Digital Music next week
Hi y'all
this is Nabeel (Zuberi). I'm the guest lecturer, pencilled in for next week's class on 'digital music'. I'm still busy marking assignments for another FTVMS course so I haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to talk about in its finer details. However, I thought I'd give you a heads-up. I can also collect my thoughts in preparation for next week.
I'll be talking a lot from my experience as a massive music fan/junkie, writer about music (formerly journalism now the academy), and last but not least as a radio DJ on Base FM 107.3.
I'm interested in music and technology quite broadly, and want to temper the 'cyberbole' by considering the range of technologies involved in production, distribution and consumption. That means 'old' and 'new' technologies, though I don't really buy into these terms. There are many continuities and discontinuities. Along with web-based formats and platforms, that means everything else like CDs, turntables, vinyl, cassettes, phones etc.
Most of what I will say comes out of my own practice as a music freak and two pieces of writing I've recently finished:
A book chapter on the digital sampling of South Asian music by hip hop and R & B artists over the last five or six years. From Missy Elliot's Get Ur Freak On onwards really; all that Bollywood and Bhangra stuff in black or 'urban' music, and what it says about black/Asian 'crossover', sex and love and more generally about globalization and those ethnic/national categorizations for music. What are 'black macks' communicating by using 'Indian chicks' on their tunes? What happens to notions of cultural authenticity? Who's ripping off whom? Anyhow, this will be published in an anthology called South Asian Networks. I was trying to think about how digital sounds travel in networks very rapidly and mutate and the implications of that. I try and use the 'mash up' as a theoretical tool, if you can believe that. So expect to hear some Missy on Wednesday. Missy be puttin' it down...
The other piece--I've just finished the first draft--is for an issue of the journal Science Fiction studies devoted to Afrofuturism. That's futurism that deals with the African diaspora. In music it often refers to black artists who have deployed themes of outer space, aliens, cyborgs and futuristic landscapes in their work e.g. George Clinton, Sun Ra, Detroit techno artists,Dr Octagon, Missy Elliot, Labelle, Betty Davis, basically loads of people. It also refers to a wider concern with notions of blackness and technology. One reason I'm interested in this, apart from the wicked music, is that white boys tend to think they rule the tech roost. And it's important to keep the race issue upfront in studies of technology which tend to be largely white and masculinist or think of technology as colour-blind. Anyhow, I was trying to understand the work of a bunch of music writers--particularly Kodwo Eshun, Alexander Weheliye, Paul Gilroy, Paul D Miller AKA DJ Spooky, Carolyn Cooper, Greg Tate, Angela McRobbie--who focus on hip hop, dancehall, techno and the whole funk rhythm call and response thang and see how their discussions might be fruitful for media studies. Media studies which is at this point looking to the future but also looking backwards.
This all started when I read a few blog entries referring to 'hauntology' in a lot of contemporary music of many genres. The ghosts in the machine as it were. This got me thinking about the ghostly presence of old media in our new mediascapes. As a vinyl junkie and hip hop fan, I love the sound of scratchy vinyl for example. Anyway, the point is that the future is also the past. No I'm not on drugs. That's one of the lessons of science fiction and of black history. Looking at this stuff helps us think through what is involved in the changes associated with the 'information' or 'network society'. Don't believe the hype, that it's all new.
Finally, another thing that has been preoccupying me is the emergent music mediascape of social networks such as MySpace etc., as well as blogs, and the "illegal" sharing of music. I've only just got involved in lastfm (my graduate music media course has a few pages on it) and I don't really yet know much about the lived reality of MySpace so I'm looking forward to hearing and reading your views on these spaces/communities. I've become an addict of audioblogs though.
I'm not going to go into copyright in much detail, particularly because it's so difficult to navigate and I'm still trying to come to grips with it. I know you've already read some Lessig on that and Luke's talked about the creative commons etc. But I will say that the current copyright regime is bullshit and needs to be changed. All that mash-up stuff and sample-based music just reminds us how much of our listening and creativity is based on 'phonographic orality'. The digital work of art confounds the distinction between reception/consumption and production.
The media corporations just want us to pay for every bit or byte of information they can get their greedy fingers on. Privatize everything. That's their desire. Make the customer always pay for music, if not air. We're paying for bottles of water, after all. Even Universal's recent 'it's all free' move is a sleight of hand. They want it locked down.
I hate the rip off merchants of the RIAA and the transnational music/media corporations. Decentralize culture! Like many of you I'm piratical in my music consumption. Embrace criminality when the law is bollocks. I download loadsa tunes each week. I do none of this on any University of Auckland equipment or time, so you can't dob me in :-). Of course, this is just a rhetorical paragraph for polemical purposes and does not actually condone you going out and performing illegal acts. If you get my drift.
I also buy records and CDs and pay for a few of the MP3s, but in the main I believe anything that deprives the big capitalists of profit and power is a good thing. Free Culture rocks,that's my anarcho-socialist utopianism. I wish it helped to bring the majors down but I think piracy actually ends up doing many services for the industry, giving them models from which they end up eventually making money. There's a quite complicated and at times symbiotic relationship between legal and illegal practices.
Let's have a more direct relationship between those who make music and those who consume music because that is a boundary that needs to be broken, so that we can all be 'musicking' in some way or another and create a vibrant sonic culture through our various efforts.
Fundamentally I think we need to reassess the value of music as a commodity when its social use is so out of step with the regulatory mechanisms of capitalism. Those mechanisms are themselves having to change. Copy. It's a gift.
Geez, I've blathered on more than I'd wanted to. That's a taster. Back to marking. Enjoy the rest of your holz.
Peace
Nabeel
The Basement (Radio)
Topical Ointment (Blog)
this is Nabeel (Zuberi). I'm the guest lecturer, pencilled in for next week's class on 'digital music'. I'm still busy marking assignments for another FTVMS course so I haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to talk about in its finer details. However, I thought I'd give you a heads-up. I can also collect my thoughts in preparation for next week.
I'll be talking a lot from my experience as a massive music fan/junkie, writer about music (formerly journalism now the academy), and last but not least as a radio DJ on Base FM 107.3.
I'm interested in music and technology quite broadly, and want to temper the 'cyberbole' by considering the range of technologies involved in production, distribution and consumption. That means 'old' and 'new' technologies, though I don't really buy into these terms. There are many continuities and discontinuities. Along with web-based formats and platforms, that means everything else like CDs, turntables, vinyl, cassettes, phones etc.
Most of what I will say comes out of my own practice as a music freak and two pieces of writing I've recently finished:
A book chapter on the digital sampling of South Asian music by hip hop and R & B artists over the last five or six years. From Missy Elliot's Get Ur Freak On onwards really; all that Bollywood and Bhangra stuff in black or 'urban' music, and what it says about black/Asian 'crossover', sex and love and more generally about globalization and those ethnic/national categorizations for music. What are 'black macks' communicating by using 'Indian chicks' on their tunes? What happens to notions of cultural authenticity? Who's ripping off whom? Anyhow, this will be published in an anthology called South Asian Networks. I was trying to think about how digital sounds travel in networks very rapidly and mutate and the implications of that. I try and use the 'mash up' as a theoretical tool, if you can believe that. So expect to hear some Missy on Wednesday. Missy be puttin' it down...
The other piece--I've just finished the first draft--is for an issue of the journal Science Fiction studies devoted to Afrofuturism. That's futurism that deals with the African diaspora. In music it often refers to black artists who have deployed themes of outer space, aliens, cyborgs and futuristic landscapes in their work e.g. George Clinton, Sun Ra, Detroit techno artists,Dr Octagon, Missy Elliot, Labelle, Betty Davis, basically loads of people. It also refers to a wider concern with notions of blackness and technology. One reason I'm interested in this, apart from the wicked music, is that white boys tend to think they rule the tech roost. And it's important to keep the race issue upfront in studies of technology which tend to be largely white and masculinist or think of technology as colour-blind. Anyhow, I was trying to understand the work of a bunch of music writers--particularly Kodwo Eshun, Alexander Weheliye, Paul Gilroy, Paul D Miller AKA DJ Spooky, Carolyn Cooper, Greg Tate, Angela McRobbie--who focus on hip hop, dancehall, techno and the whole funk rhythm call and response thang and see how their discussions might be fruitful for media studies. Media studies which is at this point looking to the future but also looking backwards.
This all started when I read a few blog entries referring to 'hauntology' in a lot of contemporary music of many genres. The ghosts in the machine as it were. This got me thinking about the ghostly presence of old media in our new mediascapes. As a vinyl junkie and hip hop fan, I love the sound of scratchy vinyl for example. Anyway, the point is that the future is also the past. No I'm not on drugs. That's one of the lessons of science fiction and of black history. Looking at this stuff helps us think through what is involved in the changes associated with the 'information' or 'network society'. Don't believe the hype, that it's all new.
Finally, another thing that has been preoccupying me is the emergent music mediascape of social networks such as MySpace etc., as well as blogs, and the "illegal" sharing of music. I've only just got involved in lastfm (my graduate music media course has a few pages on it) and I don't really yet know much about the lived reality of MySpace so I'm looking forward to hearing and reading your views on these spaces/communities. I've become an addict of audioblogs though.
I'm not going to go into copyright in much detail, particularly because it's so difficult to navigate and I'm still trying to come to grips with it. I know you've already read some Lessig on that and Luke's talked about the creative commons etc. But I will say that the current copyright regime is bullshit and needs to be changed. All that mash-up stuff and sample-based music just reminds us how much of our listening and creativity is based on 'phonographic orality'. The digital work of art confounds the distinction between reception/consumption and production.
The media corporations just want us to pay for every bit or byte of information they can get their greedy fingers on. Privatize everything. That's their desire. Make the customer always pay for music, if not air. We're paying for bottles of water, after all. Even Universal's recent 'it's all free' move is a sleight of hand. They want it locked down.
I hate the rip off merchants of the RIAA and the transnational music/media corporations. Decentralize culture! Like many of you I'm piratical in my music consumption. Embrace criminality when the law is bollocks. I download loadsa tunes each week. I do none of this on any University of Auckland equipment or time, so you can't dob me in :-). Of course, this is just a rhetorical paragraph for polemical purposes and does not actually condone you going out and performing illegal acts. If you get my drift.
I also buy records and CDs and pay for a few of the MP3s, but in the main I believe anything that deprives the big capitalists of profit and power is a good thing. Free Culture rocks,that's my anarcho-socialist utopianism. I wish it helped to bring the majors down but I think piracy actually ends up doing many services for the industry, giving them models from which they end up eventually making money. There's a quite complicated and at times symbiotic relationship between legal and illegal practices.
Let's have a more direct relationship between those who make music and those who consume music because that is a boundary that needs to be broken, so that we can all be 'musicking' in some way or another and create a vibrant sonic culture through our various efforts.
Fundamentally I think we need to reassess the value of music as a commodity when its social use is so out of step with the regulatory mechanisms of capitalism. Those mechanisms are themselves having to change. Copy. It's a gift.
Geez, I've blathered on more than I'd wanted to. That's a taster. Back to marking. Enjoy the rest of your holz.
Peace
Nabeel
The Basement (Radio)
Topical Ointment (Blog)
posted by Anonymous at 1:21 pm
1 Comments:
Hi Dr Zuberi,
The gist of the scheduled lecture on music sounds great. The 203 essay question is about 'illegal music' which I’m reading as being pirated music.
The big change this week has been Universal Music announcing their change to legalising free music downloads – that is, the largest music company in the world now giving away tunes and hoping the advertising will cover costs. But 'til it is really legislated I guess it’s still pirating!
Andrea
203 Student
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