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.