perf. Elly Stone, Mort Shuman, Joe Masiell, and Jacques Brel (Film currently available as part of American Film Theatre Box, Vol. 1, Kino Video, 2003). Mazdon, Lucy. Encore Hollywood, Remaking French Cinema. BFI, 2000. Silverton, Philip. “France turns the tables.” The Observer April 29, 2001. Todd, Olivier. Jacques Brel: une vie. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1984. Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation. New York/London, Routledge, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Lady Day the Torch Singer: The Vocal Persona of a “Woman Unlucky in Love” Robert Toft R ight from the beginning of her career, Billie Holiday demonstrated a particular afﬁnity for As was customary in popular music, Gabler made Billie the central focus of her recordings, and the accompanying musicians, instead of sharing the solo spotlight with her, like they had done in Teddy Wilson’s jazz combos, now played a supporting role through arrangements designed to showcase her voice. This shift in emphasis from jazz to pop allowed Billie to pursue her story-telling style of delivery unfettered by the constraints of the jazz-ensemble tradition. In Gabler’s words, he turned her into a real pop singer (4), and this essay examines one aspect of the vocal style Lady Day adopted to project the dramatic persona of a “woman unlucky in love.” Speciﬁcally, it discusses the manner of phrasing Billie exhibits on four of the dozen or so recordings she made of “My Man,” the song Gabler considered one of the greatest torch songs ever written (5). These recordings span her entire career, one dating from her Teddy Wilson days (1937), one from her Gabler period (1948), one from her return to a jazzier style under Norman Granz (1952), and one from a live performance at the Newport Jazz Festival (1957). Many jazz critics, especially those who wrote for Down Beat, strongly disapproved of the candycute vocalization she had acquired during her Decca torch songs, especially in her live performances (1), and several commentators from the mid 1930s refer to her not as a jazz artist but as a torch singer (2), one writer in the New York Age likening her style to that of the popular torch singer Helen Morgan (20 Apr. 1935; Nicholson 59). By the early 1940s, Billie had developed a public persona as a “woman unlucky in love,” and increasingly she chose to perform in clubs, as well as record, songs that depicted the plight of the wronged, deserted, misunderstood, and mistreated woman (3). Her interest in torch songs was fostered by the producer Milt Gabler, who saw her more as a popular singer than the artist he had known from Teddy Wilson’s jazz bands of the 1930s and early 1940s. Gabler had heard her lovingly sing slow ballads in clubs and he wanted her to record torch songs (“Liner Notes” 7). The doleful tempos associated with this genre necessitated a change in Billie’s vocal style, and the ﬁve years she recorded for Decca under Gabler (4 Oct. 1944 to 19 Oct. 1949) is characterized by a dramatic delivery that blends speaking and singing together. In a sense, Billie becomes the person in her lyrics and vividly portrays the yearning and pain she, as speaker, feels. 917 years with Gabler, and from 1947 on, they regularly compared her distorted, over-exaggerated phrasing, with its too lush pauses, to the older, less pretentious sides she had made with Teddy Wilson (6). Using critical commentary from the 1940s and 1950s as a starting point for the discussion of Billie’s singing, I place her torch style of the mid to late 1940s, particularly her speech-like phrasing, in the context of both earlier and later recordings. In fact, Billie’s tendency to speak in musical notes towards the end of her career, when viewed on a continuum of stylistic development, may be seen not as evidence of her lack of vocal power and vitality, as some writers would have us believe (Down Beat 19 Mar. 1959: 38), but as a continuation of the torchy, pop manner Billie developed in the 1940s, a style that came to dominate her vocal delivery for the rest of her career. The approach she takes to “My Man” was not unique, of course, for this quintessential torch song had been popular since 1921, when Fanny Brice ﬁrst sang it in the Ziegfeld Follies. Brice recorded the song in 1927, and the version Billie cut twenty-one years later in 1948 shows the unmistakable inﬂuence of Brice’s torch style. Billie even credits Fanny for making the song famous (7), and Brice’s recording presents the song in the sort of semi-recitative style, complete with overexaggerated phrasing, too lush pauses, and dragging tempo, that later jazz critics found so offensive in Billie’s performances (8). Indeed, in true reciting style, Brice projects the story through a highly articulated treatment of the text. Billie’s conception is similar, and she sings the lines of the ﬁrst section in a speech-like fashion before settling into a relaxed, yet steady, tempo for the second part. The manner in which Billie and Fanny segment the lines they deliver, to borrow a term from a reviewer in Down Beat (31 Oct. 1957: 30), enables them to make the story their own. Obviously, the two singers draw attention to speciﬁc words and ideas in different ways, but their personiﬁcations of the wronged and mistreated speaker are equally persuasive. Each singer employs pauses to create a sense of drama so that her personal experience may be communicated directly to listeners. Brice, for example, couples a strikingly halting delivery with occasional tremulousness in order to get her message fully into the bloodstream of the audience (especially lines 18-30; see Example. 1). Similarly, Billie disconnects one thought from another and penetrates the emotions of listeners by hesitantly revealing various aspects of her mistreatment (particularly lines 8 to 14; see Example. 1). But when Billie delivers the text of “My Man” with sidemen who share the foreground, instead of providing an unobtrusive backdrop, one senses that the jazz and torch traditions do not blend together particularly well. 918 Example 1. Pauses in My Man 18 Oh my man * I love him so. * He’ll never know. * All my life * is just despair, * (pauses are marked with asterisks) Fanny Brice Rec. 22 Dec. 1927 22 1 It cost me a lot, * but there’s one thing that I’ve got, * it’s my man. * 25 4 Cold and wet, * tired you bet, * but all that I’ll soon forget * with my man. * I don’t care. * When he takes me in his arms, * the world is bright, * all right. * And what’s the difference * if I say, * ‘I’ll go away’, * when I know * I’ll come back * on my knees * some day. * 7 He’s not much * for looks, * and no hero out of books * is my man. * 29 For whatever * my man is, * I’m, * I’m his * forever * more. 10 Two or three girls * has he * that he likes as well as me, * but * I love him. * 13 I don’t know why I should. * He isn’t good. * He isn’t true. * He beats me too. * What * can I do? * 919 Example 1. Continued. Pauses in My Man Oh my man I love him so. * He’ll never know. * All my life is just despair, * (pauses are marked with asterisks) Billie Holiday Rec. 10 Dec. 1948 but I don’t care. * When he takes me in his arms, * It cost me a lot, * but there’s one thing * that I’ve got, * it’s my man, * it’s my man. * What’s the difference if I say, * Cold or wet, * tired you bet. * All of this, * I’ll soon forget * with my man. * ‘I’ll go away’, * when I know I’ll come back on * my knees some day. * the world is bright, * all right. * He’s not much on looks. * He’s no hero * out of books. * But I love him, * yes I love him. * For whatever my man is, * I’m his * forever * more. * Two or three * girls has he * that he likes * as well as me, * but I love him. * I don’t know why I should. * He isn’t true. * He beats me too. * What can I do? * 920 Billie no longer has the freedom to tell the story her way, and this is most noticeable on her recording from 1952, when Norman Granz decided that Billie was best without the imposition of arrangements. Granz secured the ﬁnest jazz musicians in town for the date in the hope that he could regenerate the same spontaneous feel he liked from her sides with Teddy Wilson (9). However, Billie was the sort of singer who rarely varied her conception of a song once it had been established, as her live performances of “My Man” from the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s attest (10), and the recording that came from her session with Oscar Peterson (piano), Paul Quinichette (tenor sax), and Ray Brown (bass), among others, sounds more under rehearsed than spontaneous. Billie clearly has trouble placing her lines over an accompaniment that does not conform to her expectations, and in the end, the improvisational approach of the jazz musicians seems to conﬂict with Billie’s carefully constructed persona. The jazz-oriented version she recorded ﬁfteen years earlier with Teddy Wilson suffers from the same problem, for “My Man” seems to work better as a torch song than as a jazz number. In the 1937 recording, Billie’s voice is treated like an instrument, and the evenness of expression which results from this instrumental style of delivery prevents Billie from vividly portraying the depth of emotion she, as speaker, feels. Nonetheless, her return to jazz-style accompaniments in the early 1950s won the praise of some commentators, one critic in Down Beat congratulating Granz for “restoring the great Lady Day as a recording star, by the simple system of giving her ﬁne tunes [that is, jazz and not pop tunes], dance tempo performances, and a superlative small band—just the way she made it on her classic series with Teddy Wilson, Prez [Lester Young], et al, in the 1930s” (14 Jan. 1953: 15). But despite the new tunes and accompaniment Granz had given her, Billie continued to sing in the torch style she had developed in the 1940s. This led Down Beat to complain not only that she quivered through her set at the Newport Jazz Festival in semi-recitative style (6 Feb. 1958: 24), a set which contained “My Man” sung in the same torchy mode she normally employed, but also that she often seemed to enmesh herself in needless vocal contortions and distortions (31 Oct. 1957: 30). Moreover, one of Down Beat’s critics wondered if Billie’s change of style in the mid 1940s was a conscious decision to suit the customers (8 Oct. 1947: 15), and although the writer, who displays a distinct preference for jazz, cast this development in a negative light, another reviewer in Down Beat realized that Billie’s was a story-telling style of vocalization and that her deep emotional qualities never failed her (24 Dec. 1959: 46). The strong emotional impact of Billie’s singing had become a recurring theme in reviews from the 1950s, and one writer attributed her ability to personify the inner 921 thoughts and emotions of a “woman unlucky in love” to the intense range of feelings Billie could communicate through her wondrously natural phrasing (Down Beat 17 Sep. 1959: 30) (11). Billie’s interpretive capabilities never really diminished over her career; she simply channeled them into a torch style that many jazz critics found distasteful. But as Billie said of her singing in 1956, three years before she died, “I’m for sure singing better than I ever have in my life. If you don’t think so, just listen to some of my old sides [12] … and then listen to the same tunes as I have recorded them again in recent years. Listen and trust your own ears. For God’s sake don’t listen to the tired old columnists who are still writing about the good old days twenty years ago” (Holiday and Dufty 181). Endnotes 1. On this aspect of her live performances, see Nicholson 48-9, 85, 96. 2. See the sources cited in Nicholson 59 (New York Age 20 Apr. 1935), 61 (interview with Charles Linton), 73 (New York Amsterdam News 2 Nov. 1935), 74 (New York Amsterdam News 7 Dec. 1935). 3. Nicholson notes that it was not until mid 1941 that Billie began to record slow tunes in earnest (115-16). 4. Interview with Loren Schoenberg, 1992 (Nicholson 150). 5. Interview with Andy McKaie, summer 1990 (“Liner Notes” 7). 6. See the reviews in Down Beat that appeared on 12 Feb. 1947: 20, 31 Dec. 1947: 16, 1 Jul. 1949: 15, 16 Jun. 1950: 15, and 31 Oct. 1957: 29-30. 7. In her introduction to the song during one of her performances at the Storyville Club in Boston (Oct. 1951), Billie says “I’d like to try and sing for you a song made famous by Miss Fanny Brice” (“My Man” Rec. 1951). 922 8. See the following reviews of Billie’s recordings in Down Beat: 15 Jul. 1946: 25, 1 Jul. 1949: 15, 6 Feb. 1958: 24. New York: Doubleday, 1956. London: Penguin Books, 1992. ---. “My Man.” Rec. 1 Nov. 1937. The Quintessential Billie 9. Interview with Stuart Nicholson, Feb. 1994 (Nicholson 188). Holiday, Volume 5, 1937-1938. Columbia Records, 1989. Billie Holiday with Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra, Easy Living 1935-1939. Naxos, 2001. 10. Nicholson makes a similar observation not only for the latter part of her career (217) but also for the earlier part (131-32). He bolsters his conclusions with quotations from Down Beat. ---. “My man.” Rec. 10 Dec. 1948. Billie Holiday, The Complete Decca Recordings. GRP Records, 1991. Disc 2, track 7. 11. See also the reviews that appeared in Down Beat on 29 Jun. 1951: 14, 14 Jan. 1953: 15, 5 May 1954: 10, 4 May 1955: 14, 29 Jun. 1955: 13, 7 Sep. 1955: 18, 14 Dec. 1955: 22, 17 Oct. 1956: 24, 23 Jan. 1957: 25, 31 Oct. 1957: 30, 20 Aug. 1959: 60, and 24 Dec. 1959: 46. ---. “My man.” Rec. 29-31 Oct. 1951. Billie Holiday, The Complete 1951 Storyville Club Sessions. Fresh Sound Records, 1991. ---. “My man.” Rec. 27 Jul. 1952. Billie Holiday, Lady in Autumn. Verve, 1991. The Complete Billie Holiday on 12. Billie speciﬁcally mentions “Lover Come Back” and “Yesterdays,” and I would add “My Man” to her list. Verve 1945-1959. Verve, 1993. Disc 2, track 9. Selected Bibliography Brice, Fanny. “My Man.” Rec. 22 Dec. 1927. The First Torch Singers, Volume One: The Twenties. Take Two Records, 1992. ---. “My man.” Rec. 6 Jul. 1957. The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959. Verve, 1993. Disc 10, track 6. “Liner notes.” Billie Holiday, The Complete Decca Recordings. GRP Records, 1991. Down Beat. Chicago: Maher Publications, 1934-. Holiday, Billie, and William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues. Nicholson, Stuart. Billie Holiday. London: Victor Gollancz, 1995. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Creativity, Thievery and the Musical Commons Jason Toynbee F or most of its history copyright has been an arcane topic, a subject of interest for a small number of incurred in production up to the ﬁrst copy). As a result once ﬁxed costs are met every extra sale generates a high rate of proﬁt. However the resulting drive to maximise circulation is contradicted by the need to restrict access. Music’s ready copy-ability means that it can become easily available to the public at low or no cost. Hence copyright law. Copyright establishes a form of property in reproducible music, closing down public access. It is thus the basis of music capitalism. specialist lawyers and the site of a hidden struggle between different sectors of the cultural industries. In the last few years, however, the issue has become the focus of popular agitation, with a large number of people now opposed to what they see as the predatory behaviour of rights owners. In this paper I want to do two things: ﬁrst, examine why this has happened and second, ask what might be the implications of a critical approach to copyright for the practice of popular music, particularly in the area of creativity and music production. Why has copyright become an issue? Historically, the contradiction between the drives to maximise circulation and to restrict access has led to disputes between music users and copyright owners. However, for the most part these have been contained, and handled through business to business negotiation, sometimes with state arbitration. What’s changing At the most general level what we are seeing is a crisis in the capitalist mode of cultural production. Music, like other symbolic forms, is poorly adapted for the marketised mass media system (Garnham 1990, p. 160). On the one hand there’s a need to maximise circulation in order to maximise proﬁts. This is particularly the case because marginal costs (those involved in manufacturing sound carriers like CDs or 12” singles) are low in comparison to ﬁxed costs (those now, though, is the technologically determined degree of copy-ability. With digital systems - PCs, the Web, CD burners - there is a massive increase in music’s accessibility. It’s now so easy to reproduce and share (at least amongst the middle classes in advanced capitalist countries) that the record companies rightly fear their basic strategy of accumulation may not survive. That is why they have been lobbying so hard for tougher laws, and prosecuting ﬁle sharers in the courts. Contrary to 924 much opinion, I see this as a perfectly rational strategy on the part of the music industry – it’s a struggle for survival by a particular sector of capital. tends to be social, and creativity generally means the re-voicing of existing musical patterns and materials. There’s one other aspect. Music copyright assumes a strict division of labour between composer, whose In the last few years, then, ﬁle sharing and issues around the consumption of music have driven popular concern about copyright. To some extent that’s distracted attention from another area in which the contradiction between circulation and restriction has been played out – the practice of digital sampling in the production of music. The ﬁrst wave of academic writing, about 10 or 15 years ago, suggested that sampling was a postmodern phenomenon. More recently it’s been seen as a kind of subversive, avant-gardism. However I want to argue that sampling is best thought of as an example of what I have elsewhere called phonographic orality (Toynbee 2001). Particularly since the 1920s, style in popular music has developed in and through the phonographic apparatus. Examples include the blues where making and listening to records led to the crystallisation of new idioms, the improvised jazz solo which is in effect a phonographically inscribed composition, the practice of versioning in reggae, and the rock method of ‘writing’ which involves playing and overdubbing in the studio. special status calls for the grant of copyright, and performer, who merely carries out the composers’ instructions. This two tier system is now rare, or weakly developed, in popular music where the dominant working method owes more to the African diasporic model of creativity-in-performance. We’ll come back to this shortly. To sum up, the practice of popular music tends to be at odds with principles of copyright. But sampling then makes this contradiction acute because it enables much greater use, and more complex forms, of re-voicing and performance. As in the case of ﬁle sharing on the Web, digital technology has massively promoted the circulation of music. Yet what’s really interesting is the ease with which music capitalism has accommodated sampling. This is in strong contrast with the bitterly contested ﬁle sharing scenario. Sample clearing, in operation since the late 1980s, is basically a market in the buying and selling of small All these contradict the model enshrined by copyright, where a single author creates an unique and original work. Instead, with phonographic orality authorship packets of copyright protected music. Getting samples cleared has now become a relatively straightforward matter if you have money, and lawyers to negotiate 925 for you. In particular, artists signed to major record companies ﬁnd sample clearing easy because a negotiating infrastructure is there, ready to use. These artists also have access to in-house samples, from the company’s back catalogue, not to mention large budgets. But for people outside the charmed circle of the majors sampling is fraught with difﬁculty. For one thing samples are hugely expensive. Another problem, and this applies to all samplers whatever their status, is the way issues of authorship and appropriation are constantly thrown into confusion by the ideology of copyright. production. The ideology of authorship certainly represents an attempt to cover up the contradiction. But invariably it fails. We can hear the breakdown of copyright ideology and its painful consequences in a recent copyright and sampling case. Newton and the Beasties In 1978 the jazz ﬂutist and composer James Newton registered a work called ‘Choir’, a solo piece for ﬂute, with the U.S. Copyright Ofﬁce. He kept the rights in the composition while the ECM label held the rights in a recording of ‘Choir’ issued on Newton’s 1982 album Axum. In 1992 the Beastie Boys obtained a license I’ve already argued that phonographic orality represents a strong form of social authorship. Yet, paradoxically the common sense of rock and to some extent hip hop is that great music is produced by great individual artists, people who richly deserve the grant of rights in their work. Ostensibly, this Romantic view is opposed to commercialism and the proﬁt motive. Actually, it does nothing but strengthen corporate control of music by legitimating intellectual property. This is a classical example of ideology in the Marxist sense – it’s a way of thinking which obscures truth in the interests of power. from the label to use a six second sample from the recording. They did not consult Newton, nor did ECM inform him about the agreement (Korn and Berchenko 2001). The sample was inserted as the introduction to the track, ‘Pass the Mic’. It also provided a continuous loop behind the beats and rapping featured on that song. Here’s the introduction to ‘Choir’ … . And here’s the beginning part of ‘Pass the mic’ … . Seven years passed. The Beastie Boys’ career ﬂourished. Then, one day in January 2000, James Newton was giving a jazz analysis class at the University What I want to suggest, then, is that despite the routinization of sampling, there remains deep confusion and real conﬂict over creativity and copyright in music of California, Irvine when a student mentioned that he had seen the ﬂutist’s name on the liner of a Beastie Boys’ CD. The student brought in Check Your Head. 926 Newton played it in class, and was horriﬁed to hear the six second sample from ‘Choir’ being repeated over and over again. Within a few months he had begun a court action against the Beastie Boys on the grounds of breach of copyright (Korn and Berchenko 2001). However in May 2002 the Central District Court of California found against Newton, dismissing his complaint on all counts. in the score”’ which established the uniqueness of ‘Choir’. He was referring here to a technique Newton calls ‘multiphonics’. This involves singing a parallel line in accompaniment, as it were, to the ﬂute-sound. Manella was not persuaded by the testimony however, and pointed to the concession by another of Newton’s experts that ‘vocalization performance techniques’ have a long history and can be traced back to Africa (p. 9). In other words, notwithstanding the instruction In the Order issued at the end of the proceedings Judge Manella made three basic points (Newton v. Diamond et al. 2002). The ﬁrst had to do with the distinction between rights in the musical composition and in the sound recording. Because the Beastie Boys obtained a license from ECM for rights in the recording, only use of the composition was at issue. The question then became what in the composition was protected. As Manella deﬁned it, ‘[a] musical composition consists of rhythm, harmony and melody, and it is from these elements that originality is to be determined … . A musical composition protects an artist’s music in written form’ (Newton v. Diamond et al. 2002, p. 8). This formulation, of course, is entirely in the spirit of copyright law – it reduces music to that which can be expressed in notation. shown in his score, Newton does no more here than play the role of a folk musician. As such he cannot be protected by copyright. Anyway, if there was anything original in Newton’s playing it was precisely an aspect of performance – something covered by the ECM license for use of the 6 second chunk of the recording of ‘Choir’. As a result all the only thing at issue was the three-note sequence played in the sample, and not its particular sonority (p. 13). The second point of the judgement concerned whether this sequence of notes was then protected under copyright law. Judge Manella’s main thrust here was that the sequence in question (C – F ﬂat – C) could not be protected because in compositional terms it was trivial, ubiquitous and therefore not original. Manella quoted the Beastie Boys’ expert, Lawrence Ferrarra, In court one of Newton’s expert witnesses had proposed that it was in fact the ‘”special playing technique described who suggested that the same sequence ‘”has been used over and over again by major composers in 20the 927 Century music, particularly the ‘60s and ‘70s just prior to [Plaintiff’s] usage”’. It seems, then, that by art, as much as by popular standards the sequence from ‘Choir’ is derivative. Arguably, to do so simply reﬂects the nature of copyright law in the U.S.A. Yet this is clearly absurd. For like so much jazz ‘Choir’ is a composition-in-performance, with James Newton’s score inevitably being a mere shadow of the realised work. By focusing on notation copyright Finally, Manella turned to the question of whether the sample was de minimus, in other words whether the appropriation by the Beastie Boys was so small and trivial that it would fail to be recognised by the average audience. According to case law, the focus here is on the importance of the passage in the source, that is to say ‘Choir’ (p. 21). In quantitative terms this was low, being a mere three-note sequence, or 2% of the whole. And even if the six second sample might be recognised as coming from ‘Choir’ then once again it was the sound of the sample which was recognisable, and sound – being covered by the ECM licence – was not an issue (p. 24). law thus fails to do the very thing it promises, namely protect creators and their creativity. But suppose there was a way of protecting Newton. Suppose, for example, that he held the rights in the recording of ‘Choir’. Immediately one class of problem deﬁned by Manella disappears, that is to say the performance aspects of the sample are now covered. Or are they? Newton’s own witnesses argued that the original elements in ‘Choir’ were actually techniques which derived from a long, African-American tradition of music making. How, then, could Newton claim them as his own? In a letter to a friend subsequently posted on an email list, Newton has addressed this issue, arguing Newton v. Diamond et al. is a crucial judgement in that it involves one of the fullest interpretations yet of the way copyright impinges on creative practice in contemporary popular music. It also reverses a trend in case law which has seen the ascendancy of rights owners over samplers. By rigorously isolating and removing all those elements which belong to the realm of performed sound, Judge Manella reduces ‘Choir’, the composition, to the status of musical skeleton. that Judge Manella, consistently used European paradigms to judge my music. An aria from Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’ and Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’ were examples of what is protectable. ‘Choir’ is about four black women singing in a church in rural Arkansas. The work is a modern approach to a spiritual (Newton 2002). 928 Implicit here, I think, is an alternative way of thinking about authorship, one where the composer-improviser becomes, in effect, the most recent link in an historical chain of African-American music making. Critics like Henry Louis Gates (1986) and Paul Gilroy (1993) have developed this idea. They suggest that the culture of the people of African, slave descent is grounded in a process of dialogue and exchange which results in a constant re-coding and re-working of the tradition. The movement of the people across continent and ocean then accentuates the process. I want to suggest there are actually strong arguments for extending such a model of musical creativity further, beyond African diasporic cultures, to all forms of music making – like, for example, the New York, Jewish hip hop of the Beastie Boys. The commons and social authorship will take advantage of this. The logic then is to enclose the commons and turn it into private property so that owners gain the full reward from their investment. However advocates of a commons in music and other cultural forms argue that this is not a problem because only parts of the symbolic landscape should join the commons. The internet, for example, is by deﬁnition a public system of interpersonal communication and the maximum beneﬁt is derived from it in this form. Live concerts, on the other hand, are already enclosed, and the market system works very well to maximise our access our access to good music. The same principle applies to hard copy, CDs and recordings. In my view there is a signiﬁcant problem with this approach to the commons in that it is arbitrary. Private property remains the norm, providing instant incentive (or the dynamism of greed) in most parts of economic This notion of authorship as the re-working of existing materials has a parallel in the recent suggestion by copyright reformers that we treat symbolic artefacts as a commons (Creative Commons 2003). This was an institution of feudal society through which members of a community had rights on a collective basis to use certain land – the commons. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ according to conventional economic wisdom is that the land will be under-used because there is no individual incentive. If I do extra work on it, other people life. The commons is reserved for those areas where, by historical accident, there is strong public access and a strong sense of entitlement. Yet having said that, I think the notion of a commons does represent an important step forward. Crucially, it provides a powerful slogan and focal point for a broad coalition of copyright activists. As a socialist I would argue that we have to go much further than a merely creative commons, but right now that goal represents a signiﬁcant transitional demand. 929 So, what sort of measures are needed to implement a musical commons? Here is a ﬁve point list, offered in the ﬁrst place as an agenda for discussion. We badly need to reconsider the basic principles of copyright I would suggest. But there is also a need to move forward quickly and agree on a practical programme of reform. The current onslaught by rights owners means that time is tight. of their musical works. The same concept should be applied to sampling, with a sliding scale in the rate according to the size of sample. 3. Abolish moral rights. These grant authors the power to, for example, prevent ‘abuse’ of their work, or to insist on attribution. Moral rights originated in the French legal code and have only recently been introduced outside Europe. My argument is that 1. Reduce term to ten years after creation. The length of time copyright subsists in a work is by deﬁnition arbitrary. But the present term of seventy years from death of author is far too long. It enables the big music corporations to exert monopoly control over a vast back catalogue. Reducing term would maintain an economic incentive for the production of new works, while allowing free public access to older ones early and easily. they legitimate the myth of individual authorship, in other words they reinforce copyright ideology. Much better to see copyright for what it is – purely a matter of economic incentive for business. 4. Make copyright in the musical work and in the recording converge, so that the similar terms and conditions apply to both. As we saw in Newton versus Diamond et al. the treatment of realised sound as separate from, and less than, writing is incredibly 2. Extend compulsory public licensing, in particular for the re-use of music via sampling or other kinds of citation. Compulsory licensing is already an established principle. It involves the state guaranteeing access to copyrighted material for certain users at regulated rates of payment. In the U.K., for instance, the state has ﬁxed a ‘mechanical’ royalty rate of 8.5% of retail price per record payable by record companies to copyright holders for the use damaging. Copyright should be ‘joined up’ across the various kinds of property it encompasses. 5. Treat the internet as a common carrier like the telephone system, and so stop the judicial intimidation of peer to peer ﬁle sharers. Content owners should by all means be able to sell music downloads over the internet. But they should not be able to insist on commodiﬁed music as the norm. 930 Subscription or pay to play services ought be offered along-side, rather than instead of, peer to peer. Selected Bibliography Creative Commons (2003) www.creativecommons.org (accessed 18 June 2003). Taken together these proposals would go some way towards enabling a commons of shared musical resources. Most importantly, in terms of the present argument, they would recognize the model of social authorship in popular music. For too long a hyperindividualistic concept of creativity has dominated law, economy and culture. The current climate of strong scepticism about copyright gives us a real chance to rethink ownership and reward. We ought to take it. Garnham, N. (1990) ‘Public policy and the cultural industries’, in Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information. London: Sage. Beastie Boys (1992) ‘Pass the mic’, on Check Your Head. [CD] Capitol CDEST2171. Gates, H. L. (1986) The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Korn, and Berchenko, (2001) Newton v. Diamond et al. First Amended Complaint. (http://news.findlaw.com/ hdocs/docs/beastieboys/nwtnbboys22101cmp.pdf, accessed 12 June 2003). Newton, J. (1982) ‘Choir’ on Axum. [CD] ECM 1214. Newton, J. (2002) ‘James Newton loses to Beastie 931 Boys: amicus support requested!’, All About Jazz, 28 August (www.allaboutjazz.com, accessed 12 June 2003). Newton v. Diamond et al. (2002) Order, United States District Court, Central District of California, May 22, 2002 (http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/beastieboys/ nwtnbboys52002opn.pdf, accessed 12 June 2003). Toynbee, J. (2001) ‘Creating problems: social authorship, copyright and the production of culture’, Pavis Paper 3. Milton Keynes: Pavis Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Open University. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Canadian Cottage Weekend”: Place in Blue Rodeo’s Music and Videos Gillian Turnbull I t has been found in discourse on Canadian music that ambiguous concepts such as a sense of space, late 1980s, and has maintained a large audience in Canada throughout the last two decades. Their repertoire largely consists of mixes of pop, rock, country, jazz, folk, and soul. I will use the examples of the video for “The Days In Between,” and the song “Western Skies,” and I will discuss how Blue Rodeo’s music contributes to a regionalization of Canada through regional references, provincial contrasts, and concentration on speciﬁc localities, either in conjunction with, or separate from, an attempt to unify Canada in their music.1 As questions of the local, the West, and Canada are continuously renegotiated, Blue Rodeo not only adapts to new practices, but also constructs place and the West as a contested area of memory, relationships, and desire. It has long been recognized that place is not a ﬁxed essence for music to reﬂect on, but is constructed through many social and musical events and processes. This is particularly true of Western Canada, as it has a substantial farming and ranching community perpetually developing cowboy culture, and its urban areas celebrate country music and cowboy culture as distinct attributes that separates the West from the rest of Canada.2 as well as the more tangible ideas of sounds of nature and lyrical references to place, work to incorporate the nation’s landscape into a recognizably Canadian repertoire. Place can take on an exceptional role in discourse on Canadian music, as a marker of cultural boundaries, constructing a national identity. A Canadian national identity is elusive: it is a difﬁcult task to determine its characteristics, especially as exhibited through music, regardless of the above mentioned qualities. Representations of Western Canada and the prairies, especially within the genre of country, have partially determined the success of artists such as Blue Rodeo, the mystical power attributed to the West and its artists having recently acquired substantial marketing value. This paper will examine the discursive construction of place based on, and reinforcing, beliefs about the nature of (Western) Canadian identity, focusing on the example of the group Blue Rodeo, who have both conﬁrmed and uprooted conventional notions of place through recording and video production techniques. Blue Rodeo is a Canadian band that developed in Toronto in the 933 Such distinction gains in signiﬁcance in the face of impending globalization within the music industry. The promotion of “the local” at a national, regional, and community level could sufﬁce as an identitybuilding device for the nation and its inhabitants. Sara Cohen notes, at the urban level and concerning Liverpool, that: “music was also used to represent the neighbourhood,…through the use of particular musical genres and styles that evoked a collective past and tradition” (Cohen, 1998). For Alberta, a province with a short immigrant history in comparison with the rest of the county, a collective past or tradition is largely built on the lifestyles of early settlers, farmers, and ranchers, whose development of the West provides the basis for the imaginings of the cowboy’s life. A musical tradition, then, would possibly follow in the vein of the simple prairie folk tunes later adopted by singing cowboys such as Wilf Carter. While one might imagine that the local culture of Alberta supports its artists, such dedication to tradition is generally not particularly marketable in urban areas, especially in the live scene, on the radio, or in the recording industry. It therefore may fall on already established artists to relate to sections of their audience by recognizing these traditions and local values. As Andy Bennett says, in noting the social embedding by audiences, “For much of the time, popular music’s relationship to the local has rather less to do with its being a local ‘product’ than with the way in which commercially available musical products are appropriated and reworked within the context of a given locality” (Bennett, 2000). As I will show in the following examples, Blue Rodeo acknowledges Western Canada not only through their references to speciﬁc places and personal experience in the West, but also through their work in country music. What becomes particularly signiﬁcant in the example of Blue Rodeo is the way Western Canadian audiences may have inscribed a meaning on their music that wasn’t necessarily originally intended, because audiences’ forms of local knowledge in turn informs their musical experiences (Bennett, 2000). Although the nature of country music and its authentic roots is a contested subject, it may be indeed a highly valued property of locally produced music in Alberta because of its historical roots and ubiquitous presence in rural communities. George Lyon’s observations of cowboy poetry gatherings in Alberta reveal that even though many of the performers do not live or work on ranches, they have an understanding of the tradition and history of the community and are able to convey that in their performances (Lyon, 1991). The connection to the past validates their appearance of authenticity, for example, donning hates, large belt buckles, and boots, and in the case of musical performances, adhering to commonly accepted stylistic and instrumental practices, although 934 George Lewis notes that hats, belt buckles, boots, and instruments such as steel and acoustic guitars entered long after the supposed tradition of country music began (Lewis, 1997). Authenticity, then, as much as it may be constructed to support the invented traditions of country music, in practice emerges from the ability of local artists not only to understand the lifestyle of western rural-dwellers, but also to create a culture, through that understanding, that distinguishes Albertans from the rest of the country. As Lewis says, “What is deﬁned as ‘authentic’ by a particular group is likely what allows this group to identify with and make sense of the music” (Lewis, 1997). While country music often reﬂects on rural life and thereby draws a larger number of rural listeners, Greg Marquis notes that the fan base of urban centres is quickly increasing (Marquis, 1988), evidence that those who do not have direct connections to the cowboy life are just as affected and just as willing to place labels of authenticity on its products. Jim Cuddy, the lead singer of Blue Rodeo, commented on the nostalgic desire for country living in Canadian music: relief by transporting yourself to the landscapes you dream about, the landscapes you imagine (Cuddy, 2002). The urban-rural dichotomy works ironically in Canada, given that recent statistics have shown that eighty percent of the nation’s population is currently residing in urban agglomerations (Janigan, 2002), yet it remains a recurring theme in country music. Bart Testa and Jim Shedden note that Canadians were largely urbanized and working in industrial manufacturing long before the 1960s claims to the rural character of the nation were made, and say, “The cultural-nationalist construct of a rural Canada as authentic Canada must be regarded as a 1960s bourgeois-leftist-cultural-nationalist confection that served to fantasize Canada—and here Canadian musicians—as ‘not-Americans’” (Testa and Shedden, 2002). However, country music is not merely reﬂecting the desires of the audience, it is also generating such ideas in the minds of urban and rural fans alike through its illustrations of a life that may or may not exist in reality. John Lehr notes that country music “is a powerful medium for the creation, dissemination, I think that the type of music that we play is very urban-informed…But it’s very country/ landscape-longing…I think in our type of music, the longing is to get away from the confusion and pressure of the city. And a lot of that is instant and popularization of images of places, geographical stereotypes and regional myths” (Lehr, 1994). Marquis agrees: “The tension between an idyllic rural past and a troubled urbanized present is an important theme” (Marquis, 1988). One may begin to make assumptions 935 about life in Alberta based on its portrayal in Canadian country music—that it is a timeless oasis, a lifestyle that is bonded to nature and the land, removed from the chaos of urbanity, a chaos that is in reality found in Calgary or any other metropolitan centre of the West. Canadian music often perpetuates these notions and subsequently invents a further dichotomy between the East (urban) and the West (rural), projected by both Eastern musicians (Gordon Lightfoot) and Western ones (Ian Tyson). Perhaps this division emerges from the isolation aspect of tourism, particularly for visitors of the western provinces. An immaculate picture can be painted in a tourist experience, with only the most presentable and visually stunning places available for consumption. John Urry points out that “isolated from the host environment and the local people, the mass tourist travels in guided groups and ﬁnds pleasure in inauthentic contrived attractions, gullibly enjoying the ‘pseudo-events’ and disregarding the ‘real’ world outside” (Urry, 1990). Whether immersed in the Rocky Mountains or the heritage sites of the prairies, tourists miss the urban aspects of life in Alberta, those that may be very close to their own lives. When it comes to tourism, John Hopkins notes that the trick lies largely with place marketing and promotion that rely on furthering rural myths and ideals of nature drawing the consumer away from the everyday ordinariness of the city (Hopkins, 1998). And while this paper explores regional myths through music, it is important to understand where much of the subject matter for such cultural products originates. Certainly, had the mystique of the West and the mountains in Alberta and British Colombia (the western-most provinces of Canada) not been promoted to Torontonians possibly engrossed in urban life, Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, the lead singers of Blue Rodeo, would not have gone west and created music that reﬂected their encounters. Hence a recurring cycle enters: the promotion of Western places lures Eastern artists westward; they contribute to the promotion through textual and musical references; these romanticized images draw more tourists out with higher expectations, and place building and promotion occur on a larger level as a result. Blue Rodeo’s song, “Western Skies,” appeared on their 1992 release, Lost Together (see audio example). It is a country dance beginning with steel guitar and honky tonk piano, which then slides into a duet between Cuddy and Keelor on the virtues of Western living. It is rare for the two to sing together for the entirety of a song, or in close intervals; however their consistent singing in thirds lends lightness to the work. The lyrics persist in promoting the West in contrast to the East, and the combination of these lyrics, celebrating the open skies of the prairies and the relaxed ease of life in a natural environment, with the 936 decidedly old-time country feel of the instrumentation and harmonies, evoke a picturesque image of Western Canada. However, while it is easy to determine their viewpoint from the lyrics, it becomes a somewhat difﬁcult task to ascertain meaning from style and melody, and what may be “Western Canadian” about this piece lies in those musical parameters. Blue Rodeo remains true to a well-established country sound in “Western Skies,” using steel guitar, acoustic guitar, recognizable country riffs, and ﬁddle ornamentation, and call to mind what some may recognize as familiar sounds of Western culture in general. The video for “The Days In Between” (2000) contains visual images that complement the textual references in “Western Skies.” The video shows the band playing just outside a city in an industrial area. The cityscape is visible behind the band, and the atmosphere is gray and smoggy. When the band is not on screen, the video quickly ﬂips through images of busy city streets, trafﬁc jams, sidewalks crowded with pedestrians, and assorted images of chaos and darkness. These urban images are frequently in fastforward, enhancing the idea of commotion and matching Keelor’s imposing lyrics. However, while Keelor is complaining about “the days in between” his vacations, there appears to be an underlying longing for not only time off, but escape from the city. This longing may ﬁrst be noticed in the shots of the band playing, where clear sky above them is shown on more than half the screen, the band barely appearing at the bottom. The imagery changes during the instrumental solos as well, with a long frame of a dark city sky held while a juxtaposed image of an open road and sun shining through trees appears on the right-hand side of the screen. The grafﬁti, back alleys, trafﬁc, and confusion, contrasted with the scenes of nature and serenity, as well as the city scenes imposed on the playing band suggest that Blue Rodeo is ﬁghting the monotonousness of their lives with these images. It should be noted that “The Days In Between” is a guitar-driven, high-energy rock songs. Keelor’s loud vocals and often single-note melodies depict desperation and frustration. The relaxed country ease of “Western Skies” is gone, suggesting that a country style for such a subject would be inappropriate and would only be used by the band for honouring the West and its traditions. The above examples demonstrate that it is possible that the general listener would perceive Blue Rodeo’s work as promoting and celebrating rural culture and life on the prairies. My initial interpretations of the above works, as a resident of Western Canada, were just that. However, my subsequent readings of the music and conversations with Jim Cuddy suggest that such an interpretation does not reﬂect completely how the band relates to the West, and that the meanings I attribute in my analyses do not necessarily match the musicians’ intentions. 937 Despite its associations with cowboy culture and countryside living, Alberta has also long been known for its complex landscape and the sudden sight of the Rocky Mountains upon departing the prairies. Place referents in “Western Skies” such as Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains, and Saddle Mountain imply that maybe it isn’t just the plains that Blue Rodeo wanted to see or talk about. Perhaps the lure of the West lies largely in its mountainous landscape, and not in the emptiness of the prairies. Rurality is indeed available in Ontario, or Manitoba, or Saskatchewan (the provinces that lie east of Alberta); yet Blue Rodeo talks of Alberta more than any other place in their regionalized allusions. An extended quote from Cuddy tells the story of his and Keelor’s ﬁrst experience in the West and the effect it had on their work: trip was going to be a pilgrimage by the time we got there. I don’t think we thought it was going to be in the beginning. But living in the mountains completely changed us, it was the ﬁrst time that we had felt what it was like to really brave the elements, you know, how cold it was, skiing and walking around. There’s something sort of mystical about it. I think [the mountains] present a landscape you didn’t really anticipate…that made us all realize how slightly tainted our life in Toronto was. So then some of us have gone back and enjoyed the city, but I think we realize what’s missing to a much greater extent than we did before (Cuddy, 2002). If, then, the subject and meaning of “Western Skies” is more the Rocky Mountains than the prairie landscape When Greg and I ﬁnished high school, we bought an old school bus, turned it into a mobile home, and with two other friends headed out West on what we thought would be a year of traveling around on this bus going to skiing places and partying [but the] bus broke down…we didn’t have money to ﬁx it, so we…went out to the mountains and got jobs. And that winter had a profound effect on us. Living in the mountains for a year was like going to some kind of natural Mecca for us. I think that we recognized that the as a source of comfort, happiness, and freedom, how do we interpret Blue Rodeo’s references to the prairies, cowboy life, and Western culture? What is the signiﬁcance of the use of country instrumentation and styles? And what do the open, empty images on “The Days in Between” mean? The answer, simpler than it may seem, lies in one word: Calgary. Calgary is a city whose reputation is built on a strong oil economy, cowboy culture, and a friendly atmosphere. Calgary is known as the city of opportunity in Canada, a booming economy draws migrants from 938 all over the nation and country music in Canada has found a comfortable home in Calgary, thanks to annual events such as the Stampede. However, regardless of the potential hillbilly image built from the close-knit surrounding ranching community, or the corporate reputation that emerges from its economy, often the main draw of Calgary lies in its unique landscape. To the West, the mountains are visible from almost any point in the city, yet if one leaves the city limits traveling East or North, there is nothing but vast prairie. Calgary’s proximity to Banff, Canmore, and Lake Louise also entices visitors, as a number of resorts and ski areas are a short drive away. Calgary has a history of maintaining live country music venues and preserving an interest in the culture that was created by the original residents and continues to thrive. Several bars are dedicated to presenting only country acts and prosper under such a reputation. Cuddy commented on his feelings toward Calgary: I think Calgary as being to me the epicenter of the West, for me. It is a place that I anticipate coming to and it rarely lets me down. If I were in the middle of the prairies, I don’t think it would be the same. I know it has something to do with its connection to the mountains (Cuddy, 2002). Perhaps, then, the band’s intent with “Western Skies” and “The Days In Between” was to acknowledge their intense feelings for the West and the experiences that occurred during their time there. The video images, while suggesting openness and nature that is often correlated with the vastness of the prairies, can become a metaphor for the freedom Blue Rodeo associates with the mountains and the separation from an urban scene. In the case of the use of country music, while a western audience may want to believe it is Blue Rodeo following an authentic tradition established on farms in the early twentieth century and continued in rural communities (and that may very well be so), it is likely that the country style suited Blue Rodeo’s feelings toward Calgary and its Calgary is an unlikely place to be a spiritual centre, but for me it is. Very signiﬁcant things have happened to me in Calgary. It was the scene of my greatest despair when I was young. Calgary was this kind of sanctuary, but it was also a big challenge…every time I’m in Calgary there is a sense that something is going to happen. culture; the style is appropriate for the title and subject matter of the song; and it recalls the band’s inception and early repertoire of alternative country and folk music. Blue Rodeo’s work in country was not well-received, particularly in the West, and “Western Skies” could even be an unconscious attempt to build a bridge with its inhabitants. Cuddy commented on their country music: 939 There was a very signiﬁcant event that happened at the Canadian Country Music awards when they took place in Calgary and we were nominated and performed…we’ve been nominated for a lot of country music awards and there was a lot of people that felt like not only were we not country, but we were from Ontario and that wasn’t really the home of country, [etcetera]. So Ian Tyson… was sitting in the very front row, watching us perform, absolutely stone-faced. And then at the end of the performance, he got up and singlehandedly started a standing ovation for us. And that was absolutely his stamp of approval as a representative of the West for an Eastern band. And I think that changed a lot of things for us (Cuddy, 2002). The analysis of these examples demonstrates that Blue Rodeo has likely consciously created a distinction between the regions of Canada, and did so based on their perception of the nation. In heralding the features of the landscape in their songs, Blue Rodeo not only appeals to their Western audience by singling out the mountains, they also potentially foster a new sense of place for Western residents that did not previously exist. Alberta is thus able to construct an identity of difference through its possession of what no other province in the country has. For outsiders, the West’s appeal lies not only in the mystery of the mountains, but in the active and ubiquitous cowboy culture that surrounds the area. While certainly not claiming authenticity, particularly in country, at any level, Blue Rodeo may still come across as what their Western audience may believe to be an authentic country act, thanks to their acknowledgement of tradition, their Western apparel, and their subject matter. The locale of Calgary as a spiritual centre for the bad, its ties to country tradition, local culture, and the Rocky Mountains make it, as Cuddy puts it, “the epicenter of the West.” 940 New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc., 2000, 52-70. Endnotes 1. Personal communication during the completion of this paper has demonstrated that it is quite possible that Western Canada does not differ much from the Western United States in terms of landscape and culture. The examples presented in this paper will demonstrate that references to speciﬁc locales in Western Canada work to create an opposition with Eastern Canada more so than an opposition with America. The work of Ian Tyson exempliﬁes these oppositions, as much of his writing focuses on the West as a region of North America. Cohen, Sara. “Sounding Out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place.” The Place of Music ed. Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, George Revill. New York: Guilford Press, 1998, 269-290. Cuddy, Jim. Interview by author, November 20, 2002. Tape Recording. Edmonton, Alberta. Hopkins, Jeffrey. “Signs of the Post-Rural: Marketing Myths of a Symbolic Countryside.” Geograﬁska Annaler 80:2 (1998), 65-82. 2. Western Canada, for the purpose of this paper, consists mainly of Alberta, even though what might be normally considered Western Canada is anything west of Manitoba. The overriding Western culture of Alberta, as well as the landscape of the mountains and the prairies provide a unique site for the examination of the development of a Western identity. This is not to say that Blue Rodeo does not refer to other regions or provinces in their work; however most of their “Western” repertoire is centered in Alberta. Janigan, Mary. “Saving Our Cities.” MacLean’s 115:22 (June 3, 2002), 22-27. Lehr, John. “As Canadian As Possible…Under the Circumstances: Regional Myths, Images of Place and National Identity in Canadian Country Music.” CanadianMusic: Issues of Hegemony and Identity ed. Beverley Diamond and Robert Witmer. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1994, 269-281. Selected Bibliography Bennett, Andy. “The Signiﬁcance of Locality.” Popular Lewis, George H. “Lap Dancer or Hillbilly Deluxe?: The Cultural Constructions of Modern Country Music.” Journal of Popular Culture 31:3 (Winter 1997), 163173. Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place. 941 Lyon, George W. “Words From the Range: Canadian Cowboy Poetry.” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin 25:4 (December 1991), 3-8. Marquis, Greg. “Country Music: The Folk Music of Canada.” Queen’s Quarterly 95:2 (Summer 1988), 291-309. Testa, Bart and Jim Shedden. “In the Great Midwestern Hardware Store: The Seventies Triumph in EnglishCanadian Rock Music.” Slippery Pastimes: Reading the Popular in Canadian Culture ed. Joan Nicks and Jeannette Sloniowski. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002. Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage Publications, 1990. IASPM03 - MONTREAL Hearing Difference: The Seme Tobias c. van Veen T he study of resistant musical practice has often theorised its status as a “subculture.” Since the Hearing Difference: The Seme 1 advent of global capitalism, however, underground anarcho-theorists and political philosophers alike have been struggling with theorising the new position of resistant subcultures. This new position is, by default, the opposition. No longer able to practice a politics of disappearance in the mode of a liberatory invisibility, “subcultures” have shifted through the same terrain as capital: networked globalisation. Hand-in-hand with the spread of tele-technologies, electronic music cultures have shifted from the practices of the Temporary Autonomous Zone to what we can begin to theorise as a network of “microcultures.” No longer invisible, but weaved into the same global fabric as capital, the very terrain of politics is remixed as microcultures move from resistance to positive and afﬁrmative ontological projects. At the same time, musical trends play out this shift as the postmodern aesthetic of sampling is complexiﬁed through the resurgence of computer music, including the digital processes of granulation and a return to an avant-garde aesthetics of failure. Spin that again, and we could say: from memes to semes. If we were to rewind the record and spin a story of the underground, at least to posit an alternative history of what is usually called the “underground,” a ﬁction of our own, leading up to what has emerged as the microcultures of technology, we might begin where the fantasy ended, and through the most truthful of ﬁctions... 2 The Sixties rebellion crashed, a vicious & sudden carwreck to the counter-culture. Hunter S. Thompson narrowly misses the accident but is a casualty of the trauma. We ﬁnd him penning the obituary just outside of Barstow, speeding towards Las Vegas, and listening to “One Toke Over the Line.” Racing to the death of the American Dream, Thompson was “hiding from the the brutal reality of this foul Year Of Our Lord, 1971” (Thompson). 3 The Good Doctor’s pronouncement on the failure of ‘60s counter-culture became legendary in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. No Sympathy for the Devil—it was the 943 end of an era, and for some, a painful transformation took place: from ‘60s counter-culture to the diverse mix of the subcultures. The emergence of the Do-ItYourself (DIY) ethic gave energy to a furtive and angry rebellion against State and capital. Outlaws & activism fragmented into the bowels of punk and industrial cultures, while the Afro-American diaspora fermented the brews of hip-hop and electronic music—Chicago house & Detroit techno—that were to stage the Freak Fight for the next twenty years via the conjunction of DIY with Afro-Futurism. Thompson’s “Freak Power” had not failed in the ‘60s—it had, however, exhausted itself in its current form, ﬁzzled out in its counter-position to the State. In Europe as well, a break was necessary after the violence of armed revolutionary groups and the intensity of May ‘68. A general splintering of movements and a deconstruction of the revolutionary agenda gave time to regroup & rethink strategy. 4 music” (Stivale 215). The melding of space and time with music was theorised concurrently by Hakim Bey, who gave name to the Temporary Autonomous Zone. The TAZ was to become a meme across ﬂedgling cyberculture, spread by San Francisco magazine Mondo 2000, the publication of TAZ in Semiotext(e), BBS relays and eventually the World Wide Web. The TAZ resonated with punks, with strains of hip-hop, and with cyberculture itself. But its lasting inﬂuence was in provoking myriad challenges to laws across the planet concerning public property, the commons and the freedom to gather by granting a theoretical framework to the more adventurous members of a new subculture focused around “the rave.” The era of warehouse break-ins & sonic squats had been introduced along with the terror of sampling and the sudden challenge to copyright. Property in all forms was being remixed, theft was creative, & the establishment was at a loss for a good 10 years. 5 In the ‘80s, strategies gave way to tactics and the logistics were of the subculture: a music-based resistance that attempted to spread the power of revolt through alternative, DIY networks. Deleuze and Guattari would theorise this as “micropolitics.” Guattari himself remarked on the emerging acid house scene of 1985 as a “molecular revolution,” where “young people [are] opening up to another sensitivity, another relationship with the body, particularly in dance and But this raucous energy was to become condensed in its repetition of the same event. Nietzsche’s return of the spiral, despite the infusion of difference in the singularity of each rave, was not to protect it from its own success—the venture capital forces that ravaged the creative commons of the Internet also found their proﬁt in the commercialization of rave culture. From the squatted warehouse and the occupied ﬁeld to the 944 club and the Ibiza lounge. Rave culture itself, despite redeﬁning the political terrain of the counter-culture to the mobility & transient temporality of the TAZ, was pinned down as a reactionary, if not hedonistic resistance that could only grind its teeth to the ecstasy of mindnumbing trance muzak. The TAZ itself was hemmed in. As Dutch media activist Geert Lovink notes, the “TAZ was boiled down to a late 1980s concept, associating the Internet with rave parties” (Lovink 239). 6 7 The DJ as the necessary “speaking hands” of electronic music began to fade into the background as the laptop musician stumbled forth from the studio. With rave culture long appropriated, the millenium saw a shift in electronic music as it struggled to remix itself exterior to any actual event-based lifestyle-politics. Taylor Deupree, for example, once a hard techno producer, founded one of the quietest labels of all time—12k/L_ne, whose recordings are barely audible (1). Likewise, microsound and lowercase sound explored the minimalist aesthetics of ultra-low volumes and frequencies, while throughout the spectrum an aesthetics of failure began to cement the aesthetics of the glitch and the “click and cut.” These newfound sonic experiments were limited not only to the obscure. House and techno found themselves transformed by the digital possibilities of composition and deconstruction inherent to endlessly programmable, algorithmic computer software such as Max/MSP. Digital manipulation reopened the potential for areferential sound, and gave way to the ﬁrst “clicks and cuts” manifesto from Achim Szepanski. The move was strangely ahistorical, or at least forgetful of its history. For the general introduction of areferential sound precedes clicks and cuts by at least half a century via the experiments of Musique Concrete. What was forgotten in the remix of the areferential through an “aesthetics of failure” was that Musique Concrète founder Pierre Schaeffer declared the project a failure. Yet the ‘80s also saw the birth of cyberculture. Its emergence cycled at a different frequency to the subcultures it was attached. Likewise, the musicians involved with once proudly anarchic rave culture began to separate themselves from the childish circus rave had become. While the Detroit musicians sustained an offworld tradition of Afro-Futurism that stretches back to Sun Ra and George Clinton, others found their solace in a turn to the avant-garde through the immersion in the aesthetics of electronic music. A subtle shift was occuring. While originally house and techno were stitched together with MIDI and produced with synthesizers, sequencers, and the ubiquitous sampler stealing riffs from funk and jazz, the evolving technology of the computer, and eventually the laptop, began to redeﬁne the creative boundaries of the electronic musician. 945 An aesthetics of failure born, then, from the failure to remember the failures of history. 8 the internet, and the internet was the computer, our portable plug-in to the horizontal world of techno-tubers and beat-bulbs. 9 Nevertheless, the clicks and cut can perhaps be seen as a digital permutation of Musique Concrete’s archives, as the magnetic tapes of composition are exchanged for not only samplers, but the digitization of all sound—and thus its transformation into information. The click and the cut, therefore, is the realisation that “Today music is information,” and that music, like information, can become areferential and transactive. It is this concept that comes from Achim Szepanski, an ex-academe who founded the Mille Plateaux record label in the early ‘90s (the name is obviously in homage of Deleuze and Guattari). “Clicks & cuts,” writes Szepanski, are omnipresent and non-referential. Here one hears the in-between,” what Szepanski theoretically connects to Deleuze and Guattari’s “permanent ecstasy of and... and...and,” and which manifests in the movement of the “transfer, transduction, trans...interface politics and (music mutates into a transfer politics and) music” (26). For Szepanski, the areferential radicality of the click & cut was in its transaction with the network, where all music is information, inﬁnitely translated through differing forms of expression. Thus “music becomes graphics, becomes information, politics makes music, music videos act politically, hacking becomes music, etc.”—in other words, the music of the rhizome was But the radicality of the click and cut remain ambiguous. Counter-culture had produced its own DIY engagement with the machine at a level at once frighteningly Futurist and retroactively avant-garde. The digitization of information rendered history immanently mutable, and thus, forgettable. Musique concrete had become just another email attachment to the virus of history. But this self-executing message sold promise—and it was opened by others, at least to allow the virus of history to take hold of the potential that the machine promised. Areferential sound could promise the plug-in of ahistoricity, and it deﬁned the ambiguous historical moment of this emerging post-subculture. This mix of post-subcultures that we shall recognise as mediatized micro.cultures of technology. 10 The avant-garde had returned in the exploration of the areferential, which is to say, via the aesthetics of failure—as a break-down in composition, exploring the moment where software and hardware fail. Where the transactional moment produces the unexpected glitch (or ghost) in the machine. The ghost in the machine was history. For all its radicality, the burn-out effect of 946 rave culture and the crash of the Dot-Com industry gave birth to a retreat into ahistorical formalist aesthetics. For others, this retreat was a welcome return to formalist art aesthetics that had become abandoned and neglected in the era of subcultural sonic politics. The micropoliticos had in fact come full swing, as Kim Cascone notes, to dig through the high-art tradition of electronic music. Names like Pierre Boulez, Morton Subotnick, and John Cage began to resonate in the non-academic circles that once dosed E and danced all night to slamming techno. Marinetti, Russolo, the Futurists and musique concrète were in; dancing was out (2). 11 13 For one, if we are to follow Cascone, we skip over the entire history of subcultural politics and its tie to electronic music, including the radical experiments of industrial music and culture (and its counter-fascism), the anarchism of techno gatherings or Teknivals, and the social communion of house music. We even skip the politics of electro-acoustic composers devoted to acoustic ecology, such as Murray Schaeffer, and his student Barry Truax, who at SFU in Vancouver, Canada, invented the digital techniques of granular synthesis that dominate much experimental electronic music today. 14 Cascone puts it like this: “it was only a matter of time,” he says, “until DJs unearthed the history of electronic music in their archeological thrift store digs” (“Aesthetics” 15). Cascone sees the ﬂock returning to the fold as they embrace the masters of the tradition: “Fast-forwarding form the 1950s to the present,” warmly says Cascone, “we skip over most of the electronic music of the 20th century, much of which has not, in my opinion, focused on expanding the ideas ﬁrst explored by the Futurists and Cage” (14). 12 Secondly, we skip the entire history of Afro-Futurism— of the psychedelic black underground that understands the concept through movement and in movement. The politics of funk, of Sun Ra, of George Clinton, of Detroit techno, and later, of Underground Resistance—an entire history that can be read in the writings of DJ Spooky, Dan Sicko and Kodwo Eshun. 15 By skipping the needle over “most of the electronic music of the 20th Century,” i.e. the subcultures, but also the forgetful place in which the prior avant-garde becomes reinscribed in the contemporary electronic music moment, we skip over the politics—or the ways in which “the political” came to be remixed as A skip in the record lands us where we are today. But what did we miss where the needle of history skipped? 947 a mobile ﬁght against not only State and capital, but institutional frameworks that attempted to deﬁne and enforce the boundaries of high art and its history. By forgetting subcultural history, we forget its challenge to these frameworks; and by forgetting the challenges of the prior avant-garde, such as Musique Concrete, we ahistorically posit the new experimental electronic movements as both radically innovative and yet of the return of history. A history, we could say, of select cuts, one in which, at the same time, the present is seen as continuing this age-old avant-garde history at the same time that it negates it. 16 the concept. In the reinscribed return to the avantgarde, we ﬁnd a return to a powerful dualism of mind and body that opens the very moment of its return as ahistorical even as it closes over the subcultural gap in its history. Even in the radical writings of Michel Gaillot do we ﬁnd this assertion, where the lack of voice, of having something to say, is mistakenly celebrated as a sonority (4). The question is one of the voice and of the concept—and what voice became in the era of the subcultural body. This question is too large to broach here, but we can remark that without subcultural history, we cannot understand this question. We cannot hear it; it requires a different set of ears—a different way of hearing the remixed political. 17 The cornerstone of the avant-garde return is rhythm. Or rather, its lack. Although in Szepanski, clicks and cuts affect all music, in Cascone, rhythm cannot be inscribed to the tradition. Rhythm will remain populist, and as such, cannot contribute to the ideas of the Futurists and Cage. Rhythm is pop, and as such, trafﬁcs in the manufacture of “authentic aura,” which is, in reality and according to Cascone, the false halo reproduced to sell the spectacle (3). There is no concept to rhythm that can speak up, it seems; the voice, in its deterritorialization through electronic music, had nothing to say in the ﬁrst place. Rhythm is therefore meaningless, and cannot speak to the avant-garde. It is excess, and gratuitous. Moreover, it cannot speak its own history. Rhythm is of the body, and the history of the avant-garde is of In any case, if we are returning to the avant-garde, what were the ideas of the Futurists, beyond the gloriﬁcation of noise? No doubt there is much to be learned from the Futurists—including their commitment to war and fascism, as noted by Anna Friz and Owen Chapman. And what of John Cage? John Cage, truth be told, said it all, in 1937—that rhythm and percussion, in the deconstruction of tones and scripts, are to provide the potential for the future, and that, already—as of 1937— an Afro-American tradition of “hot jazz,” if not one of “Oriental cultures” in general, is far, far ahead of the supposed avant-garde (Future). On the other hand, and as well all know, Adorno hated jazz. 948 18 The academic attention that had once focused on sampling and hip-hop began to rotate 360 degrees to the coming attractions of the laptop and the formalist aesthetics of Cascone’s theorisations. The force of Szepanski’s Deleuzian argument was lost to a fascination with the technology and this new breed of globalized, jetset luminaries. Perhaps it was easier to digest, as it lacked the political anti-institutional force of its subcultural predecessors and had distanced itself from the skeletons of the drug culture. Articles on CTheory on microsound became in vogue and an entire journal of Parachute was devoted to the “micro_ sounds” (5). 19 any gestures of resistance towards the establishment. This makes its rise and fall different—less predictable, and to a certain extent softer, though perhaps even more spectacular” (338). Replace “cyberculture” with experimental electronic music—and this is where we are today: realising that we are speeding backwards through history. Here we are, in the Future: and we dream of the Futurists... In reverse, at 90 m.p.h., the death knell of the subculture has been struck—and once again we are faced with a fear and loathing. But where are we speeding to as we scrawl the obligatory obituary? 21 This fear & loathing is different. It is different in three respects. 22 But what was happening? Was this the happy marriage of radical thought in the institution and the practices of the post-rave digerati? Or had the whole movement become co-opted somehow? Where was the force of the subcultural politics that drove the face-to-face resistance of rave culture? 20 First, it is beyond, as Lovink notes, the normal cycles of appropriation. The resistance music of rave culture fell not only to commercialization, but was reappropriated by the rebirth of the elite avant-garde—to the point where the history of rebellious rhythm was erased from the record (and we might add, the vinyl record from the revolutions of wax). 23 Like cyberculture, electronic music in its experimental, evolving forms had become rareﬁed. “We are not speaking of the usual tragic cycles of appropriation here,” says Geert Lovink, here again with the wisdom cut, “Unlike pop cultures such as rock, punk, or rap, cyberculture—born in the late 1980s—has refrained from Second, these movements are global. The digitization of movement and its trans-movement as information, as Szepanski theorises, is not only “political,” but 949 proﬁtable and powerful—it begets power. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in Empire, capital is the strongest force of deterritorialization. The internet is a commerical, capitalist venture alongside a worldwide information exchange. If music, today, is information, then it suffers the same internal tendencies to disseminate like a plague—meaninglessly, violently, like money. 24 opposition, and as such, becomes something else (6). “You’re either with us or against us” is the slogan of today’s world. The subculture is no longer below: it is now the opposition, thanks to history—for unlike counter-culture, which was in opposition by will, subculture was unwillingly thrust into the opposition. As soon as it became apparent what had happened, it had already been staked as a new market. This new market faced two choices as the opposition: to colonise its radicality into product, or be destroyed as useless, if not dangerous, excess. What cannot be assimilated will be plundered, and what cannot be plundered will be scorched from Earth. But there was a glitch in the globalization of the subcultures. 26 Third, the processes are close to immanent. The content of sampling is no longer the issue; what is at stake is not the content—the traditional territory of politics—but the form, or method, of distribution. The ﬁght today is primarily not over sampling and copyright, but the transference of information-music into a different form and its global dissemination—ie, from sampling a ‘70s funk record to ripping MP3s via peer-to-peer ﬁlesharing. 25 The subcultures that could take advantage of this global glitch became microcultures. This glitch was their ambiguity—ambiguous not only in their political status, but in their status as “subcultures,” for these “subcultures” exposed themselves as a global force alongside capital. The subculture was suddenly part of the force of globalisation, and this fuelled the ambiguity. Ambiguous because the old terrain of the political—the voice of a subculture, its anger, its fury, its rebelliousness—had been hijacked by both the forces of capital and by the institutions of art—the power of history itself. And we have not yet learnt to recognise, or to hear, the ways in which the political Thus the terrain of the political is no longer that of the subculture. It is no longer of an “in-between” position, of a politics of disappearance, where the TAZ can act as a third-way, liminal escape from State capital and State communism. For one, and as anarchists and philosophers from Hakim Bey to Kojin Karatani have noted, the fall of State communism means there is no third-position: the subculture becomes the default 950 are being remixed, reshaped, and redrawn in the global microculture. What we have are microcultures that are no longer “underground,” operating at angry odds to the Establishment, either in fragmented or uniﬁed, “counter-cultural” form, but horizontal packets of microscenes that operate globally, and thus, are interweaved with the same fabric as capital. And just as often as these microcultures open a radical opportunity to embrace transactivity by attuning it to transformation, and thus a transformative politics, we are reminded that this is otherwise known in the business community as “networking.” 27 cacophony of virtual bodies operating at nodal points in the real. For what is sorely lacking in today’s electroﬁed microcultures of technology—which includes the entire milieu of experimental electronic music, tactical media, renegade theorists & net.artists, social software programmers, surrealist turntablists, etc.—are the content providers. 28 Content that would be generated not from an underground or interiorization of the political, nor from an identity, but in the transversal of space through the virtual, through the Net, and, at the limit, through forms that we cannot traditionally theorise in the way we usually understand “content.” 29 The new political is thus not necessarily fragmented, but globalized. In this globalization, the horizontality of the network opens both the opportunity to reclaim what was radical for the establishment at the same time that radical forces attempt to outreach past their conﬁnes—their genres or forms. Thus, today, in speaking of electronic music, we cannot simply speak of music. Today’s apparent formalism is an attempt to rein-in the node-jumping of the digital. Form is also an expression, and the political resides not only in the content but in the manner of its force, its dissemination. But form alone cannot fuse connections that are anticapitalist—conceptual voices remains necessary, the content must also be created, albeit this voice is not one but many, and globalised, becomes a sonorous [snip] 30 The content, then is the intervention of the global network. The content is the network, although the network changes in each application of the content. The network, in itself, is politically ambiguous as content. 31 If, in the age of the subculture, concepts travelled as memes through the ﬂedgling networks—as concepts to be remixed into new contexts, and where the concept was about the application of the content—then today 951 the concept is the network. In fact the network is both concept and context, and the meme is only the static concept within the network’s transactions. The active idea that expresses itself as a force is the seme. What matters is not the meme, but the point at which the meme becomes inverted, where the idea is no longer sampled into different contexts, but the context is sampled into different ideas, and where the context itself is already the network. The seme is the point at which the meme is forced to undergo a translation and an extroversion at the limit of its identity by the force of its trajectory—the act of its self-sampling. The inversion of its innards now expresses the trajectory of its form. The seme thus comes to express the force of form in the stitching of the network to the content of the meme. The seme is the meme of the power of dissemination. It’s the name we give to the transformational properties of the network, where the network forms the content. The seme is the theoretical framework in which the practical forces of contemporary microcultures express themselves. It is not an idea-thing that travels, like the dualist concept of meme, but the point at which the thing, at the moment of its translation or transformation at becoming something other to itself, undergoes a forceful expression of the path of its movement—its network. The seme demonstrates the digital network of transduction. If we may sample Brian Massumi: “There is no inside as such for anything to be in, interiority being only a particular relationship to the exterior to itself (infolding)” (115). 32 If the TAZ was a meme in late-80s cyberculture and ‘90s rave culture, then the TAZ today ﬁnds itself living up to its acronym—Temporary Autonomous Zone—as the context of today’s ideas, rather than being the idea itself. It thus becomes a problematic of how to disseminate the context in an expression that fosters anti-capitalist networks. In other words, how to expose the movement of the seme itself, in its multiplicity of difference. 33 [snip] 952 5. See: Turner, Jeremy. “The Microsound Scene: An Endnotes 1. See: http://www.12k.com Interview with Kim Cascone.” CTheory.net A101 (2001) and “Neuro-Transmit Me These Empty Sounds: An Interview with Janne vanHanen.” CTheory.net A102 (2001), as well as: vanHanen, Janne. “Loving the Ghost in the Machine.” CTheory.net A099 (2001). Historical footnote: these interviews and vanHanen’s paper came out of the Refrains: Music Politics Aesthetics conference which I organised at UBC in September, 2001. See: http://www.shrumtribe.com/refrains. Brady Cranﬁeld’s article in the Parachute 107 issue on “micro_ sounds” also came from this conference. A selection of the conference proceedings were also published in the UBC online journal, Intersects, available here: http://www.iisgp.ubc.ca/whatsnew/intersects/issues/ dec01/opening.htm. Also see Parachute: electrosons_ electrosounds 107 (2002). 2. For an extended analysis and critique of Cascone’s thought, see: van Veen, tobias c. “Laptops & Loops: The Advent of New Forms of Experimentation and the Question of Technology in Experimental Music and Performance.” Conference Paper. November 1st, 2002. University Art Association of Canada, Calgary. Available online at: http:// wwww.quadrantcrossing.org/papers.htm.Seealso:Ashline, William. “Clicky Aesthetics: Deleuze, Headphonics, and the Minimalist Assemblage of ‘Aberrations.’” Interview with tobias c. van Veen. Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture, Politics 15.1 (2002): 87-104. For another subtle critique see: Hecker, Tim. “Sound and the ‘Victorious Realm of Electricity.’” Parachute: electrosons_electrosounds 107 (2002): 60-68. 6. Although I remain troubled with Karatani’s turn to Kant via Marx (and vice-versa) in a discourse of positivity that comes to re-embrace “futurity” as a possible “utopia,” his motives for shifting from a proto-anarchist position in the ‘80s to a “positive” mode of production is emblematic of a general shift in anti-capitalist politics: “Up until the climate change of 1989, I also despised the all ideas of possible futures... The collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989 compelled me to change by stance... When [the Communist bloc] collapsed, I 3. See Cascone, Kim. “Laptop Music—Counterfeiting Aura in the Age of Inﬁnite Reproduction.” Parachute: electrosons_electrosounds, 107 (2002): 52-60. 4. See Gaillot, Michel. Multiple Meaning: Techno, An Artistic and Political Laboratory of the Present. Trans. Warren Niesluchowski. Paris: Editions Dis Voir, 2002. Also see: van Veen, tobias c. “It’s Not A Rave, Ofﬁcer.” FUSE 26.1 (2003). 953 realized that my critical stance had been paradoxically relying on their being. I came to feel that I had to state something positive. It was at this conjuncture that I began to confront Kant” (Transcritique. Trans. Sabu Kohso. Cambridge: MIT P, 2003: ix). The problematic with Karatani’s position is that it reverses backwards through history to confront past teleologies as a possible futurity. What remains unrealised is the role of potential in the “positive,” a role which would turn a simple relapse to “futurity” to a (yet) to-come, still immanently “productive” (and yet still deconstructive) (political) project. Nonetheless Karatani’s discourse initiated through Kant and Marx outlines a point at which to contrast the latter project from discourses that seek to re-embrace old teleologies; and along the way Karatani’s position allows us to historicize the ways in which “theory” has been transformed by actuality. Hakim Bey, however, attempts to understand what happens to a politics of disappearance once the subculture becomes the opposition: “So the choice remains: —either we accept ourselves as the ‘last humans’, or else we accept ourselves as the opposition” (Millenium. New York: Autonomedia & Garden of Delight, 1996. Anti-copyright. p. 30.). Such a position, however, doesn’t mean the negation of the TAZ or of a politics of disappearance (as Karatani implies, and follows to its self-made doom): “the temporary autonomous zone thus retains its value not only for its own sake but as a historicization of lived experience, perhaps even a mode of propaganda-in-action” (53). It retains its force—as the real, the actual—and its virtuality— as both a historicization and “propaganda-in-action.” Conjoined, the TAZ evolves from meme to seme. Selected Bibliography Bey, Hakim. T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1991. Anti copyright. Cage, John. “The Future of Music: Credo.” Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Hanover: Weslayan UP, 1973: 3-7. Cascone, Kim. “The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘PostDigital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music.” Computer Music Journal 24.4 Winter (2000): pp. 1218. Chapman, Owen and Anna Friz. “Too Big for their Beats? Questions for the Microsound Revolution.” Graduate Researcher: Journal For the Arts, Sciences, and Technology 1.2 (2003). (With accompanying audio CD). Lovink, Geert. Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture. Cambridge: MIT P, 2002. 954 Massumi, Brian. Parables For the Virtual: Movement Affect Sensation. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Stivale, Charles J. “Pragmatic/Machinic: Discussion with Félix Guattari (19 March 1985).” Pre/Text 14.3-4 (1993): 215-250. Szepanski, Achim. “Digital Music and Media Theory.” Parachute 107 (2002): 24-31. Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Vintage, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Mutation Industry: Cyberdog, Apoptygma Berzerk, and the future of Industrial Music Marc Vera On the forefront of future pop is Apoptygma Berzerk. Apop has always been the project of one Norwegian, Stephan Groth. Apop is a project that changes with Stephan’s interests. Their ﬁrst EP’s, out in the early 90’s were reminiscent of the industrial of that era – distorted vocals – hard beats, and repetitive rhythms – much like Skinny Puppy and Frontline Assembly (when Frontline began their foray into the guitar focused sounds of industrial). Apop has also toyed with the synthy sounds of Depeche Mode and Alphaville. Apoptygma Berzerk T echnology, space, suffering, evolution, the future, modernity – the decline of the world… the themes of industrial music. From its beginnings in the mid-70’s with such acts as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire to the mid-80’s dominance of Skinny Puppy and Front 242 to the mainstream acceptance of “industrial” with Nine Inch Nails – it has consistently dealt with the future and revolution. Common sounds are harsh electronics, distorted vocals, and a pounding bass. Something in the scene has changed in the past ﬁve years. Shannon Ludwig from Metropolis Records says, “Many bands (who would have once been considered industrial) have now become a hybrid between pop, dance, and trance.” This has led to the appearance of formerly lambasted forms of techno, hard house and trance, on the dance ﬂoors of clubs across the globe. It has even led to a new genre – “future pop.” In 1996, they released “7” –their ﬁrst foray into more pronounced techno beats. The ﬁrst track, “Love Never Dies” has the always powerful motif from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” meshed with a driving bass. “Love Never Dies” was not only popular in industrial nightclubs – but was embraced by the rave scene in Europe. Present on “7” are elements of the coming electronic What exactly is future pop and how has it come to dominate the scenes over in Europe and why has it been slow coming to the U.S.? And just why does it sound so much like the techno that was formerly shunned by industrial fans? revolution that would soon envelop the group along with elements of the earlier synthpop (like Depeche) and the Wax Trax era-industrial (A Split Second, Clock DVA). The album also features a cover of OMD’s “Electricity” and a tribute to Kurt Cobain. 956 The artwork for this record shows Stephan as Christ – complete with a crown of thorns. On the ﬂip side of the CD jacket, an image of Jesus with the words “rebel” underneath. Stephan thanks God or the holy trinity on all of his albums. Whether this is to be taken seriously is somewhat controversial in the scene, even though he admits to being a Christian and managed to make it into the Encyclopedia of “Living on my nerves last days of ‘99. Nightmare, conspiracy, depression and lunacy. I need to feel more love inside … maybe there is no tomorrow…. It’s about time, that this world goes up in ﬂames” (Groth 1999). “Starsign” leads into the, “want to be” club anthem of Contemporary Christian Music. However it was 1999’s “Welcome to Earth” that found Apop at the apex of ‘Future Pop’ in the world of industrial. Mostly absent are the religious connotations; present are ideas of the future, space, aliens and the apocalypse. The album begins with comments from people who have been abducted by aliens. One guy says, “I have drawn the conclusion that the fact of human-alien contact at this time is probably the least understood and least recognized major force that will shape the future of the human species during the 21st century and beyond. I do believe that not only are we being impacted by alien intelligence at this time, I believe we have always been impacted throughout our entire history of human culture.” The introduction segues into “Starsign.” A trance based song about the coming apocalypse, the desire to escape and the coming millennium. The image of the cyborg presents itself in “Kathy’s Earlier in the song he sings, “The only light we see is from the screens No will to feel or explore the forgotten dimensions.” “Eclipse.” The ﬁrst two minutes of “Eclipse” consists of common trance elements… layering a bass backbeat with a simple keyboard progression and electronic snares and hi hat. It is another song about leaving the earth – the most common theme on this album. “Our selﬁsh lives have made us all go blind One day we’ll awake by a bright light on the horizon In one second every eye will see the same And this blinding light will draw all our attention” (Groth 1999). 957 Song” with the lines, “Connecting to neural net … come lie- next to me. Don’t cry – you and me are one.” When this is performed live, there is a projection of a woman/robot/cyborg singing along with Stephan. Its somber melody creates a feeling of despair. between going to Slimelight – THE place to go for future-pop/industrial/gothic dancing or to a Frantic party. Frantic throws hard-trance/hard house parties every few weeks at the Camden Palace and other venues. I was not sure which party would help me more. Frantic Their most recent album, “Harmonizer” veers from the alien aspect and focuses on technology and consumption. I’m still trying to decipher how Pikachu makes an appearance both on the album, and as a song. They go from using a crop circle as their main motif to that of Apple’s “ﬁrewire” symbol and even have a song called “PhotoShop Sucks.” But with a leading track called “More Serotonin…Please” one has to question why they are still trying to escape this world. After having lived in London and never gone to a Frantic party – I decided to ﬁnally go to one. I attended my ﬁrst Frantic party this past February at the Camden Palace. I arrived at 11pm and ﬁgured I would be the ﬁrst person in line. Of course, I was wrong, the queue was around the corner, my friend Anna simply said, “Good luck getting in” as she walked off. There I was, standing on the corner, in my x18 sneakers, pants with an obscene “You see, see what can’t be seen. You repair – the damage done to me,” from “Unicorn,” once again brings up the idea of the female cyborg. “Rollergirl” also uses the idea of the cyborg – “You might fall in love with someone else today, but I will always love you…anyway” (Groth 2001). The album is stuck on the idea of sensory overload from the world in which we are living. The desire to escape. amount of zippers, a gray shirt with a boom box on it and a black jacket. I took my place in line … and it commenced to rain. What was I going to do? I had made the trip to London speciﬁcally to attend this party and to shop at Cyberdog. I had this crazy idea that the only people who attended Frantic and Tidy parties were uber-ravers – decked out only in the latest fashions from Cyberdog and the Camden market stalls. I Is it this desire for escape that has led to the push to the harder trance beats? I wanted to ﬁgure this out and journeyed to London. While there I had to choose could not have been more wrong – and thus began my downward spiral – or at least someone smashed the rose colored glasses that were still on my face. 958 I was lucky enough to be standing in front of some guys who apparently go to every Frantic event and any other event that consists of hard house - one had on a Sundisessential shirt. Of course, they were all students, “old people don’t go out to such things.” One of them said, “If I hear a single whistle tonight, I’m going to shove it down that person’s throat.” A vendor walked by with glowsticks and ﬂashing lights. The boys behind me were obviously “over” the whole glow stick phenomenon. “Glowsticks are for wankers.” – “I should have gone to Slimelight.” What I learned about this, however, was the role Cyberdog plays in club fashion, not only for industrial fans but for those rampant UK clubbers. Cyberdog Walking into the Cyberdog store in Covent Garden is like walking into a different world. The booming hard trance and happy hardcore overtake your senses. The dense smoke clouds your vision and you wonder, “Where the I ﬁnally got into the palace and freaked out. The pulsing bass overtook my system – all I wanted to do was dance. As I was standing in the coat check line I heard the beginning of Apop’s “Eclipse” and the crowd went wild. Maybe all was not lost! However, this quickly changed. hell am I? And what is going on?” The clerk walks up to you – in her 4 inch high Swear platform shoes – ﬁshnet stockings – futuristic skirt and a tight shirt, apparently made of nylon, with zippers all over, many of them open. She has a plethora of piercings and her hair is full of extensions, but not normal extensions – there’s yarn, bits of plastic twine, and PVC tubing – all meshed After checking my coat and walking around the ﬁve plus ﬂoors – I was left scratching my head. Who were these people, how did they know Apop, and why did I feel like I was at a super club for tourists? The music, which was amazing, was a mixture of hard-trance and house spun by Phil Reynolds and others. But why did they remind me so much of “Future Pop?” While there were some folks decked out in full Cyberdog regalia – most were in jeans, trainers, and a plain T-shirt. My hypothesis was unraveling in front of me and I realized in with her “natural” blue and black coloring. This is Cyberdog, no – not the openDoc application from Apple, but the future of fashion – whether it’s the future of industrial fashion is debatable. Entering either of the Cyberdog stores in London is akin to walking onto the set of Blade Runner, The Fifth Element or any sci-ﬁ ﬁlm. The Covent Garden store, recently painted white from black (which changes its 959 aura from doom and gloom space to a heavenly vision of the future) is two levels. Chi Chi, the store’s mascot, is the welcome mat upon entering the store. card is handed to the customer before entering one of the pods – made of a plastic shell and containing a door that slides closed (think Star Trek or perhaps the pods from Alien). The freedom to change the lighting in They’ve even created a story around Chi-Chi and how he ended up going from a Chihuahua minding his own business (and noting the fashion faux pas of humans) to inheriting the body of cyborg with super powers. Aliens somehow clued into his fashion sense and ﬁgure he’d be the perfect candidate to search out new fashions from across the universe. He ﬂies around space on a ship with creatures that are clones, of a sort, to help him out. the room from black light to ﬂuorescent white is left with the customer– after all – they have to be able to see how they will look out in the club. The main store in Camden is the destination for many a cyberpunk – although most of the crowds are boring club goers and their friends looking for something interesting to wear out. This is one of the more dynamic aspects of the store – how those who purchase the clothes do not “ﬁt the part.” The main store contains The ﬂoor of the store is metal with holes, just like a spaceship and clothes are found along the perimeter. There are anime characters, spaceships, dogs, and other permutations of the future. There are a few futuristic sculptures in the windows – no photos allowed. Downstairs is a small kids section and most of the jewelry (plastic with nails or spikes, mirror carvings of chi-chi, chunky neon spiked rubber chokers) almost all of it glows in black light. a DJ booth in the entrance that is frequently used on the weekends. Entry to the store is through a stone archway – the whole store being contained within a bridge/underground. At the end of the long hallway where the entrance is found is a huge spinning spaceship (Chi Chi’s ship from when he crash-landed on his way back to earth). The employees – usually 5, are milling about – mostly in Cyberdog clothing – all cyberpunked out. Some of these are, what is referred to in the UK, as crasher kids. [ Most of the workers seem shy – why are they dressed in such a radical manner? What is their motivation? One trip to the website further enhances the futuristic leanings of Cyberdog. The dressing rooms are also outlandish. A boarding From the opening scene of saying “Staying one step 960 ahead in fashion” to the spaceship, which will take you to the different planets – [links for news, virtual store, earth stations, mission data, club info, etc.] – the theme of space prevails. ebm/future pop. Many, like Slimelight and NY’s AlbionBatcave have different rooms. Some playing Hard Trance and EBM while others play Goth. Industrial has changed from its roots. Jeanne Klaﬁn, Director of Marketing, Video and Club Promotions for Mute After selecting a planet the music changes to a pulsing techno beat as the ship ﬂies to its destination, avoiding asteroids and travelling at the speed of light. Images of Star Wars and Tron come to mind as the ship enters its port of call. Once landed, the music changes to a simple rise and fall of synth line – akin to what is heard sci ﬁ ﬁlms when the ship lands on a new planet. Records says, “TG and EN were the ﬁrst artists to use unconventional items as musical instruments not for effect, but rather out of necessity. They were forced to use what sparse resources that were available to them because they could not obtain proper instruments. Out of this necessity, these bands created not only a new type of music, but a new way to look at music.” It now appears that Industrial musicians have the means to There are now pods/stores in Basel, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Amsterdam, Ibiza and Tokyo. purchase instruments … but they are still forcing us to look at music in new ways. The circuit like design permeates the exteriors of each of the stores and the theme of the cyborg is forever present. Chichi is obsessed with technology and loves throwing parties, leading to the club like atmosphere found in all of the stores. So where is Industrial going and how does Cyberdog and Apop ﬁt into this equation? While I haven’t heard Apop played in Cyberdog – many a friend who is a fan of theirs loves the clothes. The lines have been blurred. Many industrial/goth clubs in the US and abroad now have nights that market themselves as goth/industrial/ 961 Selected Bibliography Apoptygma Berzerk. Welcome to Earth. Metropolis Records, 1999. Apoptygma Berzerk. Harmonizer. Metropolis Records, 2002. Klaﬁn, Jeanne. “Personal Interview” jeanne@mute. com. June 25, 2003. Ludwig, Shannon. “Personal Interview” promotions@ metropolis-records.com. July 1, 2003. IASPM03 - MONTREAL “Grand Funk Live! Staging Rock in the Age of the Arena” Steve Waksman G rand Funk Railroad advertised the release of its ﬁrst album, On Time, in the December underway in the staging of live rock as the 1960s came to a close. I cannot say deﬁnitively, but I believe this to be the ﬁrst time a band was sold on the basis of the size of the audiences to which it performed (as opposed to the number of people who bought its records, lest we forget that 50,000,000 Elvis fans couldn’t have been wrong in the 1950s). The crowd was becoming a commodity in popular music to an unprecedented degree, and the large-scale concert was in the process of becoming a standardized element of the rock industry, a process that would come to fruition in the emergence of arena rock over the next few years. Accompanying this change in mode of production was a change in the meaning of live rock performance, which no American band symbolized at the dawn of the 1970s as did Grand Funk Railroad. “Live music” remains a relatively underexamined phenomenon in popular music studies. As a ﬁeld, we seem to be afraid that positing the unique signiﬁcance of the live event opens the way toward the sort of romanticization of unmediated experience that so many of us have questioned in our various research efforts. Sarah Thornton’s “Authenticities” chapter in 1969 issue of Circus by drawing attention to a series of successful appearances at large rock festivals and concerts around the U.S. The group was “born” at a rock ‘n’ roll revival in Detroit (near their home location of Flint, Michigan); they showed 125,000 in Atlanta that “it’s not how big it is, it’s how you use it;” they helped the people in Cincinnati to “get off,” and “thunder through” a crowd of 30,000 in Nashville; in Texas they got all of what 180,000 had to give, and in L.A. the band and the audience “came.” Leaving aside the crude sexual innuendo, two things fascinate me about this ad. First is the geography of it: the band creates a symbolic touring circuit for itself, starting in the midwest and heading south, before winding up in the Golden State. Notably absent is New York or any other location in the Northeast; Grand Funk is a band for the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt, at least to start. More importantly, Grand Funk uses its success at playing to large crowds to legitimate their commercial appeal. One can take this as the ﬁrst measure of the band’s effort to sell itself as a “people’s band,” in opposition to critics and “hip” tastemakers. I think it can also be taken as a measure of the shift that was Club Cultures is a notable exception, and includes some important insights concerning the relative value 963 of “live” and “recorded” music. By her account, the term “live” did not become a common point of musical vocabulary until the 1950s, when recordings had assumed the dominant role of representing “music” to the majority of listeners (Thornton, p. 41). Since that time, Thornton argues, live musical performance has played an increasingly diminishing role in public spaces of musical consumption, as the discotheque and then the modern dance club have moved the action “from the stage to the danceﬂoor” (p. 29). The one counterexample she raises to this trend is that of the arena or stadium concert, about which she notes that the Beatles were the ﬁrst band to hold such concerts, and “were possibly the last band to get away without dramatically changing their style of performance to accommodate this new environment” (p. 78). After the Beatles, Thornton claims, arena and stadium concerts were more predicated upon the intensiﬁcation of spectacle and the use of technologies designed to ensure a performance of maximum impact, and the live event as a whole no longer existed as an autonomous phenomenon but as a supplement to the business of selling records. Thornton’s genealogy of the category of “live music” is compelling, but her explanation of the changes wrought by the shift to arena rock is less so; her narrative of changing authenticities does not do justice to the speciﬁcity of the late 1960s/early 1970s moment when arena rock emerged. More attentive the the particular weight of this moment is Ellen Willis, in a short piece titled “Crowds and Freedom.” Willis begins by noting that “the power of rock ‘n’ roll as a musical and social force has always been intimately connected with the paradoxical possibilities of mass freedom or collective individuality” (p. 153). For Willis, this paradox begins to take shape not in live performance but through the collectivity created out of mass-mediated cultural forms such as radio, records and television, through which a shared repertoire of sounds and images became the common currency of a heterogeneous and dispersed population, each of whom “integrated the music into our lives or our lives into the music in our own way” (p. 154). Live crowds, in her analysis, “functioned largely as a conﬁrmation of the existence of the community,” a function that Willis suggests was particularly strong for arena or festival crowds (p. 156). Rock concerts, in other words, brought together a community that was already conscious of its interconnectedness through the effects of mass media. Yet some concerts had more weight than others as events where community was conﬁrmed and consolidated. Woodstock, by Willis’s estimation, dramatized the possibilities of mass freedom as well as the fragility dwelling within that term; and Altamont was “the countermyth that could no longer be denied,” after which the idea that the crowd could be a source of freedom largely receded from the ideological ediﬁce of rock and roll (pp. 157-158). 964 The post-Altamont moment in U.S. rock history is the moment at which arena rock starts to become the prevailing form of live rock performance. It is also roughly the moment at which Grand Funk Railroad’s career began its ascent. Between 1969 and 1974, the band scored ten gold records, at a time when a gold record was awarded for sales of over one million units. They also played a steady stream of concerts to arena- and festival-sized crowds. Throughout their rise to success, critics watched with a skeptical and at times hostile eye. For most critics, the music of Grand Funk was deemed an unsatisfying simpliﬁcation of the power trio format that had been popularized by late 1960s ensembles like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. When the band’s success continued to escalate despite critical hostility, Grand Funk Railroad became a problem for critics to resolve: how could a group with such obvious lack of musical merit gain such a strong hold over the rock audience? This concern came to a head in 1971, when the band became the ﬁrst since the Beatles to play at New York’s Shea Stadium, with a capacity of over 50,000. The Shea Stadium concert was the culmination of a determined move to mass success engineered by the members of Grand Funk Railroad -- Mark Farner, Don Brewer, and Mel Schacher -- and their manager, Terry Knight. During the early years of their success, Knight was the band’s public mouthpiece and publicity mastermind. Among his more grand gestures was a billboard advertising the Grand Funk album, Closer to Home: located in the heart of Times Square in New York, where it took up a whole city block, it remained for three months in early 1971 at a cost of $100,000. Knight would defend the necessity of such measures by noting that radio play was all but closed to Grand Funk, and critics were almost uniformly opposed to the group. Thus did he demonstrate considerable skill at maintaining one of the most characteristic and yet most delicate balances in rock: presenting Grand Funk Railroad as a group of underdogs while celebrating and justifying their enormous popularity. In Knight’s characterization, Grand Funk Railroad were the ultimate anti-establishment band, standing for “the people” against the power of government and media. When members of the press largely snubbed a press conference arranged to address the Shea concert, Knight went on the offensive, declaring that the media were scared of Grand Funk in a way that they had no reason to be with the Beatles. As he proclaimed in an interview following the aborted press conference: The media is worried about our power. Anybody that can draw 55,000 people together at one time has got some kind of power . . . Back when the Beatles were famous 55,000 people just 965 meant a lot of screaming girls. Now, 55,000 people to them maybe means the possibility of a Mark Farner standing on stage and saying, “now brothers and sisters take that city down!” (Kerner, p. 29) Feminizing the rock audience of the preceding decade by way of disparaging it, Knight drew a distinction between the Beatles and Grand Funk Railroad that was politically groundless -- the Beatles were far more political than Knight here suggests, and GFR were not so radical -- but rhetorically powerful. It was not just that Grand Funk Railroad symbolized the shift from the 1960s to the 1970s in rock, but that Knight portrayed them as the principal representatives of this shift as a means of building their appeal. In so doing, he also put forth a construction of the audience to go along with his deﬁnition of the band, as a group of people who were young but not too young, who were not “just” girls but a collection of “brothers and sisters” whose attraction to rock and roll made them automatic rebels ready for action. Interviewing Knight, journalist Kenny Kerner eventually became exasperated by such rhetoric. “Why do you keep using those words? Our people? on political grounds, declaring that when “they” are promoting Vietnam, lines of separation are necessary. But Kerner pushed his point, and in so doing laid bare some of the stakes involved in Grand Funk’s success: “The reason for the Beatles great popularity was that they had universal appeal . . . Grand Funk is coming on to the music scene and saying that these people are the ones we’re playing for . . . The Beatles didn’t separate . . . Grand Funk is taking their people out of the entire population and catering exclusively to them” (p. 30). This unusual exchange, in which an interviewer genuinely challenges his subject, reveals the tensions emerging in the early 1970s around the mass appeal of rock. Grand Funk had the capacity to draw larger crowds than just about any other band of the moment, but their appeal nonetheless seemed exclusive. By their very popularity, they had driven a wedge in the perceived ability of rock to represent its audience in a uniﬁed and unifying way. Greil Marcus elaborated upon this conception of the meaning of Grand Funk’s success in the midst of an extensive rumination on the conversion of rock into a part of mainstream culture that he wrote for the June 1971 issue of Creem (the month preceding the band’s Shea Stadium appearance). Discussing the changes that overcame rock during the late 1960s, Marcus asserted that a once “secret” medium had become assimilated, and that “mainstream assimilation Your people? Brothers. Sisters. That’s such garbage . . . How can you bring everybody together if you ﬁrst separate them?” (p. 30). Knight defended himself 966 has brought not power but dissipation” (p. 38). In this moment of fragmentation, Marcus observed, “It’s certainly possible that the only place in rock and roll . . . that still moves with the excitement and that still has the power to maintain the values of exclusive possession that have made this music matter for ﬁfteen years is the place now occupied by Grand Funk Railroad” (p. 42). Further noting that Grand Funk had achieved such prominence despite a number of limiting factors (lack of radio play, hostile critical response, indifference to the band among many diehard rock fans), Marcus went so far as to suggest that “Grand Funk is not merely fragmenting the audience, like most everyone else; they may be dividing it.” Yet the group’s ultimate importance for Marcus was, paradoxically, not in the divisiveness of their impact but in the apparent connection they had with a newly constituted wing of the rock audience, a younger wing that rejected some of the standards and assumptions of the critic and his peers. To this audience, Grand Funk seemed able to speak directly, even if their message might seem inarticulate to those not attuned to the band. Grand Funk concerts dramatized and consolidated this bond in the strongest terms, by Marcus’s description: in the mystery of the rock, you get off on what’s yours. A Grand Funk concert is exclusive. Only certain people want to get in. They know who they are, too. Fuck that critic shit, man, siddown. This is the best thing going, and not only that, this is the biggest group in the world, and I . . . am in the same room (p. 43). Five months later, in November 1971, garage rock compiler and future punk Lenny Kaye’s review of the Shea Stadium concert appeared in the pages of Creem. Kaye’s seven-page review sought to capture the event in all its grandiosity. The ﬁrst half is largely occupied by discussion of Terry Knight’s role in promoting Grand Funk Railroad. Kaye also once again invokes the Beatles/ Grand Funk comparison, recalling the uniqueness of the Beatles’ own concerts in Shea. Only on page ﬁve does Kaye begin to review GFR’s performance. He is impressed with the literal power of the band: “They’re loud, much louder than the other times I’ve seen them, but also richer, not as ear-splitting and trebly. A volume you can live with, can thrive on, just over the threshold of distortion” (Kaye, p. 73). But Kaye is also impressed by the band itself, which has improved dramatically by his account. They move through their set with force, A Grand Funk concert sets up, deﬁnes, invites and entertains a community which forms itself around that event. The “goal” is to get off -- and each song seeming to issue a new sort of prompt to the audience: “Are You Ready,” “Footstompin’ Music,” “I’m Your Captain,” “Get It Together.” 967 For Kaye, the highlight comes in the song, “Inside Looking Out,” an extended jam during which singer/guitarist Mark Farner makes a direct appeal to the crowd, encouraging them to clap their hands. As they do the stadium lights go on to illuminate the night-time assembly, “a million little suns erupting into glory, all focused on ﬁfty ﬁve thousand who are rippling along like so many seas, a huge mirror reﬂecting the suddenly-small three people on stage, a true notion of where the party has been all along” (p. 74). The crowd is displayed to itself, made conscious of itself as a crowd at the climax of the evening in a gesture that demonstrates both Grand Funk’s power over the audience and the extent to which the band is beholden to the assembled mass. Kaye here describes a moment analogous with what Elias Canetti, in his book introduction of it as “our generation’s national anthem.” For all the talk about the Beatles surrounding Grand Funk’s appearance at Shea, it is striking that they ended their set paying tribute to the Stones -- all the more so given how fresh Altamont was in the minds of many rock fans. Indeed the ﬁlm, Gimme Shelter, that documented the Stones’ performance at Altamont was even more recently released; and as critic Robert Duncan has argued, it was that ﬁlm by Albert and David Maysles that truly memorialized the event as standing for the mythic end of the sixties, culminating in footage of a young African American getting stabbed to death by one of the Hells Angels members hired to provide “security” (Duncan, p. 29). It was no coincidence that the same ﬁlmmakers, the Maysles Brothers, were hired by Grand Funk to ﬁlm the Shea Stadium concert, shooting footage that remains unreleased. The Grand Funk Railroad concert at Shea Stadium was not quite a “sequel” to Altamont. However, the continuous stream of Beatles references surrounding the event and the evocation of the Stones during the performance indicate how effectively Grand Funk had, at least momentarily, inserted itself into the existing mythology of rock. That one of rock’s great mythographers, Greil Marcus, assigned such sweeping importance to the group in 1971 further suggests the extent to which Grand Funk Railroad stood for some larger shift occurring in rock at the dawn of the 1970s, Crowds and Power, calls the “discharge,” a moment when “distinctions are thrown off and all feel equal . . . It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd” (Canetti, p. 18). Kaye considers the remainder of the show to have been an afterthought. Yet Grand Funk’s choice of closing song was certainly of consequence under the circumstances: a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” The song had appeared on the band’s most recent album, Survival, but here took on a new dimension, signalled by Mark Farner’s 968 a shift that had to do with the simultaneous expansion and perceived fragmentation of rock’s cultural reach. That the band is nowhere to be found in Marcus’s ﬁrst sign of betrayal . . . Grand Funk isn’t a rock ‘n’ roll band. They’re a big fan club. The best fuckin’ fan club in the world. (Kaye, pp. 74-75) Mystery Train, published in 1975, in which large portions of the article cited above were reprinted verbatim, might bespeak the transitory nature of Grand Funk’s importance, but also highlights the slippery nature of rock historiography and the selective memory that has gone into its construction. On that count, Lenny Kaye’s characterization of the band’s importance, which concludes his review of the Shea Stadium concert, is worth remembering, even if its terms may seem overinﬂated: Rock ‘n’ roll is built on a myth. That being a guitar ﬂash or a wizard drummer or a laid-back bass player is better than being anything on this earth. That the American Dream didn’t fade away when we ran out of West to conquer. That it doesn’t take brains, or money, or position, or anything, really, to have that golden chance to go all the way . . . Grand Funk knows all this, and if they’re not totally aware of their position in the myth, they certainly sense it subconsciously . . . Their strength lies with their audience, who’ll stay with them . . . as long as the group reﬂects a part of where they want to be, and then will split at the 969 Selected Bibliography Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. New York: Noonday Press, 1984. Duncan, Robert. The Noise: Notes from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984. Kaye, Lenny. “To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest.” Creem. November 1971, pp. 14-17, 72-75. Kerner, Kenny. “An Interview with Grand Funk Railroad’s Mentor-Manager-Producer Terry Knight.” Circus. September 1971, pp. 27-31. Marcus, Greil. “Rock-A-Hula Clariﬁed.” Creem. June 1971, pp. 36-52. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996. Willis, Ellen. “Crowds and Freedom.” Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and pp. 152-159. Myth, ed. Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell. New York: NYU Press, 1999, IASPM03 - MONTREAL Remaking Bob Marley: The Global Branding of a Soul Rebel Thomas J. Weber, Ph.D. Money doesn’t matter. Only music matters. When people think ﬁrst about money and then about the music the music won’t be worth the money they were thinking about. You ﬁnd that most people when they get money, they get withdrawn and foolish. Money is not my richness. My richness is to live and to walk on the earth barefoot. (Bob Marley, quoted in McCann 1993, pp. 8586) Fly Away Home to Zion name to support their own musical careers and business ventures while increasingly withdrawing from Jamaica, the country that spawned reggae music. In this paper, I will analyze critically the marketing of Bob Marley in the years since his death in 1981 and what I will term the “erasure of memory” regarding Marley’s Jamaican background, the core values he espoused during his lifetime, and the social history of reggae music. M ore than two decades after his death, the Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley is more “One might not think of death as an optimal career move, but for some celebrities, crossing over to the far side doesn’t hurt their income in the least,” noted Forbes magazine in their annual listing of “TopEarning Dead Celebrities” (Schiffman 2002). Marley ranked eighth on the list with $10 million in reported annual earnings, behind Presley (ranked ﬁrst at $37 million), former Beatles John Lennon ($20 million) and George Harrison ($17 million), but ahead of Hendrix ($8 million) and rapper Tupac Shakur ($7 million). Marley, who was born in poverty and came of age in Kingston’s teeming ghetto of Trenchtown, is one of a handful of artists in popular music who not only died at his peak but left a body of work that has popular now than at any point during his lifetime -- an achievement he shares with a small fraternity of popular music legends such as Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Marley’s dreadlocked face is one of the world’s most recognizable icons, and his name and image are used to market a broad range of products from footwear and fashion designs to themed tourist attractions. Marley’s image handlers have attempted to distance him from the rest of the reggae community, in part because Island Records found in a marketing survey that the word “reggae” had negative connotations. Meanwhile, Marley’s widow and children trade on his 971 never gone out of fashion and remains hugely proﬁtable. Marley’s greatest-hits collection, Legend, has sold an estimated 15 million copies worldwide (IFPI 2003) and was identiﬁed by the SoundScan database as the most popular back-catalogue item of the 1990s (Weisbard 2000). A new series of digitally remastered CDs covering his entire career is being released in 2003 -- marking the third generation of “new and improved” CD releases of an artist who died in 1981, two years before the CD format was introduced. Marley’s estate, originally administered by his widow Rita Marley and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, has morphed into the “Bob Marley Group of Companies,” a complex of not-for-proﬁt charitable foundations and for-proﬁt enterprises. Nonproﬁt organizations include the Bob Marley Foundation, which conducts charitable activities in Jamaica; Ghetto Youths International, a not-for-proﬁt arts organization run by son Stephen; URGE (Unlimited Resources Generating Enlightenment), son Ziggy’s charitable organization; and the Rita Marley Foundation, a NGO based in Ghana, where Rita Marley and some of the Marley children have relocated. Marley’s extensive recorded catalogue generates considerable income in mechanical and performance royalties, as well as licensing fees for commercial uses by corporations as varied as the Jamaica Tourist Board and NASCAR, the U.S. auto racing organization. Proﬁt-making enterprises include Tuff Gong International, the recording and music licensing arm; Tuff Gong Books, which markets books by members of the Marley clan; Catch A Fire, daughter Cedella’s line of designer fashions; Bob Marley Footwear, a shoe manufacturer headed by Cedella and half-brother Robbie; and 56 Hope Road, a real estate management company that operates the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston and a themed tourist attraction at Marley’s rural birthplace in Nine Mile, St. Ann Parish. The Marley family also markets a staggering array of merchandise through licensing arrangements with companies in North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Besides the usual posters, t-shirts, sweatshirts and bumper stickers, some of the more exotic items include Bob Marley shot glasses, Catch A Fire bath salts, Bob Marley wristwatches, incense, frisbees, license plates, wallets, keychains, trading cards, hockey jerseys, and (in monumental poor taste) a Bob Marley shoe horn bearing the ﬁgure of a topless and very well-endowed mermaid. Ziggy Marley has licensed his own name and likeness to Hemp Bars, a health food product containing hemp seeds marketed by a San Diego company. The most ambitious attempts to date to capitalize on Marley’s name and image are the “Bob Marley Experience,” a retail complex at the pricey Half Moon resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and the “Bob 972 Marley Tribute to Freedom” restaurant and nightclub at the Universal CityWalk in Orlando, Florida. The former features a retail mall with Bob Marley merchandise, a conference center, and a dedicated 68-seat theater with continuous showings of a ﬁlm about Marley’s life. The latter, modeled after Marley’s former home (now the Bob Marley Museum) in Kingston, features quasiJamaican cuisine and live reggae music. It is located next door to “Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville” restaurant and bar, which incidentally serves a red-gold-and-green alcoholic drink called a “Flaming Bob Marley.” An NBA restaurant, a Motown cafe, and a House of Blues are nearby. Plans are even afoot for a Broadway musical based on Marley’s life, according to press reports in spring 2003. Ziggy Marley is quoted as saying that the musical “will trace Bob’s life from growing up in Jamaica as a young boy, to his rise in becoming an international reggae star and local hero” and that Rita Marley has been involved in meetings about the project, tentatively planned for a 2004 premiere (“Broadway Musical” 2003). Even parts of Marley’s own body are being marketed, although not by family members. According to press reports, a four-inch piece of Marley’s dreadlocks fetched about $1,500 at an April 2003 sale at Christie’s auction house in London. “It’s intriguing because it is a part of his body and a very personal gift,” said a Christie’s spokesman. “Memorabilia like this does not come on the market often” (“Marley’s Hair-Raising Auction” 2003). Marley gave the lock to a female fan after a concert in 1980, one year before his death. The extensive commercialization of Bob Marley has not been without criticism, particularly among Jamaica’s Rastafarian community. I will discuss this in the next section. Babylon System is a Vampire Because Marley died without leaving a will, and because of extensive litigation over ownership of his recordings, publishing and other assets, the commercial exploitation of his image and music did not begin in earnest until the 1990s, when the Bob Marley Foundation was incorporated and ﬁled trademark registration for his name and picture (Steffens 2003). Two of the earliest licensing decisions involved the marketing of alcohol, which most Rastafarians including Marley shun for religious reasons. The Marley estate drew criticism from Bob’s teetotaling Rasta fans in 1997 when Marley’s song “Jammin’” was licensed to Anheuser Busch for a television spot featuring the animated Budweiser frogs. Earlier that year, the Marley estate had threatened legal action against a Cervezeria Nacional of Panama for using Marley’s image on an outdoor sign for De Primera beer. A foundation spokeswoman said “the family particularly objected 973 to Marley’s image being used alongside a liquor advertisement” (“Reggae and Beer not Mixing” 1997). In Kingston that summer, I heard Jamaican musicians joking that the Panamanians just didn’t offer enough money. The menu at the Tribute to Freedom restaurant also drew criticism when it opened on what would have been Marley’s 54th birthday in 1999. Writing in The Progressive, Rastafarian author Silja J.A. Talvi noted that; make the money, build dem fortress, and conspicuously consume by demself. The Marleys could afford to buy hundreds of hectares of land to help Rasta become more self-sufﬁcient, but they don’t.” Music critic Joshua Green termed the Marley family “graverobbers” in a review of a Bob Marley tribute album that featured overdubbed performances by pop and hip-hop stars “singing along” with Marley. “Marley’s shameless heirs, the production force behind this effort, have previously sold their souls ... to such goodwill ambassadors as the Budweiser frogs and the 350-person capacity venue will also serve alcohol, meat and shellﬁsh, all of which Marley shunned and which most Rastafarians disallow in their natural ‘I-tal” diets. Marijuana, which Marley smoked openly and copiously throughout his life -- and which forms another central element of spiritual practice -- has no place in the new Bob Marley club, according to [Universal spokeswoman Kim] Hawk (Talvi 1999). Elsewhere in the same article, Talvi quotes reggae bandleader Clinton Fearon (a Marley associate from Trenchtown days) that “you would think that the people that were close to him would at least stay out of such a rat race, but instead it seems as if some of them are the instigators.” Another Rasta, Ras Bakul, commented that “once again, dem reggae types just have avoided scrutiny simply because they’re Marleys,” Green wrote. “It’s a safe bet that if they could bottle Bob Marley’s integrity like Austin Powers’s mojo, his family would have it licensed and put up for sale” (Green 2000). Gregory Stephens, author of a book on racial identity that contains an extended chapter on Marley, writes that the Marley family charges $5,000 or more for the use of Bob’s name to promote each of the numerous “Bob Marley Day” celebrations that have sprung up in North America. “How long can those of use who love reggae music go on feeding off Bob’s remains, relying on his name to pull a crowd?” Stephens wrote. “We’ll be forever milking Bob” (Stephens 2003). Finally, the Wailers band -- Marley’s former backup musicians, now involved in litigation with the Marley estate -- published on their own website this 974 stinging criticism of the crass commercialization of their former bandleader: “The necrophiles responsible for this travesty should be ashamed of themselves and recognize that a person does not need to own Bob Marley shoes, shirts, hats, clothes, or whatever else is in the works, to enjoy his music and obtain his messages” (“Natty Tread” 2000). These critiques point to a conscious attempt by Marley’s heirs to reshape his image in a marketfriendly fashion -- to emphasize Marley’s undeniable stylishness, sensuousness, and love of a good time at the expense of his ﬁery revolutionary spirit and relentless campaign for human rights. This will be discussed in a later section. First, I will discuss what appears to be the Marley family’s growing estrangement from Jamaica and the wider reggae community. Moving Right Out of Babylon fashion and footwear companies out of Miami, Stephen Marley is “on the road” more or less constantly, leaving only daughter Sharon Marley in Jamaica minding the family properties there (Talking Drum 2003). Rita Marley has now left Jamaica permanently and relocated to Ghana, where she has adopted the name Nana Afua Addobea, according to reports in the Jamaica Gleaner and Jamaica Observer newspapers (Pitter 2000; Campbell 2002). Mrs. Marley, who has long been the target of scurrilous gossip within Jamaica, purchased a large estate at Konkonuru, 30 miles from Accra, and has opened a retail store and recording studio in the Ghanaian capital. According to the reports, Mrs. Marley has shifted the locus of her charitable activities from Jamaica to Ghana, ﬁnancing a school and day care center, public works and road construction, and hospital equipment. The move has proven controversial at home. Since 2000 -- as wealthier Jamaicans have done for generations -- Rita Marley and the Marley heirs have increasingly distanced themselves from the poor Caribbean country of their birth. According to biographers Stephen Davis (1985) and Timothy White (1988), Bob Marley himself rarely spent time in Jamaica during the last several years of his life, staying instead at a Florida residence he bought for his mother. Ziggy Marley has been recording a non-reggae CD with rock musicians in Los Angeles, Cedella Marley runs her Jamaica Gleaner editorial contributor Dawn Ritch, for example, wrote that; Bob Marley’s widow Rita, I understand, has gone to live in Africa where she is setting up schools. I, for one, resent that Jamaica to whom she owes so much was not the beneﬁciary of her kindness. She is one of the very few Jamaicans who would rather live in Africa. Somehow I expect to see her back because, if born here, she will miss the 975 excitement and what all agree are our colourful people. She might as well have emigrated to Cayman (Ritch 2001). Ritch’s column provoked an impassioned defense from Barrington Laing, manager of the Bob Marley Foundation. the country’s leading export, reggae, appears to be dwindling. Longtime Marley associates have admitted feeling left out of the ﬁnancial bonanza being experienced by Rita Marley and the Marley children. Bassist Aston “Familyman” Barrett, leader of the Wailers band (which has continued to record and perform without Marley), ﬁled multimillion-dollar Nana Rita Marley has always done -- and continues to do -- extensive charity-based works in Jamaica and all over the world. ... She also makes numerous personal monetary contributions to individuals and organisations throughout the island of Jamaica. Lest we forget, Sister Rita’s religious upbringing and strong faith as a Rastafarian deﬁnitely allow her dream of repatriation to her African home to come to reality (Laing 2001). Ghana appears to be the focal point of a back-to-Africa movement among entertainers of African descent; soul singer Isaac Hayes, Jamaican sound system entrepreneur Stewart Brown, and reggae performers Anthony B and Admiral Tibet are among those reported to be relocating to the West African country (Talking Drum 2003; Pitter 2001). Meanwhile, back in Jamaica, economic conditions continue to fester and the popularity of lawsuits in U.S. and British courts in 2001 alleging copyright infringement, business defamation and breach of ﬁduciary duty over “the consistent failure by the Bob Marley estate and Island Records to credit those responsible for songs and records that made Bob Marley famous worldwide as one of music’s best-known artists” (Reid, 2001). A press release quoted Barrett as saying that “if Bob were alive today, there wouldn’t be legal discussions. He wouldn’t have allowed this situation.” In 2002, the Marley estate countersued, alleging that the Wailers band have infringed on Marley’s “celebrity identity” and were performing his songs without permission (“Bob Marley’s Estate” 2002). Both lawsuits remain active. In order to explain the reshaping of Bob Marley into a commercially viable franchise, I turn to a body of theory dealing with the nature of collective memory in an environment of media saturation. This is the subject of the ﬁnal section. 976 Bob Marley and the Erasure of Memory another memory to be removed in plain view, without complaint -- forgotten. ... The social imaginary has just enough ‘truth’ to make the false worth savoring, or else no one cares. The audience already senses, very consciously, that it false, but buys it anyway, simply for the thrill of sharing in the magic trick (Klein 1997, pp. 2, 12) The social construction of collective memory has been widely discussed by theorists in a number of disciplines. The journal History and Theory devotes an entire issue (Shapiro 1997) to exploring the relationship between memory and history in a culture where massmediated representations are given more credibility than ofﬁcial accounts of events such as the Holocaust or the Kennedy assassination. Other authors discuss the phenomenon in the language of cultural domination: “[T]he subordinate group’s ability to express and represent its authentic experience is negated. ... Thus, the subordinate group comes to experience the world in the codes of the dominant group” (Grossberg, Wartella & Whitney 1998, p. 190). The erasure of memory with respect to reggae music is well illustrated by liner notes to a recent compilation of non-Jamaican reggae. Note how author Doug Wendt, a well-known North American critic and The idea that memories can be altered or erased was once the province of UFOlogists, conspiracy theorists and Hollywood special-effects ﬁlms like Total Recall and Blade Runner. Since the early 1990s, however, the concept has been employed in a different context by a Los Angeles-based school of critical urban theorists including Mike Davis and Norman M. Klein, who uses the phrase “erasure of memory” in the subtitle of a book (Klein 1997). These theorists discuss the politics of urban redevelopment in post-industrial Los Angeles and document the distortions of historical record that are used to whitewash racial, economic and class conﬂicts. Davis (1990, 1998) calls attention to the role of mass media in spreading paradoxical myths about Los Angeles: sunny paradise/futuristic nightmare, glamorous movieland/corrupt Babylon. Klein builds on this by arguing that mediated images of the city (both utopian and dystopian) have been so widely dispersed through movies and television that they constitute a social imaginary, or socially constructed collective memory, that is more believable than the unvarnished reality -- even to Angelenos themselves. The overall effect resembles what psychologists call ‘distraction,’ where one false memory allows radio host, symbolically eradicates the generations of Jamaican music that preceded Bob Marley’s career: 977 It was a quarter century ago that reggae music burst forth from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, fully formed and ready to conquer the world. Through the simultaneous [1973] release of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Catch a Fire and the classic ﬁlm The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, reggae found an international audience for the ﬁrst time. ... Inspired by 60s soul and protest music as well as Jamaican independence, reggae kept the best instincts of the 60s alive with songs of love and social revolution. ... It is of little wonder that reggae has joined rock ’n’ roll as one of the most pervasive, popular musics of our time (Wendt 1998). The statement erases the history of Jamaican popular music before 1973 -- pocomania, mento, ska, rocksteady and early reggae -- by claiming that Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff invented reggae, and by implying that Island Records owner Chris Blackwell, like Columbus, merely discovered it “fully formed and ready to conquer the world.” These myths are perpetuated by many mass-market books about reggae (as well as some academic works), which give the lion’s share of coverage to artists afﬁliated with Blackwell. The “branding” of Bob Marley has involved considerable refashioning of Bob’s image (easy, now that he is not around to complain). The social revolutionary who once sang that he felt like bombing a church (“Talking Blues”), and advocated the “total destruction” of western capitalism (“Real Situation”), has been replaced by the natural mystic singing sweet love songs (“Three Little Birds”) and making energetic party music (“Jammin’”). Twenty-two years after his death, it few music consumers seem to be aware of the difference. Marley’s image handlers appear to be trying to distance him from the rest of the reggae community. According to a newspaper story on the enduring popularity of the Legend compilation, Island Records conducted a survey that “found that the word ‘reggae’ often had negative connotations, even to people who liked Marley, [so] the word appears only once on the album’s back cover, in type so tiny it can’t be read without squinting” (Bauder 1977). Take, for example, this excerpt from the promotional literature for Cedella Marley’s “Catch A Fire” designer clothing label: “Catch A Fire pays homage to the legendary I-Threes and her stylish father, the natty dresser Bob Marley, Cedella’s biggest fashion inﬂuence” (“Catch A Fire” 2003). Here Marley is reduced from a complex and highly articulate individual to a snappydressing “fashion inﬂuence.” The Marley children, raised in comfortable circumstances and educated in costly private schools, also appear eager to appropriate their father’s ghetto roots. “I didn’t grow up in the ghetto, but I am of the ghetto, and the music addresses the 978 elements of the ghetto” Stephen Marley told the Gleaner in December 1995. “So it is the voice of the ghetto speaking to an international audience” (Ghetto Youths International 2003). Writings by several music critics indicate that Marley’s hard-core fans feel alienated by the growing commercialization of their hero. A review of the reissued Confrontation album argues that; remains possible to enjoy Marley’s music and to heed his liberating message without buying into the crass commercialization of his image and simplistic media representations of his life. It is difﬁcult to separate Marley’s true musical legacy from the hype that surrounds it; author Gregory Stephens notes “the general unwillingness or inability of so many people to truly imagine forwarding Bob Marley’s revolutionary spirit in a new container” (Stephens, 2003). Reggae today is the party soundtrack of boneheads, and Marley is their pop icon. As the craftsman of dozens of memorable tunes, he is the genre’s Elvis Presley and Beatles combined. His songs are blasted at sporting events (pro wrestling as well as NASCAR); they’re inescapable at frat parties, and they are covered by countless bar bands on setlists that give equal weight to Jimmy Buffett. Amid all of this white noise, Marley’s true accomplishments -- like those of that other great black musical synthesist, Jimi Hendrix -- have been reduced to a cartoon: He’s that guy who sang about smoking weed, right? And the posthumous marketing of this ﬁction has been relentless (DeRogatis 2002). Fortunately, as Marley himself suggests in the quote that opens this paper, the music itself lives on. It Another writer argues that “Marley’s music lives on, as do his ideals. And both are ready to be reclaimed from the legions of Tommy Bahama-wearing party hounds by any who share some portion of his spirit and soul” (DeRogatis 2002). More than two decades after his passing, Marley’s own words still ring true: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery / none but ourselves can free our minds,” he sang. “Won’t you help me sing these songs of freedom?” 979 DeRogatis, Jim. “Confrontation: When Bob Marley Selected Bibliography Bauder, David “Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ a Quiet Success Story.” The Associated Press. May 17, 1997. Confronted the Dragon.” The Great Albums. World Wide Web: www.jimdero.com, 2002. Ghetto Youths International. World Wide Web: www. bobmarley-foundation.com/t33.html, 2003. “Bob Marley’s Estate Sues Late Singer’s Own Band.” World Entertainment News Network. World Wide Web: www.wenn.com. March 7, 2002. Green, Joshua. “Marley, Graverobbers and the Budweiser Frogs. Epinions.com. World Wide Web: www.epinions. “Broadway Musical on Bob Marley’s Life Planned. World Entertainment News Network. World Wide Web: www. wenn.com, May 5, 2003. com, Jan. 18, 2000. Grossberg, Lawrence, Ellen Wartella and Charles Whitney. Mediamaking: Mass media in a popular culture. Campbell, Howard. “British Airways, Rita Marley Team Up to Help Ghana.” The Jamaica Observer. April 29, 2002. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1998. IFPI (International Federation of Phonogram Industries). “Catch a Fire.” (Promotional website for Cedella Marley designer clothing label). World Wide Web: http://www. catchafireclothing.com, 2003. Klein, Norman. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Laing, Barrington. (2001). “Rita Marley is Now Living Her Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998. Davis, Stephen. Bob Marley. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1995. “Marley’s Hair-Raising Auction.” World Entertainment News Network. World Wide Web: www.wenn.com, April 29, 2003. Dream.” The Jamaica Sunday Gleaner. Dec. 23. and the Erasure of Memory. New York: Verso, 1997. (2003). “Gold and platinum record certiﬁcation.” World Wide Web: www.ifpi.org, 2003. 980 McCann, Ian. Bob Marley in his Own Words. London, UK: Omnibus Press, 1997. Steffens, Roger. Personal correspondence, April 2003. Stephens, Gregory. “Forever Milking Bob.” World Wide “Natty Tread: Marley Estate’s Greed Revealed Again.” The Wailers News. World Wide Web: www.iration.com/ wailers/july2000.html, 2000. “The Talking Drum.” World Wide Web:www.thetalkingdrum. Pitter, Eugene. Entertainers Not Waiting on Black Starliner. The Jamaica Gleaner. Nov. 5, 2001. Talvi, Singh. “The Universal Bob Marley.” The Progressive, “Reggae and Beer not Mixing.” The Albuquerque Journal. Aug. 31, 1997. Weber, Thomas. Likkle but Talawah (Small but Mighty): Reid, Bill. “Bob Marley Lawsuit Pending: ‘Give me back my place in history,’ says Wailers’ Aston ‘Familyman’ Barrett.” (press release). World Wide Web: www.thewailers.com/ wailers_pr.htm, 2001. Reggae Music, Globalization, and the Birth of a Social Movement. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2000. 63(2), 2000. com, 2003. Web: www.gregorystephens.com, Feb. 6, 2003. Ritch, Dawn. “There are Some Beneﬁts to Slavery.” The Jamaica Sunday Gleaner. Dec. 1”6, 2001. Weisbard, Eric. “Pop in the 90’s: Everything for Everyone.” The New York Times, Arts & Leisure, pp. 1, 18), April 30, 2000. Schiffman, Betsy, Ed. Top-earning Dead Celebrities.” Forbes, Aug. 12, 2002. Wendt, Doug. Liner notes. Reggae around the world [audio CD]. New York: Putumayo World Music, 1998. Shapiro, Ann-Louise. “Whose (Which) History is it?” In Ann-Louise Shapiro, Ed., Producing the Past: Making Histories Inside and Outside the Academy. [Special issue]. History and Theory, 36, 1997 White, Timothy. Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley. New York: Henry Holt and Co, 1998. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Night Canadian Music Comes Home: Organizational Practices and the Juno Awards David Young organizations. The ﬁrst organization is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The CBC is a public radio and television broadcaster, and the Juno Awards were presented on television for the ﬁrst time in early 1975 through the CBC. The second organization is the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). CARAS was established in late 1975 to administer the Juno Awards. The historical analysis in this brief paper focuses on the practices of both organizations in relation to promotion. It also draws upon a few theoretical ideas about promotion. Andrew Wernick (110) notes that industry awards shows are one of the ways in which promotion is generated. The Juno Awards ceremony is no exception, and the practices of CARAS have attempted to advance the promotional interests of record companies and even other types of companies. These practices have included establishing control over the Juno Awards, securing corporate sponsorship for the Junos, and pursuing high television ratings for the ceremony. However, Wernick (195) also notes that the penetration of culture by promotion has generated contradictions. The practices of the CBC in relation to the Juno Awards are important here. Contradictions existed between the CBC’s role in helping to facilitate Introduction T he Juno Awards are the awards for the Canadian sound recording industry. The Junos had their beginnings in 1964 when Walt Grealis established RPM, Canada’s ﬁrst music trade magazine. Grealis soon came up with the idea of the RPM Awards. The magazine’s subscribers were invited to vote on notable Canadian artists and industry ﬁgures in a poll conducted during December 1964. The RPM Awards became an annual feature of the magazine, but there were no actual awards for the winners and no ceremony. That eventually changed, as did the name of the awards. The RPM Gold Leaf Awards were presented to the winners of the December 1969 poll at a reception in Toronto during February 1970. In 1971, the name of the awards changed again. The RPM Gold Leaf Awards became the Juno Awards. The new name was selected to honour Pierre Juneau, the chair of the government agency that regulates broadcasting in Canada, since he had established Canadian content regulations for radio (“The Juno Awards 25th Anniversary,” 8, 10). The further development of the Juno Awards is closely associated with the practices of two key 982 the promotional goals of CARAS and its role as a public service broadcaster. As the CBC became less useful to CARAS in meeting its promotional objectives, in part due to a labour strike and declining television ratings, CARAS decided to move the Juno Awards to the private television network CTV. These issues will be examined more fully through a discussion of three historical phases in the relationship between CARAS and the CBC. The CBC, CARAS and the Early Years of the Juno Awards of a competing awards show, Grealis made several concessions to record companies. These concessions included a promise to arrange a television broadcast of the Juno Awards. Grealis approached the CBC as well as CTV, and he eventually secured an agreement with the CBC to have the ceremony shown (Martin 26; “The Juno Awards 25th Anniversary,” 11). In order to ensure their promotional interests through the televising of the Juno Awards, record companies slowly took control of the ceremony away from Grealis. One of his concessions to record companies had been to give them more involvement In the ﬁrst phase, the promotional roles of both organizations were established. Furthermore, the in the Junos (“The Juno Awards 25th Anniversary,” 11). This involvement was apparent by the time the CBC ﬁrst televised the ceremony in 1975. The Canadian Music Awards Association (CMAA) was quickly established to administer the awards that year in co-operation with Grealis. The CMAA included representatives of the CRIA as well as the Canadian Independent Record Production Association. After the 1975 Juno Awards, the CMAA transformed itself into CARAS. Grealis was reduced to being a consultant to CARAS, and the system of voting was modiﬁed so that only CARAS members (rather than subscribers to RPM) selected the award winners (Martin 26). However, CARAS did not have complete control over the Juno Awards due to the role of the CBC. CARAS lined up the talent that would appear sound recording industry waged a successful struggle to secure control over the Juno Awards ceremony. The promotional interests of the sound recording industry led to the role of the CBC in televising the Juno Awards. After the 1971 Junos, record companies began pursuing their promotional interests by pressuring Grealis to get the ceremony on television. Grealis only saw the Junos as an industry event, but the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) wanted the ceremony turned into a television show that would provide a promotional opportunity. Continuing resistance from Grealis ﬁnally led the CRIA to declare in 1974 its plan to start the Maple Music Awards and put them on television. To prevent the emergence 983 on the ceremony, but the CBC produced the television broadcast in-house (Goddard, “The Juno Shows Could Be More Provocative”, G2). By the early 1980s, members of CARAS were expressing concern about the control that the CBC had over the production of the Junos. In the view of one record company executive, “the problem is that the CBC has taken the show away from us” (qtd. in Goddard, “Do We Call Joni Juno Now?,” C9). Bruce Allen, the well-known manager of many Canadian recording artists, argued that the Junos were “hamstrung” because the CBC had always produced the show (qtd. in Canadian Press, “Why It’s Time to Stop Knocking the Junos,” B6). In the mid 1980s, CARAS decided to secure control over production of the Juno Awards ceremony by moving from in-house production by the CBC to independent production by private companies. CARAS hired Concert Productions International to produce the 1984 Junos, but an agreement was reached with the CBC to broadcast the ceremony (“Juno Preparations in Full Swing,” 1). According to the president of CARAS at the time, there were two factors which led the organization to initiate independent production of the Juno Awards. The ﬁrst factor was the federal government’s introduction of measures to support the independent production industry. The second factor was a desire for creative control over the Juno Awards ceremony. As the president of CARAS stated, “the Academy has decided to assert itself and take on greater control over the creative elements” (qtd. in “Interview with CARAS President Peter Steinmetz,” 2). Control by CARAS and Contradictions in the Role of the CBC The second phase in the relationship between the organizations featured control by CARAS and contradictions in the role of the CBC. The creative control that CARAS began to exercise over production of the Juno Awards aimed to facilitate the promotional goals of record companies and even other types of companies. However, as the CBC co-operated with CARAS in these initiatives, contradictions between its promotional role and its role as a public service broadcaster became apparent. Variations on such contradictions have long been associated with the CBC, but the contradictions take particular forms in relation to the Juno Awards. These points can be illustrated through two issues: corporate sponsorship and television ratings. Corporate Sponsorship After acquiring control over the production of the Juno Awards in the mid-1980s, CARAS allowed corporate sponsorship to become a key aspect of the ceremony. This gave CARAS funding, but it also turned the Juno Awards ceremony into a promotional vehicle for various 984 companies. In 1985, CARAS struck a six-ﬁgure intended to provide a public space in which commercial imperatives took a back seat to other values (Taras 122). However, this public space has eroded over the years and has increasingly come to be occupied by private capital. Since a substantial and increasing part of the CBC’s revenues came from advertising, the principles underlying public broadcasting were compromised by commercial considerations (Eaman 5). Furthermore, as the case of the Juno Awards ceremony indicates, the place of private capital in public broadcasting went beyond advertising to the content of the programming itself. The ceremony promotes record companies while the corporate sponsorship meshed into the ceremony promotes other companies. The promotional role that CBC programming served for CARAS and the sound recording industry also involved other kinds of programming. The CBC aired various promotional programs for CARAS over the years. One such program was titled “The Year in Music”, and the CBC aired it a few months before the 1984 Juno Awards. CARAS described the program as “an ambitious and novel approach to promoting the Juno Awards and its nominees, as well as promoting the general awareness of the Canadian record industry” (“Fall TV Show,” 3). Television Ratings sponsorship deal with Molson Breweries. In exchange for ﬁnancial support to CARAS and the Junos, the deal called for Molson’s to be mentioned on all CARAS promotional materials and during the Juno Awards telecast (Stern 1). Molson’s was the sole corporate sponsor of the Junos for almost a decade, but CARAS moved to multiple corporate sponsors in the mid-1990s (“Juno Show Sponsors,” 1). The CBC co-operated with CARAS and its venture into corporate sponsorship for the Juno Awards. Indeed, the CBC began working closely with some corporate sponsors. This can be illustrated with reference to the case of Eaton’s, which was one of the corporate sponsors of the Junos in 1999. That year, the CBC and Eaton’s co-produced a 60-second spot which featured ﬁddler Natalie MacMaster (Folb 13; Van Den Broek 2). The spot showed MacMaster shopping at Eaton’s for the clothing she would wear at the Juno Awards ceremony. The spot showed her wearing several potential outﬁts and leaving the store with some Eaton’s shopping bags. After this spot aired about 50 minutes into the broadcast, MacMaster was seen live on the ceremony wearing one of the outﬁts from Eaton’s. The issue of corporate sponsorship is associated with a contradiction in the role of the CBC between the public and the private. The CBC was CARAS’ control over production of the Juno Awards also led to various strategies that aimed to further meet the 985 promotional interests of the sound recording industry and increase the television ratings for the Junos. For example, one strategy involved experimenting with the time of the year that the ceremony was held. Beginning in 1984, CARAS made the decision to move the Juno Awards from April to the end of the year. This decision was made by the Ways and Means Committee within CARAS. According to task of selecting the host, presenters and performers for the ceremony. CARAS representatives have indicated that, in the process of selecting the talent, the TV/Talent Committee has to try to get a number of high-proﬁle artists that will draw viewers and produce good television ratings (Druckman 38; “Behind the Scenes,” 1). Through its participation on CARAS’ TV/Talent Committee, the CBC played a role in this. The issue of television ratings is associated with a second contradiction in the role of the CBC, a contradiction between the domestic and the foreign. The CBC was intended to focus on Canadian issues and Canadian talent, thereby countering American and other foreign inﬂuences (Taras 1201). However, due to the promotional interests of CARAS, the Juno Awards broadcast on the CBC often incorporated foreign artists. One of CARAS’ strategies for increasing the television ratings involved having foreign artists appear on the Juno Awards. This strategy emerged after the 1985 Juno Awards attracted a particularly large audience of 2.3 million, in part due to a duet between Bryan Adams and Tina Turner (CBC 13). Over the next several years, CARAS’ TV/Talent Committee arranged for various foreign artists to appear on the Juno Awards as performers or presenters. For example, the 1990 Juno Awards included Rod Stewart and Milli Vanilli as performers and Steve Tyler of Areosmith as one of CARAS, there were two reasons for the decision. First, CARAS wanted to separate the Junos from the various other awards shows that take place early in the year. Second, CARAS also wanted to facilitate the promotion of Canadian artists during the Christmas gift-buying season (“Juno Show Update,” 1; “Juno Update,” 2). However, after seeing the low television ratings for most of the ceremonies that were held in November or December, CARAS moved the Juno Awards back to the spring in 1989 (Dafoe D7). The CBC co-operated with CARAS in the pursuit of high television ratings for the Juno Awards. For instance, after a decline in the television ratings for the 1986 Juno Awards, the CBC scheduled more promotional spots before the 1987 ceremony (Canadian Press, “‘New’ Junos,” C3). Furthermore, along with the independent companies that were hired to produce the ceremony, the CBC had representation on CARAS’ TV/Talent Committee (“Behind the Scenes,” 1). This committee has the 986 the presenters (LePage C5). The strategy of putting foreign artists on the Junos had signiﬁcant support within CARAS. The organization sent a questionnaire to all of its members in 1992, and one of the questions asked CARAS members if they thought foreign artists should be included in the ceremony. Forty-ﬁve per cent answered with an unqualiﬁed “Yes”. Fifteen per cent said “Yes, if there was a connection to Canada or the artist was nominated.” Four per cent said “Yes, but to present only.” Twenty-nine per cent answered with a ﬂat “No” (“How Can We Improve the Juno Awards?,” 1). A third contradiction, which is also connected to television ratings, is between the majority and the minority. The CBC was intended to be open to and reﬂect the minorities that were usually ignored by private broadcasters because they lack the numbers or characteristics desired by advertisers (Taras, 1223). However, as a result of the promotional interests of CARAS and probably also the promotional interests of corporate sponsors, the Juno Awards broadcast on the CBC focused on the high proﬁle artists and awards categories that would draw large audiences. This generated conﬂicts, with artists from minority groups taking CARAS to task for marginalizing them or even excluding them. Such artists included aboriginal artists and black or urban artists. For instance, at the 1998 Juno Awards, urban artists the Rascalz turned down their award in order to protest the lack of attention to urban music at the Junos (Flynn C4). CARAS and the Final Years of the Juno Awards on the CBC The third phase in the relationship between CARAS and the CBC led the end of the association between the two organizations. The relationship between the two organizations deteriorated, and CARAS eventually made the decision to move the broadcast of the Juno Awards from the CBC to the private television network CTV. At least three factors contributed to this, and promotional issues again played an important role. The ﬁrst factor involved growing conﬂicts between CARAS and the CBC. These conﬂicts emerged at the 1998 Juno Awards, which were staged in Vancouver. The conﬂicts involved setting up the production of the show and problems with seating availability due to broadcast needs (LeBlanc, “CARAS’ Silversides Resigns,” 6). Since the 1998 Juno Awards marked the end of the latest contract between the organizations, CARAS initially had no intention of dealing with the CBC again. However, after a series of meetings between representatives of CARAS and the CBC, the difﬁculties were ironed out and a new contract was signed (LeBlanc, “CARAS Refocuses,” 78). The new contract called for the 987 CBC to broadcast the 1999, 2000, and 2001 Juno Awards ceremonies (“Junos on CBC,” 3). The second factor was a labour strike at the CBC which affected the 1999 Juno Awards, undermined the promotional interests of CARAS, and renewed the tensions between CARAS and the CBC. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which represented 2,000 CBC camera operators and technicians, went on strike a few weeks before the 1999 Juno Awards. CARAS hired another crew of technicians to broadcast the ceremony (Foley W11). CARAS also came to an arrangement with the union, which agreed to let the broadcast go ahead on the CBC without picketing (“CBC Union Won’t Picket Junos,” A7). When the ceremony was broadcast, it was watched by a relatively small audience of 1.2 million. CARAS blamed the low television ratings on the strike and the CBC. The president of CARAS argued that, “had there not been a strike to deal with, we’re conﬁdent the ﬁgure would have been much higher” (qtd. in “Junos Draw,” 2). According to CARAS, the problem was that the CBC had produced only one promotional spot for the Juno Awards ceremony before the strike. Since the rest of the planned promotional spots were not produced as a result of the strike, the public was not fully aware of when the ceremony would take place or what performers would appear (“Junos Draw,” 2). The third factor involved the promotional opportunities which CTV offered CARAS in relation to the Juno Awards. After its latest contract with the CBC expired in 2001, CARAS gave CTV the rights to broadcast the 2002 and the 2003 Junos. CARAS also gave CTV ﬁrst right of refusal on all future ceremonies (“Strike Up the Band,” 3). CTV was part of the Bell Globemedia system, which also included various other media properties (including specialty television channels and a national newspaper). As the comments of a CTV executive suggest, the promotional opportunities presented by such convergence helped CTV to secure the Juno Awards. The executive stated: “We offered a few things I take it the CBC was not able to match, a lot of that being promotions and our specialty channels” (qtd. in Young 2). Conclusion This paper has provided a brief preliminary analysis of the historical relationship between CARAS and the CBC and the practices of these organizations. The focus has been on the way these practices are connected to promotion. Since industry awards shows are one of the ways in which promotion for cultural products is generated, the promotional interests of record companies led to the televising of the Juno Awards on the CBC and eventually control over the Junos through CARAS. CARAS in turn has engaged in promotional 988 strategies by establishing corporate sponsorship and pursuing high television ratings. These practices Selected Bibliography “Behind the Scenes: Preparing for the Juno Awards.” CARAS News Fall 1999: 1+. generated contradictions in the practices of the CBC, which facilitated promotional goals but undermined public service obligations. Finally, promotional issues were also associated with the strike and the move from the CBC to CTV. Canadian Press. “Why It’s Time to Stop Knocking the Junos.” Vancouver Sun 5 Apr. 1983: B6. Canadian Press. “‘New’ Junos Far Cry from ’60s Version.” The Gazette (Montreal) 22 Oct. 1987: C3. CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Annual Report 1985-1986 Ottawa: CBC, 1986. “CBC Union Won’t Picket Junos.” Globe and Mail (Toronto) 4 March 1999: A7. Dafoe, Chris. “Robertson, Blue Rodeo and a Tearful k.d. lang Top List of Juno Winners.” Globe and Mail (Toronto) 13 Mar. 1989: D7. Druckman, Howard. “The Junos Behind the Scenes.” Juno Awards Ofﬁcial Program 1987: 37-8. Eaman, Ross A. Channels of Inﬂuence: CBC Audience Research and the Canadian Public. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. 989 “Fall TV Show to Preview Juno Nominees and Annual Highlights.” CARAS News June 1984: 3. “Junos Draw 1.2 Million Despite Strike.” CARAS News Spring 1999: 2. Flynn, Andrew (Canadian Press). “Rappers Irked by Marginalization.” Vancouver Sun 3 Apr. 1998: C4. “Juno Show Sponsors.” CARAS News Winter 1996: 1. “Juno Show Update.” CARAS News Feb. 1984: 1. Folb, Mikala. “Cause Celeb: From Deborah Cox to Maestro, Homegrown Talent is Hocking Retail Fashion.” Marketing 5 Apr. 1999: 13. “Junos on CBC for Next Three Years.” CARAS News Fall 1998: 3. “Juno Preparations in Full Swing.” CARAS News Foley, Doug. “Lynn Can Breathe a Sigh of Relief.” Hamilton Spectator 6 Mar. 1999: W11. “Juno Update: November 4 Date Set for ’85 Goddard, Peter. “The Juno Shows Could Be More Provocative.” Toronto Star 15 Mar. 1977: G2. LeBlanc, Larry. “CARAS’ Silversides Resigns.” Goddard, Peter. “Do We Call Joni Juno Now?” Toronto Star 6 Feb. 1981: C1+. LeBlanc, Larry. “CARAS Refocuses for Broader “How Can We Improve the Juno Awards?” CARAS News Summer 1992: 1+. LePage, Marc. “Alannah Myles Scores Juno Hat “Interview with CARAS President Peter Steinmetz.” CARAS News Oct. 1984: 2+. Martin, Robert. “Trying to Make the Public Take the “The Juno Awards 25th Anniversary.” RPM 4 Mar. 1996: 7+. Juno to Its Heart.” Globe and Mail (Toronto) 8 Mar. 1975: 26. Trick.” The Gazette (Montreal) 19 March 1990: C5. Impact.” Billboard 19 Sept. 1998: 78. Billboard 2 May 1998: 6+. Ceremonies.” CARAS News Apr./May 1985: 2. June 1984: 1. 990 Stern, Perry. “CARAS Gets A Boost From Molson’s.” CARAS Beat. Jan./Feb. 1986: 1. “Strike Up the Band...CTV Acquires Broadcast Rights to Juno Awards.” CARAS News Fall 2001: 3. Taras, David. Power & Betrayal in the Canadian Media. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 1999. Van Den Broek, Astrid. “Eaton’s Riffs on Popularity of Junos.” Marketing 15 Feb. 1999: 2. Young, Leslie. “CTV Converges to Promote Junos.” Marketing 4 Feb. 2002: 2. Wernick, Andrew. Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression. London: Sage, 1991. IASPM03 - MONTREAL The Transmolecularization of [Black] Folk: Space is the Place, Sun Ra and Afrofuturism Nabeel Zuberi I n the longer version of this paper, I examine how the ﬁlm Space is the Place has been remediated colony. Ra engages in no less than a struggle for the souls of black folk against an archetypal pimp/mack/ player/business ﬁgure called the Overseer. The medium of combat is a magic card game and Ra’s most potent weapon is his music. In the ﬁlm, the Arkestra performs many pieces of diegetic and non-diegetic music in its effort to uplift the race to outer space. Ra also encounters the largely corrupt media network system, using it to spread his message despite the fact that black radio in the form of announcer Jimmy Fey is compromised by the evil Overseer’s inﬂuence. Ra also contends with the surveillance and violence of the United States government. The FBI kidnaps and sonically tortures him with a recording of the Confederate anthem ‘Dixie’. Three young black men rescue Ra just in time for the Arkestra to perform a concert for the community. During this show the FBI men try to assassinate Ra at his Minimoog keyboard, but are again foiled by the three youths. Ra teleports these youths into his spaceship and the Arkestra departs for outer space. Like the alien prophet Klaatu played by Michael Rennie in the 1951 liberal Cold War sci-ﬁ classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, Sun Ra lands on earth to inform the human race that it needs redemption, but leaves after relatively little success. (along with its star Sun Ra) in emergent techno-centric or media-centric writing on popular music as well as science ﬁction ﬁlm. I also examine and critique notions of the ‘post-human’ in debates about Afrofuturism in the African diaspora as they appropriate the ﬁgure of Sun Ra in Space is the Place1. But given the limited time here I’ll focus on the unstable generic status of the ﬁlm, as well as its music—in particular, the use of the Moog synthesizer as an agent of transformation. The musical science ﬁction ﬁlm Space is the Place was directed by John Coney in Oakland, California in 1972, and produced by Jim Newman for release by North American Star Systems in 1974. The ﬁlm stars Sun Ra, jazz keyboardist, composer, arranger and bandleader of the Intergalactic Myth-Science Solar Arkestra. Though US state documentation registers his birth as Herman Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, for much of his life Sun Ra claimed to be an alien from the planet Saturn. In SITP, Ra visits Earth in a spaceship, time travelling between Chicago 1943 and Oakland, California 1972 where he communicates with local African Americans and tries to convince them to leave with him for a space 992 In his excellent biography of Sun Ra, John Szwed describes SITP as ‘part documentary, part science ﬁction, part blaxploitation, part revisionist biblical epic’2. Initially envisaged by producer Jim Newman as a documentary, Szwed suggests that the ﬁlm became a mishmash of genres due to the different, often conﬂicting inputs of Newman, screenwriter Joshua Smith, director John Coney, and Sun Ra himself. Many changes and scene cuts were made during the ﬁlm’s production and post-production, some at Ra’s behest. Like Szwed, many other brief descriptions or reviews of the ﬁlm on the Web represent it as an early 70s curiosity, a bizarre or camp oddity with a disorganized and almost nonsensical plot. In fact, the ﬁlm’s mix of signifyin(g) humour, space-age prophecy and various generic elements are hardly beyond comprehension. In the style of much African diasporic vernacular expression and media practice3, the ﬁlm ‘signiﬁes’ across and between a number of recognizable ﬁlm genres and modes such as science ﬁction, the musical, the urban youth ﬁlm and the documentary. We can view it as the kind of ‘imperfect cinema’ lauded by Third Cinema theorists and ﬁlmmakers or a generic/genetic mutation in the margins of the early 70s New Hollywood system4. This molecular milestone in the history of African American ﬁlm plays a small role in the process of what Arthur Knight calls ‘disintegrating the musical’, further exposing the contradiction that the utopian Hollywood musical in its form integrated the community while maintaining racial-social segregation and division. Though Knight’s study focuses on an earlier period of ﬁlm history (1929-59), he contends that aspects of the disintegrated musical appear in a number of later forms such as blaxploitation, pop musicals and music videos5. Recent ﬁlm genre theory also conﬁrms a view of genres as unstable, mutable, ﬂeeting and mobile formations. Against the long durée of ﬁlm cycles and linear historical sedimentation, a more horizontal and hypertextual sense of genre formation has emerged in the genre theory of Nick Browne and Rick Altman6. In the digital era, the science ﬁction ﬁlm theory of Scott Bukatman and Brooks Landon also concentrates on cinematic moments, intensities, spectacle and special effects at the expense of linear narrative7. In this low budget sci-ﬁ ﬁlm, music is the special effect. Like much of Sun Ra’s oeuvre, SITP is concerned with how music can transport black people to other states of being in both material and spiritual terms. At the beginning of the ﬁlm in a forest on another planet Ra says to the camera: ‘The Music is different here. The vibrations are different. Not like Planet Earth. Planet Earth sounds of guns, anger, frustration. We’ll set up a colony for black people here. See what they can do on a planet all their own, without any white people there. We’ll bring them here through either isotope teleportation, transmolecularization or better 993 still, teleport the whole planet here through music’. According to Ra, redemption of black people comes through music. Musical form is a template for society and the body. Ra’s statement expresses ideas akin to those in the discourse around the music of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor and others. As Lawrence Kart puts it, the avant-garde conceived of ‘new techniques as a means of more than technical transformation, the work as a transcendental laboratory or proving ground’8. Attention to aural texture meant stretching the sonic possibilities of existing instruments, often producing dissonance and atonality. Rock music in the 1960s distorted tones and chords through electrical means such as ampliﬁcation and feedback. New electronic instruments such as the Moog synthesizer produced peculiar tones outside the parameters of previous listening. Though the eerie otherworldly sound of the theremin had weaved through thrillers, science-ﬁction ﬁlm soundtracks, and the ‘exotica’ recordings of Les Baxter and others since the 1940s, the line between noise/sound effects and music in rock, jazz and other popular music styles becomes increasingly blurred in the 1960s. This is why Sun Ra’s music has become something of a point of origin for today’s advocates of electronica and cited as an example of the power of noise to disrupt the social and musical status quo or system. For example, in his Afrofuturist sermon More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, black British cultural critic Kodwo Eshun argues: that Sun Ra uses the Moog to produce a new sonic people9. The sounds of the Moog are semiotically charged with rematerialization (or transmolecularization, if you will). In their history of the Moog, Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco state that it became an ‘apparatus for transgression, transcendence, and transformation’10. Gershon Kingsley, a musician-engineer who worked with Robert Moog, programmed Sun Ra’s Minimoog for him11 . But Jon Weiss, who worked on the overall design of the Moog, comments that Ra ‘had taken this synthesizer and I don’t know what he had done to it, but he made sounds like you had never heard in your life, I mean just total inharmonic distortion all over the place, oscillators weren’t oscillating anymore, nothing was working but it was fabulous’12. Sun Ra’s soundtrack for the ﬁlm, recorded in 1972, exploits the Minimoog’s capabilities for a range of alien textures, ‘dark’ as well as warm tones, rapid keyboard runs and less ‘musical’ beeps and burps, as well as drones produced through stable sine wave generation. Ra uses the Minimoog for discrete sci-ﬁ effects that primarily signal a disruptive presence. The minimoog joins the piano, Farﬁsa organ, Hohner Clavinet and Rocksichord in Sun Ra’s electrical keyboard armoury. The Arkestra’s horns feature strongly in the sound of SITP. Brass usually evokes 994 the military and warfare in science ﬁction ﬁlms, but in the urban action ﬁlm, blaxploitation and road movie, trumpets and saxophones complement the screeching tones of tyres in car chases and the high-pitched whooping of police sirens. In SITP, the Arkestra’s horns lead the marches of many pro-space anthems such as ‘We travel the spaceways’ and ‘Watusa’, but also propel the ﬁlm’s one car chase sequence. Another strong element in the soundtrack is the polyrhythmic ‘Africanist’ drumming and percussion of congas, koras, bongos and bells, common to other African American genres of this period. Though Ra’s soft voice offers pedagogical monologues, engages in dialogues and ‘declamations’ (such as ‘I am the Brother the Wind’), June Tyson’s voice dominates with her repeated long phrases, chants, slogans and quasi-jingles for outer space travel. The Arkestra’s music accompanies almost all the action in the ﬁlm but the musicans are rarely in the space of the ﬁlm narrative. They have clearly been ﬁlmed in a recording studio. Close ups of June Tyson other medium shots of the Arkestra feature a dark anonymous background. Though SITP shows the musicians in ‘authentic’ live performance--common in many post-1950s jazz ﬁlms and entrenched by the early 1970s after the rock concert ﬁlms Monterey Pop (1967) and Woodstock (1969)—here shots of the Arkestra cut back and forth to the story world of Oakland. We are never clear where the Arkestra is—if it’s in the space ship or is the sonic motor of the spaceship itself. Only in the rehearsal and ﬁnal concert at the end of the ﬁlm do we brieﬂy see the group in Oakland, a generic nod to the backstage musical and youth ﬁlm in which the culmination of the narrative is the ‘kids putting on a show’ for the community. SITP also riffs on the language (and some of the clichés) of black nationalism in the urban African American ﬁlm of the period. The ﬁlm’s dialogue pastiches and parodies the babble of radio and television. And like many ﬁlms of the American Vietnam War and Watergate period, Space is the Place foregrounds the government’s audiovisual surveillance of citizens and resident aliens. These themes make the ﬁlm and Sun Ra’s body of work still relevant today. They are so much exemplars of a post-human that supercedes the human, but illustrations of how limited and provincial the notion of ‘humanity’ remains in the USA13. 995 6. see Rick Altman,‘Reusable Packaging: Generic Endnotes 1. A longer discussion of Space is the Place can be found in Philip Hayward (ed.), Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science-Fiction Cinema, forthcoming, Sydney and London: John Libbey, 2003. Products and the Recycling Process’ in Nick Browne (ed) Reﬁguring American Film Genres: Theory and History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,1998, pp 1-41 and Nick Browne, ‘Preface’ in N. Browne (ed) Reﬁguring American Film Genres: Theory and History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998, xi-xiv. 2. John F. Szwed, Space is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra. Edinburgh: Payback Press,1997, p 330. 7. See Scott Bukatman, ‘The Artiﬁcial Inﬁnite: On Special Effects and the Sublime’ in Annette Kuhn (ed) 3. see Gladstone Lloyd Yearwood, Black Film as a Signifying Practice: Cinema, Narration and the African-American Aesthetic Tradition. Trenton, New Jersey & Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2000. Alien Zone II: the spaces of science ﬁction cinema. London and New York: Verso, 2002, pp 249-275; and Brooks Landon, ‘Diegetic or Digital? The Convergence of Science-Fiction Literature and Science-Fiction Film in Hypermedia’ in Annette Kuhn (ed) Alien Zone II: the spaces of science ﬁction cinema. London and New 4. see Juan Garcia Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema”, in Michael Chanan (ed.) Twenty-ﬁve Years of the New Latin American Cinema. London: British Film Institute and Channel Four Television, 1983, pp 28-33; see also Ted Gioa, The Imperfect Art: Reﬂections on Jazz and Modern Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. York: Verso, 2002, pp 31-49. 8. Lawrence Kart, ‘The Avant-Garde, 1949-1967’ in Bill Kirchner (ed) The Oxford Companion to Jazz. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p 447. 9. Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 5. Arthur Knight, Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 1998, A[185]. 10. Trevor Pinch & Frank Trocco, Analog Days: 996 the invention and impact of the Moog synthesizer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, p 305. 11. V. Vale V./Andrea Juno Re/Search #14: Incredibly Strange Music, Volume 1. Re/Search Publications, 1993, pp 82-91. 12. Quoted in Pinch & Trocco, 2002, p 223. 13. See Alexander G. Weheliye, ‘“Feenin”: Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular Music’ in Social Text, 71, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 2002, p 40; and Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000, p 356.

Magic moments: the textuality of musical memory in contemporary Hollywood cinema

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