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CMSC 2010
The seventh annual Columbia Music Scholarship Conference takes place on
March 10, 200910. The theme of this year's conference is Music and
Money: Examining Value in Music. Saturday, March 6—301 Philosophy Hall
Columbia University
Singing the Natural Wild:
Field Divisions and American Birdsong
Rachel Marie Mundy, New York University
At the end of World War II, British ornithologists took a
machine developed by the American military and used it to replace musicians
in the notation of birdsong. The
machine was called the “sound spectrograph,” and it returned to the United
States in the hands of Peter Marler, a young
ornithologist whose impressive studies of finch dialects cemented the new
gadget’s status. Today it remains
the primary tool in birdsong studies and, at least ostensibly, ensures that
these sounds fall outside the sphere of “music.”
But on the commercial front, birdsong is a different
story. The same people publishing
and teaching ornithology are successfully marketing birdsong as a
commercial enterprise not so different from a hit album. To name one example, Donald Kroodsma’s “Backyard Birdsong,” an interactive book
with birdsong available at the press of a button, ranks over 130 times
higher than Olivier Messiaen’s composition
devoted to American birdsong, “Des canyons aux étoiles,”
on Amazon.com’s website. It is the fourth most popular book about
animals that Amazon sells.
This paper examines the way interactive media like “Backyard
Birdsong” have used technology to distinguish themselves from music
scholarship. Recent field
recordings, Cornell University’s sound spectrograph program, as well as written
and recorded accounts of birdsong in music and ornithology, suggest the way
the sonic culture of birdsong came to be a lucrative possession of the
sciences since the purge of musicians from ornithology in the early 1950s.
Building Technology, Creating Commodities: The Economics of
Do-It-Yourself Music Technology in New York City
Lauren Flood, Columbia University
The independent engineering of music technology outside of
the design labs of mainstream musical equipment manufacturers has
proliferated in recent years. While 20th century American musicians and
inventors have a rich history of tinkering with electronics, a number of
emerging factors have transformed their design and construction processes,
including community-based educational programs, social networks surrounding
do-it-yourself music technologists, and the increasing availability of
“how-to” information on the internet. In numerous instances, the “DIY”
approach is tied to an anti-consumerism stance that posits independently
created items in opposition to mass-produced commodities. Although many DIY
music technologists intend their creations as a means for self-sufficiency,
distributing such items for various levels of profit often presents a
challenge to this stance. From fledgling small businesses to websites
advertising do-it-yourself kits, musicians who independently build music
technology exemplify a unique scenario regarding the time-honored quandary
of “selling out.” Using case studies of New York City guitar pedal
builders, circuit benders, and producers of “sound art,” this paper
examines individual and collective modes of engagement with “the product”
as both a labor of love and a commodity for sale. I will trace how DIY
music technologists determine which designs to build, which to sell, and
which methods of distribution remain appropriate. I will also consider how
these products circulate through formal and informal economies, as well as
how my interlocutors negotiate economic necessities with ideological
factors.
Streaming Music and the Re-assertion of Corporate Control of
the Music Industry
Gavin Mueller, George Mason University
“It’s a streaming future,”
goes the conventional wisdom of music distribution, and recent
high-profile corporate takeovers of music streaming services such as Lala and imeem would seem to
bear this out. While the official rationale is that streaming is more
convenient and less wasteful of hard drive space than downloading mp3s, I
will argue that the corporate push for streaming services represents a
larger strategy to re-enclose digital music within the realm of corporately
controlled private property.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing, the predominant mode of online
music distribution, both legal and illegal, allows users to possess all the
hard data of a recording. Users can not only listen to music, but put the
music to creative use and redistribute music to others. This model presents
a radical challenge to the notion of music as private property, as
evidenced by the extreme difficulties the recording industry faces
monetizing P2P. Streaming solves this problem for the industry by
re-establishing the industry as gatekeepers on multiple levels of
distribution. This paper will analyze the potential effects of moving from
a P2P model of music distribution to a streaming model on contemporary music
practice, consumption habits, and corporate control of music, as well as
the ethico-political implications of such a move.
God Ble$$ Ameri©a:
The Economics of an Iconic Song
Sheryl Kaskowitz, Harvard
University
“God Bless America” may have attained the status of a
national anthem, but its roots in Tin Pan Alley tie it inextricably to the
world of commerce. Written by Irving Berlin, it has earned millions of
dollars in royalties since it was first published in 1938. However, Berlin
never made money on the song, having established the God Bless America
Fund, through which all royalties are donated to the Boy Scouts and Girl
Scouts.
This paper explores the song’s hidden economics, which
garnered attention during two distinct periods when its popularity caused a
spike in revenue: just before the U.S. entry into World War II and just
after the September 11th attacks. Media reports from both eras often
express shock that this patriotic song, which had been so embraced by the
public, did not truly belong to the people. Initially, the song’s high
royalty fees fueled an anti-Semitic backlash against it and its Jewish
composer, and were used as evidence of songwriters’ greed during the epic
struggle between ASCAP and BMI. The existence of the God Bless America Fund
quieted much of this early criticism, but the fund itself became a source
of controversy after 9/11, when some protested the song’s connection to the
Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policies.
This paper reveals the commercial underpinnings of “God
Bless America,” exploring issues of ownership and collectivity in the
complex relationship between the business of music and a song’s absorption
into American culture.
“It’s Not About the
Money”: Alternative Definitions of Success in Christian Hip-Hop Music and
Culture
Shanesha Brooks Tatum, Roger Williams University
Over the past 25 years, Christian hip-hop artists have
redefined what success means in the music industry. Christian rappers such as Lecrae and Mahogany Jones engage in a musical,
evangelical ministry that seems to define success not by how many albums
are sold, but how many “souls” are brought to Christ. This presentation is based on an
ethnographic book-in-progress that explores how Christian hip-hop artists
negotiate the sacred/secular divide in African American life. Through interviews, participant
observation, and music and performance analyses, the project illustrates
how black, evangelical Christian hip-hop artists redefine success outside
of the monetary terms that so characterize the mainstream hip-hop music
industry and prosperity gospel churches.
These artists are often working-class, make their music “on the
side,” and define themselves and their musical purpose against the
financial and stylistic currents of the mainstream, secular hip-hop music
industry. Their definitions of
success and their personal conundrums about fame and recognition tell us
much about a musical, ministerial practice that inhabits and intersects the
borders of church life and secular musical practice.
Extreme Metal as Negation of the Culture of Pleasure
Juliet Forshaw, Columbia University
Heavy metal's popularity has dwindled over the last two
decades as the genre has employed increasingly unpleasant or obscure lyrics
and perceptually challenging musical techniques. Metal both inflicts
physical pain on the listener through its sonic force and limits the
listener's comprehension through its use of growled and shrieked vocals. It
thus opposes the ideals of pleasure and comprehensibility that many other
genres of popular music hold dear, and it prides itself on its marginalized
status in the music industry. This anti-commercial stance raises the
question, “What does metal value, if not the listener's pleasure and
comprehension?” Or, to put it another way, what value do metal musicians
and fans see in discomfort and obscurity? In this paper, I will show that
post-80s metal uses discomfort and obscurity as a means of inducing an
extreme physical and psychological state akin to ecstasy in listeners. This
feeling, the “rush,” is universally valued by metal musicians and fans.
Because it is derived from pain, this type of pleasure differs from
pleasure as conventionally defined. It has much in common with religious
traditions, particularly certain forms of Christianity, which historically
have considered pain a means of achieving or inducing psychological
transformation. I will contextualize metal in terms of these traditions and
discuss their opposition to the ideal of pleasure that dominates more
commercially successful genres of music today. I will end with a
consideration of the ways in which metal paradoxically buys into the
culture of pleasure while seeming to negate it. Metal's inconsistent
anti-commercialism will provide insight into the ways in which musical
cultures define value and transmit that value to listeners.
Money and Phantasy: The Patronage
of Walter Willson Cobbett”
Kathryn Lent, University of Leeds
An amateur violinist, Walter Willson
Cobbett (1847-1937) retired from the British Belting Company at the age of
60 and dedicated the remainder of his life to English chamber music
patronage. In 1905 and 1907 he held competitions for Phantasy
compositions, which were to be reminiscent of the Renaissance English fantasy
(or Fancie). Cobbett chose this non-traditional
spelling of “phantasy” because he believed that
using a “ph” and a “y” made it a truly British word. Following Cobbett’s
guidelines, these phantasy pieces are relatively
short, have sections that differ in tempo and meter, and have parts of
equal importance, that is, characteristics that evoke early English
fantasies. The importance of Cobbett’s phantasy
patronage has been all but ignored since his death, and the impact of his
financial contribution on British music has never been explored.
I argue that Cobbett’s patronage of the phantasy
pieces instilled a sense of nationalism in
‘Das Land ohne Musik.’
During a time when most chamber music heard in Britain was imported from
the continent, Cobbett’s patronage created a body of chamber work that was
genuinely native to Britain. By drawing on the recognizably British fancie form, combining it with an etymologically
British title and positioning the works within the modern chamber music
idiom, Cobbett effectively created a new national music. The resulting phantasy pieces embraced the regeneration of British
musical culture, and instilled a sense of national prominence in a new
generation of British composers.
250 Years of German Music and German Music Publishing
(ca.1500 to 1750):
A Case for a Closed Market
John Kmetz, Holtz
Rubenstein Reminick LLP
Economic pundits and financial analysts today talk about
markets: markets that are “closed” and markets that are “open.” A closed
market is simply one where there are a limited number of consumers; an open
market is one where the consumers are virtually limitless. During the
Renaissance there were closed and open markets as well. Wool, grain, wood, cooper, silver, tin,
and iron were traded throughout Western Europe in an open market. The
reason was because they were commodities, just as they are today. Books of printed polyphony or of lute and
keyboard tablature were, on the other hand, not a commodity. They were luxury goods, and their
marketplace was fundamentally a closed one.
Indeed, as I have discussed elsewhere, it was closed to
approximately 99.9 percent of the German-speaking population. Why was it closed? The answer is simple: barely one-tenth of one percent could
read tablature or polyphonic notation or could afford to buy the books.
Having said this, I do not want to give you the impression
that printed books of polyphony, of multi-voiced music, and of lute and
keyboard tablature were not consumed in an open market. They unquestionably
were. Petrucci’s
alphabet series of polyphonic songs, Attaingnant’s
chansonniers, and Gardano’s
books of madrigals, to name just a few, were owned by many German speakers
who collected such foreign music for pleasure or, on occasion, for profit.
Yet, while German speakers were very fond of foreign music, foreigners who
hailed from France, Italy, England, Spain, and the Low Countries were not
very fond of German music. Indeed,
there is little evidence to document that there was any interest in German
music outside of the German-speaking realm in the 16th century. Actually, regardless of whether the music
was German texted, Latin texted, or didn’t carry any text at all, as long
as the music was German or published by a German, it rarely traveled
outside of the German Sprachgebiet until the
second-half of the 18th century.
Summing it all up: German music publishers who flourished
before 1750 went to market with only one market in mind, and that market
was a German-speaking one. Why they
chose to do this, and by so doing embrace the closed-market model I have
described above, will be the subject of my paper.
“Disco polo by popular demand: a market oriented musical
genre as “bad music” of the transition from socialism to capitalism.”
Renata Pasternak-Mazur, Rutgers University
In socialist countries folk was believed to be the natural
idiom of choice for ordinary people and the music that captures the soul of
the nation. National programs were developed to collect, preserve, and maintain
the traditional music in what was believed to be its purest form. Under the
socialist cultural policies, modernization of Polish traditional music was
not allowed. Moreover, not the people but officially established masters of
music were considered the highest authorities in the matters related to
folk music. Ordinary people, devoid of power over their own music, started
feeling disconnected from folk music and withdrawn from traditional forms.
Spontaneously, they developed their own musical genre, disco polo, which
was played and sung at provincial fun fairs, discos, wedding receptions,
and other moments of celebration shared with family and friends.
When the socialist system dissolved, newly emerging private
labels turned to music that was widely popular among people, but hardly
accessible for sale. Rejected by major labels, denied access to record
stores, and deprived of mainstream media exposure, disco polo dominated
sonic space of Polish fairgrounds in the 1990s, generating sales in volumes
higher than any other genre. At the
same time, it became synonymous with bad music, bad taste, and
business-inspired esthetic compromise.
My paper will discuss
an emergence of the genre with relationship to a free-market economy and
the idea of Polishness. Disco polo challenges
conventional assumptions about popular music genres as produced in
commodity form for a mass, predominantly youth market.
All events are free and open to the public.
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