On the 243rd anniversary of the Boston Massacre (bigup Crispus Attucks!), I’m reposting the merely titular-pun-related mix of Boston-associated songs I cooked up for the Somerville Art Council back in 2005. This is also (barely) germane to the day given the currently flaring debate over Massachusetts’ official rock song. (As they say around here, I shit you not.) Not to mention, if only very tangentially, the emergence of one of the best mashups in years. (Really love how it reproduces the effect of that ol’ Eminem/Britney mashup, revealing the underlying pop sensibilities of two putative hardcore outsiders.) Without further ado, here’s the Boston Mashacre (my follow-up, the Smashacre, resides over here)…
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we begin with sounds of the davis square farmer’s market, with several different languages being spoken, including what sounds like a guy saying “habibi.” the percussion is an empty soda bottle that another guy was banging on his hip, quietly singing what sounded like a reggae song at the same time. confirming my impression, yet another guy–this one a farmer/vendor–walks up to him and says rather dryly, and to my incredulous ears for stumbling upon such a soundbite, “champion sound, yeah?” from there, the man with the bottle plays a classic 3+3+2, reminiscent of so many caribbean styles, and we hear car alarms and horns spin into melody. as a bus pulls up and takes off again (and “buses” was one of the most popular returns i got to the question “what are the sounds of somerville?”), the familiar strains of the standells’ “dirty water” enter the soundscape and the mix. from there, the incidental sounds of the city–which, as you can hear, are rather musical in their own way–yield to the “musical” sounds of the city. that is, we enter the realm of pop recordings, of the boston soundscape as MOR radio presents it (at least as filtered through the ears of a lifelong boston jerk who harbors a strange mix of pride, humility, and humiliation when it comes to the sounds of his city).
after the standells, the lineup moves through a number of boston mainstays and one-hit wonders, has-beens and shoulda-beens. the full tracklist is as follows:
the standells, “dirty water” (not a boston band, but they might as well be) the cars, “you might think i’m crazy” (yup, a boston band) dj c, “boston you’re my bounce” (beat research) NKOTB, “hangin’ tough” (omg! jordan is my fave lol ;-) mr. lif, “home of the brave” (so he lives in berkeley now, and what?) tracy chapman, “fast car” (used to play T stations) extreme, “more than words” (found an acapella!?!) aerosmith, “walk this way” (nice break, dudes) run DMC, “walk this way” (better break, jam master) NKOTB, “the right stuff” (williamsburg where ya at?) bell biv devoe, “poison” (girl, i must warn you: i know that BBD album by heart) the cars, “just what i needed” (uncanny how the intro mirrors BBD’s) j geils band, “angel is a centerfold” (urbody whistle now) boston, “more than a feeling” (guitars are for dorks) ed O.G., “i got to have it” (representin’ the bean harder than guru since 1991) MBTA, “davis square redline stop” (a wicked hahd-to-find recording)
listeners will notice that some of these tracks are in more fragmentary form than others. (hope not to leave anyone hanging too much, but you should seek out the originals in that case.) as with most mixes, it was the tracks’ suggestive qualities and affective resonance that i was going for–not some sense of their textual wholeness. this is however less a mix or a mashup, per se, than what might be better called a mix’n'mash. at times, i play songs on their own, though more often than not i play two or more songs at once (or instrumental versions/loops of them).
the sound and shape of the music i am making here is a product of the technology that i am using: ableton live. having the relative freedom to stretch tempos without changing pitch allows me to match a number of songs together that the average vinylist couldn’t/wouldn’t. of course, i also change pitch sometimes, purposely, either to make a harmony sweeter or to weird/chipmunk something out. generally though, at least in this case, i have preserved the original pitch/key of the songs in question, which i think makes them much more recognizable. the changes in tempo are less noticeable. you’ll notice i like the echo button, too.
Longtime W&W readers will no doubt hear echoes of my own experiments in this regard — namely, Gasodoble & Bump con Choque — and perhaps a little bit of YouTube collage master, Kutiman, as well. Despite that I have not found many other examples along these lines, I think there’s great potential for this sort of form, or method even, to demonstrate and delve into the wide, weird world of YouTube — which is to say, the wide, weird world, period — despite that the site is also an incomplete, ephemeral, willy-nilly archive hosted on corporate servers.
As you’ll see in selected submissions below, students embraced the assignment with panache, producing wonderful little documents of the varied social and cultural lives of such things as recent pop hits, well-worn war-horses, video game themes, public domain experiments, and Elvis impersonators.
First, a veritable YouTube chorus performing the 2012 pop hit, “Call Me Maybe,” showing how quickly a popular song can enter into myriad genres of performance, presentation, and play (including some YouTube-specific ones, like stitching together political speeches to make presidents stutter along too):
Or this one, combining a handful of home versions of the Halo theme, seeking specifically to document the “resurgence” (or at least newfound visibility) of “amateur” musical practice and appreciating how even people’s mistakes “actually add some character” to the performances –
Another student sought to plumb the YouTube depths for impersonations of Elvis, uncovering in the process not simply the expected plethora of examples but an interesting recent wrinkle: most of these would-be Kings are lip-synching not to an original Elvis recording but to Junkie XL’s popular 2002 remix of Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation.” My student found it notable that so many of the Elvises he encountered on YouTube “aren’t so orthodox in their impersonation”; I do too!
Several students went beyond the American pop repertory (which provides no end of subjects thanks to its imperial ubiquity) in order to explore YouTube instantiations of tunes that originated and enjoy rich social lives elsewhere.
Take, for example, this beat-matched collection of performances of “Asa Branca,” which my student describes as “a classic Brazilian baião composed by accordionist Luiz Gonzaga and lyricist Humberto Teixeira in 1947.” He continues –
This song has become so emblematic of so many things — Northeastern Brazilian regionalism, Brazilian diasporic identity, environmentalist movements, Brooklyn world music hipness — that I wanted to juxtapose as wide a variety of interpretations as I could, while choosing versions that retained the pulse of the original. From Korean fusion to muscle-metal play-along to small-town talent shows to arena Tropicália, with Gonzagão himself making the occasional approving cameo as a backup singer.
Or this one, documenting the variegated “going public” of a recent lullaby from Taiwan. (Notably, the student has only made the video semi-public — requiring a direct link — given concerns about unauthorized use of children’s performances, which she’s seeking explicit permission to include. Such ethical questions have been a recurring theme of the course, and I always encourage students to think about them as they record, copy, and manipulate the sounds and images of others.)
Finally, here’s a montage of a tune popular in both Turkey and Greece (and in both Turkish and Greek): “Kalenin Bedenleri” / “Siko Horepse Koukli Mou.” One curious thing that emerges here is how songs outside of the (Western) pop canon tend to be characterized on YouTube less by remixxy, YouTubey confections and more by familiar stagings of home, community, and local TV contexts. That said, a few clips of webcam-style pedagogy — a popular YouTube genre to be sure — make it into the mix too.
Here’s hoping that our experiments might lead to others in this vein and beyond. No doubt there is material aplenty to work with: YouTube reports (currently anyway; these figures keep changing) that 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. What a willy-nilly, wonderful world!
Africa Is a Country, a wry but passionate blog devoted to “Africa” — the idea, not (simply) the song — in contemporary media (but “not about famine, Bono, or Barack Obama”) has been threatening to make a weekly series out of the genuinely remarkable resonance of Toto’s 1982 soft-rock anthem. It’s a begrudging tribute of sorts to the song’s “resilience as a piece of media about Africa.” Did you know that in addition to dozens of covers, which they promise to feature, the song is also popular sampling fodder for hip-hop producers (among them, Madlib)?
It promises to be entertaining, whether or not you can withstand the earworm. This week they pointed to a new appearance of what they’re calling “the Toto ‘Africa’ meme” courtesy of r&b crooner Jason Derulo, which, I have to admit is both “inane” as they note over there and a pallid by-the-numbers attempt to reproduce the feel and form of “Watcha Say,” his debut single and highest charting song (it hit #1).
I can’t help but be reminded of a strange and oddly apropos discovery about Toto’s “Africa” I made a few years ago, which may be of passing interest to some of you, especially fellow followers of Africasacountry.
Here’s how it happened: my dear friend and colleague, Sharon, is a doctoral student in anthropology who studies the transmission of traditional Malian dance, especially in transnational contexts. A longtime trad-African dancer herself, she has studied and danced in Mali, the US, and France. Anyway, long story semi-short, when Sharon was getting hitched a few years back she asked me whether I might help her arrange some music for her reception (an awesome & lively affair, full of drums and dance, in which a young & chubby Nico got to prance about with the august & strikingly spry Dr. J. Lorand Matory).
Her idea was to take one of the common rhythms from the Malian repertory and mash it up with some pop or hip-hop tracks that employ the same patterns. The idea was suggested to her by the fact that her local teacher, Joh Camara, himself would reference Will Smith’s “Gettin Jiggy Wit It” as a sort of mnemonic device when introducing students to the didadi rhythm. You know, the na-na-na-na-nana-nah bit. You can hear it pretty clearly in this performance I turned up on the ‘Tube (esp between 0:40 and 1:00):
This seemed like a fun task, especially given how much I love tracing patterns across different repertories. But after a few days of intense humming along to myself and attempting to trigger things in the recesses of musical memory, I had come up with relatively little. However, while I had only located a couple tracks that make reference to the rhythm, I had seemingly stumbled across an almost incredible possibility: that Toto’s “Africa,” which seemed like one of the least African songs I could imagine, might actually be based around an actual African rhythm. (And I use actual there twice because it’s a magic word, like Africa.)
Here’s what I shared with Sharon:
I have to confess that I’ve found it rather challenging to think up other songs that employ the same rhythm(s) as Didadi (aside from the tight fit that is “Gettin Jiggy Wit It”). Been racking my musical memory, which has led to some false leads and close fits, but nothing else — until this afternoon — save for a funny refrain from a Cypress Hill song (“la la la la la la la la” in “Hand on the Pump”).
Funny enough — actually I think you may find this discovery fascinating — as I was trying once more this afternoon to think of other songs that might match (and I’m being fairly exacting in wanting a good match — a direct rhythmic overlay), I started humming the rhythm to myself: buh-duh-duh-duhduh-duh-duh. Eventually a vaguely familiar bassline / chord progression emerged from my murky brain. I couldn’t place it, though, and couldn’t remember any words, so I just sang along with the melody until I reached the chorus, where, I hoped, I might remember a single Googlable word. When I got there, I was stunned: the word was “Africa” and the song, natch, “Africa” by Toto! What a hilarious coincidence! I have no idea whether the group was intentionally figuring Africa with that rhythm — it’s never sounded very African to me, but it sure does now!
Anyhow, I’m afraid that means I have only turned up 3 songs that use the same rhythm(s) as Didadi. And two of them are quite cheesy. But this is all in good fun, right? Anyhow, see attached and tell me what you think. For now, I’ve chosen to leave Joh’s performance unedited, so you hear the entire ~2:00 rendition that he gave us, the full arc, including all his variations and the general accretionary/crescendoing dynamic. If that works for you, that’s cool. If not, we can do some editing. Just let me know what you think. It’s easy enough to loop any of the measures he plays or to cut something here or add something there. I could extend any of the songs mashed with the drums, or shorten them, or change their order. I could also change the tempo so that it is faster or slower or gets faster over time (Jo does gradually get faster, and that’s one change I’ve made: now he stays at the same tempo, which helped me to mash/match things up).
Now, judging by this Wikipedia entry and it’s detailed accounts by members of Toto of the way the song came together, it sounds like the guys in Toto might have more or less entirely stumbled upon this felicitous rhythmic concordance. Meter minutiae aside (however fascinating), I find this quotation from drummer Jeff Porcaro most pregnant:
… a white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he’s never been there, he can only tell what he’s seen on TV or remembers in the past.
At any rate, you can imagine the bizarro eureka moment as I pulled that schmaltzy tune out of some dark corner of my mind. As for the main keyboard riff’s Africanness, you’ll have to decide for yourself. Here’s the “mashup” I sent to Sharon (which, suffice to say, was a little too goofy to work for the wedding):
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Not long after my last post went public, a savvy searcher quickly proved that what I thought was fairly ungooglable (at least without knowing Arabic) was, in fact, waiting for me on eBay. And beyond simply locating & IDing the music/CD in question, this kind commenter hit Arabkidsmusic paydirt.
First, I want to take back my description of the CD itself (pictured here) as “clutterred”; scans of the jewelcase reveal heretofore unimagined photoshop riches–
And the seller pointed to other visually alluring CDs that I now want to hear, including one clearly ’shopped by the same artiste –
And one which departs significantly in visual style, but is no less tempting —
Plus, the seller decorates with nifty gifs to boot —
Taken altogether, even with my lack of Arabic, I find the whole ensemble to offer a rather fascinating snapshot of some of the various and sundry artifacts gathered around music culture today.
But the best part of all is that it turns out, not too surprisingly, that the tracks I shared yesterday are fairly popular songs by Lebanese pop star Nancy Ajram, who — though we must keep in mind that its a bot’s list — has a YouTube channel with 13,000+ videos on it.
I’m not too surprised to learn it was Lebanese, since Boston and Cambridge and especially neighboring Watertown have a relatively large Lebanese (and more generally, Armenian-via-other-places) community. This is why we are so fortunately rich in hummus and other goodies. (Hands down, IMO, Eastern Lamejun beats any other hummus in the Greater Boston area, but I digress…)
The songs I posted yesterday appear, in the same “medley” fashion, in a rather fantastic (and apparently “big budget”) video, which the eBay site links to as a “preview.” They were released in 2007 on an album for kids after Ajram “discovered,” according to the Wiki page, that young people were a substantial part of her audience.
Here’s the must-see video, which, if the beginning gets too cutesy-pedantic you might fast-fwd to 1:20 or so to see Ajram-as-Tinkerbell descending into a city of children-dressed-like-adults:
My daughters, incidentally, really enjoyed this — the visuals as well as the music, though I have to admit I liked it a bit more when I could imagine reggaetoneros in the mix.
At any rate, while perusing the Wikipedia page for Shakhbat Shakhabit, I was slightly surprised to see what seemed like an obvious bit of moralist editorial —
The album & video were the most notable and successful work for children at the time, following a huge wave of works directed to children. The reason for this could be the fact that it was purely meant for children, unlike children works by other singers that included sexual content for adults.
This didn’t seem surprising, exactly. There’s plenty of oddly salacious stuff that gets marketed to children (and their parents) in the US too, of course. Still, “sexual content” seemed a bit strong. But then, in my ensuing random walk (or rabbithole spelunk) on YouTube, I turned up a few things that, in the immortal words of Arsenio Hall (or Freedom Williams), make you say hmmmm, e.g.–
But there’s a lot of fun stuff to be seen too — and lots of songs about telephones maybe? — such as the following, which is awesomely jarring in its treble-culturized teeveediation, but also depicts a roomful of kids having a lot of fun dancing to some classic rhythms:
Anyway, I’ll stop there for now & leave you to your own funky spelunks, but I’m glad to solve this mystery — thx mystery commenter! — and to have found another YouTube musical wormhole to wiggle through.
I’m thrilled to report that Venus’s partner-in-rave, $hayne (pic’d above), will be joining her on the trip. That means we’re gonna be treated to a tag-team/4-handed Ghe20 Goth1k performance the likes of which Greater Boston has not yet been party to. So get ready, and get to the club by 11, knamean.
(When I told Venus she wouldn’t be playing in the middle of the night, as she’s used to, she sounded happily surprised! Oh yeah, and just in case you’re on autopilot, this is happening at the Middlesex, not the Enormous Room [RIP].)
If you want a taste of what you might expect, look no further than the live mixtape (and, yes, it’s worth noting that it’s live — see next paragraph) they just cooked up for Opening Ceremony –
Ok, look a little further — you’ll hardly be disappointed — and do yourself a favor by starting with Venus’s appearance this past Monday on DJ /Rupture’s radio show, Mudd Up!. (Kudos to Sñr Clayton, btw, on that Wire cover!) I was emailing with Jace today, as it happens, and he offered some off-the-cuff thoughts on Venus’s DJing that really encapsulate what’s so special, and daring, about her approach –
seeing Venus reminded me of how so many DJs just surf the wave of ‘new jams’ and dont really fuck with the form itself. Whereas its so fresh and refreshing to experience Venus going for it, really working the CD-js in a percussive way, pulling and pushing sound around to create a thing in and of itself
Now don’t get me wrong, as those in the know will know, this won’t be the first time Ghe20 G0th1k graces a Cambridge club. Indeed, it was at Rizzla & co’s Nu Life party where I first met Venus, having been tasked with sourcing a couple CDJs for the occasion. Of course, these days, Venus is tweet-lobbying Pioneer to donate 20 pairs for a next wave of rad gal DJs. But big-up Rizzla for balance-beaming across the bleeding edge, no small achievement in this little town that, better or worse, I’ll always call home.
…
As Hatsune Miku’s team thinks of ways to translate the incredible phenomenon she represents for US audiences/co-producers, I could hardly think of a better partner for the virtual idol. Venus seems to think folks here are ready for the kind of plastic pop culture we can mold and form into our own shapes, and, as it happens, so does Ian Condry, the cultural anthropologist in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program who is responsible for bringing Miku’s team to Cambridge next week (as part of the Cool Japan project). Ian, who wrote his first book about hip-hop in Japan, has recently completed a second book, this time about anime and collaborative creativity.
As he wrote in response to seeing a Hatsune Miku concert this past summer, Ian’s study of anime has led him “to see virtual characters as platforms of generative creativity in their own right.” Taking this a step further into the realm of invitational and reconfigurable culture, Hatsune Miku “demonstrates that there are likely to be many more kinds of platforms out there, waiting to created, built upon, shared, distributed, remixed and extended.”
Allow me to quote Ian’s blogpost for MIT’s Center for Civic Media in some length, especially since, among other things, it offers such a fine summary of what makes the Miku phenomenon so phenomenal–
Everyone was cheering, but at what? There was no one there, on stage, at the center of our attention, just a virtual avatar. And of what? Of whom? Of us.
Miku shows that pop culture, like politics, often appears premised on a leader on stage (or projected on a screen), but impact, and often creativity itself, whatever that means, emerges from broader, distributed collective actions. Miku hints at a world of untapped possibility, a model of crowd-sourced mobilization, and an instructive instance of a media platform that is part software technology (Vocaloid) part cultural idea (the character Miku).
Miku began as a voice on a music synthesizer software package called Vocaloid, created and sold by Yamaha starting in 2004. Vocaloid lets you make music by specifying instruments to play, like Garage Band, but with the added feature that you can write lyrics with melody as well. A separate company, Crypton Future Entertainment, released the Miku voice add-on in 2007, along with a cartoon image and biographical features (16 years old, height, weight, etc.).
Importantly, Crypton decided not to assert copyright control over the image, thus freeing up the character to have a life of her own, or rather, lives of our own. It’s as if we could all write songs for Lady Gaga, and she would perform them for us. Does it matter that Miku’s not real? How “real†is Lady Gaga anyway?
Fans responded by posting hundreds of thousands of music videos online, with a variety of shared costumes and images (e.g., a green onion / leek). In the years since, Miku’s star rose thanks to the energy of the fans amplified through uploading and commenting on the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Dôga. So-called “Nicodo†is like YouTube except user comments scroll by as you watch a video, thus adding an additional layer of participatory viewing.
Nowadays, top MikuP (“producersâ€) sell their work online, and karaoke spots in Japan let you download and sing along with favorite Miku songs. Crypton has a site online for facilitating collaboration and licensing through a system, Piapro, which they say mimics Creative Commons. Fan work sells through other channels as well. In November 2010, I was one of 7000 attendees at a sold-out fan convention in Ikebukuro, Tokyo shopping from 500 fan groups who gathered to sell Vocaloid-related music, posters, DVDs, illustration books, video games, jewelry and more (see http://ketto.com/tvm/).
Given such fan excitement, it is small wonder that big business wanted in on the act. From 2009, Sega created video games for Miku under the Project Diva title, both for handheld devices and for arcades. Toyota is now using Miku for a series of ads as well, and they even showed a commercial prior to Miku’s Los Angeles debut (drawing some boos, but probably more good will). Ultimately, however, Miku is animated by the energy of fans, and that’s why watching Miku’s steps into commercialization will be interesting.
Miku reinforces some of the lessons for civic media that we’ve heard before: people need to feel a genuine openness to participate; sharing and dialogue are key to building a community; free culture is more generative than controlled-IP systems; cooptation and commercialization are always risks, especially as popularity increases.
But Miku offers a particular schema of distributed creativity, different than both Wikipedia and human celebrities. Miku lacks a back-story. She has no pre-defined personality. She doesn’t exist in a singular made-up fantasy world. This Wikicelebrity makes old-fashioned human celebs look like appliances, when the future is platforms.
Might this provide alternative ways of thinking about democracy and participation as well? If the social realities outside leaders themselves are what generate action and popularity, then questions of media should turn less on representational content, and more on the nature of platforms, how open they are, what forms of creativity they allow.
I’m getting a good feeling about this. Do help us make next Monday the first of many incredible meetings between Venus and Miku. Glowsticks optional.
The Wizard of Oz + Dark Side of the Moon…. many folks have tried to put these two together and succeeded, sort of. The people that even know about this probably still argue on which lion roar to start the album on…wait, do you start when you drop the needle on the record or when you hit play on the cd player, shit?! I put it on Vimeo so no one has to worry about syncing this ever again…This is for all you stoners and once was hippies.
…
- Per your requests, I have extended the movie to it’s actual running time and looped the album throughout the film. It’s actually quite surprising how many moments line up later in the movie, but it doesn’t happen as frequently as the first time through.
- If you have an hour and forty five minutes to kill you could spend it watching this urban legend. Personally, I can only watch the first rotation of the album. I like Pink Floyd and all, but my human brain is only able to withstand around 45 minutes of concentration. …
Thanks for the continued conversation re: the limits to your love. I enjoy plotting to create better possible futures with y’all, and I <3 how the discussions here get amplified and “shopped” around. Ahem~
To keep the discussion moving (for I really don’t want the iron to cool too much, lest we lose our fire entirely), I want to talk about a couple interesting uploads I came across this week on SoundCloud.
Briefly, let me preface by noting that I’ve found it pretty remarkable throughout SoundCloud’s relatively short existence that I rarely if ever run across an example of flagrantly unauthorized filesharing. Some users occasionally upload other people’s tracks without explicit consent but more typically as a form of decentralized (and courted) promotional activity than in a yes-you-can-find-that-on-YouTube fashion. To me this seemed like evidence of a good faith approach, wherein SoundCloud was taking a gentle, supportive hand to remixed, DJ-mixed, and otherwise recontextualized music (including as part of field recordings) and balancing that strong stance toward fair use by vigorously removing any blatant examples of bald, untransformative filesharing.
Of course, December’s wave of automated take-downs let the air out of any dream of a concerted, coherent, or particularly robust defense of fair use on SoundCloud at the corporate level. Nevertheless, users of SoundCloud continue — both unintentionally and purposefully — to challenge terms of service, copyright law, practices of attribution, and notions of ownership. I’d like to examine here one example from each camp: the accidental and the intentional. (And, given the fraught status of each, we’ll see how long before this blogpost becomes yet another web2.0 graveyard.)
Here’s one that I would characterize as unintentional, though as I’ll explore, the lines get blurry:
Pop archivist and professor Hugo Keesing, building on the work of radio DJ Mark Ford (post-post update: see here for a detailed parsing of the tape’s twists and turns), spliced together the audio “embedded” in the player up there, just below his portrait in triplicate. It’s a piece he named Chartsweep back when in the pre-Napster 90s, an hour-plus collage comprising short, recognizable samples of every #1 hit in the US from 1956 to 1992 (according to Billboard/Whitburn).
Apparently, the montage, which may or may not have been made from reel-to-reel recordings and/or 45s (see some mythology here [and again, here]), circulated informally and anonymously among radio heads for many years before someone finally solved the mystery and tracked down Keesing. [Though to update again, according to this, the piece was "heard in national syndication, annually, by millions and millions of listeners," so obviously, and interestingly (given this week's amnesiac reception), it has enjoyed a massive audience in the past.]
Keesing discusses the project, and his background, in this interview with Jon Nelson. Allow me to excerpt a bit to show how the assemblage, which Nelson says he “couldn’t help but think of as art,” emerges both out of Keesing’s capacious love for popular music and his embrace of mashup poetics, if you’ll permit the anachronism, as a form of multimedia pedagogy:
The concept and term “Chartsweep” both originated in the late 60s with a syndicated radio show called “The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” I listened to it on WOR-FM in New York and recorded portions of it on an old Wollensack reel-to-reel tape recorder. As you know, the ’sweep presented segments of every Billboard #1 single starting with “Memories Are Made of This” (Jan 1956). I don’t recall where it stopped, but it was around 1968/69. Six years later I began teaching an American Studies course at the University of Maryland called “Popular Music in American Society.” To provide a setting for each class I dusted off the concept, took it back to January 1950, added a number of songs based on Joel Whitburn’s re-definition of #1 songs, and continued where the original had stopped. I added each new #1 until fall, 1991 when I stopped teaching the course. “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” was the 900th. At the start of each class I played a portion of the ’sweep that corresponded to the years we were covering that night. To accompany the tape I made 35mm slides of either the original sheet music, 45 rpm record sleeve or something similar, so that students could see as well as hear the pop music history. Copies of each night’s tape went to the undergraduate library. I assume that an enterprising student or two made their own copies and it is a copy of a copy of a copy that remains in circulation. That’s the story in a nutshell.
But, of course, the saga continues. In the last week Chartsweep has risen to “viral” prominence after a complicated — and possibly incestuous — round of re-posting and re-blogging and re-posting and re-blogging. Although uploaded to SoundCloud just two days ago, as of this writing, the two parts have cumulatively garnered nearly 150k plays!
Key to this unprecedented explosion of exposure is, of course, the unauthorized uploading of Chartsweep to SoundCloud, the special affordances of which — namely, embeddability and scalability — make it a lot easier for Keesing’s collage to travel and be heard and shared than if it were simply residing as mp3s on a server here or there.
Precisely because Chartsweep has been around for years, enjoying a more modest audience and addressing a narrower public, the piece’s performance on the so-called platforms of web 2.0 could prove instructive as we dispute what constitutes fair use, and what doesn’t, in an age of “automated diminishment.” At the moment, it remains to be seen what — and whether/when — Audible Magic will have to say about all the unauthorized samples it sniffs in this.
The samples are sitting there, clear as day. Here’s part 2, stretching from Men At Work’s “Land Down Under” (itself embroiled in silly copyright wrangling) to the fitting closer, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”:
Now, Chartsweep It may not be the sort of thing you’d like to listen to all the time, and it’s certainly not a replacement for any, never mind all, of the songs it includes. I feel little need to explain why this sort of thing has the right to exist. The answer to that question is audible and obvious. Indeed, just a glance at the reactions Chartsweep elicits, whether at SoundCloud or on blogs, turns up a great variety of ways that such a transparently derivative and transformative work can reveal, uniquely even, all manner of things about pop and charts and us. Among other things it nicely demonstrates, as one commenter notes, “This is so awesome…you can actually hear the British Invasion happening in 1964″ (emphasis mine).
But what about questions of attribution and fair use and ownership not with regard to the maker of the montage but the uploader of the audio? It’s notable that mjs538 provided no information about who put the piece together — or anything else. Indeed, he even gave it a misleading (and erroneous) new title, “Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single.” But despite these possibly suspect procedures, plenty of listeners recognized Chartsweep immediately, and some — like DJ Empirical — felt compelled to leave a comment providing proper attribution. (The confusion here seems to stem from a case of lazy reblogging and meta-data erasure by the very same affective laborer, Matt Stopera, who (re)posted it here — where he oddly indicates that it was “Made by” Ubuweb, who have merely done the simple, if awesome, [& actually, slightly misleading] service of re-archiving the audio and interview — and who also re-blogs stuff like “The 30 Best Pictures Of Asians Wearing Engrish Shirts” — clearly a man of taste and honor.)
Can we imagine a better set of practices for sharing Chartsweep with a new set of publics? I suspect we can. Would as many people have heard it this week if such a system were somehow automated? Doubtful, at least at this point. Does that matter?
These thorny questions echo in the second example I’d like to discuss here…
Earlier this week, Detroit techno pioneer Kevin Saunderson took to his website, Facebook, eager amplifiers like Mad Decent and Resident Advisor, and, yes, SoundCloud, in order to clown a couple Italian producers who centrally employ an obvious sample of Saunderson’s 1987 classic, “The Sound,†without giving credit (or publishing for that matter) where due. In response, Saunderson is giving away digital copies of the original track while posting a copy of the offending track to SoundCloud — for free, without Supernova’s permission, and in 82mb wav file splendor (not that it’s such a splendiferous track, a rather wan paint-by-numbers production rightly derided in comments as “beatport minimal” and “ableton techno”).
Here’s the story according to Saunderson (& hear the original here, if you don’t want to download it c/o his righteous largess); note the nuance in Saunderson’s position here — this is hardly copyright extremism:
I recorded “The Sound†back in 1987 and released it on my own KMS Records label. It was a massive hit at New York’s Paradise Garage and in Chicago and of course Detroit. Once it hit the UK it became one of the earliest Detroit anthems right acround Europe, a huge underground record across the globe – a true desert island techno track. It is such a special record to me because it was one of my first really successful productions and I hope that you all will enjoy this free, fresh digital download of my original 1987 version.
The reason I have decided to give this track away for free is because of a situation that recently developed involving the unauthorized sampling of “The Sound†by Italian producers Giacomo Godi & Emiliano Nencioni (Supernova) in their release “Beat Me Back†on Nirvana Recordings. It came to my attention that they are licensing and selling, with considerable success, this track which is nothing more than a continuous loop of the main hook from “The Sound.â€
For me to hear ‘Supernova’ taking an extended loop of “The Sound†and claiming that this is their own original composition and production is both dishonest and disrespectful. My first thought was that they were perhaps naïve, but as they have apparently been recording together since 2002 this seems unlikely. In any event this is completely unacceptable, we cannot continue to let this kind of wholesale rip off go unchallenged and tolerate “artists†who completely sample recordings, add nothing of their own and then release the results as their own work.
I have a huge affection for sampling, it’s how some of the most inspiring and ground breaking tracks of our times were created. We’ve pretty much all sampled records at some time, and cleared the sample so we can use it on our releases, but it is just not cool to take someone else’s music, create a big old loop of it and then put your name on it and try to have success entirely off the back of another artist’s efforts. This really has got to stop. For this reason, I have uploaded the Godi/Nencioni version of “The Sound†to Soundcloud so that you all can download this for free if you so wish. These producers and their record label should not be profiting from my back catalogue… this is not their track to sell.
Here it is (and do note the title!), though I recommend clicking over to SoundCloud to check the convo happening there (and over at RA too):
As of this writing Saunderson’s instantiation of “Beat Me Back” at SoundCloud has been listened to over 10k times and downloaded almost 2k times. I can only hope that the original will enjoy a lush new life despite the strange circumstances of its revival. It’s definitely vexing that someone like Saunderson — who can be credibly described as an architect of the very sound, the very aesthetic conventions (never mind specific bassline), that Supernova are working in — might find himself so rudely excluded from deserved techno dividends in the age of Beatport. And I quite support the sort of public gesture he’s making.
I also look forward to hearing, if anything, what happens to something like this on SoundCloud. Will Supernova sue? Will they settle? Will SoundCloud / Audible Magic intervene first? It’s tricky terrain, to be sure. But I suspect there are plenty of “brave” lawyers ready to leap into the breach.
But before this seems like another round of ammunition for the copyright wars, I want to return to the importance of nuance and context when we make efforts to distinguish between fair and unfair uses of musical recordings. While I am sympathetic to Saunderson (and would happily help him make his case), I don’t think it’s so simple as to say that any track built on a loop in this way is necessarily subject to the kinds of ownership claims he’s making. In contrast, I can think of any number of hip-hop tracks that are similarly loop-based and yet still stand as undeniably “original” and perhaps even deserving of commercial (and, of course, non-commercial) lives of their own.
As it happens, this very example offers a fine test case, for Supernova are not the first to build a track around a central sample of “The Sound.” Way back in 1988, just months after “The Sound” started hitting clubs across the burgeoning post-disco diaspora, New York’s Todd Terry enlisted its distinctive bassline for one of his trademark sample-laced burners, “Back to the Beat” –
Listening to the three versions alongside each other, we’re invited to think about whether “Back to the Beat” > “Beat Me Back” — or, more precisely, what makes one loop hackish (and hence disrespectable) and another inspired (and thus tolerated). Note how this commenter on another instantiation attempts to tease out what Terry has borrowed from what he has created:
Of course, the amazingly amazing and idiosyncratic bassline was sampled from Reese & Santonio’s Detroit classic “The Sound” just as the the choirish sound has Kraftwerk circa anno? 1986 and “Electric Cafe” written all over it. However, the heavy rhythm, the eclectic melange of samples from everythere and – yes – the stuttering quality is very characteristic of Todd Terry productions.
I really appreciate the way a sense of community norms — however local or contested they may be — undergirds a comment like this, and it’s that sort of community-wide interpretation and peer-level censure (or approval) that should be at the heart of how we collectively regulate public culture in an age of click-and-drag remediation.
I’m happy to announce that I recently joined the team of associate editors at JPMS, or the Journal for Popular Music Studies, which is the quarterly publishing venue of IASPM-US, or the United States branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.
Now that I’ve got that mouthful out, let me tell you why this is important to me and worth your interest — that is, if you fancy yourself a scholar or student of popular music.
Depending on one’s language, methods, and audience, there are lots of venues for writing about popular music today, from the classic sites of music journalism (magazines, newspapers), to the world of blogs and tweets and tumbls, and including an increasing number of academic journals. All of those are fine venues, in their own way, and depending on their paywalls (or lack thereof), they all can serve to amplify ideas, share research, and work to reshape the ways we think and talk and write about music.
I’m glad to note that JPMS stands alongside many similar efforts, including Popular Music, Popular Music and Society, and nowadays a host of online and grad student-edited journals. All of these serve as supportive — and increasingly bold and accessible — platforms to stage rigorous peer-reviewed discussions and debates about the significance, meanings, and effects of popular music, very broadly construed.
The “broadly construed” part is crucial, and I know my co-editors are in agreement about the diversity of approaches and topics we’d like to invite. It’s also important to me that the journal be broadly accessible — a public platform of sorts, to be read by people outside of popular music studies per se. Of course, being an academic journal, still embedded in a particular publishing regime, there will be inevitable constraints on our best wishes. But while we realize that an academic journal faces certain problems of access and professional requirements (i.e., getting people tenure in disciplines), we hope to cultivate JPMS as a space from which a broadened and more critical understanding of music writing might be generated.
Here’s a revived description of the journal c/o the new Editors-in-Chief, Gus Stadler and Karen Tongson:
Journal of Popular Music Studies features work on popular music in its historical, cultural, aesthetic, and political registers. Its purview encompasses all genres of music that have been dubbed popular. The journal is also concerned with such issues as popular music’s intersections with other arts, its relationships with old and new media, and its status as a field of research and critical writing. We welcome and encourage unconventional approaches (i.e. different from the standard scholarly essay) to these areas of inquiry. Each number of JPMS features book reviews, as well as occasional reviews of performances and recordings, and we regularly publish special issues oriented around a particular topic, co-ordinated by a guest editor or editors.
In a meeting of the editorial team earlier this semester, a more detailed picture emerged of the directions we’d like to take the journal. The following points help, I think, to situate JPMS uniquely in the field. In brief, we are in agreement that we’d like JPMS to
1. Provide a hospitable place for scholarship that departs from strictly “discipline-based†approaches to popular music.
2. Encourage writerly approaches to popular music. We want to locate and feature the passion in the projects we publish, and to that end, also hope to encourage non-academics, independent scholars, journalists, venerable aficionados, to submit to JPMS. Indeed, the disciplinary intervention of pop music studies comes not only from WHAT we write about, but HOW we write about it.
3. Create a forum for scholars/writers working on pop music that can be idiosyncratic and experimental. Whereas other journals about popular music have established certain identities (as more “official†representatives of the field, as cultural studies clearinghouses, as
venerable old organs of the profession), we have the opportunity to make JPMS a place to explore new directions in pop music and scholarship about it.
4. Enjoy an expanded (and redesigned) web presence.
With regard to the last point, I like what Social Text has been doing, for instance, and I think that in general we could grab some pointers from contemporary blog and online magazine layouts. (The current setup is dismal, clinical, and difficult.) The drab physical product could use some retooling too. There’s no reason a journal about pop shouldn’t itself also pop. And there’s no reason JPMS’s archives and current content shouldn’t be easily navigated, accessed, cited, and so forth.
Of course, one reason certain things will be slow to change is that journals like JPMS are rather institutionally entrenched. I confess that working for one of these pay-wall journals is a deeply ambivalent undertaking for me, especially at this stage of my fledgling career. None of us get paid directly for the labor that goes into producing this journal. (Rather, we get paid by universities who expect us to spend some of our time this way.) And yet readers must pay a middleman publisher in order to access the fruits of our labor. Via library subscription packages, the universities that pay our salaries are made to subsidize scholarly production twice over. And don’t get me started on the towering ivory paywall standing between that privileged but pricey university access and the greater public. The OpenAccess movement and ordinary, proactive sharing practices are helping to erode such walls, but there remains a long way to go.
These concerns notwithstanding, I’m still, for the moment, committed to working from the inside to change things for the better, so that’s one reason that I decided to join the team of associate editors this time around. (Frankly, I had been asked in the past and found it rather vexing that I would be working to get other people credentialed when I myself am still struggling to secure stable employment.) So let me finish, finally, with a brief explanation of what I’ll be doing for JPMS, and where YOU might come in. (But first, a quick plug for my fellow associate editors — Anthony Kwame Harrison, David Suisman, Alexandra Vasquez, Eric Weisbard, and Mina Yang — quite a slate of accomplished and promising scholars. It’s an honor to be working alongside them all.)
Essentially, associate editors are responsible for suggesting appropriate peer reviewers for essays that overlap with our areas of expertise, and we’re encouraged to bring to the attention of the Eds-in-Chief any new work, academic essays, or experimental writings that would be appropriate for the journal. I’m also happy to consider experimental non-writings if anyone has ideas along (outside?) those lines.
So if you’ve got something you think would be a good fit with what I’ve described above, get at me, or send to: submissions@thejpms.net (& see here for author guidelines)
When I was in Mexico recently, I gave a lecture-demo on how one might express ideas about music through music. (Readers of this blog will be familiar with these approaches, especially via my excursions in riddim meth0dism.) Although I want to keep the concept as open as possible, believing there are myriad ways to do so, in my presentation I explored two principal methods: the mashup and the mix.
With regard to mashups, I talked about two different sorts of uses, which I termed the “analytical” and the “aesthetic” (even though the whole point of music-about-music is that the aesthetic and analytical modes merge). Essentially, I was trying to draw a distinction between using mashups — i.e., the vertical / simultaneous juxtapositions of two or more tracks — to 1) demonstrate certain correspondences between recordings; and 2) embody a kind of “poetic justice,” a critique of the relations between two or more works that one can attempt to encode by choosing to “discipline” or “subordinate” one track to another (whether in terms of form, pitch, tempo, or the like). These lines really do blur, inevitably even, though certain examples I offered were rather cut’n'dry and could prolly safely be consigned to category #1.
I played a bunch of mixes and mashes from the W&W oeuvre, but I also tried my hand at making one on the spot. And I’d like to share that one here (especially since one of the mashees, Vijay Iyer, saw my tweet about it and told me he’d like to hear it).
Although mashing up Vijay’s version of “Galang” with the MIA original doesn’t really offer much opportunity for much in the way of ethico-aesthetic statements (unlike otherexamples), it does offer a pretty classic case where the simple act of juxtaposition brings out some interesting points of coincidence and departure. Before I tell you more, let’s let the sound speak for itself –
I’m not sure what emerges as you listen to and/or watch this yourself, but one thing that you’ll hear&see if you try again is that I’ve only made two small cuts to the MIA track, suggesting that there is a great deal of correspondence between the two. In the process of lining these up, I learned — after noting that Iyer & co. remain faithful to basic issues of key and tempo — that the trio skips 14 bars at one point, at the 33rd measure to be exact (i.e., after two clean 16-bar “choruses,” in jazzspeak), bringing it back for one more trip through the refrain before getting to that ya-ya-hey-ya-ya-ho part at the end (which, interestingly and mercifully, they riff on for 4 fewer measures than she). Deciding to cut here rather than extend, I followed Vijay’s lead and snipped those 18 total measures from the MIA track, which brought them right in line. I like how the mash brings out the ways that the trio traces and accentuates MIA’s vocal lines (and driving, angular accompaniment) while, at other times, departing in some fanciful ways, as Vijay takes off on some small spiky solos. I also quite like the resulting chaos and density, matching key for keyb.
…
While I was in the process of getting back into the cover-song mashing practice, I decided to do one more (now back at home, not on-stage in Mexico). I’ve really had Nina Sky’s refresh of the Cure’s “Lovesong” in my head for the past few weeks, so I figured I’d whip up a little tribute in the form of a “duet.”
Notably, as with the Galangs above, I didn’t have to alter pitch or tempo in either case here, showing the new version to be faithful to the original in its basic parameters (and making it easy on me). Once again, though, there were some small differences in form that I had to reconcile, and it’s always hard to perform such nips and tucks without thinking about the act and what it effects, symbolically speaking. (This is where aesthetics and analysis necessarily intersect.) Why should I favor this one over that? Is there a poetics here that might guide this choice? Does the sonically “right” choice imply an aesthetic position, or suggest a poetics, that I hadn’t myself premeditated? What’s the best choice in terms of both sonic and symbolic outcome?
In the end I decided to compromise. Rather than totally warping one to work to the other, they take turns leading the way. Because the Nina Sky version features a far briefer intro (2 measures vs. 8) — & such a lovely vintage drum machine loop — and I didn’t want to start right in with any incisions, I decided to loop it (and make it loud enough to compete with a rock band) until they were ready to sing together. From there, as you’ll see, I’m pretty hands-off. I make only two small cuts to the Cure version, excising the guitar solo (yeah, yeah) and inserting a brief pause after measure 45 in order to match the newer version’s terser form and awesome little breakdown. In general, I also have the Nina Sky version a bit louder in the mix so that we get more contemporary bump than 80s midrange grind. Any rockist lawyers out there can sue me. We neither cease nor desist, yo –
In Mexico I demonstrated less in the way of mixes, though I did do a brief rundown of the Zunguzung meme, zipping through 20 or so examples at a rapid clip. And I discussed a few organizing themes I’ve employed in my more “lessony” mixes, such as pursuing particular rhythmic threads or vocal lines, though I neglected to mention (doh!) the two swipes I’ve taken at my home soundscape, the Boston Mashacre and Smashacre. I also overlooked a great number of stellar efforts by other folk which do exactly the thing I’m talking about — i.e., the forms and contents of the mixes themselves, without requiring additional explication, possess the power to represent some rather interesting things about music, sound, and the relationships between particular works.
There are a growing number of these and, indeed, already a rather massive number that might be counted. Plenty have been mentioned on this blog before. We might think of Dr. Auratheft’s suggestive series, devoted to everything from fairly straightforward collections (“Calypso War Songs”) to philosophically provocative assemblages (“Post-European Dialogues in Sound”). Or El Niño’s recent Reggaespañol mix or John Eden’s Boops Specialist compendium. Or attempts to gesture at the range of global hip-hop, world house, Indian house, or — one of the all-time greats of the meta-genre — the history of English MCs. Or take the (not one but) two vocoder mixes that have emerged alongside Dave Tompkins’s magisterial vocoder opus; notably, they need not be taken as supplements but as sonic (non?)fictions of their own.
But my favorite example in recent months — maybe of the year — has to be Nguzunguzu’s Moments in Love. I sorta slept on it for a while, but I’ve been listening to it weekly just about all summer and it’s just so good. There’s something really deep about those Art of Noise synth stabs, and their hauntingly simple melody, that makes me happy to hear them over and over again. But it’s also the engrossing, downright amazing way that one hears the riff take on new life, rising and falling across the various permutations and recontextualizations that Nguzunguzu string together. Beyond anything else, I love how this mix demonstrates the utter pliability — and yet resilience — of one little riff, weaving it through all kinds of club music, hip-hop, r&b, cumbia, you-name-it. It’s an audible trip through the remix age. BravÃsimo!
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The first few times I listened, I almost couldn’t believe that the riff had been repurposed by such an incredibly wide range of producers. Indeed, I started to suspect that Nguzunguzu must be mucking around a little, throwing the riff in at times in order to keep the flow going and not caring too much about playing with the musical-historical record. Now, even though that might not be quite as “cool” as if all the tracks actually contained the riff, I wouldn’t really have minded at all. No need to be too strict about this stuff. It is music after all, which is to say, at least in this case, art (& craft). And I’m happy to grant Daniel & Asma all the poetic license in the world. It would make the mix no less enjoyable, IMO. And that’s an important dimension of musically-expressed-ideas-about-music: they need not be held to (and indeed intrinsically resist) the same standards of comprehensiveness or authority or transparency that we expect from, say, academic or even journalistic writing; rather, such creations offer gestural and sometimes personal engagements with some musical or sonic subject. That is all. From there, feel free to entrain and entertain me. Edification is a bonus.
Anyway, I had to get to the bottom of what was happening in the “edits” noted in the tracklist. Turns out, rather than superimposing the riff, Nguzunguzu were doing the exact opposite: adding drum tracks to beatless versions of the Art of Noise song! Tres cool. Via email –
Actually yes, there are two instances that “mash-up” an awesome drum beat with an already made remix of art of noise.
LIke many classical musicians would remake moments in love with a whole orchestra or bells, and we would find these recordings and put
them to a dance break as with:
MACHETE MOMENTS: ERIDSON VS. LUCIFER (NGUZU EDIT)
and
ART IN MOMENTS: DJ QUEST VS. LIEBRAND (NGUZU EDIT)
(Lucifer and Liebrand made the more ambient/ classical renditions)
hope that helps, and we would be delighted for you to post about it,
im glad to hear people are still listening to it!
We are always finding new remixes and are thinking of making a vol. 2
of moments in love mixtape! there are just so many!
I for one would welcome that!
I’d also like to hear a Vijay Iyer Trio version of the whole damn thing ;)
Keep on, all — and do send any worthy contenders my way.
I was surprised and delighted to learn last week (h/t Rizzla) that everyone’s favorite pair of singing Boricuas from Queens, Nina Sky, have released a handful of new tracks, all for free DL (long as you give them your email address, which, in this case, seems a fair exchange). Apparently, the release comes in response to finally getting out of their contract with a label that was simply sitting on their work. Adoring fans should obv let Nicole and Natalie know how much we appreciate.
Readers of W&W may not know this, but we sure <3 us some Nina Sky over here. They jumped on the Coolie Dance riddim when it was still simmering and worked up a breakthrough hit, they led the flag-waving chorus on the first reggaeton song to crack English-language playlists, and they’re just so damn cute. (And I mean that in the most unpatronizing way possible, if that’s possible.)
The first three tracks of the EP are a really strong start. They manage to sound new and unlike much else right now, even while incorporating cherished breakbeats and hints of hip-house (funk dat!). But while they synthesize so many currents in pop, r&b, and club music — and the EP is even tagged, hilariously, with “happy hardcore” — what I really hear running through this, and through Nina Sky’s whole oeuvre, is the spirit of freestyle, which these girls are keeping alive and, oddly enough, autotuned! (I love the stuttered vocals on the title track, which really do seem like a nod to classic freestyle freakiness.) Above all, they sound like they’re having fun, all up in the mix and loving it.
For me, the EP sorta goes awry when it starts to sound like Madonna trying to sound like Kylie Minogue. These girls should stick to their “happy” “hardcore” New York dance steez, all sorts of syncopated synth-stabs and popping percussion — and forget about trancey arpeggio presets. Anyway, as a saving grace of sorts, the second half of the EP does feature this gem, a cover of the Cure’s “Lovesong” that is equal parts Ace of Bass and Lil Jon, none of which am I mad at.
In my best Sagat voice: Why is it that you haven’t downloaded this yet? Funk dat! Fix dat.
…
ps — after hitting the publish button, I ran across this new Q&A, which confirms what I was hearing –
The EP is definitely influenced by freestyle music. What are your favorite freestyle tracks?
Natalie: “I Wonder If I Take You Home†by Lisa Lisa. I love that song. It reminds me of being young and hanging out with my friends. We used to listen to mad freestyle music.
Nicole: I think mine would be “Let the Beat Hit ‘Em†by Lisa Lisa because it’s a freestyle song with more of a house feel. My mom used to play Lisa Lisa so much when we were growing up.
[Ok, while I'm grinding on non-bloggy things, let me keep things moving here by offering up another from the riddimmeth0d vaults. I'm happy to report that I've since discovered more info about the origins of "Bird In Hand" here, which points out that the female singer on "Milte hi aankhein dil huwa" (from the 1950 film Babul, directed by Raj Kapoor) is not Geeta Dutt as I initially reported but rather Shamshad Begum. I also want to note that just about three years ago, my mashup of the Lee Perry recording and its filmi inspiration worked its way into a podcast by Mick Sleeper (mp3) devoted to odd remixes of Perry's odd remixes. Finally, given the recent uptick around Dutch club music thanks to the moombahton movement, I'm pleased to note that the second track here employs a classic bubbling loop. This post was initially published on 27 April 2006.]
worldclass warblers talat mahmood and geeta dutt
several months ago, matt woebot called attention to another amazing instance of far-flung musical connections. in this case, a filmi melody turning up in a lee perry-produced dub track. i myself had always wondered about the odd, haunting melody of “bird in hand” (on return of the super ape), but like many listeners i suppose i chalked it up to that ol’ wacky jamaican creativity or assumed it was amharic or something. recorded in 1978, the song foreshadows reggae’s embrace of the bollywood sound by a cool twenty-five years.
even more remarkable, whereas contemporary dancehall producers tend to simply sample lata and conjure the east with tabla patches, here we have an amazingly faithful engagement on the part of the singer, versioning the melody like alton ellis doing sam cooke and drawing out suggestive vocables (ma-ri-wa-a). (woebot’s post points to more info, but one of the more explanatory pages is down so i’ve linked to it though the waybackmachine here. [update: actually, I'm afraid that page is no longer viewable at archive.org b/c it "has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt"; I can't seem to find it on Mick Sleeper's site either; shame.])
as you might have anticipated, i couldn’t resist mashing the two versions together, hearing – as on “big gyptian” – one complement (and perhaps compliment) the other, filmi singers over dread riddims. (properly speaking, i guess what i’ve done is more like “blending” – no pellas, mang – but, importantly, via digital cut’n'play.) i’ve arranged the two so as to play up their relationship, lining them up and juxtaposing them toward the end, letting the versions share a chorus before their forms (which, despite all the melodic fidelity, are far from identical) diverge too much. i also pitch- and time-shifted the filmi song slightly, playing it a little higher and a tad faster so as to better ride the upsetters’ deep one-drop.
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[as is par for the course, the filmi version itself is full of far-flung musical connections. note, for example, the tango-derived piano figure in the opening.]
/ .. / .. /
del shannon and max crook’s musitron
as i was cooking up my segment of our lemon-red mix, i was suddenly inspired to include del shannon’s “runaway” (well mixed’n'mashed, of course). given that it seems a less than obvious choice (see comment #3), why did i think this was a good idea? i’m not totally sure. i suppose that some aesthetic doors had been opened for me by bmore’s affinity for oldies as well as hip-hop’s recent embrace of doo-wop. (indeed, as it turns out, not only has bobby vinton been sampled and frankie lymon channeled but, apparently, shannon’s “runaway” has itself been tapped recently – pressed into service for the crossover-courting comeback of NYC’s kulcha don. ) but the main reason i even had the song ready to remix is because i recently picked up a bunch of 60s pop to play at moms’s birthday party. (where people – mostly aunts – were getting down to some golden oldies, boy.)
given the degree to which i’m tampering with it, i was delighted to learn that “runaway” is itself quite a product of electronic technologies. (you can read a detailed account of the story of the song on del shannon’s site.) for one, the track’s famous keyboard solo also happens to be one of the first appearances of a synthesizer (the musitron!) on a pop/rock’n'roll record. second, and significant, del shannon’s voice – which i have chipmunked here (along with the entire song) – was itself pitch-shifted for the original! so all you oldies fans who always wondered how he hit those alvin-esque high notes can now revel in the knowledge that del actally recorded the song in a lower range to a slowed-down accompaniment:
Upon his return to Detroit, producer Harry Balk listened to the tapes only to hear that Shannon was singing too flat. Balk liked the song’s potential and suggested to his partner, Irving Micahnik, that Shannon be flown back to New York to re-cut the vocals. Again, Shannon was nervous and singing flat. Having spent a lot of money on studio time and expenses, Balk and Micahnik were very concerned. Balk and Big Top Records president Johnny Beinstock turned to the owner of Bell Sound for help and advice. The owner developed a machine, the size of a desk, that would enable the tapes to be sped up and slowed down. This allowed Balk to speed up Shannon’s vocals to nearly one-and-a-half times it’s original speed to bring him into key. “We finally got Del on key, and it sounded great, but it didn’t sound like Del,” explained Balk. “We mixed it anyhow, and it came out wonderful. (source)
and i was quite pleased to discover that my chipmunked, boston-bounced, merengue-mashed remix not only seems in line with the original both technologically and aesthetically, but also – considering del shannon’s frank admission of alluding to “stealing” other people’s music – philosophically and ethically:
Shannon, too, was ahead of his time, being one of the first white boys to sing falsetto on record. “I learned falsetto from The Ink Spots’ ‘We Three,’” Shannon would explain in a 1989 interview. “I eventually got hooked on Jimmy Jones’ ‘Handy Man’ in ‘59 and would sing that at the Hi-Lo Club. I always had the idea of ‘running away’ somewhere in the back of my mind. ‘I wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder, why…’ I borrowed from Dion & The Belmonts’ ‘I Wonder Why.’ The beats you hear in there, ‘…I wonder, bam-bam-bam, I wa-wa…’ I stole from Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover.’ We all steal from the business you know. When ‘Runaway’ went to #1, people stole from me. That’s the way the record business is played.” (source)
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[as you can see, i'm mixing the chipmunked "runaway" with loops from the merengue-mix of lil jon's "get low" as well as additional percussion courtesy of a bubblin' loop, "Beat-005" (itself a far-flung thing, filtering dancehall/soca through dutch happy hardcore) and a few boston bounce layers, namely that swingin' hi-hat and syncopatedly-snappin' snare.]
musicologist, internet annotator, imagined community organizer.
