I’m currently in Los Angeles. Just picked up a copy of 944, a magazine about fashion, entertainment and lifestyle. The August issue features “the nightlife.” Like most lifestyle magazines these days, it consists of short snippets about trendsetters or “pioneers.” One cannot help but notice a quote stating that DJ’s can make as much as 35,000 for a three hour set. The magazine truly hypes up the life on the ones and twos.
Regardless of such statements, as I grew up in Los Angeles, I was quite happy to see that 944 acknowledged real talent. Above are some of the DJ’s that have shaped my views on music beyond the mainstream. Trinidad’s Chocolate City may well be a historical gem of a radio show, which any music historian specialized in radio would have to note; he has a vast knowledge of R & B and Soul and has taken great care to bring back B-sides that even serious record diggers have missed. The same for Jason Bentley, who was around even before Garth with his radio show, Metropolis. Bentley was one of the first DJ’s to mix electronic music live on the radio.
From left to right: Eduardo Navas, Seidel Brito, Mónica Mejia (CCE Program Coordinator), and Clara Astiasarán. Discussing the ongoing selections of Arte Joven.
I visited San Salvador in June. This time I was invited again by Cultural Center of Spain to be a juror for their Premio Arte Joven 2009 (Young Artist Award 2009). The prize has been in place for ten years now, and has proven to be an important cultural element in supporting young artists in their early professional development.
From far left to right: Saidel Brito and Eduardo Navas, discussing the selection process with applicants. Clara Astiasarán participated via Skype.
I was in excellent company with fellow jurors Cuban artist Saidel Brito, and Cuban art critic Clara Astiasarán. We spent several intensive hours going over 71 proposals, from which we chose eight by artists: Ernesto Bautista, Héctor Bermúdez, Boris Ciudad Real, Mauricio Esquivel, Melissa Guevara, José David Herrera, Mauricio Kabistan, and Hugo Rivas. Their projects will be featured in an exhibition in October 2009. From the selected artists three will be chosen by a different set of jurors for first, second, and third place awards that include cash prizes. The October exhibition is complemented with a well produced catalogue.
Aside from meeting with the eight artists to discuss the possibilities of installation and development of their proposals, we, as jurors, also decided to meet with all applicants to explain the selection process and encourage artists to meet each other and converse. This was a way to support and expand the growing art community of El Salvador. The turn out was great and we had an extensive and constructive exchange about art practice and professional development.
DJ A Todo Color, warming up the crowd for recording artists Ikah and Ari Puello on the International Day of Music, June 20, 2009.
Ikah keeps the crowd shaking during her set.
During my stay in San Salvador, on Saturday June 20, I was able to attend a concert also organized by the Cultural Center of Spain in collaboration with the Cultural French Alliance, featuring local rap artists, including Pescozada and Five o Three. This was the second year in which the French initiated public event “International Day of Music” was extended to the streets of San Salvador. The main feature of the night was Latina Urbana, a touring act consisting of Ikah, based in Madrid; and Arianna Puello, based in Barcelona. Both recording artists consistently tour throughout Latin America. They were gracefully supported by the beats of DJ A Todo Color (DJ total color), also from Barcelona.
Ari Puello breaking it down from beginning to end.
The evening was well organized as Pescozada and Five o Three warmed up the crowd for Ikah, who with her R & B compositions kept the crowd going. Ari Puello closed the evening with a strong set of some of her best hits. Ikah has one album and Puello has four. Puello is actually considered an important artist in Latin American rap. Many people in the audience sang along with her while waving their hands in acknowledgment of her well calculated rhyme and beat.
As I write this entry, the Internet is flowing with comments and information about Michael Jackson. Here is my drop in the sea of data that will be archived in places people who adopt RSS as part of their daily life will never know exist.
As critical as I am about pop culture, I have to admit that Michael Jackson was ever-present in my growing years; the teenager in me mourns, while the critic cannot help but reflect on the implications of this unexpected and unfortunate death. As sad as Jackson’s passing away is to millions of people, one cannot help but notice how media has changed in the way it handles celebrities and public figures. Just a few years ago there would have been some distance from the dark side of a person’s life. This may still hold true for presidents of the United States as one hardly heard anything negative about Richard Nixon during his funeral. Watergate had become so abstract that it could be cited as a historical moment with no major shame for the country or Nixon’s presidency. This is the power of ahistoricity: people’s lack of historical knowledge made possible by 24 hour news cycles.
But with Michael Jackson a different kind of mourning takes place. His accomplishments and setbacks are cited simultaneously. Everywhere, from CNN to all major newspapers, like the NYTimes and El Pais in Spain, Michael Jackson is remembered for all his deeds–good and bad. As he is remembered as the King of Pop, he is also remembered as a person who was accused of child molestation (this was not proven in court). He is subjected to the aesthetic of reality TV.
In a way this might be healthy for the way people perceive celebrities, as people may become more accepting of public figures’ shortcomings. The sad thing is that scandals sell, and this is the last thing Michael Jackson is remembered for. The King of Pop was planning a comeback, but this one was not to be. He will be remembered as a conflicted figure, who will inevitably be romanticized for his early production and his conflicted last years.
And now, it is time to settle for reissues of MJ’s music in whatever form networked culture will allow. As I write these lines, files of Jackson’s songs are being swapped across the Internet–bootleg remixes made in bedrooms across the world to be shared in just minutes, while music executives figure out a way to cash in on MJ’s music legacy. Such cash-in will be mixed and hard to control. Michael Jackson dies in a time when things for the music industry are not so clear cut and no celebrity is perfect, and that imperfection in the end may mean more cash
He was a person who everyone knew through spectacular images. He may have known himself through the same images as well. As constant exposure rises with social networks, Michael Jackson, the most famous person vanishes. Let this be a rupture in the era of networked media. Michael Jackson is about to become an institution, like Marilyn, like Presley, like Warhol. He will live forever as a spectacular figure. But let’s not forget that somewhere in there was a child who was trying to understand himself. I may be accused of a bit of romanticism with this last statement. Let it be. This is why I chose an early image of Michael Jackson to complement this short reflection on a celebrity I felt I knew, as I had no choice but to acknowledge him everywhere I turned as I grew up. I accepted him as I was bombarded by his presence, just as I am now by the repetition of his spectacular absence. I admit to have moonwalked. RIP MJ.
Just saw this shirt at a local Waffle shop in State College. We asked the guy wearing it where he got it, and he said, with a blank stare, “from DC…”
“Ahh!” we said… “Of course!”
On the web, leave it to Boing Boing to have the tip:
“Photographer and Boing Boing pal Glen E Friedman, who shot many of the iconic photographs of the hiphop band Run DMC, shares this t-shirt with us — he’s seeing them everywhere in NYC, I understand they’re all over the place. But this was the first time I’d seen the design, so I LOLed and blogged. Larger view. Link to a few related shots.”
One of the anxieties often cited by those who guard intellectual property is how artists who sample ultimately steal from those who created the “original” material, therefore taking away potential revenue from the original source. Another common argument is that the original source runs the danger of going unrecognized by those who enjoy the material composed of samples. Even if sampling artists may pay royalties, it is often argued by those who believe in creating things with their bare hands that artists who sample are simply unoriginal. Yet, as the article “What is your sampling Epiphany,” by Simon Reynolds entertains, at the moment, the republishing of material as a set of recordings sampled by well-known music studio artists has the potential of becoming a common trend–not to mention a major form of revenue for record companies.
We have reached a state in the consumption of post-production when those who have developed a career based on other artists’ samples have become the ones who support renewed sales of the originating sources in the form of reissues. This is the case with Massive Attack’s Protected Massive Samples. Now, it appears remix culture is coming full circle. The implications of this trend might further complicate copyright law in the near future. This trend is worth keeping in sight.
The article by Reynolds ends with a very compelling citation of Virilio, which was actually forwarded to me by my colleague, Greg Smith. It reads more like an aphorism that exposes that dialectics of culture:
Critical Note: Janneke Adema recently wrote a long post on her blog Open Reflections about remix culture, titled “Schyzophonia. On Remix, Hybridization and Fluidity.” Aderna cites parts of my essay “Remix The Bond of Repetition and Representation” in order to extend her own views on remix culture. One thing that caught my attention is the concept of the “work in progress” which she entertains when citing an interview with Joe Farbrook. Farbrook’s propositions are parallel to my own views on constant updating, about which I wrote a couple of years ago in another essay titled “Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.” Adema interestingly enough considers knowledge remixable, and she cites my own position on history to support her argument. While I don’t think knowledge itself is necessarily remixable in terms of Remix proper, I am compelled by Adema’s argument. On this regard, the following question recurs: When should one stop calling cultural hybridity a form of remix? On her part, I think Adema does a good job in entertaining this preoccupation, ending with a reference to none other than Walter Benjamin. The article is worth a careful read. Other great resources are mentioned as well.
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I read Lawrence Lessig’s Remix a few months ago, a great book with a stimulating positive approach to the whole piracy and copyright problema, focusing on finding solutions which cater to the increasingly prevailing remixed and remediated forms of digital art and culture, in which the hybrid has become common ground. Lessig discusses new musical ‘innovators’ like Girl Talk, who creates elaborate and eclectic remixes of current pop sounds and anthems, creating a new musical discourse which reflects, winks, ironizes and mocks, while still standing firmly on its own. These kind of adaptations, versionings or reinterpretations have been part of music since its beginnings, coming to the forefront mostly in dub, hiphop, turntablism and the use of samples in electronic music. Just think about all the beats, breaks, loops and glitches that have made a career for themselves and their derivative offspring in musical history.
The following text was published in December 2008 in Inter/activos II by Espacio Fundacion Telefonica, Buenos Aires. The publication was produced in support of a new media workshop and theory seminar by the same name which took place in 2006, organized by curator and writer Rodrigo Alonzo. The text revisits my definition of Remix that has already been introduced in prior writings, such as Turbulence: Remixes and Bonus Beats. This definition can also be found in the section Remix Defined. “The Bond of Repetition and Representation” links the theory of Noise by Jacques Attali to my overall argument that Remix has its roots in DJ Culture starting in the seventies. In the conclusion it revisits and extends my analysis of Yann Le Guenec’s project Le Catalogue.
Some things have changed since I first wrote this essay in 2006. I did not expect the print publication to take as long as it did, but now that it has finally been published, as opposed to updating the text, I have chosen to release it online as it was originally written. While some cultural trends may be quite different from 2006, the argument proposed is still relevant. This analysis is part of a much larger and extensive project and will be eventually released in its remixed form in the future.
The term remix, today, is used to describe various cultural elements, from mash-up software applications[1] to projective architecture.[2] No matter what form it takes, the remix is always allegorical, meaning that the object of contemplation depends on recognition of a pre-existing cultural code.[3] The audience is always expected to see within the object a trace of history.
To entertain the importance of Remix in culture at large, we must come to terms with it according to its historical development. This will enable us to understand the dialectics at play within Remix, which at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the ideological foundation for remix culture. As it will become clear in this essay, in order for remix culture to come about, certain dynamics had to be in place, and these were first explored in music, around the contention of representation and repetition. This essay will focus on defining remix in relation to these two terms, and then move on to examine its role in media and art.
In the 25 years since “Wild Style” was first shown, in Times Square, more than a few viewers were convinced that the movie was a documentary. Granted, its stars were real-life graffiti artists like Lee Quiñones, hip-hop groups like the Cold Crush Brothers and break dancers like the Rock Steady Crew. But the story — such as it was — was less a reflection of real life than a hope for the future.
DJ Spooky has performed live Rebirth of a Nation, a remix of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in various parts of the world. The multi-faceted media performance deconstructs Griffith’s historically important film to expose the politics of racism during and after 1915, the year when the original film was produced.
DJ Spooky is releasing a DVD version of Rebirth of a Nation on November 4 of 2008. The critically minded would not hesitate to think that the release date is not a coincidence, but rather a constructive move on Spooky’s part to remind people that the upcoming presidential election is historically important. The United States has come a long way since the days when Griffith released Birth of a Nation, and on November 4, the title Rebirth of a Nation will take on a new meaning, for no matter what happens after the fourth, the United states will certainly enter a definitive new stage in its history.
Information about the Film and DJ Spooky’s Biography follow below.
First released in 1915, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation ignited worldwide controversy with its graphic depictions of racism and white supremacy in the post-Civil War south. Nearly 100 years later, Paul D. MIller- also known as conceptual artist/musician/writer DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid- creates a daring ‘remix’ of Griffith’s epic to expose the film’s true meaning and relate it to the socio-political conflicts of America today. Originally commissioned as a live multimedia performance, Rebirth of a Nation- now featuring an original score by Miller performed by Kronos buy generic meds online Quartet- is ‘a DJ mix applied to cinema’ that challenges our legacy of revisionist history as it deconstructs one of the most influential and inflammatory movies of all time.
DJ Spooky (Paul D Miller, born 1970, Washington DC) is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and Rapgun amongst other publications. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work “New York Is Now” has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller’s first collection of essays, entitled “Rhythm Science” came out on MIT Press 2004, followed by “Sound Unbound,” an anthology of writings on elctronic music and digital media, published in 2008.
Miller’s deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of the legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records. Other releases include Optometry (2002), a jazz project featuring some of the best players in the downtown NYC jazz scene, and Dubtometry (2003) featuring Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Mad Professor. Miller’s latest collaborative release, Drums of Death, features Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Chuck D of Public Enemy among others. He also produced material on Yoko Ono’s new album “Yes, I’m a Witch.”
Note: This text was originally published on Vague Terrain, Digital Dub Issue, August 08. It is reposted here with minor edits, and an additional quote by Bunne Lee, to clarify the history of dub in Jamaica.
Abstract: This text outlines the foundation of dub as a musical movement that found its way from Jamaica to other parts of the world, in particular NY and Bristol. Upon looking at history, it can be argued that dub and other musical genres that it has influenced have constantly thrived on the threshold of culture, feeding the center. In support of this argument the essay links the influence of dub to the theories of Homi Bhabha and Hardt & Negri. Dub is also linked to Remix as a discourse of global production.
