| By: Amanda Connon-Unda (amanda@womenoftechno.com) |
| Class: VIC220: Postmodernism and Poststructuralism |
| Submitted: Monday April 12th, 2004 |
| "With my Djing, which consists mainly of wild cut-ups and scratches, I try to overcome cultural barriers. In the USA, for example, racial barriers are still very present, in Europe, too. The easiest way to establish a dialogical way of give-and-take is mixing. The generation of Afro-Americans, to which I belong, slowly starts to overcome these barriers of frustration...In the economic as in the psycho-social field a new sense of equality, meaning coexistence, is established. Some decades ago, Elvis would visit a blues pub, listen to that sound, steal it and then sell it as his own work - the present development counterfeits that." |
| (Dj Spooky cited in Hartmann and Pettauer 1998:1). |
| Introduction |
| This essay looks at the late 20th century cultural and musical phenomenon of techno music Djing and production techniques. I am exploring techno music and techno Dj culture as a postmodern form of artistic practice, which, with its use of sampling, is a highly intertextual genre. I look at the types of musical quotation, and look at some of the questions that follow from the concept of sampling. In exploring the ways that sampling threatens the traditional authorial rights of composers, and the idea of an original unchanging song, several other questions arise. How may new forms of techno Djing and production technology affect the interaction between musician and machine? And how could these new technologies potentially disrupt the need for record labels, distributors, stores, and local techno cultures? |
| In looking at the popular cultural art form of late 20th and early 21st century that is techno music Djing, it is important to consider the dialogical nature of culture as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). In considering his theories on the dialogical nature of speech, the novel, and "carnivalesque" popular culture, and his notion of the web of cultural discourses, we can apply these to the practice of sampling in techno music and to the moment of techno?s inception, which are both dialogical and intertextual, drawing on a web of cultural and musical discourses. |
| Techno Music's Genre Specifications |
| Techno music as a genre is characterized by 4/4 rhythms, electronic sounds and samples created first on drum machines (such as the Roland TR-303, 909) and later programmed with simple and now more advanced computer software programs. In its hard as well as minimal brands, there are many ?techno? sounds that emerged in various places in the world. More specifically, those that originated in Detroit are recognisable and characterized by futuristic machine-sounds, hi-hat drums, claps, breaks, bassy syncopated rhythms, and sometimes almost ?tribal? polyrhythmic qualities. Techno was born out of a combination of the more high art musical influences such as African American Jazz, but equally out of the popular musical influences of 1960?s dub sound system reggae (for its original use of the turntables to mix, break, and cut records), 1970?s disco, 1980?s Gay house music (particularly located in Chicago and New York), and European electronic bands such as Kraftwerk, and Japanese Yellow Magic Orchestra. |
| A Brief Genealogy of Techno Music: Roots in the Underground |
| The Underground Resistance, a record label from Michigan USA, is a group of prolific techno producers who sought to resist commercial music and develop their own new sounds, and they were highly political: ?The goal of creating a musically based product that would sell without going through the traditional channels of magazines, radio and TV is realized by cleverly using technology.? (About Underground Resistance website) Further, they want to resist mediocre audio programming that they believe is ?stagnating the mind of the people; building a wall between races and preventing world peace? We are going to destroy this wall?Techno music is based in experimentation; it is sacred to no one race; it has no definitive sound. It is music for the future of the human race?? (Creed:Underground Resistance website). Thus, they acted in a collective to throw parties and support their own underground scene, making records and contributing to what would be known years later as the rave/warehouse party scene and the internationally successful techno music industry. |
| Dj Culture Today and the Dialogical Art of Techno Djing |
| Since the late 1980?s, with the obliteration of ?rave culture? proper, several new generations of techno Djs have gone on to create their own new visions of sounds, based on the genre set out in Detroit, with the consciousness of the ?underground? aesthetic and the spirit of resistance. Today there is a multiplicity of techno sounds and styles, in and outside of the Detroit techno vein, and Djs mix records at clubs around the world in local scenes as well as international Dj circuit tours. |
| The art of Djing is contested as an art form from those who stand outside the subculture of techno; but to those inside the subculture, it is clearly an art. Turntabalism involves improvisational techniques involving multiple variables: ?tactile (physical manipulation of the vinyl), spatial (effects and processing), frequential (EQ manipulation), compositional (Ordering and choice of tracks), and auditory (the volume, and the use of silence, such as cutting)? (van Veen 2002a: 1). Furthermore, as a postmodern genre, music can be interpreted and understood as a type of text. As such a text, the concepts of intertextuality and dialogism expressed by Bakhtin, and later by Julia Kristeva (1941-), readily apply to techno music and Djing. According to Bakhtin, utterance is always rooted in certain social conditions and a situation, in a historical moment and derives meaning from a web of cultural discourses. All utterances depend on what was said before and also act as agents that provoke future responses in a long chain. Utterances are ideological and encoded as to an expected addressee (ideal reader), and this relation between addresser and addressee is inscribed in the utterance. Further, based on Bakhtin?s conceptualization of the dialogical nature of utterance, Kristeva coined a term to describe the larger property ?intertextuality? in relation to many types of texts and art forms. Thus, it follows that authors do not construct from their own original minds solely, but compile their own text or art from pre-existent texts. Texts are made up of ?the cultural text?, the different discourses?which make up what we call culture (Kristeva cited in Brajovic hand-out 2004:1-2). In this sense, the text is not an individual, isolated object, but rather, a compilation of cultural textuality. The individual text and the cultural text are made from the same textual material and cannot be separated from each other (Kristeva cited in Brajovic hand-out 2004:2). |
| Given these simple definitions and postmodernist theoretical concepts for understanding dialogism and intertextuality in texts and art, it is easy to see why the process of Djing techno music is dialogical. One can look at music as a universal language as Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky has articulated, thus tying in Bakhtin?s notion of dialogism to Djing with even more relevancy. Writes Dj Spooky, ?Music never stands alone. Every single song contains so many different influences, forming a collection of quotations. Nothing happens in a vacuum. This fact is expressed and externalized through Djing. Making music? you are part of an intertwinedness of influences.? (cited in Hartmann and Pettauer 1998: 2). According to van Veen, mixing records is also dialogical as it ?defines the Djs originality?her response to the music, and not only her interaction with the crowd, but her reaction to the record?s effect upon the crowd?. Where the moment of collapse, of spectacled and spectacular simulacra, is the mix? (2002: 1). |
| Techno Music Production and Sampling as Postmodern Quotation |
| In the context of Djing and the production of techno music, sampling is realised as postmodern quotation. In the art of Djing, various songs are mixed together and the beats are matched to create a new grouping of songs over-layed or mixed together in new seamless combinations over the course of usually 2 to 4 or over 8 hour sets. In the production of techno music, samples from other recordings or parts of recordings as well as the machines used to create the sounds are not necessarily fully original and are open to new recombinations and hybridisation. |
| Techno music can easily fall under Linda Hutcheon?s description of postmodern representational practices, ?that refuse to stay neatly within accepted conventions and traditions and that deploy hybrid forms?? (Hutcheon 2002: chapter 2). Furthermore, as a postmodern artistic practice, the production of techno music using sampling techniques also challenges modernist notions of artistic autonomy, pure genre form, and splitting off of art from culture and everyday life (Brajovic ?postmodernist theory?? hand-out 2004). Techno mixes genres and this can be seen in hybrid forms of techno such as in electro live acts with vocalists, glitch electronic acoustic live P.A.?s, techno-rap, and new forms of techno-rock with vocalists singing over techno music rhythms that would typically have no live vocals added. |
| According to David Metzer, ??such amalgams of sampled parts are prevalent in techno styles,? and ?sampling has been used in two general ways. First, many musicians have isolated individual performance sounds, say a bass line, cymbal crash, or vocal cry. Edited and combined together, these parts can create a whole that is more impressive than the sum of its parts.? However, Metzer points out that, unlike quotation where the original and the transformation are involved, in sampling, ?both sides are expanded: material can be quoted from more sources, and more can be done with it? With sampling, musicians can borrow sound, not just melodies, rhythms or harmonies? (Metzer 2003 cited in Brajovic 2004: 1). |
| With this new ability to transform old sounds into new ones, there has been both critical and positive attention put on sampling as postmodern quotation. The process of recording and sound production with computer software has been referred to by many, including Metzer 2003, as the ultimate example of Baudrillard?s idea of electronic reproduction of simulacra where no original is to be found. ?In that realm, the line between the original and the reproduction, so long eroded by previous reproduction devices, has now been erased. Recordings of recordings, the nexus of sampling, do away with the idea of an original altogether? they may also do away with the act of quotation.? (Metzer 2003 cited in Brajovic 2004:2). |
| Final Scratch and 'Versioning': Exemplifying the Concept of Intertextuality |
| One new technology pushing the limits of the techno Dj?s set and production is called Final Scratch which uses the existing Dj equipment (turntables, needles, and mixer) and enables the Djing of MP3?s (digital sound files) supplied by a laptop. A Dj can then scratch, cue, backspin, etcetera, as one would Djing separate records, except this technology only uses two special records with USB connectors that go from the mixer to the laptop that accesses the files. A techno icon, Richie Hawtin is positive about a new redefinition and the possibilities this technology opens up. ?Once you have control over digital music files, you have much greater possibility for interacting with those files?Now you can really get into each piece, you can start to reinterpret it: extend breaks, take out sections, so it?s more of your own personal version. And then have that physical interaction with it because of the vinyl interface?? (Hawtin cited in van Veen 2002a). |
| The aesthetic notion of the ?version? actually dates to Jamaican dub sound system, but it can also be seen in techno music production where similarly, there is a cultural value on repetition and plural identity. In techno as in reggae, ?no one owns a rhythm or sound. You just borrow it, use it and give it back to the people in a slightly different form. To use the language of Jamaican reggae and dub, you just version it? (Hebdige cited in Connor 1997:208). According to Connor, ?The aesthetic of the version gives a popular-cultural equivalent to the much-celebrated principle of intertextuality.? (1997:208). Further, versioning is a democratic principle because no one has the final say and it allows the expression of heterogeneous cultural experience and the negotiation of mixed or transitional cultural identities (Hebdige cited in Connor:159). |
| Even though there is sharing of rhythms and sounds, Dj Spooky, a producer of hybrid techno sounds, still recognizes the distinction between appropriation and quotation. ?To quote means to say, ?I like this piece of music from this musician, and that?s why I?m using it?? Appropriation means eradication of the names of the others. I don?t want to do this?I intentionally use quotations for my samples, and I try to rearrange them and build something new?Music is always metaphor, and I?m trying to recontextualize these metaphors.? (cited in Hartmann and Pettauer 1998:1-2). |
| In techno Djing and its new performance aesthetics and technological interfaces, according to Frank Hartmann and Richard Pettauer, ?there is but performance, the constant play of ?binary dissonance? between original and copy, between author/artist and audience?The Dj is also a storyteller? who addresses his or her audience not by the master discourse but by traditional structures which nonetheless carry meanings of the present.? (1998: 2). Dj Spooky describes the Dj as a memory selector who pastes, ?cultural signifiers into new contexts and selections, thereby deconstructing traditional references and recontextualising the present experience by remixing the past in real-time?The result is a ritual of remembrance and reworking of the past to create future-memories, such as the desire of early Detroit techno.? (cited in van Veen 2002c:2) |
| Critical Questions about New Recording Technologies and Sampling Practices |
| However, in addition to the positive elements of pastiche and hybrid forms of creative sampling, there are also potentially negative implications of the increasing sophistication of studio and Djing technology such as, ?the loss of a sense that there can be such a thing as the original version of a song?This means that the oppositions between the live and the reproduced which is sustained within studio recordings themselves ? is jeopardized.? (Connor 1997:176) |
| One telling example showing the negative implications of technologies that allow the manipulation of an original song (now in digital files) taken from one artist by other Djs/producers is when, 4 years ago, major labels SONY and BMG released Dj Rolando?s track ?Knights of the Jaguar? remixed in a certain way without his permission. Dj Rolando as part of the Underground Resistance had support from the entire electronic underground community who rallied behind him in protest (van Veen 2002a:2). But this certainly challenges an artist?s authority for making decisions about the reproduction of their work. Another concern for many people is the increase of internet distribution of MP3?s which could result in a decreased need for local record stores, distributors and labels releasing records on vinyl. This would mean a distancing of communities through technology and could hurt less commercial artists in their livelihoods (van Veen 2002a:2). According to Metzer, quotation, ubiquitous in its nature, ?has been taken to the points of redundancy and irrelevancy?, and ?at these extremes (excessive transformation versus too close fidelity), quotation can collapse. Either the excessive transformations wipe out any trace of the original, or the close fidelity gives no impression of creative alteration, leaving behind what appears to be merely a recording.? (2003:161, 173. cited in Brajovic hand-out 2004) |
| It seems that in the advent of new interfaces for digital music file Dj performances and where Live PA?s become more frequently employed (using samples to create music from a laptop on the spot- live), many new possibilities emerge in the ways performers interact with machines and their audiences. As newer technologies develop, audiences and academics alike have to grapple with and reconceptualize the notion of authorship, the original, and the specific relations created between addressor and addressee. Equally important are questions about the economic implications of these technologies on the techno music industry and techno artists. |
| Works Cited |
| Brajovic, Snezana. "Mikhail Bakhtin? VIC220 Class Lecture Handout. Toronto: unpublished, 2004. |
| Brajovic, Snezana. " Bakhtin (continued) and Julia Kristeva." VIC220 Class Lecture Handout. Toronto: unpublished, 2004. |
| Brajovic, Snezana. "The Politics of Postmodernism, Chapter Two." VIC220 Class Lecture Handout. Toronto: unpublished, 2004. |
| Brajovic, Snezana. "Postmodern theory and artistic practice." VIC220 Class Lecture Handout. Toronto: unpublished, 2004. |
| Connon-Unda, Amanda. ?Interview with Alan Oldham AKA Dj T1000? Women of Techno Project ?zine. Toronto: unpublished, 1999 |
| Connor, Steven. Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary. 2nd edition ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. |
| Hartmann, Frank and Pettauer, Richard. ?Dj Spooky: It?s all Jazz. An Interview on Sound and Media Literacy? (updated: 04/06/1998) http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/musik/3244/1.html Accessed: 04/08/2004. |
| Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. 2nd Edition New York: Routledge, 2002. |
| Metzer, David. Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music. Cambridge University Press, 2003 in Brajovic, Snezana. Ed. VIC220 Class Lecture Handout. Toronto: unpublished, 2004. |
| Underground Resistance. ?About Underground Resistance? (Website excerpts) http://www.undergroundresistance.com/about.html Accessed: 04/08/2004. |
| Underground Resistance. ?Creed? (Website excerpts) http://www.undergroundresistance.com/creed2.htmlAccessed: 04/08/2004. |
| van Veen, Tobias C. ?Digital Djing: Richie Hawtin and (the) Final Scratch.? Discorder Jancember 2001/2002a. |
| van Veen, Tobias C. ?Laptops and Loops: The Advent of New Forms of Experimentation and the Question of Technology in Experimental Music and Performance.? Conference Paper. November 1st. University Art Association of Canada, Calgary. 2002b |
| van Veen, Tobias C. ?Vinyauralism: The Art and Craft of Turntabalism. The Dj School.? Discorder March, April, 2002c. |
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| Techno Djing and Production as a Postmodern Art Form and Questions of Power in Regards to New Sampling Technologies |
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| Genealogically speaking, what is known today as Detroit techno music has a geographically located and particular historicity. Early Detroit techno music made in the 1980?s was pioneered by urban radio disc jockeys who got into producing their own music, taking a melange of influences and fusing new sounds made with computers, samplers, synthesizers, drum machines, and a futuristic theme. Many (if not all) of the pioneering techno producers (such as Jeff Mills, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, ?Mad? Mike Banks, Juan Atkins, etcetera) were young black men who named their record labels and performing Dj names after science-fiction characters (Neuromancer, The Wizard, Metroplex, Model 500, Transmat, A Number of Names, Cybotron, Rhythm is Rhythm, Purpose Maker) or coined their own concepts according to the vision they saw in their music. One techno music producer I interviewed said, "I was just lucky to have been in Detroit in the late 80's. A lot of my friends were getting into this thing called techno and I happened to fall into it... It wasn't really a 'career choice', there aren't that many options in Detroit. Ten years later it seems to have worked out" (Alan Oldham A.K.A Dj T1000 cited in Connon-Unda 1999). According to Angela MacRobbie this kind of pastiche in the production of techno music and identity as a postmodern practice has created radical possibilities for the construction of new, fictional identities by means of the invocation of multiple texts and images. ?Black urban music has always thrived on fake, forged identities, creating a façade of grand-sounding titles which reflect both the ?otherness? of black culture, the extent to which it is outside that which is legitimate, and the way in which white society has condemned it to be nameless.? (cited in Connor 1997:208). |
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