The Wire Tapper #12

"It don't bother me/Where is Mike" is a solemn funeral party remix. 

It reminds of you an Afro-peruvian song about death. A slave boy dies and is thrown on the flat bed of an improvised tricycle made to be a funeral vehicle.  His feet hang off the edge and bounce up and down on his way to the burial. His mother is crying hysterically so is every one else. 

However a contrasting element is also present, one that doesn't fit in. The boy's mother begins to move her hips to a rhythm. People noticed it and cheer her on, "Cry on, cry on black woman, cry it out and but keep moving those hips". She cries to mourn the death of her baby boy; she dances because death is better than slavery.

In more contemporary context remix Mike might the boy's name.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Looking at this film clip through the lens of the Beat Generation, although Bob Dylan was not a member of such, I can see the first attempt to capture contemporary audiences using a visual, acoustic and literary medium. I think that Bob Dylan and the Beatniks saw a need to take self expression to the net level and permeate audiences senses subliminally by instilling socio-political messages in the context of entertainment, design and technology.

The Beatniks

One thing I found fascinating about the The Beat Generation is their collective eclecticism. The fusion, if you will, of spontaneity, open emotion and most important visceral engagement was unprecedented. This blend of raw creativity became the basis for self expression and artistic imagination sampling ideas from every philosophical, artistic and literary tradition, ripped them, cut them, remixed them and rendered a visual, acoustic and tactile medium that created a canvas on which to paint our ever-changing contemporary reality.

The Beat Generation

In reading about the Beat Generation, I began to make connections between Dadaism, Surrealism, the Beatniks and the later 60s counterculture of the Hippies. The Beats incorporated the Dadaist spontaneity and its non-conformity to bourgeois values and, like Surrealism, allowed the imagination to move freely through the subconscious. Injecting their writings with spiritual references and inspiration from the truths they found in the streets, poems such as Ginsberg’s Howl emerged. In listening to DJ Spooky’s, “Once loved/ A footnote to Howl”, I could hear Ginsberg saying such things as “The bum is as holy as the seraphim. The madman as holy as you my soul are holy. The typewriter is holy. Holy the jazz bands’ marijuana hipsters, peace, and junk, and drums. The tongue, and cock, and ass-hole, holy. Holy Holy Holy. Everything is Holy.” Obviously, such thoughts were not mainstream but were proclaimed anyways, breaking free of societal constrictions. The Beatniks grew out of the media attention surrounding writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. As the decade turned, the Beatniks morphed into the new cultural phenomenon of the Hippies.
In is interesting to note the effect that media played in taking what was spontaneously happening in the cultural scene of New York and elsewhere during the 50s and then taking that energy, repackaging it and selling it to the masses. In one of the Beat Generation documentaries on You Tube, many of those interviewed said that they were not aware of what they were doing as any sort of movement, per se. Rather, they were just having fun and experimenting with new ways of expressing themselves. For example, the rhythm of music and the body movements of the performers such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk were a large influence on the poetry as were painters of the time such as Franz Kline.
It is interesting to note that Ginsberg himself even says that nobody knew whether they were “catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own.”

Subterranean Homesick Blues

In Subterranean Homesick Blues I’d sample “You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows”, “20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift”, “Better stay away from those that carry a fire hose” and “I’m on the pavement thinking about the government”. I like the fact that the music is very upbeat and yet the lyrics, used within the right setting, could talk about serious subjects. The upbeat nature of the music could add a bit of humor or light-heartedness to a serious piece and I think that is key.

Thoughts on DJ Spooky's Interview, Errata Erratum and Digital Media as an art form

In his interview, DJ spooky said something like…the landscape of culture and technologies and memory are tools for editing and manipulating memory and this is a new type of art form.

It as if through this art form we can both time travel and teleport. But rather than move our physical bodies, our mind is transported down the roadways of sound and images. By taking images, voices and sounds from different historical periods and parts of the world and then merging them into the present through this digital art form, a magical mirror is created that reflects our society back to us in a completely new way. Even with a short attention span and historical memory, a person watching such a performance is able to see the dots of their age connected before their eyes. And beyond this, they are able to feel the impact within themselves because of the music and sound which work in conjunction with the images.

In Errata Erratum, DJ Spooky goes one step farther by allowing the audience members the power to actually control aspects of the artwork wherever they may be in the world, so long as they are connected to the web. To me, that is absolutely fascinating! I have always enjoyed interactive art pieces, but this is the first one that I have partaken of on the internet.

On another note, I wonder what will happen when the whole world begins to sample each other…and even sample those samples and on and on like two mirrors reflecting each other again and again. What will be the next step? If blues, jazz, techno, hip hop, jungle, bass etc. came out of the collision of Africa and Europe as DJ spooky said, then what will come out of the musical rhythms of the entire world colliding? I just imagine more and more collaboration for the future. I imagine the most varied artists working together and communicating from across the globe. I imagine building on, for example, what the Digital Worlds Institute is already doing with global artist collaborations. Also imagine the possibilities of say, bringing the arts into classrooms through digital media and on top of that allowing the kids to actually become creators of interactive artworks…putting the power into their hands. I know a lot of this is already starting and it will be fascinating to watch this art form continue to unfold, web-out, network etc…..

Errata Erratum

The "redundancy" of the term or phrase 'Errata Erratum', the first word just being the singular form of the second one, seems to me a very clever and ingeniuos play on words to illustrate the very idea of music looping. I choreographer once told me that in order to tell a story right you must repeat it over and over...

I find this passage fascinating:

"By not altering its pitch or timbre, one keeps the original emotional power that speech has while intensifying its melody and meaning through repetition and rhythm"

Steven Reich