Can I bail by saying that I've been thinking about a lot of the same things my classmates just blogged about? Music. Authenticity. Culture. How to locate these terms seems to be the conundrum of the day and the great unanswerable. I like the idea of locating. In a sense, it's like citing other people's work in scholarly research. The irony here is astounding...I lament taking time to look up citations and do bibliographies- it's just boring. Of course, this applies to me, but authenticity matters when we're dealing with other people's work. (Just call me a hypocrite and be done with it!)
I love music and film, and the amount of borrowing is astounding. What's interesting is how "borrowing" is looked at in different fields. In higher education, woe be the student who borrows and does not cite. In music, borrowing and sampling is in the eye of the beholder. Some like artists who sample freely. Some dislike artists who do covers. To me, it's hard to justify Amiri Baraka's stand on Blues music. Not because I don't understand his argument, but it's never been that neat. The Rolling Stones stole from Muddy Waters? They used Muddy's music, but that denies a dynamic relationship. Taking Baraka's line of thinking, Muddy had nothing to learn by the time he was 50. This is a paradigm that fades as older adults realize that life has more to offer. I might have the same reaction as Baraka had Jay-Z released an album of Klezmer music. It could happen!
Movies present another problem entirely. I never discount film critique that remind us how subliminal the medium can be. If this is true, we are in the dark about films that "borrow". I would argue that most filmgoers do not take the time to connect individual film shots to past works and this makes it cumbersome to "cite" past filmmakers. Brian DePalma did not take the time while editing "The Untouchables" to stop action and have the actors give Sergei Eisenstein a round of applause for his famous "Odessa Steps" sequence. It was a total rip-off, yet no one gave a hoot because we are not so aware of the parts that make up the whole.
Whither music? I was listening to Bob Dylan last night doing a guest DJ spot on satellite radio. "I get excited about music from a hundred years ago, and I get excited about music made two days ago." He warned listeners to not be so limited in their scope. Yet, we still argue authenticity. When W.A.S.P. covered "The Real Me" by The Who in the late 80s, I refused to listen to it. Not only was it a Who song, but it was part of a larger story. I thought taking it out of context was unthinkable. Today, I feel different. W.A.S.P. fans (a more commercially successful example is the Scorpions' cover of "I Can't Explain") got out of the song what they needed to. Same with the Scorpions. In an instant, one can discover (and cover) inspirational tunes and record them for mass appeal or other purposes. I take great comfort knowing that the Scorpions will be remembered far more for "The Winds of Change" than "I Can't Explain". I rationalize it by remarking that truer context stands up over time. This is my homage to the word "authenticity". Notice, though, I said I "rationalized".
I love music and film, and the amount of borrowing is astounding. What's interesting is how "borrowing" is looked at in different fields. In higher education, woe be the student who borrows and does not cite. In music, borrowing and sampling is in the eye of the beholder. Some like artists who sample freely. Some dislike artists who do covers. To me, it's hard to justify Amiri Baraka's stand on Blues music. Not because I don't understand his argument, but it's never been that neat. The Rolling Stones stole from Muddy Waters? They used Muddy's music, but that denies a dynamic relationship. Taking Baraka's line of thinking, Muddy had nothing to learn by the time he was 50. This is a paradigm that fades as older adults realize that life has more to offer. I might have the same reaction as Baraka had Jay-Z released an album of Klezmer music. It could happen!
Movies present another problem entirely. I never discount film critique that remind us how subliminal the medium can be. If this is true, we are in the dark about films that "borrow". I would argue that most filmgoers do not take the time to connect individual film shots to past works and this makes it cumbersome to "cite" past filmmakers. Brian DePalma did not take the time while editing "The Untouchables" to stop action and have the actors give Sergei Eisenstein a round of applause for his famous "Odessa Steps" sequence. It was a total rip-off, yet no one gave a hoot because we are not so aware of the parts that make up the whole.
Whither music? I was listening to Bob Dylan last night doing a guest DJ spot on satellite radio. "I get excited about music from a hundred years ago, and I get excited about music made two days ago." He warned listeners to not be so limited in their scope. Yet, we still argue authenticity. When W.A.S.P. covered "The Real Me" by The Who in the late 80s, I refused to listen to it. Not only was it a Who song, but it was part of a larger story. I thought taking it out of context was unthinkable. Today, I feel different. W.A.S.P. fans (a more commercially successful example is the Scorpions' cover of "I Can't Explain") got out of the song what they needed to. Same with the Scorpions. In an instant, one can discover (and cover) inspirational tunes and record them for mass appeal or other purposes. I take great comfort knowing that the Scorpions will be remembered far more for "The Winds of Change" than "I Can't Explain". I rationalize it by remarking that truer context stands up over time. This is my homage to the word "authenticity". Notice, though, I said I "rationalized".
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