Real talent vs. what an artist "should" look like...

Here is Milli Vanilli, the band I mentioned in class who was caught for lip syncing all of their songs, claiming it was their own voices. Is the image of an artist really so important that their true talent does not matter? Or, was the band so publicly scrutinized because it is generally considered unacceptable to simply disregard musical ability in exchange for a "pretty face"? Nowadays with auto tune, it seems that the first option is starting to gain more influence over society- whereas before the 1980's it was unheard of for a musical artist to become famous by using someone else's (or a highly altered) voice.

Dear Alek,
I didn't know how else to contact you and wanted to thank you again for the Vertigo poster. I think it will be a great edition to a creative project that I've been thinking about for a while.

And thank you everyone for a great class. Good luck on your papers!

Here's a little soul music for you from local artist Raphael Saadiq:

Supplementary

This can be summed up in the debate of serious and light music. Clearly it is not exactly light listening, but contains elements that attempt to trivialize the context of mimetic production and a mirroring of what repetition does in modernity--this comparison works when opposed to any position critiquing reused elements for song composure.

Here, the lyrics are derived from a genre more recently built upon spontaneity with an emphasis on extemporaneous sounds and words without the use of classical components for instrumentation.

Now, without words:

The more savvy approach of course uses other peoples voices, and trivializes the use of classical elements in composition with repetitive, droned-out synth productions. The lack of a literal voice contained in lyrics presents the opposition to anything arranged as "pure" or "spontaneous" music for performance, and amusement.

In this example, sounds seem estranged from their previous genres and transported in less obvious forms of impoverishment and commercialization for the listeners and creators ends.

TV ON THE RADIO--Second Song

"Composers face the agony of choice. They can turn a deaf ear and carry on as if music were still music; or they can practice the same levelling out on their own account, turn music into normality, and maintain, as far as possible, a certain level of quality. Alternatively, they can oppose the tendency by resorting to extremes, with the prospect of either being drawn in and levelled out after all--as one can already witness with Kafka--or withering away as a speciality. The highly uncomfortable situation of composition today stems from the decline of music's raison d'etre, the undermining of its very possibility. This, admittedly, communicates itself in the decline of criteria, in the loss even of a tradition that could be experienced negatively, and in technical, intellectual and social disorientation." Adorno, Philosophy and Music, p.430

Rock Me Baby--BB King/Eric Clapton/Buddy Guy/Jim Vaughn

Perhaps we can think of this performance in relation to Mica's last posting about Bambino, Adorno, Dionysiac.....

Bambino - Tuareg guitarist - Dionisiac Commodity?

This artist Bambino's homeland, Agadez, has been cut off from the rest of the world for the past three years due to flood and rebellion (read more: http://shenews.projo.com/2010/04/new-music-tuareg-guitarist-bam.html). He was featured on NPR today. Bambino's live performance creates an ecstatic atmosphere, and his connection to the dancer at 2:11 is reminiscent of a Dionisiac moment, where he and the dancer are exchanging energy, playing off of each other. Now that Bambino's music is known world-wide (thanks to NPR), would it be considered "fetishized," or does this apply (for Adorno) to Western music only? Is the fact that Bambino plays a traditional style of guitar passed down from previous generations a form of "kitsch" and "commodity"? Perhaps stepping outside of the popular music category challenges some of Adorno's more general statements about reproduction and repetition.

Sweet Accumulation by Dispossession

"For all contemporary musical life is dominated by the commodity form: the last pre-capitalist residues have been eliminated. Music, with all the attributes of the ethereal and sublime which are generously accorded it, serves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to be able to hear music" (Adorno, "Fetish Character in Music and Regression in Listening" 278).

From Within

". . . mimesis becomes a repressed presence in Western history in which one yields to nature to the extent that the subject loses itself and sinks into the surrounding world." - Adorno

R.I.P. Poly Styrene July 3, 1957 - April 25, 2011 - Fetishization of Women in Music

Perhaps I should be bummed that Poly Styrene passed away from cancer on my birthday, but I will choose instead to celebrate her awesome humanity, artistry and womanhood. As my friend, Boston punk and DIY artist, Amy Toxic wrote me: "She was an absolutely radiant soul. Broke boundaries (age, race, music, image) and was a huge role model for all different kinds of people, especially women."

I took this statement from Poly Styrene's website: "Poly Styrene was a punk amongst punks. A groundbreaking presence that left an unrepeatable mark on the musical landscape, she made history the moment she uttered, "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think oh bondage up yours!" The influence of Poly and X-ray Spex has been felt far and wide ever since. Their landmark album Germ Free Adolescents is a landmark work and a primary influence on Britpop and Riot Grrrl. At the centre of it was PolyStyrene, a bi-racial feminist punk with the perfect voice to soundtrack rebellion."

Poly Styrene has just released a new album, "Generation Indigo" (a reference to a type of enlightened evolution believed to be noted in the newest generation of children). On the album, she has a track titled "Kitsch." In "Night Music," Adorno offers his description of the advent of kitsch: "When joy was unreal in society, its unreal form was ideologically enlisted by society, and in any art that strove for truth, there was no longer any place for [joy]"...the deprivation through kitsch...displays powerlessness of...great works [but] also reclaims their leftovers for society" (85). This can be said of women in music, who, as objects of fascination and commodity, have often been made powerless to express the truth of their experience from within the commodified product of music (though on an indie level, this is of course more possible). In the below video, at 0:20-0:45, Poly talks about "Kitsch," reclaiming the negative aspect of the word, the feminine "leftovers," and reframing it into something positive for women: "Kitsch was just all the negative things that you can say about women; but just turning it around and saying 'yeah, you can say this that and that, but I'm just a little bit kitsch...":



In Adorno's essay, "Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," he writes about the voice in a way that I think applies to the feminine in music, as well: "If the moments of sensual pleasure in the idea, the voice, the instrument are made into fetishes and torn away from any functions which could give them meaning, they meet a response equally isolated, equally far from the meaning of the whole, and equally determined by success in the blind and irrational emotions which form the relationship to music into which those with no relationship enter" (278). Further , he writes, "the romanticizing of the particulars eats away the body of the whole" (281).

Women are historically "fetishized," their parts synecdochically presented to the public, pieces of a sexualized product, never whole--and in music it is amplified. A woman in music is not known for her voice, musical style or message alone, but for the size of her breasts, her hair color, her clothing, her age. In videos, we see her in flashes of thigh, eyes, lips. As Adorno writes, "The reaction to isolated charms are ambivalent. A sensory pleasure turns into disgust..." (290). Women in music are scrutinized and criticized, any commercially displeasing visual characteristic effectively destroying the message and the individual aspect of the female within the music. In "Philosophy and Music," Adorno claims that "[o]nly by remembering what one is loath to admit can one develop a relationship with the reality of this life" (465). Women music artists who speak in a meta-language about the synecdoche and fetishization of the feminine use the scene of the fetish to expose the act, like this song from the Divinyls, where Chrissie Amphlytt (also recently diagnosed with breast cancer) states "I am just a red brazier to all the boys in town."



Here Poly Styrene and the X-Ray Spex expose the "bondage" of the feminine: "Bind me tie me
Chain me to the wall / I wanna be a slave To you all."



R.I.P and rock on Poly Styrene! Oh Bondage - UP YOURS!

Grain of Voice?

Last One from Klaus-McAbee/Billy Nayor

Another From Klaus--Stingray Sam

Cory Mcabee--FROM Klaus Flouride for Tuesday

A GIRL NAMED T FROM KLAUS FLOURIDE FOR TUESDAY

Model in the Media from Aaron blumenshine on Vimeo.

Another example of a song that has been plagiarised at least 3 times

First came the Swedish band Cardigans who released their song "Lovefool" as a single on 14 September 1996, in the United Kingdom and internationally on 5 October 1996. The song was featured in the film William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet




Then came Arsenium with a virtually the same song but with a title "Love me, love me". Arsenium is a Moldovian singer who was the youngest member of the former boyband "O-Zone". "Love Me, Love Me" was released in 2005 (Germany Top 100 #33, France Singles Top 100 #36)



Finally came Justin Bieber with "Love me" in 2009. There might be more to come after him, however.




The chorus that all three songs share begins at 0:46 for Cardigans' song, at 0:45 for Arsenium's and at 0:50 for Justin Bieber's. It is interesting that even the time lines are almost exactly the same.

Addendum to Rebecca Black Video

In class we may also want to consider what Rebecca Black has to say about Friday. In this 'interesting' interview, she discusses her rhetorical interpretation of her song. As rhetoricians, we may enjoy her take...

Friday Lyrics Analyzed with Rebecca Black from Rebecca Black

At least I'm not ruining your actual Friday: Our Generation, Our Culture Industry

The Onion
http://www.avclub.com/articles/your-hatred-of-friday-is-making-rebecca-black-rich,53495/


The "Bob Dylan" Cover

Who is Röyksopp?

No one knows this song.

"There is actually a neurotic mechanism of stupidity in listening, too; the arrogantly ignorant rejection of everything unfamiliar is its sure sign. Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again and with stubborn malice, they demand the one dish they have once been served" (On the Fetish-Character..., 290).


But everyone (well, most people--help me here for the sake of argument) knows this song.

"It is the mere reflection of what one pays in the market for the product" (On the Fetish-Character..., 278).

"He (the consumer) has literally 'made' the success which he reifies and accepts as an objective criterion, without recognizing himself in it. But he has not 'made' it by liking the concert, but rather by buying the ticket" (On the Fetish-Character..., 279).

Only as a commodity does this song then bring about a sense of familiarity and "enjoyment."

"The change in the function of music involves the basic conditions of the relation between art and society. The more inexorably the principle of exchange-value destroys use-values for human beings, the more deeply does exchange-value disguise itself as the object of enjoyment" (On the Fetish-Character..., 279).

Familiarity and Fetish Character

An explanation and discussion of these videos will be given in class...

Adorno the Appositionally Inclined Riddler?

Ciccone -- lazily reproduced (transposed) riffs // Wu-tang v. Beatles -- Clear, crisp and tidied up through engineering

Don Quixote -- planned performance (literally) // Coldplay -- helps conceive history because it's been literaturized in a modern translation retaining & reifying the original content -- not trying to include the audience in some trickery (similar to Ciccone Youth) but presenting this up front

Schoenberg -- dissonance / counterpoint // Company Flow -- parcelling the points of improv (including counterpoint fragmentations). Unlike Ciccone Youth and still musically interpretive like Coldplay

Ref.

Fetish Character (pp. 291-94)

Perennial Fashion -- Jazz (pp. 122-25, 131-32)

Philosophy and Music (p. 434)

Replacements - Bastards Of Young - The funniest videos are a click away

"The change in the function of music involves the basic conditions of the relation between art and society. The more inexorably the principle of exchange-value destroys use-values for human beings, the more deeply does exchange-value disguise itself as the object of enjoyment. It has been asked what the cement is which still holds the world of commodities together. The answer is that this transfer of the use-value of consumption goods to their exchange-value contributes to a general order in which eventually every pleasure which emancipates itself from exchange-value takes on subversive features" (Adorno, 279).

"The effect of song hits – more precisely put, perhaps; their social role – might be circumscribed as that of patterns of identification."

"In an imaginary but psychologically emotion-laden domain, the listener who remembers a hit song will turn into the song’s ideal subject, into the person for whom the song ideally speaks."

"Yonkers" by Tyler the Creator of Odd Future Wolf Hang Kill Them All came to mind in class as a new experience of music, not one that I enjoy or can say that I appreciate, but as you've just seen, its different.

Initially this came to mind due to the drastic dissimilarities between Tyler's music and the rest of the Hip-Hop world at the moment but after reading the "Popular Music" excerpt, my feelings about Odd Future, in relation to Adorno, have changed. The reason for this came up when I looked into their group's goals and recent successes. In looking at the Punk movement, the mainstream culture is what most authentic Punk music rebelled against, however Odd Future has every intention of reaching mainstream success -- Tyler, the leader of the group, has already hinted at his desire to sell dozens of records and win Grammy awards, hardly the aim of a youth in rebellion against the machine.

The record industry had a shit fit when Odd Future was first looking to sign a deal because everything they ever seemed to represent was anti-record label and that is where I see the difference. Adorno claims that popular music is catchy, follows a certain scheme with 32 bars and a bridge, and as seen in the quotes above offers listeners a chance to identify, however I would not consider ANY of Tyler's music to be relatable and the majority of my friends that have heard his music would agree, so why is it that this group has such a cult following? Why was every major record label dying to sign this group of 17-23 year old kids? Why have mainstream music artists like Kanye West, Pharrell, and even UK mega pop star Adele all expressed major admiration for this group?

I think the answer is that not only are fans of the music industry, but the music industry itself is getting tired of "popular" music and can appreciate the drastic distinction between this music and what is played on the radio. I myself am unsure of the authenticity of this group's differences and have yet to be convinced that this is not just an act to eventually get mainstream attention, similar to what Eminem did years ago.

If authentic, it does speak to a point made on the first page of "Popular Music" where Adorno relates the difference between popular music and standard music to the differences between high and low art. High art for Adorno is essentially removed from the realities of life and those can only be found in low art.

"...the ones whose discontent with civilization is always an expanded reproduction of the raw state of nature"

Tyler and his music, if authentic, seem to fit this mold quite well.

childish v childlike - Soundgarden - Just Like Suicide

on the idea of childish v childlike (286): Adorno places childish listening in a negative category, calling these listeners primitive, retarded, neurotic, stupid (and what an asshole he is, geez):

"they are childish; their primitivism is not that of the undeveloped, but that of the forcibly retarded...they are not merely turned away from more important music, but they are confirmed by their neurotic stupidity, quite irrespective of how their musical capacities are related to the specific musical culture of earlier social phases"

1. Can we take seriously a theory which insults and disregards an entire culture of taste?
Whether or not this is the theorists/critics taste, doesn't their need to be some attempt at objectivity in order to be regarded as theory? I find this approach childish.

2. Children DO love repetition and "find great delight in bright colors" (289). Does this necessarily have to be a regressed state? Children also enjoy food, comfort, to be caressed, to be talked to sweetly, to be loved...do the regular appearances of these things throughout adult life also constitute a form of primitivism, too?

3. What constitutes "more important music"?

This song by Soundgarden is repetitious, what I would call full of "individual instrumental colors," has a chorus, a melody...all of the "formula" of supposed popular music -- yet it's never been a popular radio hit that I know of. And I love it. If this is childish, I don't want to grow up. Adorno makes being a musical adult sound like a fucking pretentious snob fest. Quick! Be avante garte or Adorno will call you names!

Masochism in hearing - Mission of Burma

Masochism: –noun

1. Psychiatry . the condition in which sexual gratification depends on suffering, physical pain, and humiliation.

2. gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions of others, especially the tendency to seek this form of gratification.

3. the act of turning one's destructive tendencies inward or upon oneself.

The lyrics of "Mica" are about a girl celebrating a kind of regression, relishing a rejection of the outside world for an internal one, a psychological breakdown where she could "sleep for days...[like] a mineral deposit, a ball of mica inside a rock." The story is told through dissonant "melody...complex [and] fragmentary," which reflects the emotional honesty and inner conflicts of the girl (Emancipation 300). The thesis is the normative expectations of the outside world, that one must manage "the whistles; the radio; the screams" (Mica); the antithesis is the girl's masochistic rejection of this notion, and the desire to regress into a fetal, catatonic state; the synthesis is co-opting nature as an example of removal, rage solidified into something beautiful and naturally occurring, like a mineral deposit; something she could "love" (Mica lines 9-11). There is irony in the girl rejecting the normative dissonance of the outside world, the "value of taste in the present," including "radio" which she equates to "whistles [and] screams" (Fetish 280; Mica lines 13-15). Hers is an existentialist response to an absurd world. By having her story presented in a post-punk song, which is itself dissonant, this demonstrates that dissonance is relative to itself.

"Masochism in hearing is not only defined by self surrender and pseudo-pleasure through identification with power. Underlying it is the knowledge that the security of shelter under the ruling condition is a provisional one, that it is only a respite, and that eventually everything must collapse. Even in self-surrender one is not good in his own eyes; in his enjoyment one feels that he is simultaneously betraying the possible and being betrayed by the existent. Regressive listening is always ready to degenerate in to rage. If one knows he is basically marking time, the rage is directed primarily against everything which could disavow the modernity of being with-it and up-to-date and reveal how little has in fact changed" (Adorno, Fetish Character).

First she says

Why mince modes?

If you feel like a patient why not dress like one?

Then she says

Why can’t I sleep

Between icy wet white sheets for three days

And sink down deeper than dreams

Oh, I’d love that

I’d be a mineral deposit

A ball of mica inside a rock

I’d be a mineral deposit

A ball of mica inside a rock

Then there’d be no whistles

No radios

No screams

What could I say to that?

Paranoia Prose - on Adorno

Note: This post might be incomplete. I wanted to post it early so that those who choose to, may watch the videos with control of volume, duration, and repetition. I am trying to tell a story with these videos, but I will fill in the gaps later.

"The type of relationship suggested by the billboard, in which masses make a commodity recommended to them the object of their own action, is in fact found again as the pattern for the reception of light music." (Fetish Character, bottom of p.287)

Choice, with its democratic implications, free speech, independence, the individual of free will, moves into the language of the commodity. You are empowered, you have chosen this, you want this, and that choice and ability to choose is essential to your identity. In these new capitalistic structures, the social order transforms. Everyone is empowered. The employee is an associate, partner, representative, an embodiment of the corporation. S/he no longer sells a product, but a morality, in direct competition with universities, religions, and governments. The consumer buys the choice, an identity. This paradoxical system liberates and controls - it spreads a way of life, promoting the idea of individualism, but in turn standardizes, creates a unified structure of discipline through manipulation and predictability.

These powers are no longer visible, above and singular,but flattened and spread. They have become the authoritative lifestyle, the only way to work against them is within them. The self and the other become confused, you cannot even trust yourself and in turn must speak through/in different positions.

"Their music gives form to that anxiety, that terror, that insight into the catastrophic situation which others merely evade by regressing. They are called individualists, and yet their work is nothing but a single dialogue with the powers which destroy individuality - powers whose 'formless shadows' fall gigantically on their music." (Fetish Character, p.299)

Samuel Beckett - Not I

The play Not I (1972) consists almost solely of, in Beckett's words, "a moving mouth with the rest of the stage in darkness"... many of these later plays explore memory, often in the form of a forced recollection of haunting past events in a moment of stillness in the present. They also deal with the theme of the self confined and observed, with a voice that either comes from outside into the protagonist's head... (via Wikipedia on Beckett)

Nirvana - 'Verse Chorus Verse'

Verse:
Neither side is sacred
No one wants to win
Feeling so sedated
Think I'll just give in
Taking medication
Till my stomach's full
Neither side is sacred
Crawling in the hole

Chorus:
The grass is greener
Over here
You're the fog that
Keeps it clear
Re-inventing
What we knew
Taken time is
All but true
You're the reason
I feel pain
Feels so good to
Feel again
(x3)

This song was written/recorded after the release and commercial success of Nevermind, and before recording for In Utero, the followup to Nevermind and response to its success. In Utero was "engineered" by Steve Albini (who's worked with the Pixies and Sonic Youth). Albini's signature sound is distinctly different than the polished grunge of Nevermind. There is limited use of multi-track and no effects, mostly played live. All components share equal presentation. The voice, guitar, bass, and drums all seem to operate on a level field, without any partialism (or fetishism if you prefer). Of course, In Utero was a hit.

Nirvana - 'Milk It' (recorded by Steve Albini)

This whole album really plays on "rock star angst" (think 'Very Ape' or 'Radio Friendly Unit Shifter'), but this song was chosen because for me, it highlights Albini's work best.

Shellac - 'End of Radio'

This is Shellac, one of Albini's bands - for those in the punk persuasion, I would direct you towards Big Black and Rapeman.
Steve Albini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini)
Tube amps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_amplifier)

A Night at the Opera--See YOU TUBE

" When in one of the incomparable film farces of the Marx Brothers, an absurd sequence of events suddenly leads to the showing of an opera scene with tragic ariasm illustrated by the clumsily grandiose, old-fashioned gestures of the singers, the effect is the demolition of the tragic stage--and indeed, the clowns immediately set upon it and bring the scenery crashing down. But all this does is to highlight through garish caricature, an aspect of music that is in fact inherent in all its manifestations. It is only faith in education and cultural ideology that prevent people from mentioning it otherwise, yet it is precisely the deadly seriousness of cultured posturing, which clings obstinately to the music's dignity, that involuntarily contributes to its ridiculousness."

Schoenberg Piano Concerto Op.42, 1942: Version 2

Schoenberg Piano Concerto Op.42, 1942: Version 1

COunterpoint Explained

Counterpoint--the Story of the Baroque Orchestra

Bach Fugue No 17 in A Flat Major Counterpoint

Adonro Schnbert A Survivor from Warshaw

"Schonberg achieved the impossible, namely to stand up to the horror of the present in its extremest form, the murder of the Jews, in a work of art. For this alone, he would already desrve the gratitude of a generation that disdains him--precisely because one can hear the tremors of that unspeakable horror, which everyone is already trying to forget, in his music. If music is to avert the threat of its invalidation, the loss of its raison d'etre discussed above, it can only hope to do so if it achieves what Schonberg achieved in it."A 'Survivor from Warsaw': by confronting complete negativity, the utmost extreme, which makes manifest the whole constitution of reality...." Adorno PM, 455-56

Adorno--Counterpoint-See Power Point Glen Gloud

Schonberg with Adorno on Counterpoint See Power Point

Another Version Who's Gonna Save My Soul

Gnarls Barkley-Who's Gonna Save My Soul Live On Abbey Road

Modern Advertisement Appropriation of Music

“Music, with all the attributes of the ethereal and sublime which are generously accorded to it, serves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to hear music” (278) There is a shift in the listener response to music. It is no longer the value derived from the piece of music, but rather the veneration of the money which allows a person to buy concert tickets to Coachella, to buy the IPod, or the sold in specific stores album versions. I chose the IPod commercial, to show an example of modern day use of music as a means of supporting the growth of this commercial and capitalistic engulfment of music. Adorno claims that the “exchange-value” power produces the quid pro quo fetish. That is, it is the disguise of exchange-value for the as the object of enjoyment that leads to pleasure in the caprices of commodities, in this case the purchase of the IPod. Basically, the feelings of the money commodity exchange value create the appearance of immediacy, but at the same time ignore the absence of a relation to the object itself. In a sense, the music available lacks originality for “the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods” (280). Taste no longer exists for the organization of the whole of a piece no longer matters. Instead, the disconnected parts with climax and repetition subvert the listening experience into one of isolated popular passages and advertisement.

Turtle Island Quartet Performing and Talking about Jimi Hendrix

Adorno-- Art is an Uncommitted Crime

Disintegration and Interpretability in Non-Western Music

This clip is taken from the documentary, Ginger Baker in Africa. In it, Fela Kuti performs with his Afrika '70 band in the city of Calabar, Nigeria. The performance takes place in 1971, shortly after the Nigerian Civil War, and the scene is a truly amazing spectacle. Rain pours from the sky, but it can do nothing to dampen the electrical energy of his performance. Wild-eyed and proud, Fela dominates the floor. Around him, scantily clad women gyrate in ecstasy, their bodies dripping wet. At the end, one of the musicians starts rolling around on the ground in a convulsive fit while Fela slaps his back. It looks like the religious experience of someone who has been seized by a divine encounter with the sublime.

To give a little background information on the politically charged and controversial history of Fela Kuti's music, I've excerpted the following from his Wikipedia article:

Fela Anikulapo Kuti was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick . . . After Fela and his band returned to Nigeria, the band was renamed The Africa '70, as lyrical themes changed from love to social issues. He then formed the Kalakuta Republic, a commune, a recording studio, and a home for many connected to the band that he later declared independent from the Nigerian state . . . Fela also changed his middle name to Anikulapo (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch"), stating that his original middle name of Ransome was a slave name . . . As popular as Fela's music had become in Nigeria and elsewhere, it was also very unpopular with the ruling government, and raids on the Kalakuta Republic were frequent . . . In 1977 Fela and the Afrika '70 released the hit album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the zombie metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military. The album was a smash hit with the people and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. The Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed had it not been for the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten.

Now, simmer on that while you watch the following clip from a 2009 Broadway production of Fela! :

It's almost painful to watch, isn't it? Someone had the brilliant idea to appropriate Fela's music for commercial consumption in a milieu almost certainly made to appeal to -- let's face it -- white people. The music, the dancing, the traditional African garb are all there, but the production itself is sterile, inoccuous, boring. The gesture has been completely de-politicized and what's left is nothing but an empty husk. Watch and listen to the way the female vocalist performs. Her gestures and gesticulations are so dramatically contrived. You can also tell she's received formal voice training -- this, and her emphatic pronunciation of every word she sings, contrast starkly with the original music. You can hear contemporary Western influences in the way she sings, but not in the instrumental music itself, which all lends to create a really cringe-worthy experience.

What do you guys think of this contrast? Is Fela rolling in his grave or what?

Adorno’s discussion in Night Music concerning the loss of interpretability of works due to the transformative catalyst of history resonated with me in regards to a key controversy of the straight edge sub-counterculture movement. The founding principles of straight edge were unintentionally delineated in the song “Out of Step (With the World)” by Minor Threat; lead vocalist Ian Mackaye is credited with coining the term “straight edge” and is considered a legendary idol in the hardcore/straight edge community, despite repeated statements disassociating himself and his values with any cultural movement. Regardless, his lyrics in “Out of Step” serve as the basis for the straight edge philosophy, first interpreted and developed in the 1980s. Since that time, the biggest controversy has been the very nature of the “three rules” (don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t fuck) and the lesser known, but more rhetorically significant, implicit philosophy of “at least I can think,” insofar as their clarity is still somehow obscure: differing interpretations of these lyrics, then and now, have resulted in multiple, often exclusive, versions of straight edge (all of which, incidentally, are denounced by Mackaye).

Adorno claimed that “the impossibility of interpreting historical works adequately is becoming increasingly evident…the works themselves are starting to become uninterpretable. For the essences which interpretation seeks to access have been wholly transformed in reality, and thus also in the works, which are located in history and participate in living history.” Considering “Out of Step,” it seems very possible that the implicit philosophy of the song has suffered the fate of lost interpretability. “Out of Step” was written as a very personal account of a subjective moment in history, that of Mackaye’s own youth and beliefs; but as history continued, the song was transformed into an anthem of an underground movement, the doctrine of a radical counterculture, and a chorus of the masses. Who can adequately interpret the song now, 30 years later, when even its creator claims to be unable to do so after its appropriation by the “edge” masses? Adorno offers a possible option when he says “it would be conceivable for the history of the interpretations of works now receding into the past to find its continuation in the history of their derivatives,” which could mean modern music derivative of hardcore punk, foremost being the broad spectrum of music under the umbrella genre called simply “hardcore.” However, musicians of this category can only “wander aimlessly between fragments” of “Out of Step,” as history has “revealed the original essences” and caused the “disintegration of [the] morphological unity in the form of the work.” The implicit meaning of the song has been undeniably decided for many, in light of what may be considered its “original essence,” and its interpretability has been sacrificed to an absolute doctrine for the close-minded members of the movement.

Yet, the interpretability of “Out of Step” may still exist; for as Adorno said, “the ‘work-in-itself’, which can in reality never be separate from the work in its historical manifestation” will be dead only if “one day, nothing remained but this ‘work-in-itself’.” The historical manifestation of a work plays a critical role in its interpretability – the very component that disintegrates the “morphological unity” and reveals the “original essences” of a work also defines its objectivity. So long as “Out of Step” is considered not only in terms of its abstracted philosophy, but its relation to history and the culture of that time, we can engage in what Adorno called “playing off the past against the present.” The reconciliation and subsequent interactivity of the historical manifestation of “Out of Step” as Mackaye’s personal beliefs, formed as subjective principles in the midst of an apathetic and unaccomplished culture, with the modern manifestations of the song’s implicit philosophy, extolling the value in living with a kind of rhetorical virtue, allow for the interpretability of the song to endure and its musical materialism to be understood.

Adorno Night Music--Interpret? Interpretability?

Sid Vicious "My Way"

The Beatles' Ode to Joy and Adornoa

"It was only the rudiments of the European faith in education that once protected Mozart and Beethoven, who have now been integrated into cinema, from more energetic use. Surrounded by noise, the works preserve themselves in silence." Adorno, Night Music, p. 86

Adorno Night Music Interpretability

"Many a female pianist will, her hair flying about her, pour out the private longings of her soul into the blind alleys of Schumann's forms, not realizing in her vanity that her own echo is audible only to herself,; she may find the trace of the soul's halting, lost utterance within, but can no longer bring it back to life." Adorno, Night Music, p. 90

Sid Vicious "My Way" Cover

"It is vital to remain mindful of the fact that changes take place within the works, not simply in the people who interpret them. The state of turth in works corrresponds to the state of truth in history. This is the only convincing way to disprove the objection that one need only change people sufficiently, reawaken their lost sense of scale, form and inwardness, and works that bore them today will bloom once more for them, inducing them to turn away from kitsch in favour of the true originals." Adorno, Night Music, pp. 86-7

Sinatra "My Way" One Version. Post 1 of 2 of My Way

A Fifth of Beethoven

..." however the depravation through kitsch that displays the powerlessness of the great works also reclaims their leftovers for society, which because its own order is no less illusory than kitsch, is oonly capable of experiencing them as such" Adorno, Night Music, p. 85

Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 1 of 2

Adorno and Beethoven Dame Myra Hess

"Lehar's boring Frasquita is an exemplarily strict transformation of Carmen as a whole, who, as kitch, finally separates the traits of opera from human experience as fully as those traits had lain hidden within its authentic form."

A Fifth of Beethoven

"A Fifth of Beethoven" is a disco instrumental recorded by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. It was adapted by Murphy from the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The record was produced by noted production music and sound effects recording producer Thomas J. Valentino.^[1] It was one of the most popular and memorable pieces of music from the disco era. The "Fifth" in the song's title is a pun, referencing a liquid measure approximately equal to one-fifth of a gallon (757 ml), a popular size for bottles containing hard liquor, as well as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony from which the song was adapted.

"Fifth" was released in 1976 becoming Murphy's best known work and his only Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, where it reached the #1 position for one week. It also went to number 10 on Billboard's Black Singles chart in the same year.

Even though Murphy played nearly every instrument on the instrumental, his record company cautioned that the record would stand a better chance if credited to a group rather than an individual. To Walter's annoyance, they came up with the name Walter Murphy and The Big Apple Band, only to discover two days after its release that there was already a Big Apple Band. The name on the label was changed to The Walter Murphy Band and then simply to Walter Murphy.

The song when released entered the Hot 100 at number 80 on May 29, 1976, and took 19 weeks to reach number 1, where it stayed for one week. Early in 1977, it was licensed to RSO Records for inclusion on the soundtrack to the movie, Saturday Night Fever.

The song was listed at #94 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of all time.^[2]

Voice and the Apparatus of Recording Technology

In light of today's discussion, I was interested by the notion of recording technology and its ability to effect changes in the voice. When Reese mentioned how he hated hearing his own voice in recordings, I understood it as a common anxiety. Somehow, there must be a discrepancy between how people think they should sound and how they actually sound when the voice is disembodied and reflected back to them through an apparatus. What then is the "proper" voice?

Frances Dyson, a feminist media theorist, describes the emergence of the "proper" radio voice in her essay, "The Genealogy of the Radio Voice":

It does not mumble or stutter, it pronounces full and meaningful sentences, it says something. As a voice, it is traditionally male, having a certain timbre and intonation that suggests a belief in what it is saying and a degree of authority in saying it. Critics of the dominant radio voice have dubbed it "the voice of authority". Yet, although this voice appeared with the advent of radio and seems therefore to have sprung from the 20th century, it in fact has been a long time in formation and has accumulated a host of characteristics that connect it to the deepest symbolic and epistemological structures governing thought, speech, and media in western culture. The origins of contemporary production and reception of the voice can be traced to the remote past of western culture, where the guidelines for "proper speech" -- speech which is authoritative, meaningful, gendered as masculine and representative of a particular worldview -- were first set in stone.

Of course, when Barthes speaks of the grain of the voice, he refers specifically to the singing voice. However, in today's media-rich environment, it would be difficult to ignore the effects that media has in the production of our own voices and the anxieties it creates around how we perceive our voices and how we wish to be perceived. In early western thought, the mind became the supreme achievement of human existence, while the body, ever conceived as a machine, presented a problematic knowledge, thus becoming subordinate. In order to properly articulate the mind, the voice had to become disembodied, or de-corporealized, if it was to express a higher knowledge and ascend towards God.

For Plato the naming voice is an "instrument of cosmic synthesis"; for Aristotle the breath required for vocal production is interpreted by Aquinas as an "instrument" of the soul. Such definitions are important in determining the true voice as a voice of the mind, instrumental in the achievement of a higher good, distanced from the alarming presence of the body. Even the breath, the most spiritual aspect of all human corporeality, is eradicated in this system.

Dyson goes on to describe the proper voice of radio as markedly gendered and how women have had to adapt their voices in order to assimilate into a male-dominated system:

It is not difficult to locate the voices excluded from radio. Look to any race, gender or cultural group which poses a threat and listen to their voices on radio. The most consistently excluded or derided voice is feminine. Not only has radio’s mode of direct address developed from oratory, a traditionally masculine pursuit, but radio’s fundamental technology, the microphone, was originally designed for the male vocal range. In fact the radio voice, characterized as masculine, has become so idealized in contemporary culture that feminine voices of authority like Mrs. Thatcher, have had to train their voice to speak in a lower pitch and develop microphone technique in order to be accepted as authoritative by the listening public. Higher pitch is associated with nervousness and a lack of confidence, suggesting that the speaker neither believes in themself nor what they are saying. A rising pitch often produces a shrill voice, and is associated with hysteria and irrationality. These characteristics, among many others, are designated feminine in western culture, and heard as signs of women’s essential lack—both of presence and truth. On radio they are particularly relevant, since it is a medium in which the subject is represented by the voice alone. Thus to be listened to or even heard on radio, women have to adopt the persona (from the Greek, meaning through sound) of the ideal male voice.

So, we see that the history of radio favors what Barthes would perhaps call the "pheno-voice". While the grain of the voice is the site of difference, the voice of authority severs its connection to the body and imposes a single streamlined voice. The apparatus of recording technology also plays an important role in contextualizing a voice in this dominant social sphere. What we hear on the radio may influence how we believe our own voices compare to this standard. The question is, do we affect a change in our voices in order to be well received by a listening audience? To what degree do we subconsciously subscribe to the same standards of proper voice when we know we are being recorded?

A Grain of Voice Like Sandpaper

The naked voice is so simply, the one without clothes. It is the voice without the guise of fashion, its tricks of colorful distraction, of pleasurable enhancement, or the manufactured aesthetic. The voice without the shelter of layers, the protective extensions to keep the world from touching our tenderness. The voice without the false articles, the shameful obfuscation of our original beauty…the naked voice is the essence of the body, as the body alone, unhindered, unrepresented, and uncovered, standing before us in truthful nudity – nothing more, nothing less.

Dangers writes all of their songs with this naked voice, bearing their marred bodies as raging poetry. They destroy any chance of articulation, instead invoking rabid, driven pronunciation of the body in its “mother tongue,” which for Dangers is pure anger (Anger ain’t a mood/it’s a goddamn way of life). The grain of voice is all in the delivery, and Dangers seems to punching us. If nothing else, one can appreciate the force of their bluntness, the encroaching explicitness that is too personally revealing and emotionally draining to be anything but honest. Anything as honest as this is art to me.

In the interest of avoiding an “adjectival” description of the music, here is my alternative interpretation “Break Beat”:

This song is muscle tearing over boiling water; scratchy hemoptysis; broken nose Barry Manilow…scraped knuckles, raised fist.

"Naked Voice" Ramblings

Karen in the previous post brought up a question I had as well while re-reading Barthes: can one transition between pronunciation and articulation? Can both exist, albeit in tension, within the same song? the same artist?

This semester, I am also taking a class in the English department entitled Poetry and Music. Currently we are reading dub -poetry and those inspired by the Creole-based sound literature: the likes of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Kamau Brathwaite. Although dub poetry is known as a poetry of thematics, usually dealing primarily with themes of immigration, racism, injustice and oppression, for me it is the space in which the friction between music and language has most clearly existed. A classmate commented that the poem was "difficult to close-read," that perhaps we were not supposed to close read because by doing so, it would make it into an aesthetic object trivializing the revolutionary impulse of the poem. I wanted to respond: "Pish-posh, read Barthes." (Which we will later in the week). Dub-poetry was made to be listened to, if not read aloud, then to cultivate music in the mind's ear. It is a close reading that happens aurally, not with the eyes. Perhaps its my own unfamiliarity with the Creole-language which diminishes the preeminence of semantics, but I find myself drawn to the diction of the read/sung poem: dub poetry is about rhythm, about enacting language, making one's voice move and transfigure syllables and phonemes.

For my long essay in class, I plan on writing about one of my favorite poems by Brathwaite entitled "Stone." The poem, although not traditional dub-poetry borrows from that tradition. Brathwaite is known for theorizing upon the Creole-language and using a technique called the transplosion of words, which is about colonized cultures reappropriating, reinfiltrating the dominant culture through language. To transplode words is to address the dislocation, the displacement, the exile experienced by not just human bodies, but human language and then creating news words to reflect particular experience.

The reason I am drawn to the poem "Stone" is because it is an emotionally and physically exhausting poem to read aloud (and I must read it aloud). Not only has Brathwaite created new words in a semantic sense, but he dislocates, disjoints words in this poem - using periods to break open words, so you don't know where to begin, where to end, where to take a breath, where to place sounds upon the tongue or in the throat. Like dub poetry, this poem rings in my ears long after I, my professor, or Brathwaite has finished reading it. Like dub poetry, this poem affects my language, my speech, my music long afterwards. I carry it with me. I yearn for it.

It is a punctum.

I tend to read poetry aloud because I like the feel of consonants and vowels on my tongue. Each time I have read "Stone" (A link to a not so great copy of the poem. I also have a mp3 of Brathwaite reading it that I wish I could share). I have tried to do something different: pronounce words differently, inflect here, soften there, pause and pause, race breathless, constrain and flatten the throat, the tongue, the chest, my fists. The more familiar with the poem I have become though the more it seems like a battle between articulation and pronunciation - the emotional meaning of the poem, a concentration on the breath, has seeped into my reading, sometimes, I fear, renouncing attention to diction, to my "tongue, [my] teeth, [my] glottis, [my] sinuses, [my] nose" (The Grain of the Voice, 271) therefore losing the grain.

Further thoughts on Barthes

According to Barthes on page 280, there is no neutral voice. The neutral voice, if found, produces “a frozen world, one in which desire is dead” (280). In essence, the voice that is used in day to day or for musical purposes is loaded with eroticism. Barthes thus situates an implicit desire in life that is actualized through the voice. In order to access this desire, Barthes shows one venue, that being the voice. Basically, by avoiding articulation, the clear phonic intensity to consonants that ultimate result in a voice with “parasitical clarity,”or meaning, one favors a “lover’s discourse” otherwise known as the grain of the voice. It is the expression of desire or pleasure that a voice with grain can successfully communicate. In looking at the video posted from seconds 50 and on the singer demonstrates the magic of auto tune. What one sees is how auto-tune alters one’s natural voice, making his voice stay in the right key and pitch. I am left wondering whether this element in particular, autotune, can distort the voice enough to produce the frozen world lacking in desire. My thoughts are still a bit hazy regarding these issues, but the autotuned version does not appear to be the “lover’s discourse” type of music Barthes favors.
Other questions that I have had while re-reading the text: While distinguishing between the two types of voices, Barthes does not make it clear whether a person can transition between them. That is, can the grain of the voice develop in an artist or person through training against articulation? Or if once present in a voice, is it possible to lose the act of pronunciation for one of articulation?

Cocteau Twins - A Language Encounters a Voice

"The geno-song is the volume of the speaking and singing voice, the space in which the significations germinate "from within the language and its materiality"; this is a signifying function alien to communication, to representation (of feelings), to expression; it is the culmination (or depth) of production where melody actually works on language--not what it says but the voluptuous pleasure of its signifier-sounds, of its letters: explores how language works and identifies itself with that labor." (Barthes, The Grain 271)

Fischer-Dieskau Barthes Grain of the Voice

Barthes on Panzera The Grain of the Voice and Music Voice Language

Nirvana Smells like Teen Spirit

See Anatasia's Comments on Eminem. Think also about Barthes' theory of active and passive listening as well as the viability or applicability of reading music as pronunciation or articulation.

Dark Lady of the Sonnets, a poem about Holiday by Amiri Baraka from _Black Music_

Dark Lady of the Sonnets
Nothing was more perfect than
what she was. Nor more willing to fail.
(If we call failure something light can
realize. Once you have seen it, or felt
whatever thing she conjured growing
in your flesh.)
At the point where what she did
left singing, you were on your own. At
the point where what she was was in
her voice, you listen and make your
own promises.
More than I have felt to say, she
says always. More than she has ever
felt is what we mean by fantasy.
Emotion, is wherever you are. She
stayed in the street.
The myth of blues is dragged from
people. Though some others make cat-
egories no one understands. A man
told me Billie Holiday wasn't singing
the blues, and he knew. O.K., but what
I ask myself is what had she seen to
shape her singing so? What in her life,
proposed such tragedy, such final
hopeless agony? Or flip the coin and
she is singing, "Miss Brown to You."
And none of your cats would dare
cross her. One eye closed, and her
arms held in such balance, as if all
women were so aloof. Or could laugh
so.
And even in the laughter, some-
thing other than brightness, completed
the sound. A voice that grew from
singer's instrument to a woman's. And
from that (those last records critics say
are weak) to a black landscape of need,
and perhaps, suffocated desire.
Sometimes you are afraid to listen
to this lady.
(Black Music 25)

The Grain of the Voice

Barthes makes a distinction between the voice that has "grain" and the voice that doesn't. In what terms can we think of a song that is a duo of the two?

An example of such a song is "Stan" as sung by Eminem and Dido. In The Grain of Voice Barthes says that Fischer-Dieskau's voice doesn't have a grain, but Panzera's does:"Fischer-Dieskau's art, expressive, dramatic, emotionally clear, conveyed by a voice without "grain", without signifying weight, corresponds perfectly to the requirements of an average culture; this culture, defined by the extension of listening and the disappearance of practice, is eager for art, for music, provided that such music be clear, that they "translate" an emotion and represent a signified (the poem's "meaning")..." Then on p. 272 he says that Panzera, on the other hand, does not articulate, or separate the consonants, and that we do not hear him "breathe" but only "shape the phrase". In "Stan", Eminem's voice is like that of Fischer-Dieskau because you can hear the emotion of anger in his voice, so the meaning of the lyrics is clear from the way he sings them, and Dido's voice is like that of Panzera because it seems as though the lines she is singing are not as articulated and do not really express any emotion, instead, she "skates over" the words as Panzera does.
Since we find examples of both in one song, we can't talk about it only in terms of one, so the definition of having a grain becomes more flexible. And it is the song’s structure of combining different styles and voices of Eminem and Dido that allow the song to create this muddling. Additionally, it also has elements of both the pheno-song and geno-song because while we could think of Eminem's voice as being "dramatic" and "expressive" (p.270), and thus, having the elements of the "pheno-song", it also has the elements of the "geno-song" because diction and volume are important for him.

Music, Voice, and Body

Music, Voice, and Body Questions

In preparation for tomorrow, Group 1 has prepared the following questions for class discussion. These are inquiries that we will likely use to illuminate both Barthes and Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever (2002):

The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout”:
Is one’s voice that voices itself through a particular body always the same?
Can there ever be an “authentic voice”?
Is Bathes’ understanding of the body that “figures” the “grain of the voice” invariable?

Los Cojolites’ “El Conejo”
What does the naked voice sound like? What does a clothed or disguised voice sound like?
Is the naked voice the most honest voice, singing the story “without disguise”?
Is the "grain of the voice" in this song signifying something more than merely anticipating a rabbit?

The Gregory Brothers’ “Bed Intruder Song”
Is this a song completely devoid of the “grain of the voice”? Has the “grain” been skinned alive?
If Fischer-Dieskau’s voice is Apollonian, can Antoine Dodson’s voice crushed through The Gregory Brother’s auto-tune machine be understood as the Socratic voice?

Billie Holiday and the Grain of Voice

I was not sure if we were going to bring back Billie Holiday, so I will go ahead and share a personal story which may, in a way, illustrate Barthes' grain of voice.

The first time I heard "Strange Fruit" was in the 2nd grade. I was playing Monopoly with my parents in the living room and the radio was tuned to a jazz station which was mostly playing big band music. This song, sung by Billie Holiday, came on after and I had such a strong reaction which I now understand differently through the reading on Barthes. Being 6 or 7, I did not understand the metaphor of lynching, let alone really take any meaning from the lyrics. At that age, lyrics did not communicate to me, they were just the tool which allowed me to participate in the singing-along to a song. But I knew that there was something about this song, and something specifically about Holiday's singing, which made me uneasy. I did not know if the song was particularly sad or happy, but I knew that there was something in her voice, not entirely in the words, not entirely in the melody, it was precisely the point in which music entered the language. This friction, which is the grain (and is there not a more 'grainy' voice than Holiday's?) which I embodied and experienced as something coming from an ugly place. I responded in the only way I could, being confused and uncomfortable, I cried. With my parents prompting me to explain myself, all I knew how to say to convey my feelings was "I don't like this song." Not because I thought it was a bad song, but because the effect the voice had on me and the way I felt was not a knowledge, but an experience of embodiment, the very body which is the source of such a disgust and disparity. My body felt as if it housed a cancer, pulsing then spreading with each annunciation, a sensation which I could only find unpleasant at the time. Also, I was uncomfortable because I had never experienced any sort of aesthetics so strongly, having only before been mesmerized by the television screen. My parents thinking my response was an excuse for being a sore-loser, ended the game deciding I was too sensitive to play Monopoly.

Although I think most of us would agree that this song is beautiful, brilliant, sad, whatever adjective you like... I think the only way I can accurately describe this song is that it is difficult to listen to.

Space in the Construction of Music

Normally with music videos, it is the video which is parasitic on the music. It requires the music to justify its existence and to serve the purposes of entertainment. With Fionn Regan's "Be Good or Be Gone," that relationship appears slightly inverted—the music needs the video to operate. This song would not be good on the radio, on your iPod, etc. this is not simply aural listening, this is a listening which, much like a face to face interaction engages the third kind of listening Barthes speaks about in that it is not, “what is said or emitted, but who speaks, who emits” and in this case where it is spoken because, “such listening is supposed to develop in an inter-subjective space” (p. 246) where, “I am listening” would also mean “listen to me” but this time the inter-subjective space begs, ‘listen to me here’.

The music video illustrates how the appropriation of space is also a matter of sound. "Be Good or Be Gone" goes beyond the domestic space as Barthes speaks of “territory”; instead it illustrates different ways territory is marked by sounds. The compilation of these “spaces” isn’t a “household symphony” but instead a symphony of our constructed Earth as sound signifies differently in each location.

This song prompts us to ask, what is the role of space in the construction of the music we listen to today?

Barthes writes in Musica Practica that there are really two forms of music, “one you listen to” and “one you play” (p.261). They are variously labeled music proper and musica practica. Forms of music which are examples of passive listening (music proper) are the concert, the festival, the record, and the radio. Most forms of music today appear to be examples of passive listening. We still have the radio, the concert, and the festival. Now instead of the record player we have iPods, and sites like YouTube and Pandora.

Barthes asserts that, “playing no longer exists; musical activity is no longer manual, muscular, kneading” (p.262) and then asks, “What is the use of composing if it merely confines the product in the enclosure of the concert or the solitude of radio reception?” We could similarly ask, what is the use of making, playing, pounding out new music if it merely confines the ‘song’ to a cage in our hands, the box (computer, radio, television, iPod) at our fingertips? Is this why playing no longer exists? Does it no longer exist?