*

Page 10 Planet of the Arts

ee ee ee

ne musicis too LOUG

Agustin Luviano-Cordero

In this day and age of ultra-modern tech-
nologies and lifestyles, there is probably
nothing as all-pervasive in our everyday lives
as music. We awake to music, we travel with

_ music, we work, eat, relax and even make

love to music. From Muzak to rock videos,
from elevators to nightclubs, music is every-
where, insidiously leaving its indelible mark
on both our conscious and subconscious
and controlling our very thoughts. The group
apparently being targeted by the recording
industry as the most impressionable consum-
ers is (obviously) youth, and whether the in-
dividual young person prefers the popular hit
parade or the more ‘subversive’ underground
electronic, or experimental music, the object
and results are similar.

So-called pop music, the staple diet of
young people for the last three decades, has
shown itself to be quite the opposite of what
it has claimed to be. As an omnipresent force
in the youthful sub-culture, its long term ef-
fects cannot be underestimated, even though
individual pieces rise to prominence and fade
with an astonishing rapidity. This ever-
changing yet constantly uniform music has
perfected itself as a non-obtrusive, sublimi-
nal force to the point where it can be used as
background music and remain unnoticed; a
far cry from the rebellious, liberating expres-
sion it still claims to be.

Pop music has become, in fact, music for
the masses, music for an anesthetized mar-
ket. The recording industry has accom-
plished what repressive power-brokers have
sought for centuries: explicit censorship. By
controlling the content of their release, the
recording companies have promoted a de-
graded, censored and artificial music, and
have succeeded in placing it at centre stage.
Modern marketing techniques have allowed
the flattest, most meaningless of themes to
pass for successes. Neither musically nor
semantically does pop music announce a
world of change. By promoting safe,
sanitized sounds and prohibiting subversive
lyrics that denounce standardization, pop
music has become a tool in the hands of the
establishment.

Thus not only is the content of what is
heard controlled, but also of what is thought.
More than just a factor in centralization, cul-
tural normalization, and the disappearance of
distinctive cultures, pop music is a means of
silencing, a concrete example of com-
modities speaking in place of people, of. the
monologue of institutions. One of the most
characteristic examples of this music of
silencing is Muzak. The pieces of music used
on these tapes are the object of a treatment

- akin to castration, called “range of intensity

limitation” which consists of dulling the
tones and volume. They are then put on per-
forated cards, classed by genre, length and
type of ensemble and programmed by a com-

. puter to correspond fo the ‘mood’ require-

ments for the time of day, (ie. morning, af-

_ ternoon or evening). It is the stated intention

of Muzak to control the listener by dulling
the senses and tranquillizing the emotions
and reactions. Individuality is shunned in
this extreme example of the leveling action
of today’s popular music.

The rise in popularity of rock videos has
carried the numbing of autonomous thought
to yet a new level. No longer is the listener
free to associate the visual images of his own
imagination with the repetitive themes of the
music. Instead the music and the significance
come prepackaged with the visual images of

Contributor’ s Note: Portions of this article are indebted
to Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jaques Attali.

a bureaucratic producer’s choice. These
range from the banal to the mindless land-
scapes, pretty nubile girls, artists lip-synch-
ing the piece, and so on. Aside from stifling
the imagination, such videos also serve to en-
hance the transformation of the musician
from simple actor to that of molder. His func-
tion is no longer to invent ways of com-
municating or representing the world, but to
be a model for replication. His function is un-
ifying, personifying a lifestyle and fashion
that is to be emulated, not analyzed. Rock
videos, then, only represent a tighter control
over the channelling of individual expression
and autonomy exerted by the promoters of
pop music.

It is ina much more insidious way that so-
called avant-garde music proceeds to control
the revolutionary instincts of today’s sub-
culture. The avant-garde musician professes
a desire to shatter existing codes, both musi-
cal and societal, while seeking a universality
that will unite all those capable of under-
standing the call. For these musicians, form
is freed from former constraints, and the re-
sult is an infinite labyrinth of effects. The
predeliction however, of today’s avant-garde
artists for ‘high-tech’ sounds has created an
unprecedented dilemma: the modern com-
poser is often little more than a spectator of
the music created by his own computer. The

result is often"a work that no-one but the
composer can perform. It is the transcending
of men by their knowledge and tools: the

composer no longer organizes the growth of

production, but simply makes an effort to
regulate an evolution whose laws are not
completely known. One produces what tech-
nology makes possible, instead of inventing
the technolgy for what one wishes to pro-
duce.

The primary requisite must be the chang-
ing of all rules: composition is no longer an
institutionalized network. There is, instead,
the very real potential for relationship, for
participation, and what emerges is an ex-
change between bodies, between individu-
als, through work, not through intermediary
objects. It is this that constitutes the most
fundamental subversion of all: to stockpile
wealth no longer, to transcend it, to play for
the other and by the other, to exchange the
noises of bodies, to hear the noises of others
in exchange for one’s own, to create, in com-
mon, the language within which communi-
cation will take place. It becomes obvious,
then, that this new composition requires its
own technology as a basis for its new values.
Stability is perpetually called into question,
for truly revolutionary music is not music
which expresses the revolution in words, but
which speaks of it as a lack.

I WHERE PoP MUSIC COMES FROM. by Ian V.

Wi;

Le ESTE &

PROCESSING PLANT.

IN STEAMING TROPICAL MARSHES, A BLACK Goo BUBBLES
To THE SURFACE. IT 1S SKIMMED OFF BY PEASANTS,
AND COMPRESSED [NTO ONE HOUR BLOCKS AT A LOCAL

ih OOLOR :

he
Zod

x VY

\ c .

ais
¥

[AFTER SHIPMENT TO L.A. OR NEW YoRK, THE Biocks
OF Goo ARE FURTHER REFINED INTO VARIOUS LENGTHS
| BETWEEN TWO AND FINE MINUTES, AND DISTRIBUTED

TO RADIO STATIONS Foe AIRPLAY.

Like the music itself, the new musician
represents a rupture with his predecessors.
Frequently challenging the ideology of
rigourous, elitist music produced at the in-
stitutional level, this musician questions the
academic training and the recording, fund-
ing, and distribution networks. Diffusion is
limited, by choice to places like independent
radio stations with obviously-a very limited
audience, or through a network of under-
ground channels which are basically accessi-
ble by word of mouth, It is by choice that
these composers shun the commercial mar-
keting of their work, for it is meant as a per-
sonal communication, seeking response,
seeking feedback, not adulation. Recently,
too, some of these artists have come to the
realization that it is as important to pass on
the desire to create music to other people as it
is for the artist himself to compose.

This composition, therefore, represents
the possibility of renewed meaning, renewed
communication through music. It is the de-
parture from the silencing of pop music or the
meaninglessness of avant-garde music as
such. In an age where every noise evokes an
image of subversion, and is repressed and
monitiored, this new, noisy individual spells
the rebirth of music and the affirmation of an
individual destiny, vision and experience.

Thus we witness the emergence of a new
elite, a modern intelligentsia, for whom
music has become a pretext for asserting
one’s cultivation;instead of a way of living
it. Such self-proclaimed superiority is illus-

“ory, for while breaking with establishment

norms, avant-garde music has failed to redi-
rect the energies lost with the destruction of
the old value-systems. In its obsession with
destruction, this music has failed to produce
an alternative system to encourage thought
and communication.

In both manifestations then, popular and
experimental, runs the common thread of ab-
sence of meaning: the latter seeking it inten-
tionally, the former producing it, since
meaninglessness is the only possible mean-
ing in repetition without a purpose. The end
of these labours has been the mass produc-
tion of music whose result is silence in time
and space, an absence of meaning. The indi-
viduals’s identity is in the process of being
replaced by successive waves of collective
non-differentiation, and unanimity has be-
come the criterion for beauty. For the vast
majority, security takes precedence over
freedom.

We see emerging however, piecemeal and
with the greatest ambiguity, the seeds of a
new music, one exterior to the institutions.
This noise of freedom may turn out to be the
essential element in a strategy for the
emergence of a truly new society. It is just
not a new music, but a new way of making
music, and it is radically upsetting every-
thing music has been up to this point. It is the
rediscovery of communication, inventing the. -
message at the same time as the language and
spreading it to all that will listen. It is playing
for one’s own pleasure, the pleasure of
being, not having. In this new way of making
music the absence of meaning may be non—
sense, but it is also the possibility of any and
all meanings, and perhaps the necessary con-
dition for real creativity. While no longer
having anything to say in a specific language
may be a precondition for slavery, it is also
the pre-condition for the emergence of cul-
tural subversion. Yet how does one distin-
guish this new noise? The pseudo-new pro-
liferates today, making it difficult to choose.

Page 10 Planet ofthe Ans

MUSIC:
EEE

the music is COO loud

Agustin Luviano-Cordero

In this day and age of ultra-modern tech:
nologies and lifestyles, there is probably
nothing asall-pervasive in oureveryday ives
‘as music, We awake to music, we travel with
‘music, we work, eat, relax and even make
low
from elevators to nightclubs,
where. insidiously
‘on both our cons
‘and controlling our very thoughts. The
ntly being targeted by the recording
ss the most impressionable consum
ers is (obviously) youth, and whether the in
dividual young person prefers the popular hit
nore “subversive” underground
perimental musi, the object
‘and results are similar.

So-called pop music, the staple diet of
young people for the last three decades, has
Shown itself to be quite the opposite of what
ithas claimed to be, Asan omnipresent force
in the youthful sub-culture, its long term ef-
fects cannot be underestimated, even though
individual pieces rise to prominence and fade
with an astonishing rapidity. This ever-

‘yet constantly uniform music has
perfected itself as a non-obirusive, sublimi
nal force to the point where itcan be used as
background music and remain unnoticed: a
farcry from the rebellious, liberating expres
sion it stil claims to be

Pop music has become, inf
the masses, music for an anesthetized m
et. The recording industry has accom:
plished what repressive power-brokers have
Solight for centuries: explicit censorship. By
controlling the content of their release. the
recording companies have promoted a de-
graded, censored and artificial musi
have stieceeded in placin
Modern market

it at centre sta
schniques have allowed
the flatest, most meaningless of themes 10
pass for successes. Neither musically nor
semantically does pop music announce
world of change. By promot
sanitized sounds and prohibiting subversive
Iyries that denounce standardization. pop
music has become a too! in the hands ofthe
establishment

Thus not only is the content of what is
heard conteolled. but aso of what is thought
More than just a factor in centralization, cul:
al normalization, and the disappearance of

distinctive cultures, pop musie i

‘a concrete example of com
midities speaking in place of people, of the
‘monologue of institutions. One of th
characteristic examples of this music of
silencing is Muzak, The pieces of music used
‘on these tapes are the object ofa treatment
akin to castration, called “range of intensity
limitation” which consists of dull
tones and volume. They are then put on pe
forated cards, classed by genre, length and
type of ensemble and programmed by acom-
puter t0 correspond fo the “mood” require-
‘ments forthe time of day, (ie. morning. af-
{emoon or evening). Its the stated intention
‘of Muzak to control the listener by dulling
the senses and tranquillizing the emotions
and reactions. Individuality is shunned in
this extreme example of the leveling action
‘of today's popular music,

‘The rise in popularity of rock videos has
carried the numbing of autonomous thou:
to yet a new level. No longer is the listener
free to associate the visual images of his own
imagination with the repetitive themes of the
‘music. Instead the music and the significance
‘come prepackaged with the visual images of

Contributor's Note: Portion
tw Noise: The Political Econom

‘4 bureaucratic producer's choice. These
range from the banal to the mindless land-
scapes, pretty nubile girls, artists lip-synch
ing the piece, and so on. Aside from stifling
the imagination, such videos also serve ten
the transformation of the musician
from simple actor to that of molder. His func:
tion is no longer to invent ways of com:
municating oF representing the world, but to
‘be'amodel for replication. His function is
ifying, personifying a lifestyle and fashio
that is to be emulated, not analyzed. Rock
videos, then, only represent tighter control
‘over the channelling ofindividual expression
and autonomy exerted by the promoters of
pop music

Ttis in a much more insidious way that so
called avant-garde music proceeds to control
the revolutionary instincts of today’s sub-
culture, The avant-garde musician professes
‘a desire to shatter existing codes, both musi
teal and societal, while seeking a universality
that will unite all those capable of under
ing the call. Fr these musicians. form
is freed from former constraints, and the re-
sult is an infinite labyrinth of effects. The
predeliction however, of today's avant-garde
artists for high-tech” sounds has ereated an
a: the modern com:

unprecedented dile
poser is often little more than a spectator of
the musie created by his own computer. The

sof this article are indebred
ny of Music by Jaques Artali

result is often'a work that no-one but the
‘composer can perform, Itis the transcending

their knowledge and tools: the
composer no longer organizes the growth of
production, but simply makes an effort to

evolution whose laws are not
produces what tech-
makes possible, instead of inventing
the technolgy for what one wishes to pro-
duce.

‘The primary requisite must be the chang
ing of all rules: composition is no longer an
institutionalized network. There is. instead.
the very real potential for relationship. for
Participation, and what emerges is
change between bodies, between individu
als, through work, not through intermediary
“objects. It is this that constitutes the most
fundamental subversion of all: 10 stockpile
wealth no longer. to transcend it, to play for
the other and by the other, to exchange the
noises of bodies, to hear the noises of others
inexchange for one’s own, to create, in com

Won, the within which communi
ation will take place. It becomes obvious,
then, that this new composition requires its
‘own technology as a basis for is new values,
Stability is perpetually called into question
for truly revolutionary music is not music
‘hich expresses the revolution in words, but
which speaks of it asa ack:

[WHERE PoP MUSIC COMES FROM. by Tan V.

[RSE

Tr

IN STEAMING TROPICAL MARS!

To THE SURFACE. IT 1S SKIMMED OFF BY PEASANTS,
AND COMPRESSED INTO ONE HOUR BLOCKS AT A LOCAL

a

HES, A BLACK Goo BUBBLES

PROCESSING PLANT:

a

BETWEEN TWO AND FINE Mi

AFTER SHIPMENT TO L.A. OR NEW YORK, THE Brocks
OF Goo ARE FURTHER REFINED INTO VARIOUS LENGTHS

INUTES, AND DISTRIBUTED

TO RADIO STATIONS FoR AIRPLAY.

Like the music itself, the ‘cian
represents & rupture with his predecessors.

challeng’ ‘ideology of
rigourous nusie produced at the in
sfitutional level, this musician questions the
‘academic training and the recording, fund

limited, by choice to places lik
radio stations with obviously a very limited

ence, oF through a network of under
ground channels which are basically access
ble by word of mouth, It is by choice that
these composers shun the commercial mar
keting of their work, for it is meant as a per
Sonal communication, seeking respon:
seeking feedback, not adulation, Recently
too, some of these artiss have come to the
realization that itis as important to pass on
‘ ‘music toother people as it
is for the artist himself to compose,

This composition, therefore

the possibility ofrenewed meaning, renewed
‘communication through musie. It isthe de-
parture from the silencing of pop music orthe
mieaninglessness of avant-garde. music as
such, In an age where every noise evokes an
image of subversion, and is repressed and
‘monitiored, this new. noisy individual spells
the rebirth of music and the affirmation of an
individual destiny. vision and experience.

Thus we witness the eme

represents

e of anew
elite, a modern for whom
music has become a pretext for asserting
‘one’s cultivation: instead of a way of living
it. Such self-proclaimed superiorit
‘ry, for while breaking with establishment
de music as failed to red

snergies lost with the destruction of
the old value-systems. In its obsession with
destruction, this music has failed to produce
an alternative system to encourage tho
and communication

In both manifestations then, popular and
‘experimental, runs the common thread of ab-
sence of meaning: the latter seeking it inten
tionally, the former producing it, since
meaninglessness is the only possible mean.

sin repetition without a purpose. The end
‘of these labours has been the

ss produc
tion of music whose result i silence in time
and space, an absence of meaning, The indi
Viduals's identity is in the process of being
replaced by successive waves of collective
ron-differentiation, and unanimity has be

he criterion for beauty. For the vast
security takes precedence over

We sce emerging however, piecemeal and
with the greatest ambiguity, the seeds of a
new music, one exterior tothe institutions
‘This noise of freedom may turn out to be the
essential element in a strategy for the
temergence of a truly new society. Iti just
not new music, but a new way of making
music, and it is radically upsetting every-
‘thing music has been upto this point. Its the
rediscovery of communication, inventing the
the same time as the language and
toall that will listen. Iis playing
for one’s own pleasure, the pleasure of
being, not having. Inthismew way of making
‘music the absence of meaning may be non-
sense, but itis also the possibility of any and
all meanings, and perhaps the necessary con-
dition for real creativity. While no longer
hhaving anything to say in a specific language
‘may be a precondition for slavery, itis also
the pre-condition for the eme:
tural subversion, Yet how does one distin-
‘suish this new noise? The pseudo-new pro-
Tiferates today, making it difficult to choose