Music and the geocultural Sampling politics Music and the geocultural

The audible world Study of relationship between popular culture and global politics growth area Main emphasis on visual and digital media content (TV, cinema, video, computer games, comics), some interest in literature, visual arts and design Terms and modes of analysis embedded in the visual – cultures and metaphors Mode of analysis that can apprehend the audible – aural and sonic – dimensions to how people make sense of the world less developed Aim today is to use our ears, consider how the audible world has personal, political, local and global dimensions to production, circulation, and consumption.

Music as “organized sound” Music is a disciplinary area and an object of theory and research in sociology as well as media, and cultural studies Popular music is primary object, and a sociological approach now dominates – due to a shift away from classical, “art music” analysis focusing on composition, the score, materials of music (“musicology”) Sociological approaches (e.g. Hesmondhalgh, Frith) provide new insights in who makes music, where, and under what conditions of production, distribution, and reception. However, interest in the materials of music, or aesthetics based on the sonic substance has been overlooked. Objective is to revisit critical musicological approaches that allow us to unpack “how music works” (Byrne 2012), on its own terms but also as co-constitutive element to our personal lives, social relationships, and the sociocultural, political and economic dynamics of shifting “global cultural economies” (Appadurai) Music is big business as well as a locus, or medium for personal and community identity

Music, recording technologies, and the digital Today will focus on one sort of practice, musicking, epitomizing the arrival of digital techniques, web-based music-making, sharing and distribution; SAMPLING Three ways that sampling can be considered today: The technological and musical practice from the 1980’s – how rap and hip-hop artists developed scratching, and then digital tools to “borrow” excerpts from other tracks, mixing and manipulating these sounds in increasingly sophisticated ways But these sorts of lo-fi and hi-tech practices predate the digital. Recording technologies have been embraced avant-garde, electronic music composers in the classical tradition, and experimental musicians playing around with tape, and early synthesizers in their studios

Whose music? Whose culture? (3) Today we are also going to consider the notion of sampling – musical borrowing by various means - across the global industry in pop, or “world music” to consider the contested geocultural politics, namely the ethics of sampling that borrow (some argue “take”) music from other, non-western societies and (popular) cultures. What is at stake when the music – sonic artefact – produced collapses Collapses aesthetic and cultural distinctions between sacred and secular music? Challenges local, if not national conventions around performance, execution? Change understandings of cultural significance, and heritage? Make money for others? These questions have an economic dimension because Major artists in the west have been criticized for the way they handle ‘samples’ from other cultural traditions

Together these developments have radically altered the art and business of music making, realigned the profit-margins gatekeeping powers of the music majors and with that the global political economy of consumption and distribution of the arts and culture They also point to realignments of global – now digital – intellectual property and copyright regimes in the music and entertainment industry that monitor music downloading behaviour online for litigation purposes. This too is not a new phenomenon as copyright is at the heart of tension between success and making money as an artist.

What is ‘music’? Is the rest is ‘noise’? Music is sound, but not all sound is regarded as music – composers and musicians have played with these distinctions throughout history http://www.quotegarden.com/music.html Traditional understandings of the materials of music (what makes up musical sound) in include: melody ; harmony ; beat (metre) ; rhythm ; timbre With recording now include orchestration/arrangements ; texture (layers) ; lyrics/libretti What about non-sonic? What is silence? Is silence sound? Different cultures, different conventions in applying these elements mean different sounds, with diverse meanings, sociocultural, political and economic stakes

Point of departure today is digital sampling - defined as: “digital sampling is a type of computer synthesis in which sound is rendered into data, data that in turn provide instructions for reconstructing that sound. Sampling is typically regarded as a type of musical quotation, … but it encompasses the digital incorporation of any prerecorded sound into a new recorded work. … Regardless of the gear on the simplest level sampling works like a jigsaw puzzle; a sound is cut up into pieces then put back together to form a ‘digitized’ picture of that sound” (Katz 2004: 138).

Listen to this: Sonic – material – music samples Today we consider three cases of sampling (treated as an additional material of music) Intro – Sampling The World Around Us Loss of Innocence: “Found Sounds” before and after 9/11 The Empire Samples Back: Ragas, Dubs, and Fortress Europe Anthems, Nation-States and the Electronic Avant-Garde His Masters Voice: Your Revolution has been ‘Signified’ Outro – Prayer Loop Song

Sample this “Too often discussions of [digital] sampling treat it simply as technological quotation. … However sampling is fundamentally an art of transformation. A sample changes the moment it is relocated. Any sound, placed into a new musical context, will take on some of the character of its new sonic environment. … Yet samples rarely leave home unchanged, and it is in the chopping, looping, tweaking, and shuffling that the art is truly found” (Katz 2004: 156, added emphasis).

Summing up Music as a creative practice no longer restricted to composition, individual ‘genius’ Materials, including sonic elements, now provided by recordings of the world around us, of sounds made in the studio or at home on computers The digital now integral to creating, performing, distributing, experiencing and sharing music The business models adapt in order to maintain market control and profit margins Those with power over production, distribution, and terms of use make money – not always the composers, performers, or artists