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Configurable culture: mainstreaming the remix, remixing the mainstream

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CONFIGURABLE CULTURE
MAINSTREAMING THE REMIX, REMIXING THE MAINSTREAM

by

Aram Arthur Sinnreich

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

December 2007

Copyright 2007 Aram Arthur Sinnreich
ii

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my teachers Anthony Braxton, Sam Freedman, and Larry
Gross, to my partner in thought crime Jesse Gilbert, and to my teacher and partner in
all things, Dunia Best Sinnreich.
iii
Acknowledgments

Much of this work centers around the subject of collaborative authorship, and
the blurring of the lines between the individual and the collective. It is therefore
essential that I emphasize my own indebtedness to several individuals and
communities, without whose contributions this work could not exist.
I would first like to thank my professors, colleagues and staff members at
USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Annenberg Center for
Communication, both of which offered me vital academic fellowships (in the
financial sense) and academic fellowship (in the social sense). Specifically, I would
like to thank my advisor Larry Gross and my dissertation committee members Doug
Thomas and Joanna Demers, as well as Jonathan Aronson, Johanna Blakley,
Francois Bar, Manuel Castells, Peter Monge, Howard Rheingold, Cory Doctorow,
danah boyd, Mimi Ito, Jennifer Urban, Jon Taplin, Arul Chib, Li Ying, Kasia
Anderson, Steve Rafferty, Richard Hodkinson, Dan Chamberlain, Mark Latonero,
Anne Marie Campian, and Christine Lloreda. Each of you provided me with
invaluable insight and support prior to and during my dissertation process, and I
appreciate your efforts more than you know. I would also like to thank my
colleagues at NYU Steinhardt’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication,
where I am presently employed, and where I completed and assembled this work –
specifically, my department chair Ted Magder and my new colleague (and former
Annenberg professor) Marita Sturken.
iv
I would also like to acknowledge the many individuals who contributed
directly to this work as sources. This includes the 1,765 anonymous survey
respondents whose opinions I cite frequently in these pages, and the roughly three
dozen interviewees I spoke with, each of whom contributed hours of time and
serious thought and energy to addressing the questions that interest me most. Your
expertise and observations are the “heart” of this work, and without your
contributions these pages would contain nothing but unformed (and uninformed)
ideas.
Finally, I would like to extend my boundless and undying gratitude to the
many healers, friends and family members who sustained me through some of the
most difficult months of my life, during which I could neither walk nor read and
write, and genuinely feared that I would not live to complete this work. I have
already named some of you as colleagues above. The rest, in no particular order,
include Dr. Peter Goldman, Dr. Robert Baloh, Dr. Nerses Sanossian, Stephanie
Cushna, Jesse Gilbert, Miriam Gerace, Henry Myers, Jessica Ritz, David Ritz,
Roberta Ritz, Marissa Gluck, Noah Shachtman, Elizabeth Visceglia, Nikki Lewis,
Harry Bruinius, Gail Shand, Matt Urbania, Julie Thaxter-Gourlay, Dan Heller, Kathy
Dong, Michael Heller, Debora Cahn, Ahmed Best, Raquel Horsford, Nancy Zager,
Bob Zager, Kim Graves, Emily Pines, Rachel Cleves, Tim Cleves, Dan Sinnreich,
Masha Zager, Jonathan Sinnreich, my beautiful and musical son Simon Sinnreich,
and my wonderful and patient wife, Dunia Best Sinnreich. I love you all, and am
truly fortunate to have you in my life.
v
Table of Contents

Dedication ii

Acknowledgments iii

List of Figures vii

Abstract viii

Introduction: Confessions of a (Reformed) Musical Reactionary 1

Chapter 1: Music as a Controlled Substance 14
Taxonomy of Musical Regulation 16
Examples of Musical Regulation 18
Resistance and Innovation 34
Musical Modes and Social Codes 56
The Mechanism: Musical Levels of Meaning 68

Chapter 2: Configurability and Crisis 86
The Modern Ontological Framework 89
Origins of the Modern Framework: Art vs. Craft 90
Origins of the Modern Framework: Artist vs. Audience 94
Origins of the Modern Framework: Original vs. Copy 99
Origins of the Modern Framework: Performance vs. Composition 104
Origins of the Modern Framework: Figure vs. Ground 106
Origins of the Modern Framework: Materials vs. Tools 110
Institutional Foundations of the Modern Framework 113
Social Functions of the Modern Framework 125
The New Terrain: Configurable Culture 132
Configurability and the Mainstream 141
Crisis: Configurability and the Modern Framework 152

Chapter 3: Drawing Lines in the Sand 171
Yes, But is it Art?: Configurability and the Art/Craft Binary 172
Some Kid in his Bedroom:
Configurability and the Artist/Audience Binary 186
Something Borrowed, Something New:
Configurability and the Original/Copy Binary 207
Live From a Hard Drive:
Configurability and the Composition/Performance Binary 238
vi
Hooks and Hearts: Configurability and the Figure/Ground Binary 250
“The Technology is the Tool”:
Configurability and the Materials/Tools Binary 262

Chapter 4: The Lessons: Configurability and the New Framework 287
Resistance to Regulation Among Configurable Musicians 290
Configurability, Cooperation and Cooptation 299
Conclusion: ‘Plus Ça Change’ or Paradigm Shift? 304

Bibliography 332

vii
List of Figures

Figure 1: Musical Regulation, Resistance and Innovation 39

Figure 2: Musical Meaning Production Bounded by Ontological Framework 75

Figure 3: An “Authentic Reproduction” Available at a Retail Store 103

Figure 4: An Optical Illusion Demonstrating Figure/Ground Ambiguity 108

Figure 5: Reciprocal Relationship Between Framework and Institutions 115

Figure 6: TradeMark G and an Audience Member Spinning the
“Wheel of Mash” 231

Figure 7: Reasons for Creating Remixes or Mash-ups 289

Figure 8: Time Magazine’s cover depicting “You” as the 2006
“Person of the Year” 301
viii
Abstract

This dissertation examines the emergence of new musical aesthetics and
practices based around networked media technologies, from remix music to file
sharing, and argues that these “configurable” technologies and practices compel us to
reexamine our assumptions about both cultural production and social organization.
The research is multi-theoretical and multi-methodological, bringing together
elements of cultural studies, social network analysis, personality psychology, art
history, and musicology, and drawing data primarily from personal interviews with
musicians, music industry executives, and attorneys, as well as self-reported attitudes
about emerging cultural practices from a survey of 1,765 American adults.
I begin by reviewing the social history of musical regulation, and the
resistance that this regulation has engendered. I also propose a mechanism by which
musical aesthetics influence social organization, helping to explain the universality
of musical regulation and resistance across a broad range of social milieus. I argue
that the dialectical tension between these opposing ethics has operated as a vital
engine of aesthetic innovation. However, I argue, this process is bounded by a
discursive framework that overdetermines our understanding of music’s role in
society, and that both sustains and is sustained by dominant social institutions.
Next, I demonstrate that configurable technologies and practices undermine
the discursive boundaries that have been in place for the past two centuries, which I
term the “modern ontological framework.” I draw upon interview and survey data to
ix
explore the ways in which musicians, lawmakers, and everyday people are
developing new ways to understand music and cultural production, as the
definitional binaries underpinning the modern framework continue to erode into
shades of gray.
Finally, I analyze these data in an effort to determine whether a new
discourse based on configurability may be replacing the modern framework, and
what such a discourse might entail in terms of social organization. I describe five
principles: Configurable Collectivism, The Reunion of Labor, The Collision of Public
and Private, The Shift from Linearity to Recursiveness, and The Emergence of DJ
Consciousness. Their net effect, I argue, suggests a roadmap for the emergence of
new social forms and institutions in the networked age.
1
Introduction: Confessions of a (Reformed) Musical Reactionary

“. . . We’re the only bar in the area, you know, has a strictly
electronic music policy. Come on around Saturdays, starting midnight
we have your Sinewave Session, that’s a live get-together, fellas come
in just to jam from all over the state, San Jose, Santa Barbara, San
Diego---”
“Live?” Metzger said, “Electronic music, live?”
“They put it on the tape, here, live, fella. . . .”
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

It is both fitting and ironic that I have written this book. Fitting, because I
have been obsessed with both music in general and the expressive potential of
recording technology in particular for as long as I can remember, and because my
entire professional career to date has been dedicated to exploring the intersection
between music, technology and society. Ironic because, while many or most other
members of my generation happily embraced configurable music styles such as hip-
hop, house and techno as both we and they reached adolescence in the 1980s, I
actively resisted these innovations, and only begrudgingly came to accept and finally
to love them a decade later.
I still remember the wonder and amazement I felt when I first heard my own
voice recorded and played back to me. It was the late 1970s, I was about four or five
years old, and my father, an attorney, brought home a battery-powered Dictaphone
with an internal condenser mic. He held the small black box in front of me while we
talked, then pressed a button. All of a sudden, my own voice came out, repeating the
words I had just spoken. I was shocked; he hadn’t told me what the box was for, and
I had never dreamed that such a thing was possible.
2
Even at this young age, I was already quite familiar with sound recording
technology. I had been requesting to hear albums by my favorite musicians – The
Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Everly Brothers – since I could first speak, and
by four or five I was very comfortable with the mechanics of the turntable and the
amplifier, and happy to raid my parents’ record collection whenever I had the
opportunity. I had even come to view the stereo with a kind of familiar reverence,
often running my fingers over the knobs on the receiver or the fabric covering the
boxy Advent floor speakers as I listened to music, and wondering how it all worked.
Thus, my sense of awe on encountering the Dictaphone had nothing to do
with the technology per se. What shocked me, though of course I could never have
put it in words at the time, was that the device allowed me to produce recorded
sound, and not just to consume it. The thought had literally never occurred to me.
Although we had a beautiful Steinway baby grand piano in our home, it was rarely
used; in my family, music was something that you primarily listened to, rather than
made. We could listen appreciatively – even passionately – but the notion that we’d
make it for ourselves was as absurd as the notion of making our own butter, or
clothing. That was a job for experts, whose work we acquired at a store and brought
into our home to enjoy.
Nonetheless, over the ensuing years, I developed a passion both for making
music and for recording sound. I begged my parents for piano lessons, but they
demurred, believing (perhaps accurately) that I lacked the requisite attention span,
and that forcing me to practice would quickly become a chore for them. I would not
3
receive my first formal music instruction – on guitar – until I was 13. However,
much earlier on, I acquired my first tape deck, and by the age of eight, I was
recording my own “radio show” (call letters WARAM) from the dining room table.
A few years later, my parents bought me a RadioShack integrated stereo unit,
which included both a turntable and a dual-deck cassette recorder. Most importantly,
it had a headphone jack and a microphone jack. It didn’t take me long to figure out
that a set of headphones could serve as an improvised microphone if plugged into the
“wrong” jack, and by the time I was 12 or so, I had upped the ante on my recorded
radio show, creating tapes on which I alternated songs from my parents’ record
collection and my own patter. From there, I made the obvious leap, to talking and
singing while the record was playing, rather than waiting for the interstitial silences
between songs. To this day, one of my most treasured relics is a tape I made at the
age of 15 with my 3-year-old brother, on which I cajole him to sing along with songs
such as The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and to chant
slogans such as “LSD, LSD, LSD is the thing for me” (never mind that I had never
tried LSD – it just seemed to go with the territory).
By the end of my teens, I actually fulfilled my childhood ambitions and
became both a disc jockey (for three years on my college radio station) and a semi-
professional musician, writing songs and playing guitar and bass first in college
bands, and then in gigging and recording bands in New York and elsewhere.
None of this is extraordinary. In fact, as I will argue throughout this work, I
believe that my own relationship to recording technology is indicative of a much
4
larger cultural shift, a redefinition of our relationship to media production and
consumption. My generation was the first to have cheap, accessible, and even
disposable audio recording equipment in the home from early childhood, and in the
decades since then, both audio and video production have become increasingly
accessible in many senses, including affordability, ubiquity and ease of use. And,
because technology and culture coevolve, continually nudging one another in new
directions, we have seen drastic changes in our aesthetic and symbolic environments
in these years as well, many of which I will describe in greater detail in the pages
that follow.
What is extraordinary is that, despite my practical enthusiasm for recording
(and re-recording) music and sound from earliest childhood, I was not only blind to
the merits of what I have come to call configurable culture for many years, but
actively hostile as well. As I have mentioned, I was reared on the rock-and-roll of the
1960s, and throughout my childhood, that music remained my gold standard, even as
popular idioms moved farther and farther away from it. Even the most mainstream
pop acts of my adolescence – Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson – felt somewhat
foreign to me. The big, gated drum sound, tinny synthesizer patches and electronic
percussion that pervaded nearly every popular recording of that era sounded like
music from another planet; it just didn’t fit into my aesthetic at all.
Far more foreign, and even threatening, were the musical styles of the ‘80s
that dispensed with the fig leaves of guitars, chord charts and vocal melodies
retained by the pop stars I mentioned above. Emerging styles such as hip-hop (which
5
was suddenly everywhere in my Brooklyn neighborhood), house and techno were
unapologetically mechanical in their aesthetic, and though I didn’t fully understand it
at the time, Afrocentric in their structural logics. In a sense, then, I understood the
message of the music intuitively – these recordings were hostile to the music I held
most dear, and to what I refer to in this book as the modern ontological framework.
What I didn’t understand yet was how these musical innovations related to
me, and to my own life experiences and social position. My aesthetic antipathies to
these new musical styles were consciously and unequivocally moral – I viewed them
as a kind of commercial bamboozlement, a bait-and-switch operation in which the
human soul was being replaced with a robotic facsimile, and I believed myself to be
uniquely conscious of this tragedy among my unthinking peers. In short, I felt about
hip-hop the way that Theodore Adorno did about jazz.
This continued even into my early college years, during which I remained a
musical reactionary, believing myself to be a revolutionary: strumming my acoustic
guitar, playing only “live” recorded tracks on my radio show, and condescendingly
insulting the tastes of my friends and acquaintances. I remember many conversations
with my friend Henry, around the age of 19, during which he tried fruitlessly to
convince me that sampling was a legitimate art form, and just as creative as sitting
down and playing a piano. I rejected his arguments out of hand; in my mind,
sampling was copying, it was unoriginal. How could Run DMC or Public Enemy
ever approach the genius of The Beatles if they didn’t even know how to play their
own instruments?
6
Then something changed, around the time I turned 20. Suddenly, I could hear
hip-hop. I could appreciate the brilliance of a well-flipped sample, the ingenuity of
an unexpected remix. I began, for the first time, to feel that configurable music was
my music, my generation’s music, in a way that the rock I had formerly cherished
and the jazz I had come to adore could never be. Almost overnight, I became an
enthusiast, blasting KRS-One, De La Soul and Negativland from my stereo. I had
arrived, late, to the configurability party.
What precipitated this change of heart, this change of ear? I’m not completely
sure myself. It may be that, as I entered adulthood and roamed ever farther from my
home, I paradoxically came to see myself ever more as a New Yorker, and to
immerse myself nostalgically in its culture. Or it could be that, as the miles and the
years separating me from Brooklyn widened, the palpable threat contained in hip-
hop waned, and I was better able to appreciate what was left over.
Or maybe the change had nothing at all to do with leaving. Maybe it had to
do with arriving. Halfway through my college career, I transferred to Wesleyan
University, where I instantly immersed myself in its stellar music and
ethnomusicology programs. There, I was exposed for the first time to innovative
music theorists such as Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier, and to new (for me)
musical traditions, from locales as diverse as Ghana, South India and Indonesia.
Also, during these years, I developed a deeper cultural competency in the African
American musical styles of the 1970s and 1980s (my parents had stopped collecting
soul and R&B records around the time I was born, at the beginning of the ‘70s), as
7
well as in dub and dancehall reggae. Given how deeply the hip-hop of the 1980s and
1990s drew upon these traditions, it makes sense that I would gain a fuller
appreciation of this newer music only once I had further developed my historical
musical lexicon.
It is also possible, of course, that my change in tastes reflected an actual
change in the form of the music itself. The early 1990s witnessed a blossoming of
new hip-hop sub-species, many of which seemed tailored to appeal as much (or
more) to middle class white kids as to the inner city black kids who comprised much
of the form’s original audience. Some of my earliest and most enduring loves
included groups like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, whose “Native Tongues”
ethic included a style that sampled a broader range of musics (some of which I
actually knew), rapped more melodically, and used more “sophisticated” language in
its lyrics. Also, at this time, there was conscious emphasis among some DJs to
integrate jazz into a new hip-hop “fusion” style – and my preexisting love of bop and
post-bop made me a natural candidate to appreciate these efforts.
Most likely, my conversion to the cause of configurability was a result of all
these factors and more combined. Along with effecting a change in my musical
tastes, they also helped to spur in me a dawning recognition that music is
intrinsically political, and that my intransigence on the subject of sampling was
therefore evidence of some reflexive social conservativism that didn’t jibe with
either my progressive politics or my own cultural practices and predilections (e.g.
tape recording accompaniments to vinyl records).
8
This realization, and the story of my musical conversion, comprise the
genesis of this work. In the 15 years since my about-face, I have had the opportunity
to explore the questions surrounding musical taste and meaning, and the complex
relationship of music to both social organization and communication technologies,
from a variety of angles. As a musical composer, performer, and sonic experimenter,
I have progressed from recording with bands on 2-inch magnetic tape in recording
studios to recording and sequencing tracks on my own laptop at home, and
assembling them in “virtual” space with other musicians via the Internet. As a digital
music industry analyst, I have been privileged to meet and speak with many of the
executives, policymakers, journalists and musicians working in this sector, and to
contribute my own questions, opinions, and expertise to the field as the need has
arisen. Finally, as an academic, I have discovered many rich veins of discourse and
debate over these issues in a broad range of disciplines, including Media Studies,
Communication, Cultural Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Science,
Technology and Society (STS), Art History, Musicology and others – many of which
I will explicitly reference and address in the course of this work.
The argument I make in this book is fairly simple and straightforward – that
there is a seismic cultural shift, analogous to my personal musical conversion,
currently underway. This cultural shift is evident in our changing ideas about music
and our changing uses of communication technologies, and has ramifications for
every aspect of the existing social order – from the institutional macro-level to the
cognitive and affective micro-level.
9
In my first chapter, I propose a historical dialectic consisting of musical
regulation and resistance, and producing aesthetic innovation. I also review and
critique many theories linking musical evolution to social evolution, and propose my
own theory regarding the mechanism by which this correlation occurs. Finally, I
argue that the entire process of musical regulation, resistance and innovation is
bounded by a discursive framework, which sets the limits for both regulation and
resistance, and which is intimately bound to the institutional context in which it
arises.
In my second chapter, I begin by reviewing the origins and principles of the
modern ontological framework, the discursive boundary that has defined music in
our society since the Enlightenment era. I argue that these discursive boundaries both
sustain and draw support from modern social institutions, such as our legal,
educational, and commercial systems. Then I discuss recent developments in both
communication technologies and cultural practices, which I group under the term
“configurability.” Finally, I demonstrate that configurable technologies and practices
challenge the fundamental precepts of the modern framework, forcing us to
reevaluate our assumptions about the social institutions that both support and rely
upon this framework.
In my third chapter, I address the discursive ambiguities presented by the
introduction of configurability to the modern framework, drawing upon dozens of
extensive interviews with configurable musicians, music industry executives and
attorneys, as well as self-reported attitudes about configurable culture culled from a
10
survey of nearly 1,800 American adults. The aim of this chapter is not to answer the
question, “what’s happening?” in a definitive sense, but rather to offer a range of
responses to the question, “how do people understand and interpret what’s
happening?” As these data show, there is no longer any clear consensus about what
constitutes originality and derivativeness, artist and audience, or even figure and
ground in a configurable context. However, interviewees and survey respondents
consistently expressed passionate opinions regarding their individual answers to
these questions, demonstrating that people widely perceive questions of aesthetic
meaning and valuation to be both morally and politically vital – much as I described
my own feelings in the anecdote above.
In my final chapter, I analyze these data in an effort to address my primary
research questions. First, I ask to what degree we can understand configurable music
as a “resistant” or “critical” musical movement, using the same taxonomic matrix of
regulation and resistance that I introduce in my first chapter. Then, I discuss the
ways in which the resistant potential of these forms has been mitigated by the recent
embrace of entertainment companies, advertisers, and other musical regulatory
institutions. Finally, I abstract five core principles describing specific ways in which
the ethic of configurability poses a threat to the foundational assumptions and
structures comprising our modern social institutions. I term these principles
Configurable Collectivism, The Reunion of Labor, The Collision of Public and
Private, The Shift from Linearity to Recursiveness, and The Emergence of DJ
Consciousness. Their net effect, I argue, suggests a roadmap for the emergence of
11
new social forms and institutions in the networked age. However, I conclude with the
acknowledgment that these principles are neither utopian nor dystopian; some form
of social order will be maintained, and it will almost certainly retain some historical
social inequities, while eradicating others and producing yet more.
I have briefly described what this book is. I will conclude by describing, even
more briefly, what it is not. This book is not a work of music criticism, outlining an
evaluative mechanism for configurable music, or championing some songs, styles or
musicians as “better,” “more authentic,” or “more legitimate” than others. This book
is not an ethnography, describing the cultural habits and symbolic structures that
characterize a specific musical community. This book is not a work of art history,
chronicling the emergence of a new style or the ascendancy of a new aesthetic
paradigm. This book is not a comprehensive catalog of configurable musical styles
or techniques – in fact, I have avoided getting bogged down in the differences
between synthesizing, sequencing, sampling, remixing, DJing and mashing-up,
except where absolutely necessary, perhaps to a fault. Finally, although this book
was written in part to satisfy the dissertation requirement of my Ph.D. degree, I do
not consider it a work of scholarship in the classic sense: I am not testing a specific
theory or expanding a specific methodology, nor am I responding to and extending
the literature of a specific discipline.
I view this book as something of a mash-up in itself: an improvised amalgam
of theories, methodologies, and writing styles, loosely harnessed together to suit my
own immediate purpose – namely, to address the questions that have interested me
12
most throughout my life. Ironically, however, I am still a reactionary in some ways;
although this work emulates the structural logic of configurability to a certain degree,
it still takes on the form of traditional scholarship – not just at the superficial level of
footnotes and formatting, but at the deeper level of linear argumentation and the
written word. Therefore, I am quite aware that, although I am relatively new to
academia, I am already a member of the old guard. As the ethic of configurability
increasingly comes to full fruition, and the modern framework that dominated the
19
th
and 20
th
centuries recedes into intellectual and cultural history, I consider it
likely that scholarship will change as well. Most likely, it will come to increasingly
resemble the musical principles I describe in this book, in both its material aspects
(e.g. the use of configurable technologies rather than paper and ink) and its formal
ones (e.g. the use of recursive argumentation).
This idea is not so far off, or so absurd, as it may seem. I believe that, in
many ways, the spirit of configurability and the spirit of scholarship have always
been one and the same: both are communitarian enterprises, emphasizing the benefits
of collective ideation, and yet both recognize and celebrate the needs and
contributions of individual participants. Both ethics relentlessly reexamine their own
origins, continually seeking to re-cast old assumptions in a new light, and to
challenge dominant and ossified ideas. Finally, both ethics explicitly acknowledge
that the last word has never been spoken, and that no project is ever complete. There
is always another stone left to turn, another perspective to add to the mix. As you
read this book, I encourage you to keep this in mind. Even for me, these pages are no
13
more than a snapshot capturing two years of my own intellectual evolution, and the
moment I finish writing, it will be obsolete. I look forward to editing, abridging and
augmenting it in the future, and I look forward to your remixes, as well.
14
Chapter 1: Music as a Controlled Substance

This is the point to which, above all, the attention of our rulers should
be directed, that music and gymnastic be preserved in their original
form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost to maintain
them intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard ‘The
newest song which the singers have,’ they will be afraid that he may
be praising, not new songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not
to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any
musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to
be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him; he
says that when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the
State always change with them.
- Plato, The Republic

The Meanies captured everything that maketh music.
- Lord Mayor, Yellow Submarine

In the above epigraph, drawn from Plato’s Republic, the philosopher Socrates
is summarizing the conclusions he has reached through a dialogue with the sophists
Adeimantus and Glaucon. In broad terms, Socrates is concerned that music’s unique
capacity to penetrate the “inward places of the soul” threatens the political stability
of Athens – in fact, of any state or institution. This is because the state’s citizenry,
especially its leaders, are at risk of being unwittingly “corrupted” by any musical
aesthetic that inculcates antisocial or ignoble tendencies in its listeners.
Not content merely to state this premise as a general principle, Socrates and
the sophists catalog a host of specific harmonic, rhythmic and instrumental musical
elements, examining the worthiness of each for official sanctioning or proscription.
The Mixolydian harmonic mode, which expresses sorrow, “must be banished; even
to women who have a character to maintain they are of no use, and much less to
15
men.” The Ionian mode must be prohibited as well, for by virtue of its “relaxed”
sound it encourages “drunkenness and softness and indolence” in its listeners,
undermining the state’s military preparedness.
Ultimately, the interlocutors agree that only two harmonic modes possess any
redeeming value whatsoever from the perspective of the state: the Dorian mode,
valuable in wartime for building courage in its listeners, and the Phrygian, valuable
in peacetime for encouraging acquiescence. Similar proscriptions are made against
inappropriate rhythms (specifically those “expressive of meanness, or insolence, or
fury, or other unworthiness”) and instrumentation (“only the lyre and the harp for use
in the city, and the shepherds may have a pipe in the country”).
As dangerous as these rogue aesthetics are to the state, in Plato’s estimation,
at least they are known quantities. Far more dangerous, as the quote in the epigraph
suggests, are innovative musical structures and practices. Musical innovation,
according to Adeimantus, is the gateway to lawlessness. He proposes a system of
incremental change whereby minor aesthetic developments can have major social
effects:
…little by little this spirit of license, finding a home, imperceptibly
penetrates into manners and customs; whence, issuing with greater
force, it invades contracts between man and man, and from contracts
goes on to laws and constitutions, in utter recklessness, ending at last,
Socrates, by an overthrow of all rights, private as well as public.

Consequently, Socrates holds that the guardians of the state must be vigilant against
even seemingly inconsequential musical aesthetic changes; to give way even slightly
would jeopardize the very foundations of society.
1

16
It may be tempting to dismiss the conclusions of Socrates in this case as
merely another example of Platonic hyperbole, or a quaint notion more suited to the
magical thinking of classical antiquity than to an era of scientific empiricism.
However, the fundamental premise – that musical aesthetics reflect and influence
sociopolitical structures, and that innovative or challenging aesthetics pose a
consequent threat to powerful institutions – has been remarkably popular across a
broad range of cultures and eras.
In fact, musical regulation by powerful institutions – political, religious,
commercial and otherwise – has arguably been the rule throughout much of human
history, rather than the exception. While a comprehensive catalog of musical
regulation is beyond the scope of the current research (although the subject certainly
merits its own book-length research project), I will begin this chapter by introducing
a taxonomy of historical regulatory practices, citing examples of each category. In
this way, I hope to convey with a few brushstrokes a tableau of considerable breadth
and complexity. I also hope to introduce a new framework of analysis for a subject
that scholars have traditionally viewed on a case-by-case, sui generis basis.
Taxonomy of Musical Regulation
Plato’s list of musical proscriptions is both long and thorough; in his ideal
state, the vast majority of harmonic modes, rhythms and instrumental timbres known
to contemporary Athenian society would have been censored. Yet all of these
prohibitions conform to one basic premise: legal prohibition of aesthetic codes. In
reviewing the many historical examples of musical regulation, it becomes apparent
17
that this premise is only one category in a broad matrix of regulatory practices,
which may be differentiated along two axes: methods of regulation and sites of
regulation.
The Republic suggests that music should be regulated legally, codified
through political mandates and policed by the state. However, as Foucault
2
argues,
institutional regulation of individual behavior may occur through means other than
the direct physical threat and intervention that Plato advocates. In the case of music,
there are at least two other methods of regulation that often come into play:
ideological regulation, in which one paradigm describing music’s role in society is
given primacy over another; and commercial regulation, in which market actors
(such as broadcasters or record companies) serve as “gateways” between musical
producers and consumers, thereby performing a censorship role typical to brokers in
the political economy of any information goods.
3
Thus, the first axis of our matrix
contains three methods of musical regulation: legal, ideological, and commercial.
If The Republic focuses on a single method of musical regulation, it focuses
on a single site, as well. For all his many mandates, Plato seems primarily concerned
with controlling the aesthetic codes – harmonic, rhythmic and timbral – that circulate
within the state’s borders. However, actual historical instances of musical regulation
have focused on at least two other sites: praxis, which concerns the behaviors and
practices surrounding the composition, performance and reception of music; and
technology, which concerns the mechanisms by which music is composed,
performed, distributed, and audited. Thus, the second axis of our matrix contains
18
three sites of musical regulation: aesthetics, praxis and technology. Along with the
first axis, this categorization suggests a taxonomy consisting of nine different forms
of musical regulation, which are arranged in Table 1.
Legal/Aesthetic Legal/Praxis

Legal/Technology

Ideological/Aesthetic

Ideological/Praxis Ideological/Technology
Commercial/Aesthetic Commercial/Praxis Commercial/Technology
Table 1: Taxonomy of Musical Regulation
Examples of Musical Regulation
As with all taxonomic schemata, this model no doubt suffers from being at
once too detailed and too vague. That is to say, there are almost certainly historical
examples of musical regulation that may not find easy classification according to my
scheme, and even the examples I do use are not clean-cut – the lines between
aesthetics and praxis, or between law and ideology, are seldom sharply drawn.
However, I hope that the examples I cite below both indicate the general truth of
musical regulation as a historically prevalent practice and illustrate the details of the
specific categories well enough to suggest some value in my scheme of
classification.
The first category of musical regulation, Legal Regulation of Aesthetic
Codes, has appeared in ancient, classical and modern times alike. D’Olivet
4
cites the
19
public exhibition of state-mandated diagrams of permitted melodic and harmonic
codes (aesthetic pronouncements literally written in stone) in ancient Egypt as the
inspiration for Plato’s recommendations in The Republic. Similarly, in 1725, the
Yongzheng Emperor of China’s Manchu Qing Dynasty established an Office to
Harmonize Sounds within a newly appointed Music Ministry. By doing so, Sommer
writes, he “replaced the ‘licentious music’ of a morally debased caste with
‘harmonized sounds,’ to conform with the Confucian vision of music as a tool for
moral order in the hands of a sage ruler.” The Confucian texts that bear upon this
matter are strikingly similar to Plato’s. Confucius is quoted in The Classic of Filial
Piety as saying that “for the reform of customs and mores, there is nothing better
than music.” Similarly, Confucian sage Xunzi wrote in his “Discourse on Music”
that “when correct sounds move a man, they cause a spirit of obedience to rise, and
when such a spirit has arisen, good order results. As singers blend their voices with
that of the leader, so good or evil arise in response to the force that calls them
forth.”
5

However, more recent (and more local) examples abound as well. Jones
6
and
Southern
7
both recount the explicit legal prohibition against African musical codes
and instruments in the American South prior to the Civil War. Such prohibitions
served two purposes, one immediate and one general. Slaveholders, who were “well
aware of the African tradition for ‘talking instruments’”
8
, realized correctly that
African music could serve as a secret mode of communication between African
Americans and a vital instrument in slave rebellion. More generally, the prohibition
20
was intended to sever the cultural ties between Africa and the diaspora. By
extinguishing the slaves’ cultural memory of their origins, slaveholders hoped they
could also extinguish any hope or even desire for repatriation.
The second category in our matrix, Legal Regulation of Musical Praxis,
applies to the widespread practice of officially licensing or sanctioning musicians
and musical performance. An excellent example, chronicled extensively by
Chevigny,
9
is the 80-year-old New York City institution of the cabaret license, which
dictates such practical matters as who can play music, in which venues, at what
times, and even whether audience members are allowed to dance. Although cabaret
laws have their origins in the Prohibition era, and perhaps reached their prosecutorial
apogee in the postwar period, they continue in diminished form today. Following a
successful public interest campaign to reduce their scope in the 1980s, the laws’
remaining statutes (which prevent customers at unlicensed venues from dancing,
even if music is permitted) were exploited by Mayor Giuliani in the mid-to-late
1990s as a vital tool in his controversial “Quality of Life” campaign.
As Chevigny argues, the complexity and breadth of the cabaret laws served to
mask an inherent bias in their function. In his words, the laws “expressed the view of
the NYC lawmakers - rooted ultimately in racism as well as fear of bohemian
mores.”
10
Additionally, he argues, the cabaret license functioned as an institutional
bulwark against musical innovation, “calculated to favor chiefly those with
considerable staying power,”
11
at the expense of newer and less established acts.
Given that such innovative black performers and composers as Charlie Parker, Billie
21
Holiday, and Thelonious Monk were each subject to cabaret license revocation at
various points in their careers (all as a result of drug charges, incidentally),
Chevigny’s argument carries some weight. It is no small irony that half a century
later, even as the Giuliani administration was being widely criticized for bias and
abuse of power in its use of the cabaret laws
12
, all three of these musicians, safely
enshrined as geniuses in posterity, were featured on United States postage stamps.
The third category of musical regulation, Legal Regulation of Music
Technology, has increased in prevalence as new production, recording, distribution,
and playback technologies have become increasingly central to both innovative and
mainstream musical practices. In a general sense, many of these technologies have
been regulated since they first emerged. The use of the electromagnetic spectrum for
radio broadcasts, for instance, has been regulated by the U.S. government since
Congress established the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) in 1927.
However, neither the FRC nor its descendant, the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), ever exerted the kind of sweeping control over consumer
technologies that has been exhibited in recent legislation, such as the Audio Home
Recording Act (AHRA, 1992), or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA,
1998). Among its many provisions, the DMCA makes it a crime for music listeners
to circumvent the copy protection or other “anti-piracy” technology that may
accompany recorded music, even if this is the only way for listeners to engage in
legal behaviors such as making back-up copies of their music collections, or re-
selling their property to new buyers. As authors such as Lessig
13
and
22
Vaidhyanathan
14
persuasively argue, such legal provisions regarding music
technology constitute an unprecedented incursion of corporate and governmental
power into the individual rights of musicians and music listeners, and threaten to
undermine the very social practices that give music its power and meaning.
The examples of legal musical regulation I have cited thus far are fairly cut-
and-dry; although we may argue about a given law’s implications, there can be little
argument about its existence. The next set of examples, which focus on the
ideological regulation of music, are far more difficult to document conclusively,
although I would argue these methods exert an even greater degree of influence over
musical codes, practices and technologies than the legal methods cited above. At
issue here are the efforts by individuals and institutions to regulate music by
influencing standards and opinions, rather than through the rule of law. In other
words, these examples suggest coercion, rather than compulsion.
The first such example, Ideological Regulation of Aesthetic Codes, has been a
mainstay of religious, political and cultural thought for time immemorial. Arguably,
although Plato’s Republic advocated for legal regulation, the text itself served as a
form of ideological regulation, explicitly politicizing musical aesthetic codes to a
degree unrivalled by previous and contemporary Greek philosophers.
Ideological regulation of musical aesthetics has been a prominent element in
modern American social thought and political strategy as well, from the Civil War
through the Cold War and the Culture Wars. Above, I described the legal
prohibitions against African music and dance in the antebellum South. By the time of
23
the Civil War, many black churches in the South had absorbed these aesthetic
proscriptions into their own doctrines, discouraging both dance and African-derived
work songs as sinful and irreligious. In other words, what had begun as externally-
imposed legal regulation became an internally-imposed ideological regulation. As
Epstein writes, the provenance of these self-imposed aesthetic strictures can only
originate within European American culture:
The prejudice against secular music, and especially against
dancing, has not been traced to Africa, where such distinctions
between sacred and secular cannot be said to have existed.
This is one case where the blacks appear to have been
influenced by the whites. . .
15

In the period following World War II, as tensions between the United States
and the Soviet Union escalated sharply into a global war of ideas, aesthetics became
a prime target for ideological regulation on both sides of the great divide. The role of
abstract expressionist painting as a badge of American liberty and individualism, and
the role of the C.I.A. in surreptitiously sponsoring its promotion at home and abroad,
is perhaps the best known example of this practice. However, music also played a
vital role in this process. As Von Eschen recounts in her recent book Satchmo Blows
Up the World,
16
top-tier American musicians including Dave Brubeck, Duke
Ellington, and Louis Armstrong were routinely dispatched as “jazz ambassadors” to
Eastern Bloc countries throughout the Cold War’s most virulent decades. Although
the manifest intention of the U.S. government was to demonstrate American racial
equality and personal liberty in action, Von Eschen describes some unintended
consequences of these tours: the globalization of jazz and other regional musical
24
aesthetics, and the growing resolution among the African American musical
community to fight for real equality on the home front, even as they promoted its
fictitious existence abroad.
Clearly, the examples I have just cited entail the regulation of musical
practice (e.g. dancing) in addition to musical aesthetics. However, it is worth citing a
few examples specifically related to the Ideological Regulation of Musical Praxis for
the sake of our taxonomy. An excellent – if relatively idiosyncratic – historical
example is the interdict imposed upon the 12
th
century German abbess and composer
Hildegard von Bingen by her church superiors, the prelates of Mainz.
17

The prelates, ostensibly upset about Hildegard’s willingness to bury a
nobleman who had once been excommunicated in the consecrated ground of her
monastery, commanded that she be punished unless and until the body was exhumed
– a demand she resisted until the interdict was lifted, shortly before her death. In
addition to provisionally excommunicating Hildegard, the interdict called for mass at
her monastery, usually celebrated musically, to be performed without musical
accompaniment of any sort. Given that Hildegard was 80 years old and quite famous
as a musician, scholar and religious figure, this was a severe sentence. Baird and
Ehrman argue that the prelates’ motives in imposing the musical ban were
“suspect,”
18
and Maddock directly attributes the move to “jealous spite.”
19
Both
analyses suggest that the nobleman’s burial was a pretext, and that the true ambition
of the prelates was to put Hildegard, one of the few powerful women of her era, back
in her place by banning the very musical practices that had marked her ascent.
25
A more recent (and general) example can be found in the contemporary
American debates over music education. Jorgensen, in her call for sweeping changes
to the organization and practice of music education, contends that “musicians and
educators are engaged in a fundamentally social, political, and cultural enterprise.”
20

She argues that institutional music education, by virtue of its power to inculcate
broadly applicable (i.e. beyond the study and practice of music) values and behaviors
during children’s most formative years, has become a battleground for wars between
different cultural, religious and political interest groups. Thus, seemly internecine
debates over the relative importance of music appreciation and musical performance
in the classroom, theoretical arguments over whether music should be interpreted
structurally, symbolically or aesthetically, and efforts to strike the proper balance
between the Western classical canon and multicultural and popular music traditions
are freighted with a far greater burden of significance than may at first be apparent.
For Jorgensen, then, ideological regulation of musical praxis amounts to ideological
regulation, period. This is an argument I will examine in greater depth later in this
chapter.
The next category in our taxonomy, Ideological Regulation of Music
Technology, has an obvious contemporary example: the vilification of digital music
encoding and distribution technologies – specifically, the MP3 encoding format and
peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software. These technologies, due to their contentious
role in the growth of new music distribution paradigms which have momentarily
tipped the scales of power away from the corporate sector and towards consumers,
26
have arguably become more rapidly and thoroughly politicized than any other music
technologies in modern history.
Largely powerless to halt the spread and use of these technologies by their
standard means (legal regulation) and unwilling to undertake the risk and expense of
neutralizing their threat through market competition (commercial regulation), the
music industry has relied primarily upon threats and propaganda (ideological
regulation) to achieve these ends.
Perhaps the most important achievement of the music industry along these
lines has been in persuading people to adopt language that frames the debate in
industry-friendly terms. It has become commonplace to describe P2P in terms of
“piracy” and “theft.” These terms are typically used to refer to commercial
reappropriation of rivalrous goods – in other words, depriving a legitimate distributor
of a physical object in order to profit from its redistribution. However, songs shared
on a P2P network are neither rivalrous nor commercially redistributed – no one is
deprived of a digital music file when it is copied, and no one profits commercially
from sharing songs on a network (although participants profit in the sense of gaining
access to the libraries of other users). Thus, the relationship of P2P to our
conventional understanding of the terms “piracy” and “theft” is ambiguous, at best.
Despite – or because – of this ambiguity, these pejoratives have been aggressively
promoted as the terms of choice by pro-industry organizations like the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry (IFPI). Hilary Rosen, when head of the RIAA, was frequently
27
quoted using moralistic terms to discuss the issue – arguing, for instance, that P2P
services like the original Napster were “morally and legally wrong.”
21

These campaigns appear to be working. According to a survey fielded in the
U.S. by Jupiter Research, the percentage of online adults who believe that “online
music trading is wrong” climbed from 22 percent in 2003 (the first year in which
they asked the question) to 28 percent in 2004 (the last year in which they asked).
The climb among young adults (18-24 year-olds) was even steeper, from 8 percent in
2003 to 14 percent in 2004. In the meantime, an increasing number of respondents
reported cutting back on file-sharing because they were “afraid of legal
consequences” – from 17 percent of online adults and 21 percent of young adults in
2003 to 25 percent and 34 percent, respectively, in 2005.
22
The recording industry,
emboldened by these results, has redoubled its efforts on the ideological front.
According to a recent IFPI publication:
The recording industry launched four targeted international
education campaigns in 2005, by far the biggest expansion of
its public information activities in this area. Each campaign . .
. aims to help change attitudes to online music, improve
understanding of copyright and promote the legitimate
services.
23

The final set of categories in our taxonomy involve capital as the musical
regulatory mechanism. Although capital and market actors are traditionally
considered objects, rather than agents, of regulation, there is a rich body of literature
documenting the central role commercial organizations play in inhibiting and
enabling the flow of information, cultural and otherwise, throughout society.
24

Consequently, we may describe such organizations as serving a regulatory function,
28
especially if we consider the organic connotations of the term (e.g. as we would
describe the circulatory system regulating the flow of blood throughout the body).
The first category concerning capital’s relationship to music, Commercial
Regulation of Aesthetic Codes, can be traced back at least as far as Europe’s feudal
era. As Attali
25
recounts, church music became increasingly secularized during the
14
th
century, as feudal courts began to offer permanent positions to church-trained
musicians. This development led to the establishment of a new professional class –
salaried career musicians in the modern sense of the term, suddenly reined in from
itinerancy and “bound to a single master.”
26
Of course, the security and prestige that
came with professionalization carried a price as well; these court musicians were
required to obey the aesthetic dictates of their patrons – arbitrary, stultifying, and
self-serving as they may have seemed. Attali quotes an official reprimand levied
against J. S. Bach, for “having hitherto made many curious variations in the chorale,
and mingled many strange tones in it,” and laying out a number of permissible
melodic alternatives
27
, as but a single example of the aesthetic micromanagement
faced by court musicians every day of their professional careers.
As modern capitalism and industrialization emerged, music’s role in society,
and its relationship to capital, changed with the times. The professionalization of
musicians was followed first by the commercialization of musical performance and
composition and then by the mass production and distribution of recordings. During
this process, commercial entities continued to exert an ever greater regulatory force
on musical aesthetics. Today, one of the most contentious issues in debates over
29
cultural policy is the overwhelming degree of power exerted by oligarchic
organizations in highly consolidated music industry sectors such as broadcasting,
record distribution, and music retail. Large corporations in these sectors are routinely
referred to as either “gatekeepers”
28
or “bottlenecks”
29
, for their ability (and
tendency) to dictate the tenor of the mainstream music marketplace by including or
excluding music that meets their favor or disfavor.
Because I have written at length about this subject in other research focusing
on the structural role of independent promoters
30
and the emerging mash-up
phenomenon
31
, I will not expand upon it here. However, I will close by saying that
the argument that consolidated media companies are simply “giving people what
they want” and obeying no ideology but the quest for profit when they exert
regulatory control over musical aesthetics is patent nonsense. This “myth” has been
thoroughly debunked by McChesney, who compellingly argues that “the commercial
media system has generated a hyper-commercial carpet-bombing of our culture that
is decidedly unwelcome by much of the population”
32
.
This argument is also belied by the media oligarchs themselves; Wal-Mart,
which today is America’s largest music retailer, accounting for roughly 1/5 of all
sales in this country, has repeatedly come under fire for censoring or altering the
music it carries. The company makes these decisions based not on the anticipated
popularity of a given artist or title, but rather on the socially conservative ideologies
of the company’s founding family, the Waltons. The consequences of these decisions
are severe and far-reaching. As Strauss writes, “because of Wal-Mart’s clout, record
30
labels and bands will . . . omit songs from their albums, electronically mask
objectionable words and even change lyrics in order to gain a place on Wal-Mart’s
shelves”
33
. In other words, these decisions amount to unilateral aesthetic regulation
by a powerful commercial organization, not the democratic choice of an empowered
consumer base acting through the mechanism of the marketplace.
The next category in our taxonomy, Commercial Regulation of Musical
Praxis, has also increased in prevalence as the market system has evolved and
become ever more enmeshed in the mechanisms of cultural intercourse. There is
perhaps no clearer example of this phenomenon than the licensing of copyrighted
musical compositions and performances by commercial entities.
The application of copyright to music has expanded significantly since its
first appearance in American law at the dawn of the republic. Printed material, such
as scores, were first covered in 1790. Public performances were not covered until
1889. Mechanical reproduction, a right currently applied to songs on CDs, was first
introduced in 1909 to cover piano rolls. In 1972, nearly a century after the invention
of recorded sound, a new kind of copyright was developed to describe the
performances (rather than the compositions) embodied on records. Television
broadcasts and jukebox playback were first added in 1976.
34
Online radio
performances were added with the DMCA in 1998, and other new forms of
protection are currently being explored through proposed legislation, contractual
innovation, and caselaw.
31
Even as the range of behaviors and technologies subject to copyright has
expanded, “fair use” restrictions on the scope of copyright and time limits on
copyright’s applicability have been scaled back. In recent decades, large and
powerful media and software companies have successfully lobbied Congress to push
back expiration terms,
35
limit fair use in new legislation and include a growing range
of categories as “works” that can be protected under copyright.
36

These commercial developments have impacted cultural praxis to an
extensive, and sometimes absurd degree. Bollier
37
, in his excellent book on the
subject of clumsy and overarching commercial incursions into cultural practices,
recounts a particularly ridiculous episode involving music royalty collection society
ASCAP
38
and the Girl Scouts of America. In 1996, ASCAP sent letters to 288
summer camps, 16 of them run by Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, demanding hundreds
or thousands of dollars per camp for the right to allow campers to sing ASCAP-
controlled songs such as “This Land is Your Land” around the campfire. The San
Francisco Bay Girl Scout Council, unable to pay tens of thousands of dollars in
licensing fees for its 20 chapters and unwilling to face far steeper fines and possible
jail time for violating ASCAP’s demands, was forced to ban the singing of such
songs in its camps. The Girl Scouts’ plight ignited a media furor over the issue, and a
week after the matter became public ASCAP waived its demands. However, the
organization has made it clear that “the free singing of songs by the Girl Scouts
remains an ASCAP-granted indulgence, not a legal entitlement.”
39

32
The final category in our matrix, Commercial Regulation of Music
Technology, can be observed in the century-old tug-of-war between the music
industry, who generally would prefer that music production and playback
technologies be separated; music lovers, who generally would prefer the
technologies be integrated; and technology manufacturers, who must please both
factions to successfully sell their products.
This is a long and complex issue to sketch out in a few short paragraphs, but
in essence it hinges on technology’s power not only to place physical boundaries on
praxis (people can’t easily do what their machines won’t let them) but also to help
set cultural boundaries (people tend to base their decisions and expectations on
concrete options, rather than abstract ideals). Thus, a technical decision today can
become a cultural norm tomorrow and a legal axiom the next day.
Consequently, although the music industry has consistently argued for the
separation of music production and playback technologies on the grounds of
protection against piracy and lost sales,
40
another, broader agenda may be inferred
from their arguments. Arguably, the vitality of the industry is predicated on
inculcating values and behaviors that follow the logic of mass production: a handful
of manufacturers produce music, and the great masses of consumers – unable,
unwilling, or unaware of their capacity to produce it for themselves – purchase
music. This producer/consumer dichotomy is reified through the technological
separation of production and consumption technologies, and undermined by their
technical union. Such relationships between economic, ideological, and
33
technological logics deserves greater attention, and I will return to it in the following
chapter.
For now, I will simply observe that the history of recorded music media, even
in its simplest, most reductive form, reveals a startling pattern of alternating union
and disunion of production and consumption capabilities.
41
The phonograph was
initially conceived and marketed as a device that would both record and play back
sound. However, as the recording industry grew and the phonograph’s many possible
uses crystallized around music in the home, record players became playback-only
devices. The next dominant music storage medium, the cassette tape
42
, developed in
1963 but gaining mainstream adoption only in the 1970s, allowed users to record as
well as play back. Perhaps this shift back toward a union of functions was due, at
least in part, to the emergence of mainstream pastiche-based musics (from the
Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” to Lee “Scratch” Perry’s dub
reggae innovations), and to the burgeoning efforts of record DJs, first in Jamaica,
then in New York and throughout the world, to reclaim the turntable as a means of
musical production through aesthetic innovation.
43

The cassette gave way to the CD, which became the dominant recorded
music medium for over a decade beginning in 1992 – and remains so, depending on
one’s measuring stick. During the 1980s and 1990s, commercially available CD
players were playback-only devices. However, the rapid proliferation of digital
music technology, including the MP3, the Internet-connected personal computer, and
affordable CD-writable drives around the turn of the 21
st
century once again reunited
34
music production and consumption technologies. Today, entertainment industry
efforts to mandate the use of digital rights management (DRM) technology (through
a multi-pronged strategy including legislation, PR, and coordination with software
and hardware manufacturers) once again threaten to sever music production and
playback.
44
This technological cycle and the underlying tensions behind it show no
signs of abating any time in the foreseeable future.
Resistance and Innovation
As Foucault argues, “there are no relations of power without resistance.”
45

This is certainly the case when it comes to musical regulation. In each of the
examples I have cited above, the exercise of regulatory power was in some way met
with resistance from the subjects of regulation, and this resistance served both to
reify the regulatory power and to mitigate its effects. Sullivan, for instance, writes
that African slaves in the antebellum South responded to the “void left by the ban on
drums . . . by contriving new means of creating rhythm” using European instruments,
household objects such as spoons and washboards, and even their own bodies.
46

These tactics of resistance, which reinforced the diasporic bond to African culture
through the very act of transforming it, contributed to the development of new,
fundamentally subversive African American musical forms, such “patting juba” and
the spiritual. These new musical practices managed to use the “double-
consciousness” of the African American experience to the slaves’ advantage,
presenting one set of meanings (carefree, nonsensical fun; Christian theology) to
35
white audiences while simultaneously communicating altogether different messages
(armed insurrection; prophecies of liberation) to black listeners and participants.
There is an odd symmetry between government prohibition of African
musical codes in the 18
th
and 19
th
centuries, and government exploitation and
amplification of African American musical codes in the 20
th
century. Above, I
described the State Department’s role in exporting American musicians as “jazz
ambassadors” to the world at large (especially Eastern Europe and the Middle East)
during the height of the Cold War, and noted the program’s galvanizing effect on
African American musicians to fight for equality on the home front after advertising
it (falsely) abroad. Von Eschen
47
describes the most visible example of resistance
against the jazz ambassador program within the American musical community: a
musical revue called The Real Ambassadors, created by Dave and Iola Brubeck and
Louis Armstrong, and staged at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival.
The show, which explicitly “satirized State Department objectives, personnel
and protocol and voiced a powerful and unequivocal indictment of Jim Crow
America”
48
, represented a significant political and professional risk for its
contributors and participants. Brubeck and Armstrong had both been staples of the
State Department program a few years earlier, but had grown disenchanted with it
after witnessing the ugly side of American geopolitics abroad and federal
ambivalence about segregation and civil rights at home. At a time when the public
demand for jazz was starting to wane, outspoken opposition to the government’s
Cold War policy was broadly considered tantamount to treason, and the battle over
36
civil rights was escalating toward riot and bloodshed, The Real Ambassadors was
anything but an empty gesture: lives and livelihoods were at stake.
The show was so volatile, in fact, that despite its political relevance, aesthetic
appeal and superstar provenance, it was never performed publicly again, despite
attempts to bring it to Broadway. However, its effects reverberated for decades, in
the increasing autonomy and militancy of jazz musicians on and off the State
Department circuit, and in the burgeoning political and aesthetic alignment between
musicians in America and around the world. This process, in turn, contributed to a
new, globalized jazz aesthetic, reflected in the work of American musicians such as
John Coltrane, Charlie Haden, and Don Cherry, and foreign musicians such as Hugh
Masekela, Shobha Gurtu and Yolande Bavan. Through this process, the very notion
of diplomacy through jazz was recuperated. Instead of promoting a propagandist
vision of American freedom to strategically chosen target audiences, jazz musicians
at home and abroad negotiated a new vision of freedom based on the premise of
global struggle against oppressive use of force – a vision in which the American
government was as much aggressor as liberator. As Von Eschen writes:
[T]he jazz ambassador, epitomized by Louis Armstrong,
conveyed through his horn and voice hopes and aspirations for
freedom in a world where he, like so many of the audiences
for whom he played, was still waiting for the day when he was
‘really free.’
49

Another excellent example of resistance to musical regulation, which I
touched upon above in discussing commercial regulation of music technology, is the
repurposing of the turntable from a playback-only consumption instrument to a
37
creative production instrument. As Rose,
50
Chang
51
and Schloss
52
argue, the creative
innovations that led to the genesis of rap music were fundamentally resistant acts,
even if the innovators themselves – inner-city New York DJs such as Kool Herc,
Grand Wizard Theodore and Grand Master Flash – were primarily concerned with
starting parties and building their careers.
Arguably, the repurposing of the turntable signified an act of resistance on at
least two distinct (if interconnected) levels. First, the disruption of the
technologically-imposed separation of production and consumption can be
understood as an attempt to disembed musical codes and practices from the logics of
capitalism and mass production. If the implicit message of the playback-only musical
device is that production is something best left to the professional elite, while the
masses must find pleasure only in listening, then hip-hop turntable techniques such
as looping, scratching and beat juggling amount to a simple and resounding “au
contraire” from the erstwhile masses.
However, there is a more subtle dimension of resistance implicit in
turntablism – namely, the assertion of the dominance and validity of an Afro-
diasporic musical paradigm over European or Euro-American source material. As
Schloss writes, “there is clearly a political valence to the act of taking a record that
was created according to European musical standards and, through the act of DJing,
physically forcing it to conform to an African American compositional aesthetic.”
53

This ongoing tension between African and European compositional aesthetics and
38
performative ethics, and its enactment and transformation through new music
technology, is a theme I will continue to examine in greater depth later in this work.
Resistance and Innovation
Each example I have just cited of resistance to musical regulation suggests an
important secondary effect: through the process of resistance, the musical codes,
practices and technologies themselves are transformed. Thus, by applying proscribed
African aesthetic logic to European instruments, scales and subject matter, African
American music was created. By turning the apparatus of American cultural
imperialism against itself, jazz was newly politicized and globalized. By
transforming a playback-only entertainment device into a viable and accessible
musical instrument for the masses, the hip-hop era was born. In short, resistance to
musical regulation becomes an engine of aesthetic innovation (see Figure 1).
39

Figure 1: Musical Regulation, Resistance and Innovation
Although the examples I cite should illustrate my premise, I cannot make a
statement like this without at least briefly acknowledging the multitude of conflicting
and overlapping meanings that words like “resistance” and “innovation” have
accrued in the annals of academia, and locating my own definitions within these
discussion.
The term “resistance” as I use it here doesn’t merely suggest intransigence in
the face of power – simply “sticking to one’s guns.” African American slaves, faced
with a choice between death and adaptation, wisely chose the latter, finding
subversive potential within their acquiescence. And even in situations where
resistance to musical regulation isn’t a life-or-death issue, it rarely makes sense to
40
follow this course of action. As Bourdieu observes, such strategies are doomed to
failure because they reinforce the very power relations that sparked resistance in the
first place: “if, in order to resist, I have no other resource than to lay claim to that in
the name of which I am dominated, is this resistance?”
54

Nor am I suggesting a strictly Gramscian view of power and resistance, in
which elites attempt to manufacture consent among the masses, using ideology to
make their domination appear natural and inevitable, and “organic intellectuals”
organize coalitions of the disempowered to resist.
55
Although this model presents
some improvements upon the Frankfurt school’s virtual disallowance of resistance
56

and although it continues to play a prominent role in recent musical and cultural
scholarship,
57
I have a number of objections to it.
First of all, powerful interests are no more monolithic than the
disempowered. Although there is an ongoing social tension between the aggregation
and disaggregation of wealth and power, the different sides in this struggle are
always strategic, contingent and transient. In the American political sphere, for
instance, the recent ascendancy of the right is premised on an uneasy coalition of
socially conservative and religious groups, wealthy corporations espousing a “free
market” economic ideology, wealthy individuals seeking to lower their tax burden,
security-minded individuals and groups who support war abroad as a preventative
measure against terrorism, entrepreneurial organizations seeking to expand access to
foreign markets and resources, and a host of other groups and individuals, all of
41
whom must find common ground under the Republican banner in our two-party
political system.
Second, I do not believe that the artists and other individuals who have
resisted against musical regulation can be classified as “organic intellectuals” in any
meaningful sense. According to the Gramscian model, organic intellectuals are
driven by a kind of altruistic class consciousness – an explicit desire to resist for the
sake of the disempowered. While this may be true in some cases, it demonstrably
does not apply in many others. As I mentioned above, for instance, class
consciousness was the last thing on DJ Kool Herc’s mind when he invented hip-hop
turntablism. He was simply trying to get a party started. This does not negate the
resistant capacity of his innovations; it simply recontextualizes them. I would
propose that more often than not – especially in the cultural arena – resistance is born
from a personal or local frustration with the constraints of regulation and a desire to
accomplish specific, concrete goals (e.g. making people dance), rather than from an
abstract dissatisfaction with hegemonic power structures and a desire to accomplish
macro-level social goals (e.g. liberating a coalition of the disenfranchised).
My own understanding of power and resistance falls a bit closer to the
models embraced by contemporary scholars such as Hall
58
, Hebdige
59
, Giddens
60
,
and Laclau.
61
There are two points, in particular, on which I can agree with these
authors. The first point is that all individuals in society are both bound by a “net of
constraints, the ‘conditions of existence’ for practical thought and calculation about
society”
62
and at the same time free to operate within this net of constraints. In this
42
model of “constrained agency,” meaning emerges at the nexus where our personal
powers of interpretation collide with structural forces of cultural production. The
second point is that all coalitions, blocs, parties, organizations and alignments
operating in the cultural arena (or any arena, for that matter) are by definition
transient and contingent. Taking these two points into account, power and resistance
look less like a Manichean battle between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel
Alliance and more like some rowdy barn dance, in which dancers lock eyes, join
hands, spin wildly around for a moment, and release each other back into chaos, all
in time to some fiddler’s tune.
However, there is one important point on which I differ from the
“Birmingham School” of cultural studies – especially when it comes to the
discussion of power, resistance and music. For these scholars, music – and, in a
broader sense, culture – is only interesting insofar as it symbolically represents
political forces and positions. In Hall’s words, popular culture is worthy of research
only because it “is the arena of consent and resistance . . . otherwise, to tell you the
truth, I don’t give a damn about it”
63
. To me, this attitude betrays a fatal
misunderstanding of music. As I will discuss further below, when I review the
literature surrounding music’s social functions, the symbolic (or, more appropriately,
semiotic) content of music is only one of many levels of meaning – and of those
many levels, it is the most abstract, and arguably the least influential.
To the Birmingham school, music is simply one of many areas of discourse,
in which sociopolitical forces are symbolically set in play against one another. In my
43
model, music is the object of these forces, not their representative. Music is the
sound of the human cognitive-affective apparatus at work, and musical codes are
instruction sets for entire networks of human cognitive-affective apparatuses –
otherwise known as societies. Put in other terms, the entire post-Marxian academic
continuum, from Gramsci to Adorno to Hall, views music first and foremost as a
form of ideology, with all the baggage that accrues to the varying nature of that term
for those different theorists. Thus, in their models, musical resistance is a form of
ideological resistance. For me, ideology is merely one means to regulate music, and
resistance is often explicitly non-ideological.
Similarly, when I speak of musical “innovation,” there is an entire body of
relevant literature to contend with, much of it conflicting and none of it in complete
agreement with my own models and definitions. Arguments about aesthetic
innovation (as opposed to market innovation, technological innovation,
organizational innovation, etc.) generally fall into three camps: teleological,
deterministic, and functional/instrumental. I will discuss each briefly before I turn
back to my own argument.
The teleological camp is perhaps best represented by the “great man theory”
64

of aesthetic development. According to this theory, the role of the artist is to
innovate relentlessly, pushing the prevailing aesthetic forward in a quest for
perfection, purity, or simply to avoid stasis. According to this theory, although many
are called, only few are chosen; a handful of visionaries in each generation have the
native talent to recognize, develop and communicate the next progressive step to the
44
rest of us. Arguably, this theory’s origins are in a fallacious act of extrapolation.
Looking back on the history of aesthetic development from any given vantage point,
it seems evident that millennia of innovation led artists directly to that very moment;
false prophets fell by the wayside, while the true geniuses built upon one another’s
work progressively, striving collectively toward their goal. One need simply project
this trend from past to future to believe that we are still in the process of working
toward some ultimate aesthetic destination, and that creative visionaries will
continue to lead the way.
Although this romantic and manifestly fallacious notion has been disparaged
by scholars for at least a century, it persists in various forms within the academy, in
popular culture, and even among artists themselves. Its appeal to artists should be no
surprise; who wouldn’t want to test his visionary mettle for a chance at immortality?
Furthermore, the persistence of this idea in art communities presents something of a
self-fulfilling prophecy – if artists (and the critics who enable art worlds to
function
65
) see themselves as visionaries, and see their grand project as aesthetic
advancement, who can argue otherwise? The horse’s mouth has spoken.
The persistence of the “great man theory” in popular consciousness is
abundantly evident as well – although it generally seems to be an idea most
comfortably applied to musical and other art forms that have conveniently matured
over several generations, rather than to emerging ones without histories to speak of.
The recent Ken Burns documentary, Jazz,
66
provides an excellent example of this
tendency. In its near-hagiography of the “great men” of jazz, “the film’s narrative
45
voices use the word genius again and again, frequently by connecting Armstrong,
Ellington, or Parker to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or some other recognized genius of
the classical canon.”
67
The Smithsonian Institute’s recently announced decision to
launch a hip-hop artifact “collecting initiative”, inaugurated by a launch party
featuring “some of the seminal pioneers of the genre”
68
, is one of many recent
indications that hip-hop has now matured to the point where the “great man theory”
may be applied as well.
Deterministic models of aesthetic innovation differ in almost every way from
the teleological model described above. Instead of portraying artists as striving
toward some lofty and abstract goal, these models often take their cue from Darwin,
casting cultural ideas as competitors for survival, evolving within the environment of
human society – or within the human mind. Alternatively, deterministic models may
focus on the some key structural factor as the driver of aesthetic innovation, reducing
the individuals involved in the process to little more than bystanders.
A leading proponent of the notion that individual creative innovation works
through evolutionary processes is the psychologist Donald Campbell. Campbell
disparages “teleological metaphysics,”
69
arguing that “blind variation and selective
retention” is the mechanism at the root of all knowledge acquisition and information
processing within the human cognitive system. In other words, we are continuously
generating random new creative ideas, most of them unproductive ones. Only
through trial and error do we learn which ideas bring us closer to our goals – which
ones to select, and which to discard. Campbell is quite strict in his Darwinian dogma;
46
for instance, he disallows any suggestion that we may pre-select viable trial ideas
based on our past experiences. Every new creative leap must essentially start from
scratch.
The evolutionary model of aesthetic innovation applied at the macro-level, to
social processes, is perhaps best exemplified in Richard Dawkins’ notion of the
“meme.” He coined this term to exploit a genetic metaphor: genes are to the body
what memes are to cultural expression. In Dawkins’ words:
Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping
from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate
themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain
via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called
imitation.
70

In Dawkins’ model, new cultural forms and aesthetic innovations don’t
necessarily survive because people want them to, or because they suit any specific
needs in human society. Technically speaking, they survive because they don’t die
out. More specifically, success for memes, like success for genes, relies on longevity,
fecundity, and copying-fidelity. Thus, chain-letters, which have never done anyone a
bit of good, are impossible to extinguish, while countless religions – hindered by
secrecy, complexity or time/place specificity (e.g. volcano gods, or millennial cults)
– have died out entirely. Like genes, Dawkins theorizes, memes are subject not only
to transmission, but also to evolution. Subtle changes that occur during transmission
may create a slightly different meme, which may be either more or less suited to the
environment than its predecessor. If more, it may eventually replace its progenitor. If
less, it is consigned to the dustbin of history.
47
A good example of the structural deterministic model is George Kubler’s
argument in The Shape of Time. Kubler views aesthetic innovation as the result of a
confluence of factors. New technologies or social conditions change the locus of
expressive possibility, which necessarily suggests new styles suited to these
possibilities, which are then serially explored by artists until the capacity for
innovation within these new styles has been fully realized. The innovators in these
styles are the furthest thing imaginable from “great men.” They are simply artists
whose personal or professional development overlaps felicitously with the cycle of
stylistic development. Only artists lucky enough to have a “good entrance” into the
stream of aesthetic development at a “fortunate moment” will have any impact on its
direction. “By this view,” Kubler argues, “the great differences between artists are
not so much those of talent as of entrance and position in sequence”
71

Although Kubler accords the artist little choice regarding the structural
determinants of aesthetic innovation, he does at least acknowledge that creative
individuals have their motivations as well. Artists, he argues, are particularly
vulnerable to aesthetic “tedium,” which they feel impelled to overcome “by the
invention of new formal combinations and by more daring advances in previously
established directions.” Yet despite these grand ambitions, artists are as much
constrained as enabled by structural factors. They may never innovate beyond the
point of “gradual differentiation,” because their work “must remain as recognizable
variations” on earlier works.
72

48
Deterministic models such as these have much to recommend them, but also
tend to seem a bit simplistic in the harsh light of day. While I find Darwinian
approaches to aesthetic innovation like Campbell’s and Dawkins’ far more
compelling than the teleological model, I still have major reservations about their
applicability in the real world. Both theories rely upon a strictly Darwinian process,
in which mutations are random and selection is “blind.” But as any student of
cultural history knows, these two requirements don’t always apply. The human mind,
and human society, are self-aware in a way that, say, the Mojave Desert is not. While
the desert may have no vested interest in which species of flowering cactus prevails
over its competitors, individuals and other members of the cultural environment may
have a very strong interest in the success of one idea or the failure of another.
Towards this end, people and the institutions they constitute frequently intervene into
the process, consciously altering the environment to favor one meme at the cost of
another.
For instance, Dannen
73
has written extensively about the millions of dollars
spent by record labels on “independent promotion” to influence the programming
decisions at commercial radio stations – in turn influencing the success or failure of
artists and songs on the retail market and in the public consciousness. Similarly, an
individual may have a vested interest in prizing one idea over another within his own
mind – for instance, someone converting from one religion to another for the sake of
a spouse. It would be difficult to find a role for self-aware, recursive processes like
these in a strictly Darwinian model of cultural change.
49
Another problem I have with Campbell’s model is that it its assumptions
about the function of art are problematic. Campbell’s work focuses primarily on
scientific innovation. In this context, the notion that ideas compete for survival, and
the one that best solves a given problem wins, makes perfect sense. The scientific
methodology is premised on the notion of problem solving, and empirical research
makes the definition of success fairly cut and dry. If a model in which the Earth
orbits the Sun fits observable data more effectively than a model which supposes the
opposite, it will be retained (at least within the individual mind where it arose).
However, creative expression does not solve problems in the same way. Music may
be used instrumentally (e.g. for dancing, mood management, or product
differentiation), but we can hardly accept the proposal that every musical innovation
has emerged from an undifferentiated mass of random ideas based solely on its
relative instrumental effectiveness. To accept this, we would have to believe that
artists always work with a specific aim in mind (one against we could measure the
success or failure of new ideas), and this would lead us back down the path toward
teleology.
Similarly, I appreciate Kubler’s efforts to undermine the “great man theory”
by focusing on structural forces rather than individuals. Specifically, I agree with his
assessment that technological and social changes create conditions wherein aesthetic
change is enabled – perhaps even encouraged. However, he pushes this argument to
a fault, eliminating individuals from the equation altogether. He justifies this through
analogy, arguing that, just as a history of the railroads should “disregard persons and
50
states,” focusing exclusively on the tracks themselves, a history of art must focus on
the grand narrative of stylistic development, rather than on the artists who
participated in those developments.
74
This view, like its Darwinian cousins, seems to
work at cross-purposes with itself. Portraying artists as mere “passengers” on the
voyage of stylistic development suggests a certain inevitability: if those passengers
had not made the trip, no doubt others would have taken their places. Either way, the
train would have followed the same route, on the same timetable. This sounds, to my
ears, an awful lot like teleology.
The other problem with Kubler’s argument is a lot clearer from the vantage
point of 21
st
century cultural studies than it would have been when he first published
The Shape of Time. As countless postmodern and postcolonial scholars have argued,
the notion of a single, linear “grand narrative” is inherently problematic. Every
canonization, whether it is an individual artist or a stylistic innovation that is being
elevated, prioritizes its subject over the universe of other possible subjects. This
process is inherently political and subjective, and serves to reinforce the social and
cultural dominance of the groups or individuals responsible for the canonization.
According to this argument, the inevitability of stylistic development that Kubler
describes masks an ideological argument asserting the inevitability of hegemonic
power. Although I have described my own differences with postmodern cultural
studies above, I find this critique of Kubler’s model quite compelling.
The final scholarly approach to aesthetic innovation, which I have collected
under the category functional/instrumental, is premised on the notion that aesthetic
51
innovation has little to do with the survival, development or improvement of
aesthetic codes and everything to do with social, political or commercial goals.
These other functions are both served and occluded by the focus on aesthetics – in a
sense, according to these theorists, aesthetic innovation’s primary function is both to
mask and to further such goals.
Perhaps the most prominent of these theorists is Fredric Jameson, who argues
that society in the age of late capitalism “now assigns an increasingly essential
structural function to aesthetic innovation and experimentation”
75
This function, he
argues, is purely commercial in nature: by increasing the rate at which design
aesthetics change, we increase the rate at which old commodities become valueless
and need to be replaced, and help to distinguish new goods in an age of industrial
mass production and symbolic repetition. In his words, “the strategic emphasis on
innovation and novelty, the obligatory break with previous styles, the pressure . . . to
‘make it new’” exists in order to “produce something which resists and breaks
through the force of gravity of repetition as a universal feature of commodity
equivalence.”
76

Gross
77
proposes an equally functional assessment of aesthetic innovation,
but focuses his investigation much earlier and in a different social sphere. Whereas
Jameson’s observations specifically address popular culture in the age of mass
production, Gross sees aesthetic innovation as an artifact of the evolving concept of
the individual in Europe, from the Renaissance era through the Enlightenment,
ultimately crystallizing in the Romantic period. According to Gross, art during these
52
centuries became increasingly separated from its ritual and quotidian origins, and
was elevated to a rarefied stratum of society, serving as a mechanism of class
distinction. In order to further this process, the artist had to be elevated as well. Thus,
the notion of creative genius was born, and innovation became one of its most
important hallmarks. (Bourdieu
78
makes a similar argument about the functional role
of aesthetics as a mark of social distinction, without the same focus on the role of
innovation). In other words, Gross turns the “great man theory” on its head: geniuses
don’t innovate – the social function of innovation is to reify the concept of genius.
In Gross’s model, the concept of Art-with-a-capital-A, and its emphasis on
innovation, could only exist within a dichotomized schema that separated high from
low, undermining any cultural lingua franca that may have existed prior to social
and cultural distinction. Thus, innovation didn’t only serve as a badge of
individuality and exceptionality for artists; it also prevented disenfranchised groups
and individuals from participating in Culture-with-a-capital-C, as either producers or
consumers. As he writes:
The pattern of constant innovation in the arts undermines their
ability to embody the common experiences and meanings of
the society, to serve the central communicative functions of
socialization and integration – roles now assigned to the
‘popular’ arts and the mass media.
79

Thus, though Gross and Jameson may argue about whether innovation’s
functional role occurs in high culture or popular culture, and whether it reflects and
amplifies the logics of early capitalism, industrialization, or late capitalism, they are
in agreement about the fundamentally social function of aesthetic innovation. As I
53
will discuss at greater length in the next chapter, I am very sympathetic to this
general view; the premise that aesthetic paradigms echo and reinforce social
paradigms is central to my thesis.
However, I do not believe that aesthetic innovation is a recent phenomenon,
or that it is a requirement imposed extrinsically on cultural creators. To the contrary,
I argue that innovation is not only central to creativity, but constituent of it. Until the
age of mechanical reproduction, it was impossible to produce an exact facsimile of a
creative work; therefore, every new work must necessarily have contributed new
information to the aesthetic codes that governed it, produced a new “spin” on the
prevailing styles, however slight. In recent years, the centrality of innovation to
creativity has only increased, as mechanical reproduction has enabled people to
(re)create cultural information without the burden of acquiring technique; when the
material constraints against cultural production are removed, arguably all that’s left
to creativity is the innovative reordering of preexisting cultural forms and artifacts.
I am also skeptical of Gross’s and Jameson’s arguments for another reason:
by locating the invention or appropriation of aesthetic innovation in recent history,
they suggest a bygone era of cultural purity, untainted by the functional dictates of
social forces. To me, this suggests not only a whiff of naïveté, but also some logical
inconsistencies. Gross acknowledges that art has always been a social phenomenon,
but suggests that the imposition of social demands on the aesthetic realm are recent;
what did the relationship between art and society consist of before this imposition?
54
Finally, Gross advocates changes to programs of early education, aimed at
closing the gap between cultural haves and have-nots, and between producers and
consumers. While I think this is an excellent and admirable proposition, I balk at his
justification: to “make possible a fuller employment of human potential than we now
achieve.”
80
Despite his ambitions to undermine and invert the premises of the “great
man theory,” Gross himself has relied upon a teleological model of perfection-
through-aesthetics to support his own arguments.
Now that I have addressed at least some of the scholarly perspectives
pertaining to both resistance and aesthetic innovation and located my own views in
relation to those perspectives, we can return to my thesis: namely, that resistance to
musical regulation has been a vital engine of aesthetic innovation throughout cultural
history. At the structural level, I am suggesting a dialectical process: the opposing
forces of musical regulation and resistance combine to alter the very codes and
practices under dispute; the resulting new codes and practices themselves become
subject to regulation, and the cycle repeats ad infinitum.
By using the term “dialectic” here, I risk being misconstrued; I am not simply
re-stating Marxian/Hegelian dialectical materialism, or any of its more recent
descendants. Unlike Marx and post-Marxist cultural scholars, as I hope I have
already made clear, I do not believe that cultural change can be traced to either class
struggle or material production. Although regulatory entities tend to be institutional,
and the most effective resisters of regulation tend to be disenfranchised groups or
individuals, I am more inclined to understand the process as a war between ethics
55
than as a war between classes. The institutional ethic embraces a centralization of
power over cultural production, while the resistant ethic seeks to decentralize such
cultural power. The constituents of these warring ethics are always fluid and
contingent – a single individual may (and often will) support both ethics in different
ways, in his roles as consumer, employee, artist, citizen, or parishioner.
And, unlike Marx and his followers, I am not suggesting that revolution or
any other given outcome is inevitable. Being itself an engine of cultural change, the
dialectical tension between centralization and decentralization of cultural power is
perhaps the only constant we may rely upon as larger social and cultural battles wax,
wane and change over the centuries.
Most importantly, perhaps, I differ from Marx in that my model presumes
that, at the human level, neither individuals involved in regulation nor individuals
involved in resistance are necessarily cognizant of the larger structural dialectical
process they are helping to constitute. To the contrary, as I have indicated, regulatory
institutions seem more dedicated to halting or controlling the spread of existing
musical codes, practices and technologies than to contributing to the birth of new
ones. And resistant individuals and groups often seem to rely on innovation more as
a tactical workaround in the face of regulatory obstacles than as an end in itself.
This may help to explain why innovation so often springs from creative
environments where it is least expected and least sought after as an abstract ideal.
John Cage, for example, accurately predicted in the 1940s that samples of recorded
sound would become widely used as the constituent elements for new compositions,
56
and that the resulting aesthetic codes would contribute to dominant cultural forms in
the second half of the 20
th
century.
81
However, despite the self-conscious efforts of
academic “avant-garde” composers throughout the Western world in the ensuing
decades to define this new aesthetic, it was the youth culture of an urban American
ghetto that ultimately provided the blueprint for the cultural phenomenon currently
known as hip-hop.
Arguably, this dialectical process applies to realms of cultural production
beyond music as well. Chang, in describing the evolution of street graffiti, suggests
as much without ever stating it outright:
Politicians and bureaucrats played an unwitting role in the
development of style. . . . graffiti's inherent risk and its
perpetual removal catalyzed innovation and ingenuity; its
countless deaths generated countless, more magnificent
rebirths.
82

Similarly, Thomas argues that computer hackers are continually driven to create
innovative new software in response to the information barricades erected by
network systems operators and other regulatory entities. As Thomas writes, the
desire to confront regulatory authority surpasses any more instrumental desires
regarding the forbidden files themselves: “what defines the value of the information
is not necessarily how useful the information is but, rather, how secret the
information is.”
83

Musical Modes and Social Codes
As I have shown, musical codes, practices and technologies have been
subject to legal, ideological and commercial regulation across a broad range of
57
societies and epochs. These regulatory incursions have spurred both organized and
spontaneous resistance among groups and individuals, and the resulting tension
between regulation and resistance has contributed to a dialectical process of aesthetic
innovation.
Underpinning this entire process is a remarkably durable idea, so pervasive
that it often becomes a tacit element in struggles over musical regulation: namely,
Plato’s claim from the epigraph of this chapter, that “when modes of music change,
the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.” In other words, musical
regulation would not be such a pervasive cultural practice if the regulatory
institutions (and those resisting their regulatory incursions) did not believe in the
power of music to reflect, amplify and influence the human psyche, the social ideas
we embrace, and the organization of society itself.
For such a durable, widespread and powerful idea, there is very little
conclusive evidence to support or reject it. What mechanism could possibly allow an
ordered series of sounds, or the practices and technologies that produce and
reproduce these sounds, to exert such control over the course of our lives, and over
the shape of our world? Several musicological and social theorists have attempted to
address this question in recent years, and I will briefly explore some of the dominant
strains of thought on the subject before adding my own voice to the fray.
There are essentially three vectors of differentiation between the many
theories positing a relationship between musical and social forms. First, there is the
question of directionality: does musical change effect social change, or vice-versa?
58
Do music and society change in tandem, as reciprocals in a cyclical relationship, or
as equally dependent factors in a larger system of change? Second, there is the
question of structure and agency, which I raised briefly in my discussion of
resistance, above. This question demands to know to what degree musical and social
change are the result of individual efforts and intentions, and to what degree they are
guided by macro-level forces, sweeping individuals along in the tide of history.
Finally, there is the question of levels of meaning: what is the epistemological
foundation of music as a communicative act, and how does meaning-production at
the micro scale (e.g. individuals and communities) ramify at the macro scale (e.g.
social and cultural forms)? This third question is itself worthy of book-length
treatment, and has been the subject of numerous excellent texts by scholars such as
Meyer
84
, Keil
85
and Frith
86
. For our present purposes, it is merely necessary to
observe that musical meaning production can be understood in terms of somatic,
spiritual, emotional, cognitive, psychological, metaphorical, semantic, semiotic,
and/or functional processes (and no doubt many others as well). I will describe what
I mean by these terms as I have occasion to use them in reviewing the theorists
below.
The Platonic model, which has served well as a touchstone for this entire
chapter, is clearly directional. He suggests a multi-level mechanism whereby music
influences individuals, who then influence one another, who then reify these
influences in the form of customs and contracts, which eventually become set in
stone as laws, altering the political organization of society as a whole. However,
59
despite the importance of the individual in this schema, it is still structural in nature,
suggesting that people have little ability to fend off the deleterious (or salutary)
effects of music once it reaches their ears. The levels of meaning he relies upon are
mostly psychological and emotional. Music, in this model, possesses in its aesthetic
DNA inherent qualities such as “meanness, or insolence, or fury, or other
unworthiness,” producing a manifestation of these qualities in its auditors.
Modern theorists offer several alternative visions of music and society,
although the echo of Plato continues to reverberate through their work. Adorno
suggests a model that is more reciprocal: music influences the social behavior of its
listeners, but it always does so in the service of the institutions that promote it.
Hence, his criticism of popular music and the industry behind its mass production:
Listening to popular music is manipulated not only by its
promoters, but as it were, by the inherent nature of this music
itself, into a system of response-mechanisms wholly
antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal
society.
87

As this quotation suggests, Adorno, like Plato, has little room in his model for
individual agency. His hapless listeners are manipulated by the music industry into
abnegating their own identities, lining up like a mass of iron filings in the presence
of an electromagnet. The possibility of critical or resistant listening is entirely
precluded by the totalitarian power of the sound itself: “Popular music commands its
own listening habits.”
88

As to levels of meaning, Adorno suggests a mélange of psychological, cognitive,
functional and metaphorical processes at work. In one passage, he speaks of
60
“response-mechanisms,” suggesting a behaviorist psychological approach. In
another, he suggests a metaphorical relationship between industrial structures,
aesthetic structures, and the social behaviors they inculcate. For instance, he argues
that the logic of mass production is reflected in the repetitive structures of popular
music, which then communicates an ethic of conformity to its audience. In other
passages, he suggests that cutesy lyrics forcibly infantilize audiences, that prominent
and consistent rhythms compel social obedience, and that emotive musical signifiers
offer a cathartic salve to dissatisfied workers who would otherwise throw off their
chains in violent revolution. Despite his many claims, Adorno proposes no unifying
mechanism for these myriad industrial assaults on individual liberty, and offers very
little in the way of data, even anecdotally.
Lomax, one of the first scholars to fuse musicological and ethnographic
analysis, offers a very different model and methodology. He documents numerous
structural correspondences between musicological and social forms in several
cultures around the world (African, Asian, European and American), arguing that the
consistency of correspondence suggests that “musical structure mirrors social
structure or that, perhaps, both structures are a reflection of deeper patterning
motives of which we are only dimly aware.”
89
As to what these “deeper patterning
motives” might be, Lomax declines to elaborate. However, it is clear that, like Plato
and Adorno, he holds little truck with agency. These “deeper patterning motives”
apparently take place at such a fundamental structural level as to preclude individual
intervention in the process.
61
Because he proposes a correlative, rather than causal, relationship between
musical and social structure, Lomax doesn’t delve deeply into levels of meaning. In
his model, music doesn’t produce social change, so there is no need to identify a
mechanism for it. However, he does suggest that some kind of collective affective
process is at work: “a musical structure stands for social adjustment, for the
fulfillment of a commonly felt emotional need.”
90

Barthes proposes a reciprocal model of musical-social interrelationship, in
which changing musical codes and practices both reflect and reinforce changes in
social organization. This is demonstrated well in his discussion of Beethoven, whom
he sees as the symbol (and an agent) of both the Romantic ideal of the individual,
and the structural logic of industrialization.
91
As with many of the models I have
already discussed, there is no place for agentic intervention in this structural process.
Despite the mythos of individuality attached to Beethoven as an artist, the individual
listener (or reader of the score) has little leeway to interpret or respond according to
his own will.
Barthes identifies several mechanisms for musical influence over social
structure in the context of this discussion. First, he argues that Beethoven’s aesthetic
innovations, which he briefly catalogues (dynamic leaps, sudden rhythmic changes,
repeated motifs, etc.), “could easily be transformed metaphorically into pseudo-
philosophical values” in the minds of listeners, and in society as a whole. Further,
Barthes suggests functional and psychological processes at work. He argues that “the
amateur is unable to master Beethoven’s music, not so much by reason of the
62
technical difficulties as by the very breakdown of the code [which] becomes
orchestral.” Because of this aesthetically inherent professionalization, “the idea of an
intimist or familial activity is destroyed: to want to play Beethoven is to see oneself
as the conductor of an orchestra.”
92

In other words, Barthes suggests that music can both suggest and functionally
enforce structural social change. In the case of Beethoven, the musical aesthetic
demands that musical praxis be removed from the sphere of the family home and
reserved for the more rarefied air of the concert hall. In doing so, it also demands
several contributory social factors: the rise of a class of professional musicians, the
erection of concert halls suited to the performance of the music, and the aggregation
of an audience with enough capital to subsidize both musicians and concert hall. It
also compels social change metaphorically, by elevating the individual above the
group and, paradoxically, by suggesting a hierarchical and mechanized social
organization, in which members are less autonomous and more beholden to the
dictates of a “conductor” – embodied in the punch clock, the school bell or the
timetable.
Attali is one of the only modern theorists to unambiguously embrace a
directional model, arguing that changes in musical structures anticipate changes in
social structures. However, unlike Plato, he does not suggest a causal process;
musical change doesn’t effect social change, it merely portends it. In his words,
“change is inscribed in noise faster than it transforms society” because “music makes
mutations audible. . . . it reflects the manufacture of society; it constitutes the audible
63
waveband of the vibrations and signs that make up society.”
93
Attali supports this
argument with scattershot historical data, alluding to three periods of political change
in European history and identifying analogous changes in musical codes immediately
prior to those periods.
Although he is a structural thinker (a political economist by training), Attali
does afford a degree of agency to individuals in his model. He ends his book on an
optimistic note, suggesting that we are on the cusp of a new era in which the
consumer of music will “become a producer and will derive at least as much of his
satisfaction from the manufacturing process itself as from the object he produces.”
94

This is a tantalizingly prescient claim – especially given that it was written three
decades ago – and one that I will address in greater detail in the following chapter.
However, despite the prescience and the comprehensiveness of his work,
Attali never delves very far into levels of meaning. The only mechanisms he ever
suggests for structural correlation between aesthetic and social codes are the
aforementioned “vibrations and signs” – one is never sure whether he is describing
culture, or universal consciousness, or arguing that they are one and the same. His
entire argument is metaphorical, tracing music’s origins to the ritual simulacrum of
human sacrifice, and charting its evolution in the same structural terms he applies to
social change. Ultimately, this lush rhetorical forest reveals few tangible trees from
which another scholar may start to build an argument.
Hebdige
95
offers a starkly different model than Attali in almost every way. A
veteran of the Birmingham School of cultural studies, he applies the school’s general
64
theoretical framework to subcultures and the musics they embrace. This model
suggests a reciprocal relationship between cultural and social change. However,
there is no fixed isometry between aesthetic and social structures – there are simply
contingent alignments (or, in proper cultural studies terminology, “articulations”),
which are continually forged and discarded in the ongoing struggle between different
social factions for cultural and material power. This model also offers individuals far
more agency than many of the more structural models I have discussed; however,
this liberty remains limited by Hall’s “net of constraints.”
While Attali avoids discussing levels of meaning, this is Hebdige’s primary
subject of focus. He suggests that music can act as a functional agent of social
change, describing the role of mobile Jamaican “sound systems” as disseminators of
news, information and political power in rural and urban neighborhoods: “The sound
system provides an opportunity for the grassroots people to talk back, to respond, to
choose what they like and don’t like.”
96
He describes semantic and semiotic
processes as well, as when the representative musics of separate subcultures are
united with the aim of effecting an analogous sociopolitical union: “Behind the
fusion of rock and reggae lay the hope that . . . a new, hybrid cultural identity could
emerge along with the new music.”
97
Finally, he suggests that metaphorical
processes obtain as well, arguing that the Jamaican tradition of “versioning,” in
which a single recorded instrumental track is reused over and over as the substrate
for countless new recordings by different artists, inherently espouses “a democratic
principle because it implies that no one has the final say.”
98

65
Frith offers a critical perspective that combines elements of post-Birmingham
School cultural studies, Becker’s
99
analysis of the institutional structures surrounding
cultural production, Bourdieu’s
100
arguments about the role of cultural tastes in
reinforcing social hierarchies and identities, and the “uses-and-gratifications”
101

school of communication studies. Frith proposes a reciprocal relationship between
the aesthetic and social spheres, echoing Bourdieu when he argues that “pop tastes
do not just derive from our socially constructed identities; they also help to shape
them.”
102
His model also suggests a midpoint somewhere between structure and
agency: “musical response is, by its nature, a process of musical identification;
aesthetic response is, by its nature, an ethical agreement.”
103
This re-tools Adorno’s
model a bit: music doesn’t bully us into embracing its message; to the contrary, we
choose our music based in part on our existing affinity for its message – musical
communication would be impossible without this meeting between producer and
consumer at the halfway-point.
Similarly, Frith embraces a multiplicity of levels of meaning in his model of
musical-social correspondence. Unlike virtually every other contemporary scholar,
Frith acknowledges a somatic dimension to the production of musical meaning,
recognizing that certain “‘bio-acoustic’ facts” preexist any musical symbolic system.
However, he stops short of suggesting that aesthetic qualities can have an
unmediated effect on our cognitive or emotional state, observing that “all evaluative
and affective musical symbols are culturally specific,”
104
and therefore contingent
upon the semantic and semiotic musical systems native to a given culture. Finally, he
66
echoes uses-and-gratifications research, arguing that people use music functionally
to fulfill both individual and collective needs: “if consumers (of all ages) value music
for the function it fills, then that ‘function’ must be defined both socially and
psychologically.”
105

My own understanding of the relationship between musical and social
structure is still evolving, and has been shaped both by my own experiences and
observations as a musician and music researcher, and by the scholars I have
discussed above. As may be inferred from my dialectical model of musical
innovation, I view the relationship between musical and social codes as
fundamentally reciprocal – not only are the processes of change in each sphere
interrelated, they are intimately linked.
I would go so far as to suggest that one of music’s primary functions, in
contemporary Western cultures and in most if not all others, is to serve as a vector of
communication between individuals and society. The act of encoding, decoding or
re-coding organized sound, then, is a facet of the act of social orientation, and vice
versa. While elements of this argument can be glimpsed in texts ranging from
Meyers’ discussion of style as the codification of a given culture’s emotional
associations with pre-defined musicological forms
106
to Frith’s ethical handshake
between performer and audience
107
, it really owes the most to Attali’s conception of
music as the audible coefficient of social “vibrations”
108
.
However, I find Attali’s notion that the social messages carried by new
musical codes can be boiled down to mere unrest with the status quo simmering just
67
beneath the surface of detectability somewhat facile, both from a musicological and a
sociopolitical standpoint. Social orientation constitutes an ongoing process of
negotiation between countless individuals, alliances, groups and ideas, and neither
society nor musical culture can or should be viewed univocally. In this light, the
notion that musical aesthetic change must always precede social change holds no
water on a logical basis. From which god’s-eye vantage point must someone stand to
hear every musical aesthetic change as it happens, to glimpse every shift in social
dynamics as it happens, and to judge which came first? In a world of infinite nuance
and incomplete information, how can we begin to assess whether a one-to-one
isometric relationship between musical aesthetics and social structure is even
imaginable, let alone possible? Without a clear answer to questions like these, I must
reject not only the unidirectionality of Attali’s model, but also its confident emphasis
on the precedence of epochal, macro-level structural change over contingent, micro-
level agentic change.
In short, I wish to combine the agency, contingency and multivocality of
post-Birmingham School cultural studies with the emphasis that scholars like Attali,
Barthes, Lomax and Frith place on music as not just a site of social contestation, but
a fundamental constituent of social imagination and individual reality construction –
not just a means to an end, but an end in and of itself. Of course, I have already taken
Attali to task for building a solid analytical edifice atop the marshy ground of
“vibrations” and their ilk, so I would be lazy at best and hypocritical at worst if I did
not at least attempt to outline a model with slightly firmer foundations. This must
68
come in my discussion of musical levels of meaning, and in the interrelationships
that exist between them.
The Mechanism: Musical Levels of Meaning
In order for music to act as a vector of orientation and communication
between the individual and society, it must somehow retain its capacity to mean,
from the most fundamental micro level to the most sophisticated macro level. In my
research, which has included the theories and methodologies of “network society”
scholars such as Castells
109
and Giddens
110
and “social network analysis”
practitioners such as Monge and Contractor
111
, Burt
112
and Watts
113
in addition to the
cultural and musicological scholars I have already cited in this work, I have come to
embrace a model of culture and society that would account for such a multi-level
process – namely, a complex system of nested networks-within-networks.
The human cognitive-affective system itself can be viewed as a network of
networks – whether viewed at the molecular, cellular or systemic scale, the
organization of the constituent elements produces emergent, and often unpredictable,
effects at the next scalar level. As John D. Mayer, a scholar in the emerging field of
“systems framework” personality psychology, argues:
The biological, psychological, and social systems are
connected, in part, along a continuum called the molecular-
molar dimension. The molecular end of the dimension refers
to smaller systems of interest—at its extremes, subatomic
particles. The molar end refers to larger systems—at its
extremes, the entire universe as a system.
114

Between the molecular and the molar scales, in Mayer’s schema, we find
several distinct levels of organization. The molecular level emerges into the level of
69
“brain processes,” which comprises a multitude of separate neurological subsystems.
This level, in turn, emerges into a level of “psychological processes,” which
comprises internal psychological subsystems as well as interpersonal relationships
and shared social meanings.
115

Above the psychological level, according to the systems framework, we
emerge into the realm of the cultural and the social. Although Mayer, who is
primarily concerned with the scalar level describing psychological processes,
declines to extend his analysis beyond this horizon, his theoretical framework
dovetails well with the work of network-oriented social and cultural theorists.
If the individual cognitive-affective system itself can be understood as a
series of nested subsystems (the term “nested” in this context means that “lower
levels are at least partially included in higher levels”
116
), social network analysts
offer a similar vision of society as a whole. As Monge and Contractor argue,
quantitative analysis of social organization requires a multi-level, multi-theoretical
(MTML) analytical framework. From a methodological standpoint, this means that
any model of social organization must simultaneously account for the processes
governing relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, cities and
countries, each of which emerges from the other and yet may be driven by a unique
and different set of organizing principles. In their terms, “the exigencies of
nonindependence in relational data preclude the use of standard statistical testing
procedures.”
117

70
From a theoretical standpoint, this means that society both reflects and
extends the multiplicity and interdependence of organizational scale found within the
individual cognitive-affective system. Thus, if individuals and society can each be
viewed in terms of “networks-within-networks,” then any model seeking to
understand how changes to the cognitive-affective system ramify throughout society
as a whole must understand the bigger picture as a nested set of “networks-within-
networks-within-networks-within-networks…” nearly ad infinitum. This also means
that changes at any level of organization – from the micro-cellular to the macro-
social – can have emergent and often unpredictable effects that ripple upwards
through the scalar chain.
But what do these “changes” and “effects” consist of, and how can we know
them when we see them? I argue that both micro- and macro-level structural change
can be understood in terms of organizational patterns. Inside the individual
cognitive-affective system, organizational patterns of relationship among or within
neurological and psychological subsystems are typically described in terms of
emotions, thoughts or associations. Within the broader social system, they are
described in terms of ideas, styles and cultures.
As I have described above, Dawkins attempts to trace the relationships
between these neurological, psychological and social organizational patterns by
flattening out the terminology, referring to any pattern that is “capable of being
transmitted from one brain to another” as a “meme.”
118
However, this flattening-out
of language has an unfortunate corollary in the flattening-out of the model. For
71
Dawkins, a meme remains consistent across all levels of organization – he would
make no distinction, for instance, between the Christian doctrine of the “golden rule”
as it existed in Christ’s brain, as it was encoded in the text of the Bible, or as it
manifests in social codes and behaviors throughout various Christian societies.
Regardless of scale, it remains a single, indivisible unit – the golden-rule meme.
Dawkins’ disregard of scale and his emphasis on Darwinian processes of
cultural change (which I alluded to earlier) are both points with which I differ
strongly. Like the nested-network model of society I have described, in which
smaller levels of scale emerge somewhat unpredictably into larger ones, the
organizational patterns that constitute meaningful information at each scale must
emerge just as unpredictably into different (if related) patterns at a larger scale.
Similarly, it is not especially useful to think of single patterns working their ways up
the scalar chain as separate phenomena – like waves on the surface of a windy lake,
the myriad patterns that populate our minds and societies must constantly intersect,
amplifying and disrupting one another in equally unpredictable ways. Finally, as I
have mentioned, changes in these patterns over time are not simply the result of blind
mutation or poor copy-fidelity. By virtue of our self-awareness, we have an active
and agentic role in the process at every scale, from meditation to mood management
to mimicry to mass media.
This schema helps to illuminate two of the central conundrums that echo
throughout modern music scholarship. First, music appears to be both a universal
human behavior and yet so polysemic and so culturally specific in its details as to
72
confound any attempt at identifying universal elements in its codes and praxes. As
Cross writes, “it can be about something, but its aboutness can vary from context to
context and even within context.”
119
Second, although music plays a vital role in
countless rituals, ceremonies and social functions across countless cultures, it has
neither a fixed reference point nor an identifiable function pertaining to our material
condition.
I argue that the answers to these conundrums are one and the same: namely,
that music’s reference point is the human cognitive-affective system itself, that its
function is the psychological and social maintenance of the cognitive-affective
system, and that our universal capacity for cognitive-affective adaptability is the
source of our musical aesthetic polymorphism and the polysemy of our musical
codes and practices.
In other words, we can view our cognitive-affective systems as cultural
filters, which change as a result of the cultural information flowing through them,
altering the information flows in the process. This process is both agentic and
constrained; we have some degree of self-awareness and control over our own filters,
but none save perhaps an enlightened few (monks? yogis?) possess full awareness or
autonomy. Society, in turn, can be understood a vast network of filters, and the
cultural information that flows through it has the capacity to effect emergent macro-
level change by virtue of its individual interactions at the micro-level. Music is a
uniquely effective form of cultural information, because it addresses the filter
mechanism itself, without recourse to linguistic or representational abstractions.
73
Thus, we may draw relationships between musical phenomena at different
scalar levels that have been traditionally treated as separate and unrelated: music’s
role in cognitive development and in the evolution of the human mind itself; music’s
role in psychological processes, such as mood management and self-identification;
music’s role in social processes like group identification and religious ritual. Each
level of meaning I alluded to above, in my discussion of the scholarly literature
surrounding music and society, can be viewed as one of the many interrelated tiers in
this nested network model. In other words, music’s psychological functions are
predicated on its cognitive functions, its social functions are predicated on its
psychological functions, and so on.
This capacity of music to contribute to macro-level changes without
necessarily conveying explicitly referential social information helps to explain why it
has been so often regulated across such a broad range of societies. Its power can be
viewed as a kind of cognitive-affective capital (which contributes emergently to the
“cultural capital” that Bourdieu
120
ascribes to music and other cultural forms). This
capital, like any other, is coveted, collected and exploited by individuals and
institutions who are invested in promoting or inhibiting a given social agenda or
organizational ethic. Each of the powerful institutions I alluded to in my discussion
of musical regulation, and each of the individuals and groups who resisted against
this regulation, can be seen as warring over cognitive-affective capital, whether their
explicit focus of these battles is intellectual property, Christian dogma, or political
affiliation.
74
However, the unpredictability stemming from music’s emergent nature and
the organizational complexity of society’s nested networks would seem to make it
very difficult for any individual, group or institution to effectively leverage music’s
cognitive-affective capital. This unpredictability is mitigated by the ontological
framework a given culture develops to understand and define the role that music
plays in society. The ontological framework serves as a kind of cement, binding
together ideas and assumptions about how music operates, and what it means, at the
various scalar levels of society’s nested network. In so doing, the ontological
framework encourages us to view music in certain ways, and precludes us from
viewing it in other ways, serving as a discursive boundary and constraining the
process of dialectical innovation I described above (see Figure 2). For instance, an
ontological framework defining a musical composition as a piece of “intellectual
property” owned by an individual composer will support a very different set of
beliefs and associations than one defining musical compositions as conscious and
autonomous supernatural entities. Both frameworks are perfectly justifiable in their
own ways, and both have been embraced by large cultures comprised of millions of
individuals.
75

Figure 2: Musical Meaning Production Bounded by Ontological Framework
Because of its power to overdetermine the application of music’s cognitive-
affective capital at various scalar levels of society, the ontological framework has
significant implications for any individual or group with a stake in social
organization. However, the framework is such a ponderous edifice, and so deeply
entrenched in every aspect of social practice, that it does not change easily. It is
instantiated in our laws, our customs and our ideologies, to the point of near-
invisibility: of course music is X; how could it possibly be Y? And yet, arguably, the
battles between musical regulation and resistance represent the frayed edge of the
social fabric, and every tiny victory and defeat constitutes an act of renegotiation, a
minor revision to the overwhelming edifice.
76
On rare occasions, however, the ontological framework undergoes a serious
revision within a relatively short frame of time. Usually, this is precipitated by some
sea change in either the social or the technological landscape. In the first instance,
political revolution may bring a new party or group to power, who may demand that
all ontological frameworks be revised to suit their philosophies. In the second,
technological development may so drastically change the locus of possible codes and
praxes that the old ontology becomes nakedly obsolete, jutting out for all to see like
the foundations of some long-buried city suddenly regurgitated by the Earth. I argue
that we are in the midst of exactly such a sea change today, a development I will
explore further in the next chapter.
77
Notes to Chapter 1

1
Plato, The Republic (B. Jowett, trans.), books III and IV. Downloaded March 1,
2006 from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

2
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan,
Trans.). New York: Vintage.

3
DiCola, P., & Thomson, K. (2002). Radio deregulation: has it served citizens and
musicians? Washington, D.C.: Future of Music Coalition.

4
D'Olivet, F. (1997). The Secret Lore of Music (J. Godwin, trans.). Rochester, VT:
Inner Traditions.

5
Sommer, M. H. (2000). Sex, law and society in late imperial China. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press; pp. 268-270.

6
Jones, L. (1963). Blues people. New York: Morrow.

7
Southern, E. J. (1983). The music of black Americans. New York: Norton.

8
Ibid, p. 182

9
Chevigny, P. (2005). Gigs: Jazz and the cabaret laws in New York City. New York:
Routledge.

10
Ibid, p. 4.

11
Ibid, p. 178.

12
See, for instance: Kreigel, M. (1997, March 31). City plays into off-beat jive: Anti-
dance laws out of step. New York Daily News, p. 7; Jacobs, A. (1999, August 31).
Dance clubs heeding call to tame wild life. New York Times, p. A1; Dwyer, J. (1998,
June 11). Mayor’s book no code of conduct. New York Daily News, p. 8; Bumiller, E.
(1996, August 4). Can clubland live in quality-of-life era? New York Times, p. 33.

13
Lessig, L. (2004). Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to
lock down creativity. New York: Penguin

14
Vaidhyanathan, S. (2004). The anarchist in the library. New York: Basic Books.

15
Epstein, D. J. (2003). Sinful tunes and spirituals: Black folk music to the civil war.
Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
78

16
Von Eschen, P. (2005). Satchmo blows up the world: Jazz ambassadors play the
cold war. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

17
von Bingen, H. (1994). The letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Vol I (J. L. Baird & R.
K. Ehrman, Eds. and Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.

18
Ibid. p. 79 (footnote 1)

19
Maddock, F. (2003). Hildegard of Bingen : The woman of her age. New York:
Doubleday; p. 244

20
Jorgensen, E. R. (2002). Transforming music education. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press; p. xiii.

21
Kirchofer, T. (2001, February 15). Stop the music: Appeals court ruling could
silence Napster. The Boston Herald, p. 1.

22
Data sources: Jupiter Research/Ipsos-Insight Music Survey (07/03), n = 2,525
(online adults) n = 394 (online 18-24) (US only); JupiterResearch/Ipsos Insight
Music Consumer Survey (08/04), n = 2,335 (online adults) n = 336 (online 18-24)
(US only); JupiterResearch/Ipsos-Insight Music Consumer Survey (08/05), n=2,427
(online adults) n = 321 (online 18-24) (US only).

23
IFPI (2006). Digital music report 2006. Downloaded 2/7/2006 from
http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/library/digital-music-report-2006.pdf

24
Adorno, T. W. (1991). The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture.
London: Routledge; Bagdikian, B. H. (2004). The New Media Monopoly. Boston:
Beacon.

25
Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The political economy of music (B. Massumi, Trans.).
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1977)

26
Ibid, p. 15

27
Ibid, p. 18

28
Fang, I. (1997). A history of mass communication: Six information revolutions.
Burlington, MA: Focal Press; Lopes, P. D. (1992). Innovation and diversity in the
popular music industry, 1969 to 1990. American Sociological Review, 57(1), 56-71;
Low, L. (2000). The economics of information technology and the media. Singapore:
Singapore University Press.
79

29
DiCola & Thomson, Radio deregulation; Bar, F., Richards, J. E. & Sandvig, C.
(2000). The Jeffersonian syndrome: The predictable misperception of the Internet’s
boon to commerce, politics, and community. [unpublished draft]. Downloaded April
10, 2005 from: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~fbar/Publications/jeffersonian-syndrome.pdf

30
Sinnreich, A. & Monge, P. M. (2004). The role of enforced structural holes in
independent radio promotion. Presented at the annual conference of the International
Communication Association, New Orleans, 2004.

31
Sinnreich, A. (2004). Mash it up!: Hearing a new musical form as an aesthetic
resistance movement. Presented at the annual conference of the National
Communication Association, Chicago, 2004.

32
McChesney, R. W. (2004). The problem of the media: U.S. communication politics
in the 21
st
century. New York: Monthly Review Press.

33
Strauss, N. (1996, 12 November). Wal-Mart's CD standards are changing pop
music. New York Times, p. A1.

34
Krasilovsky, M. W. & Shemel, S. (1995). This business of music (7th Edition).
New York: Billboard Books.

35
Originally, copyrights were granted for 14-year terms, with the potential for a
single 14-year renewal. Currently, copyrights are granted for the life of the author
plus 70 years – a potential term of 150 years or more.

36
Boyle, J. (2003). The second enclosure movement and the construction of the
public domain. Law and Contemporary Problems, 66(1), 33-74; Lessig, Free
Culture; Vaidhyanathan, S. (2001). Copyrights and Copywrongs. New York: New
York University Press.

37
Bollier, D. (2005). Brand name bullies: The quest to own and control culture.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

38
The American Society of Composers and Publishers

39
Bollier, Brand name bullies, pp. 16-17

40
Much as Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) chief Jack Valenti
testified to Congress in 1982 that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the
American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”

80

41
For an in-depth review of technology’s role in shaping music and vice-versa, see:
Katz, M. (2004). Capturing sound: How technology has changed music. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press; and Sterne, J. (2003). The audible past: Cultural
origins of sound reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

42
I acknowledge but decline to review here several branches of music technology
that either died young or were stillborn (e.g. 8-track tapes and DATs).

43
Chang, J. (2005). Can't stop won't stop. St. Martin's Press; Rose, T. (1994). Black
noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary America. Hanover, NH:
Wesleyan University Press.

44
Although two of the four major record labels – Universal Music Group and EMI –
have recently begun to allow digital music retailers to sell DRM-free songs from
their catalogs, perhaps signalling that the pendulum has begun to swing yet again.

45
Foucault, M. (1980). In Colin Gordeon (ed.). Power/Knowledge - Selected
Interviews and Other Wiritings 1972-1977. Brighton: Harvester Press. p. 142

46
Sullivan, M. (2001). African-American music as rebellion: From slavesong to hip-
hop. Discoveries, 3, 21-39; p. 22

47
Von Eschen, P. M. (2004). The Real Ambassadors. In Uptown Conversation: The
New Jazz Studies. (R. G. O’Meally, B. H. Edwards, and F. J. Griffin, eds.). New
York: Columbia University Press, 2004; pp. 189-203.

48
Ibid, p. 190

49
Ibid, p. 200

50
Rose, Black Noise.

51
Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.

52
Schloss, J. G. (2004). Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan

53
Ibid, p. 33

54
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The uses of the ‘people’. In In other words: Essays toward a
reflexive sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; p. 155.

81

55
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare and G. N.
Smith, Trans. and Eds.). New York: Internationional Publishers.

56
Adorno, T. W. (2002). On popular music. In R. Leppert (ed.), S. H. Gillespie
(trans.), Essays on Music, pp. 437-469. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

57
Lipsitz, G. (1997). Cruising around the historical bloc: postmodern and popular
music in East Los Angeles. In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures
Reader, pp. 350-359; Stapleton, K. R. (1998). From the margins to mainstream: the
political power of hip-hop. Media, Culture & Society, 20, 219–234.

58
Morley, D. & Chen, K.-H. (1996). Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural
Studies. London: Routledge.

59
Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut 'n' mix: cultural identity and Caribbean music. London:
Comedia.

60
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and
contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

61
Laclau, E. (1975). The Specificity of the Political: Around the Poulantzas-
Miliband Debate. Economy and Society, 5(1), 87-110.

62
Hall, S. (1996). The problem of ideology. In D. Morley and K.-H. Chen (eds.)
Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge; p. 44.

63
Hall, S. (1998) ‘Notes on deconstructing 'the popular'’. In John Storey (ed.)
Cultural theory & popular culture: A reader (2nd Edition). Athens, GA: University
of Georgia Press, 442-453; p. 453.

64
Mueller, J. H. (1938). The Folkway of Art: An Analysis of the Social Theories of
Art. The American Journal of Sociology, 44(2), 222-238.; Samson, J. (2001).
Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music. West Nyack, NY: Cambridge
University Press; Washington, S. (2004). ‘All the things you could be by now’:
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and the limits of avant-garde jazz. In
Uptown conversation: The new jazz studies. (R. G. O’Meally, B. H. Edwards, and F.
J. Griffin, eds.). New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. pp. 27-49

65
Becker, H. (1982). Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

66
Burns, K. (Producer). (2001). Jazz [Television series]. Washington: WETA

82

67
Lipsitz, G. (2004). Songs of the unsung: The Darby Hicks history of jazz. In
Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies. (R. G. O’Meally, B. H. Edwards, and
F. J. Griffin, eds.). New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 9-28; p. 11

68
Smithsonian Institution (2006, February 22). Hip-hop comes to the Smithsonian.
Downloaded February 28, 2006 from
http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/nmah_hip_hop_advisory.pdf

69
Campbell, D. (1960). Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought as
in other knowledge processes. Psychological Review, 67, 380-400; p. 396

70
Dawkins, R. (1989). Memes: the new replicators. In The Selfish Gene, pp. 189-
201. Oxford: Oxford University Press; p. 192.

71
Kubler, G. (1962). The shape of time: remarks on the history of things. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.; p. 7.

72
Ibid, p. 82.

73
Dannen, F. (1990). Hit men: power brokers and fast money inside the music
business. New York: Times Books.

74
Kubler, The shape of time, p. 6.

75
Jameson, F. (1990). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Durham, NC: Durham University Press; pp. 4-5

76
Jameson, F. (1979). Reification and utopia in mass culture. Social Text, 1, 130-
148.

77
Gross, L. (1995). Art and artists on the margins. In L. Gross, ed., On the Margins
of Art Worlds.

78
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (R.
Nice, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

79
Gross, Art and artists, p. 3

80
Ibid, p. 14

81
Cage, J. (1973). Silence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

82
Chang, Can’t stop won’t stop, p. 122.
83

83
Thomas, D. (2002). Hacker culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, p. 131.

84
Meyer, L. B. (1961). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

85
Keil, C. (1994). Motion and feeling through music. In C. Keil and S. Feld (eds.),
Music grooves: Essays and dialogues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 53-
76.

86
Frith, S. (1996). Performing rites: On the value of popular music. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press

87
Adorno, On popular music, p. 442.

88
Ibid, p. 446.

89
Lomax, A. (1962). Song structure and social structure. Ethnology, 1(1), 425-451,
p. 435.

90
Ibid, p. 439.

91
Barthes, R. (1977). Musica practica. In Image – music – text. (Stephen Heath,
Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 149-154.

92
Ibid, pp. 151-152., emphasis in the original.

93
Attali, Noise, pp. 4-5

94
Ibid, p. 144

95
Hebdige, Cut 'n' mix.

96
Ibid, p. 87

97
Ibid, p. 109

98
Ibid, p. 14

99
Becker, Art worlds.

100
Bourdieu, Distinction.
84

101
Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973-1974, Winter). Uses and
gratifications research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509-523.

102
Frith, Performing Rites, p. 276.

103
Ibid, p. 272.

104
Ibid, p. 102.

105
Ibid, p. 63.

106
Meyer, Emotion and meaning in music.

107
Frith, Performing rites.

108
Attali, Noise.

109
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (Second Edition). Oxford,
UK: Blackwell.

110
Giddens, Central problems in social theory.

111
Monge, P. R., & Contractor, N. S. (2003). Theories of communication networks.
New York: Oxford University Press.

112
Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

113
Watts, D. J. (1999). Networks, dynamics, and the small-world phenomenon. The
American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 493-527

114
Mayer, J. D. (2005). A tale of two visions: can a new view of personality help
integrate psychology? American Psychologist, 60(4), 294-307; p. 296.

115
Ibid, p. 297.

116
Monge & Contractor, Theories of communication networks, p. 11.

117
Ibid, pp. 69-70

118
Dawkins, Memes, p. 196.

85

119
Cross, I. (2001). Music, cognition, culture and evolution. Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, 930, 28-42; p. 31, emphasis in original.

120
Bourdieu, Distinction.
86
Chapter 2 – Configurability and Crisis

In the course of history, the various arts change not only their content
and style, but also their relations to each other, and their place in the
general system of culture, as do religion, philosophy or science. Our
familiar system of the five fine arts not merely originated in the
eighteenth century, but it also reflects the particular cultural and social
conditions of that time.
- Paul Oskar Kristeller
1

I think that the laptop is a folkloric instrument of our time.
- Osvaldo Golijov
2

In 1830, Hector Berlioz was still a young Parisian composer with a growing
reputation and a promising career ahead of him. However, he was already embroiled
in the financial difficulties that would dog him for the rest of his life. To help make
ends meet, he accepted a simple job, far beneath the capabilities and stature of a
composer whose grand orchestral work Symphonie Fantastique had premiered earlier
in the same year, to both fanfare and controversy. As he relates in his memoirs,
3

Berlioz was given the task of correcting proofs of musical scores for local music
publisher Eugène-Théodore Troupenas. Some of the scores, including works by
Beethoven, had been edited by François-Joseph Fétis, a professor at the prestigious
Paris Conservatory, a stalwart member of the French musical establishment, and a
sometime mentor to the younger composer.
Berlioz worshipped the recently deceased (and not yet canonized) Beethoven
as a “modern master,” the “king of kings,” and a “great Homeric mind,”
4
and
consciously modeled aspects of both his life and his compositions after the elder
87
composer’s. When he discovered that Fétis, in editing Beethoven’s work, had
“corrected” some of the notes to suit his own harmonic principles, he was appalled at
the “incredible audacity” of these “insolent modifications.”
5
As Berlioz later wrote,
he instantly resolved to prevent Troupenas from ever publishing the offending
scores:
‘What?’ said I to myself; ‘they are making a French edition of
the most marvelous instrumental works ever brought forth by
human genius, and because the publisher has called in the aid
of a professor who is drunk on his own vanity . . . therefore
these monumental works are to be mutilated, and Beethoven is
to submit to corrections like the veriest pupil in a harmony
class. No, indeed, that shall never be.’
6

True to his word, Berlioz spread the news about the forthcoming publication
and its revisions throughout the Parisian music community, from the Société des
Concerts to the Opéra. Eventually, he raised such a furor that Troupenas was forced
to withdraw Fétis’ revised score, and to publish “the original text.” Not content to
celebrate his victory in private, Berlioz composed a monologue in his subsequent
work, Lélio, in which the title character excoriates “the desecrators who dare to
attack original works,” equating their “ridiculous outrage to art” with the actions of
pigeons who defecate on public sculptures and then “strut about with as much pride
and satisfaction as if they had laid a golden egg.”
This incident drove a wedge between Berlioz and the French musical
establishment that would undermine his career for the rest of his life (it wasn’t until
1850 that he was finally awarded his first and only institutional sinecure, as Librarian
at the Paris Conservatory). However, Berlioz later wrote that he didn’t regret the
88
consequences of his attack on Fétis, because “I was even more his enemy than he
was mine, and I could never think of his attempt on Beethoven without quivering
with anger.”
7

Despite the many difficult years he had spent between authoring Lélio and his
memoirs, Berlioz was probably telling the truth when he wrote that he had no
regrets. By the time he completed the book, in 1854, he could be confident that
history would vindicate him. Not only was his place in the French musical pantheon
securely established, but the rest of the world had come around to seeing things his
way.
The model of music and society which Berlioz had propounded in his youth,
premised on the supremacy of genius and the inviolability of artistic vision, was still
relatively new. Although many elements of this aesthetic ontological framework had
their origins in Enlightenment-era philosophy, they only began to crystallize into a
coherent worldview around the turn of the 19
th
century. The Parisian musical
establishment of Berlioz’ youth had come of age before this crystallization. Berlioz,
arguably, was among the first to come of age after it. But by the middle of the
century, the Romantic era was in full swing and the new paradigm was ascendant.
Berlioz could rest assured that most, if not all, of his readers would view his
“defense” of Beethoven (himself well-enshrined in the canon by this point) as both
principled and reasoned.
Many readers of Berlioz’s memoirs today no doubt feel just as sympathetic to
his cause as did his contemporary readers. In the century and a half since the
89
memoirs were published, the notions he fought so fiercely to defend have become
thoroughly enmeshed in our system of thought, and in the institutions that govern art
in society, to the point that we have come to take them for granted. However, as I
will argue in this chapter, I believe this era may be nearing its end. The rapid pace of
technological development in the past three decades has helped to effect
paradigmatic changes in the way we make and experience music, forcing us to
reevaluate our most fundamental assumptions and bringing theory increasingly into
conflict with practice. I consider it entirely likely that, a generation from now,
readers of Berlioz’s memoirs will have to struggle to understand what motivated his
vitriol against Fétis, and, finally understanding, will marvel at the quaintness of his
ideas.
The Modern Ontological Framework
In order to discuss how things are changing, we must first establish what they
are changing from. The ontological framework that Berlioz embraced, which we may
as well call, for lack of a better term, the “modern” framework, consisted of far more
than simply rushing to the defense of genius. This elaborate and robust system of
thought, which has remained dominant during the last two centuries, was the first to
elevate art above other fields of human endeavor, the first to recognize the artist as a
separate class of individual, and the first to place such a premium on originality. In
fact, the entire framework as it existed by the end of the 20
th
century can be
understood in terms of a series of binary distinctions, including:
• An art as opposed to a craft
90
• An artist as opposed to an audience
• An original as opposed to a copy
• A performance as opposed to a composition
• A figure as opposed to a ground
• Materials as opposed to tools
As I will discuss in the following pages, each of these distinctions has its own
philosophical origins, serves its own social functions, and is perpetuated through its
own set of institutional foundations. Collectively, they have amounted to a
remarkably durable and flexible framework that has survived centuries of social and
technological upheaval.
Origins of the Modern Framework: Art vs. Craft
The elevation of Art-with-a-capital-A to its own stratum of human endeavor
is perhaps the most essential defining characteristic of the modern ontological
framework. As Kristeller
8
demonstrates, ancient and medieval societies did not
distinguish between the categories we now refer to as art, craft and science; nor did
they distinguish between aesthetic beauty and moral good as independent concepts or
frames of reference. In his words, writers in these periods
were neither able nor eager to detach the aesthetic quality of . .
. works of art from their intellectual, moral, religious and
practical function or content, or to use such an aesthetic
quality as a standard for grouping the fine arts together or for
making them the subject of a comprehensive philosophical
interpretation.
9

Thus, the ancient Greek term for art, tekhne, may also be translated into
English as “skill,” “craft,” “method,” or “system,” and applied to shoemaking or
91
shipbuilding as easily as to painting and sculpting. A similar breadth of interpretation
may be applied to the equivalent Roman term, ars. Classificatory systems such as the
seven “liberal arts” and the nine muses only began to crystallize during later
antiquity, and as Kristeller argues, these systems were fluid and ever-changing,
consistent only insofar as “poetry and music are grouped with some of the sciences,
whereas the visual arts are omitted.”
10
In the late middle ages, seven “mechanical
arts” were added to match the liberal arts, introducing a rudimentary distinction
between intellectual and practical pursuits, but even within this schema, painting and
sculpture remained relegated to the (inferior) mechanical sphere, while mathematics
and astronomy remained in the (superior) liberal sphere.
Only in 1790, with the publication of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment,
did Western culture begin to arrive at the definitive understanding of art that we have
taken for granted in the two intervening centuries. Kant is credited as the inventor of
modern aesthetics, not because he was the first to propose that diverse arts may share
traits in common, or that they may collectively constitute a discrete field of human
endeavor, but because he “drew together all of the various strands of eighteenth-
century aesthetics and fitted them into his larger philosophical scheme,”
11
thus
justifying such arguments, and helping them to become the basis of institutionalized
philosophies.
Kant’s schema distinguishes the experience of gratification (getting what we
want) and the experience of goodness (getting what we expect) from the aesthetic
experience of beauty, which he argues is fundamentally “disinterested” pleasure.
12
In
92
other words, our aesthetic response to a beautiful object exists regardless of our
relationship to or desires surrounding that object. This is because aesthetic judgments
are based on pure intuition, which exists prior to practical or conceptual
understanding. Thus, we may find people, places, or works of art beautiful regardless
of other negative associations we attach to them. For instance, I may reprehend
Wagner’s anti-Semitic mythologizing, but I’ll happily sit through a live performance
of the entire Ring Cycle as often as I can.
This last point suggests another important facet of Kantian aesthetic
philosophy: namely, that beauty can inhere both to the natural world and to man-
made objects.
13
Within the modern ontological framework, the notion that beauty can
be simultaneously man-made and prior to logical categorization allows for the
emergence of a vital distinction: among man-made objects, those which serve no
function other than their inherent beauty are classified, definitively, as art. Mere
functional objects, regardless of the skill involved in their production or the beauty
of their form, are relegated to the category of craft. As art historian James Trilling
put it in a recent lecture: “Unlike the arts that we call art, the arts we call craft have a
built-in standard, a test of practicality to pass.”
14

If the general concept of art as we now understand it is a fairly recent
invention, the categorical status of music and its relationship to other arts has also
been fluid throughout most of history, crystallizing only in the modern era. In the
ancient world, music was not initially understood as a discrete practice; what we
would today consider musical performance was traditionally grouped, along with
93
dance, as a constituent element of poetry. As with the terms tekhne and ars discussed
above, the ancient Greek term mousike “was not confined to music; it encompassed
euphony in poetry and rhythm in gymnastics,” and could even be used to describe
“the spiritual harmony of a soul in balance.”
15
After Pythagoras’ investigation of
music’s relationship to mathematics, however, this began to change. By late
antiquity, and into the Renaissance, music (more specifically, music theory) was
widely considered one of the liberal arts – the only one of today’s “fine arts” to hold
that distinction. However, throughout much of history, according to Kristeller, music
has teetered on the brink between its roots in poetical praxis and its Pythagorean
elevation to the realm of mathematical theory.
As art and science increasingly diverged during the Enlightenment, and
disciplines such as painting and poetry became definitively classified as fine arts,
music faced something of an identity crisis. On the one hand, the rise of opera re-
cemented music’s relationship to poetry and theater. On the other, the rekindled
interest in Pythagorean notions of “music of the spheres” after the Baroque period,
and the increasing scientific fascination with musical prodigy, reinforced its ties to
mathematics. Music’s unique ability to straddle this divide has arguably only been
achieved with the theoretical separation of musical composition as a creative act (i.e.
art) from music theory as an analytical practice (i.e. science), a distinction first
proposed by Jacobus Pontanus in 1600 and well-enshrined in the philosophy of art
by Kant’s time.
16

94
Origins of the Modern Framework: Artist vs. Audience
The distinction of the artist as a separate class of individual, and the
formation of an audience in contradistinction, is another philosophical process that
closely parallels the elevation of art to a discrete class of human endeavor. However,
the relationship is not interdependent; although the category of the artist would be
meaningless without the category of art, the reverse does not apply: the concept of
art could easily exist without requiring the existence of artists. Thus, the emergence
of the artist as a unique class of individual demands to be understood as a
philosophical development on its own terms.
Throughout both ancient and medieval history, art was considered to be
fundamentally teachable. Skill, it was assumed, was transmissible from teacher to
student, cemented through practice, and passed on again to the next generation, along
with any functional refinements that may have been developed along the way. In this
respect, portraiture, sculpture and music were understood to operate in much the
same way as blacksmithing, masonry, or any other skilled trade.
17

However, the rise of scientific discipline and the simultaneous elevation of
the arts to a putatively higher sphere of human endeavor at the outset of the
Enlightenment produced some unanticipated consequences. Scholars began to realize
that, although the scientific revolution was propelling the technological knowledge
and capacity of contemporary Europeans far beyond the achievements of antiquity,
aesthetic achievement appeared to be at best consistent with, and by some opinions,
inferior to,
18
the work of ancient artists. Clearly, these scholars reasoned, there must
95
be some functional difference between scientific and artistic capacity undergirding
this growing achievement gap. One logical answer to this conundrum was that, while
scientific expertise was completely transmissible, allowing consecutive generations
of scholars to build cumulatively upon one another’s work, artistic skill must be
somehow inherent to the individual, and therefore both unteachable and non-
cumulative.
19

Thus were born two enduring ideas that have gained much currency within
the modern ontological framework: talent and genius. These two interrelated
concepts are difficult to definitively distinguish from one another, and some may
argue they differ only in terms of scale. The American Heritage Dictionary, for
instance, defines the trait of talent as “a marked innate ability, as for artistic
accomplishment,” and the trait of genius as “a strong natural talent, aptitude, or
inclination.”
20
However, I would argue that there is actually a functional difference
between the two terms, reflecting two variant philosophies of art, or two classes of
artist, that both compete with and reinforce one another within the modern
framework.
Talent, as the dictionary definition suggests, reflects a greater-than-usual
innate capacity for artistic accomplishment. The logic of the concept of talent
suggests that while art is teachable, it may be taught more easily and effectively to
some than to others. An artist, therefore, is someone who has taken advantage of his
or her native talent to become proficient in a given artistic discipline. Art, in this
96
model, becomes merely a craft without a practical function, and the role of an artist
is to become proficient at the production of beauty.
The concept of genius suggests a different approach to art and artistry.
Although the term dates back to antiquity (the American Heritage Dictionary cites
Roman mythology’s use of the word to describe a “tutelary deity or guardian
spirit”
21
), our modern use of the term begins with Kant. In the Critique of Judgment,
Kant argues that artistic geniuses are those who do not simply follow the aesthetic
codes of their times; rather, by producing innovative work, they change the codes
themselves.
22
This innate capacity for aesthetic innovation, which is called
“imagination,” allows geniuses to translate their own aesthetic experience to other
individuals, through the medium of art. Thus, in post-Kantian aesthetic theory, the
terms “genius” and “artist” are often treated as virtually synonymous. In this model,
the role of a true artist is simply to innovate. Self-styled artists who fail to innovate
or to communicate their aesthetic visions effectively are simply pretenders to the
throne; called to greatness, perhaps, but not chosen.
Gross
23
describes a gradual shift in the definition of artistry, analogous to my
distinction between talent and genius. The earlier definition, he writes, emphasizes
virtuosity in execution, measuring the ability of the artist against some idealized
form. As Kristeller
24
observes, this concept was championed by The Earl of
Shaftesbury, around the turn of the 18
th
century. The second definition of artistry
Gross describes is not predicated on the skill evident in the artist’s work, but rather
on the innovation evident in the artist’s ideas. The sincerity and therefore the quality
97
of an artist, according to this definition, could be inferred not from the objective
faithfulness of his work to its subject or its style, bur rather from his idiosyncratic
subjective distortion of the subject or style.
This latter definition, along with the image of the artist as the innovative and
exceptional genius and the necessary relegation of the remainder of society to a role
of mere appreciation (or worse, lack of appreciation), came to dominate the
discourse of art by the early-to-mid 19
th
century. As Gross observes, this concept
grew in prevalence and power as both a result and a contributory factor of the
increasing Western preoccupation with the individual, beginning in the Renaissance
but achieving dominance in the Romantic era.
The social category of “musician” appears to have existed in many cultures
throughout most of human history. However, like the broader category of “artist,” its
definition within the modern ontological framework differs drastically from those of
other times and places. In many traditional and pre-industrial societies, music was
integrated into the fabric of life and shared among the community in a way many
people in our society would find it difficult to imagine. As Attali writes of music in
Europe’s Middle Ages, “The circulation of music was neither elitist nor monopolistic
of creativity … music in daily life was inseparable from lived time, in which it was
active and not something to be watched.”
25
Southern describes a similar dynamic in
West Africa during the slave trade years of the 17th through the 19th centuries,
writing that “for every activity in the life of the individual or the community there
98
was an appropriate music; it was an integral part of life from the hour of birth to
beyond the grave.”
26

Thus, while jongleurs, minstrels, or griots may have inhabited the specialized
social role of musician in these societies, they were not nearly as removed from
quotidian social practice as they are within the modern framework. These musicians
served something akin to a shamanistic function, officiating and organizing musical
events in which every member of society was a vital participant – whether by
singing, dancing, or simply clapping hands. Only after musicians were
professionalized, becoming “bound to a single master”
27
during the late Renaissance
era, did a greater gulf emerge between musicians and other members of society,
whose role eventually crystallized under the more passive rubric of “audience.” The
Kantian concept of genius, then, can be understood as the final step in this process,
affirming the separation of artist from audience as both natural and inevitable.
Blacking
28
provides additional evidence that the category of the musician as
we understand it within the modern framework is highly idiosyncratic, and that our
concept of musical genius is a social construction. In the course of his
ethnomusicological fieldwork among the Venda people of the Northern Transvaal,
Blacking came to wonder how it was that every individual he encountered had a
degree of musical competence witnessed only among a special few in Western
culture. Rejecting localized biological anomaly as an explanation, Blacking
concluded that all humans have an innate capacity for a highly sophisticated level of
99
musical accomplishment, but that most cultures, including our own, tragically fail to
nourish this capacity.
The editors of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert
Performance have recently provided support for Blacking’s argument. Their book
offers a broad survey of recent psychological research suggesting that, for highly
accomplished individuals (in music as well as other fields), the influence of native
“talent” is dwarfed by the influence of “deliberate practice” (self-directed and
strategically planned skill acquisition).
29
In other words, although we may differ
from one another to a limited degree in our native capacity to produce music, the
cultural concept of musical exceptionality suggested by the terms “talent,” “genius,”
and “musician,” and taken for granted within the modern ontological framework, are
almost entirely the products of social construction.
Origins of the Modern Framework: Original vs. Copy
The idea that an artist’s work occupies a place of distinction, apart from all
other objects both natural and manufactured, is closely tied to the philosophical
notions of art and artistry described above. If art is a discrete category of human
endeavor, and an artist is an exceptional member of society, then the work he
produces must necessarily be equally distinct from all that surrounds it. This
distinction is evident in two defining features that are ascribed to a work of art in the
modern ontological framework: its originality and its uniqueness.
The concept of originality applies to the artist as much as to the work of art
itself. In essence, the logic of this concept suggests that no other individual could
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have produced this work of art. As Kristeller observes, the idea shares its
Enlightenment-era provenance with the others I have discussed above: “such
dominating concepts of modern aesthetics as taste and sentiment, genius, originality
and creative imagination did not assume their definite modern meaning before the
eighteenth century.”
30

However, the definition of originality arguably evolved in subtle ways along
with the definition of artistry. During the formative years of the modern framework,
when artistry was defined in terms of virtuosity, originality was more of a functional
constraint than an ideal. Only Bach could have produced Toccata and Fugue in D
Minor, this logic holds, because he alone possessed the mastery of both the
instrument and the aesthetic codes. As the badge of artistry moved from virtuosity to
innovation, and from objective fidelity to subjective distortion, the definition of
originality necessarily changed as well. Only Van Gogh could have produced Starry
Night, this newer logic holds, because only his personal vision could have translated
a normal landscape into such an idiosyncratic image.
The concept of uniqueness offers a different form of distinction than the
concept of originality. According to the logic of this concept, a given work of art is
unlike any other object in the world. As Benjamin observes, the value of uniqueness
to art can be traced back much farther than the modern framework: “The uniqueness
of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition.”
31

This uniqueness, he argues, has traditionally engendered an “aura” of authenticity
around works of art, tying them to the unique cultural circumstances that produced
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them and to the unique cultural interpretations of their local and contemporary
audiences.
However, Benjamin argues, industrialization ushered in an era of
“mechanical reproduction” of art, which fundamentally changed the ways in which
we understand a work’s uniqueness and authenticity. In an age when industrial
processes can produce a painting or sculpture more flawless than the “original” it is
based upon, and when emerging creative media (such as film, photography and
sound recording) are made explicitly for mass production, the aura surrounding a
work of art withers and dies.
Despite (or because of) the death of aura, Benjamin continues, the importance
of authenticity has only increased – to religious proportions. “The function of the
concept of authenticity remains determinate in the evaluation of art,” he writes.
“With the secularization of art, authenticity displaces the cult value of the work.”
This shift from aura to authenticity is effected through an evolution in the definition
of uniqueness, similar to the shift in the definition of originality I discussed above. In
Benjamin’s words, the “uniqueness of the phenomena” that possessed aura in
traditional society is “displaced by the empirical uniqueness of the creator or of his
creative achievement.” Again, the locus of distinction within the modern ontological
framework shifts away from the work itself, and toward the artist, whose vision and
genius cannot be reproduced.
The distinction afforded to a work of art by virtue of its originality or
uniqueness finds its counterpart in the lack of distinction attributed to a copy of such
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a work. Originality and uniqueness each suggest a different definition for this term.
According to the logic of originality, a copy is a work of art that attempts to replicate
either the style or the actual form of another work. Put in other terms, a copy may be
described as a work lacking originality, and therefore undeserving of distinction.
Given a definition of artistry and originality based on virtuosity, copying is more
likely to be explicitly acknowledged, as when a student of Rembrandt’s signs his
master’s name to his own work. Given a definition of artistry and originality based
on innovation, the definition of copying is more likely to be subjective, as when an
art critic or historian avers that Picasso copied Braque, or vice-versa.
According to the logic of uniqueness, the term “copy” suggests either forgery
or mechanical reproduction. In both cases, the uniqueness of a work is challenged by
the existence of another, seemingly identical (and, therefore, interchangeable) work.
If, as Benjamin observes, the age of mechanical reproduction (and the modern
ontological framework) increasingly requires that uniqueness be defined in terms of
the artist rather than the work, we may infer that copies are increasingly defined (and
thereby deprived of distinction) by their lack of authorization – quite literally, by
their theoretical distance from the author.
Thus, a hierarchy of uniqueness begins to emerge. At the top of the pyramid
are theoretically unreplicable works, such as signed paintings, live performances and
handwritten manuscripts. Although the phenomenological experience of these works
may be reproducible through industrial processes, their verifiable connection to the
artist cannot survive the journey. Next in the hierarchy come the constituent elements
103
of the industrial process, such as animation cells, photo negatives, musical
instruments or “master” tapes, which are typically accorded the same assiduously
documented provenance as a “unique” work of art. Next come industrial products
bearing the unique imprimatur of the artist, such as signed or “limited edition”
photographic prints, books or recordings. Near the bottom of the pyramid are
standard mass-produced commercial fare, such as posters, prints, books, recordings
and films. Finally, at the very bottom of the pyramid are the unauthorized “pirated”
copies of such works, reproduced without the legal permission, let alone the
imprimatur, of the artist.

Figure 3: An “Authentic Reproduction” Available at a Retail Store
104
The modern framework offers fairly fixed interpretations of concepts such as
originality, uniqueness, authenticity and copying as they apply to the field of music.
As the Berlioz-Fétis imbroglio demonstrates, one of the foundational premises of this
framework is that an artist’s authority (in every sense of the word) extends across the
gulf introduced by mechanical reproduction. Put another way, Berlioz emphasized
that the physical act of copying or reproducing a score does not give the copyist any
right to alter its contents – the originality and uniqueness of the underlying
composition are preserved regardless of the mode of expression of that composition.
This remarkably durable idea, which denies even the possibility of originality or
uniqueness (and, therefore, of artistic expression) being introduced in the act of
reproduction, was applied to sound recording as well, when it emerged around the
turn of the 20th century. As I will discuss at greater length throughout this work, it
has also become one of the primary assumptions upon which intellectual property
law is currently rooted.
Origins of the Modern Framework: Performance vs. Composition
The modern framework’s emphasis on the inviolability of an artist’s vision,
when applied to music, tacitly relies upon another relatively new idea: namely, that
music exists both prior to and independently of its expression. This distinction is
typically represented in terms of the composition/performance dichotomy, although
“expression” can certainly refer to recordings and printed scores as well.
Kristeller argues that the concept of the musical composition as an
independent work of art was introduced to Western philosophy in 1600 by the
105
Bohemian Jesuit Jacobus Pontanus, who placed it on a plane of aesthetic
achievement equivalent to poetry and painting. However, Lowinsky demonstrates
that Swiss poet and scholar Glareanus argued for the primacy of composition over
interpretation a half century earlier, in his Dodekachordon: “Shall we not consider
him who invented the melody of the Te Deum or the Pange lingua a greater genius
than him who later composed a whole Mass on it?”
32

Regardless of its precise origins, most scholars agree that the concept of the
musical composition as a discrete artistic enterprise appears to have emerged towards
the end of the Renaissance period, on the cusp of the modern era (Goehr disagrees,
arguing that the concept of “works as objectified expressions of composers, that prior
to compositional activity did not exist”
33
did not emerge until the end of the 18
th

century). The timing of this shift can be correlated to many of the philosophical
developments outlined above, such as the professionalization of musicianship and
the elevation of art to its own sphere of human endeavor. However, the reification of
musical composition can also be understood as a factor (both dependent and
contributory) of two more or less contemporary technical innovations: standardized
musical notation, which allowed composition to be expressed independently of
performance, and movable type, which allowed musical notation to be produced and
distributed on a massive scale.
One of the many results of the reification of composition was the correlatory
reification of performance and its relegation to a lesser sphere of artistic
achievement. Prior to the development of printing and notation, music was orally
106
(and aurally) transmitted, and performance was everything; without audible
expression, music could not exist. Arguably, from antiquity through the Renaissance,
music represented one of the last bastions of orality in an increasingly literate
society. However, the liberation of composition from performance reversed the logic
of musical expression. No longer did composition comprise a mere element of
performance; it became something necessarily prior to performance, and thus more
essential.
This process parallels the rise of the composer to the pinnacle of the musical
labor hierarchy, as evidenced in the passages from Berlioz’s memoirs quoted above.
This division of labor has only widened in the years between the Romantic era and
the present day. Becker observes that, within the Western classical music tradition,
in the mid-twentieth century, [composition and performance]
occur separately and are seen as two different, highly specialized
jobs. That was not always true. Beethoven, like most composers
of his time, also performed, both his own music and that of others,
as well as conducting and improvising on the piano.
34

This process has also paralleled, and helped to engender, the gradual removal
of musical performance from the public sphere and its sequestering behind the
proscenium (or down into the orchestra pit). As Attali writes, by the 18th and 19th
centuries, “the concert hall performance replaced the popular music festival and the
private concert at court.”
35

Origins of the Modern Framework: Figure vs. Ground
The concepts of “figure” and “ground,” which are essential to our
present-day understanding of musical organization, originate in 19th century gestalt
107
psychological theory. According to The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, the
terms relate to a “characteristic organization of perception into a figure that ‘stands
out’ against an undifferentiated background.” Such perceptual organization can be
subjective, contingent, and changeable: “What is figural at any one moment depends
on patterns of sensory stimulation and on the momentary interests of the
perceiver.”
36
In one classic illustration of this point, a drawing of an hourglass,
chalice or candlestick can resolve itself into a drawing of two profiled faces and then
switch back again for any given viewer within the span of a few seconds (see Figure
4). While the figure/ground distinction is typically observed in regard to visual
stimuli such as this, it has been conclusively demonstrated in the case of auditory
perception as well. This is commonly referred to as the “cocktail-party
phenomenon,”
37
describing our “capacity to attend to just one of several
conversations in a crowded room.”
38

108

Figure 4: An Optical Illusion Demonstrating Figure/Ground Ambiguity
The concepts of figure and ground have been applied to music by numerous
scholars over the years. Meyer, one of the foremost Western music theorists
operating within the modern framework, relies upon it heavily. He concedes that
figure/ground distinction may not be as universally recognizable in music as it is in
visual art: “In ‘aural space’, in music, there is no given ground; there is no necessary,
continuous stimulation, against which all figures must be perceived.”
39
Yet, for
Meyer, this is only further demonstration of his fundamental premise that musical
meaning relies entirely upon culturally specific stylistic conventions and cues.
This helps to explain why, elsewhere throughout the book, Meyer confidently
discusses exactly which sonic features correspond to figure and ground in music. He
is specifically describing the Western musical tradition, and thus giving us an
109
excellent description of the prevailing norms within the modern ontological
framework. For Meyer, the “ground” in a musical work can be identified through
two criteria. First, it “must be more homogeneous” and “have a less palpable, well-
figured shape than the other figures of the work so that it is clear that it is not the
chief pattern.” Second, it must “surround the other figures temporally,”
40
ideally
beginning earlier and ending later than the musical figure or figures do. For Meyer, a
“well-figured shape” can apply to melodic, harmonic or rhythmic articulation,
depending on the form of the composition. In other words, a polyrhythmic pattern
can act as a figure against a uniformly rhythmic ground, a melodic figure can stand
out against a harmonic ground, or a dissonant chord can emerge from an assonant
background. Like all aesthetic meaning in his model of music, the figure/ground
distinction is a factor of our expectations, and of the compositional divergences
therefrom.
Tsur
41
builds on Meyers’ model, focusing on the ambiguities of figure and
ground in both musical composition and performance. Tsur specifically analyzes
Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, which he argues is “quite unlike anything
previously composed for the keyboard” due to the unique ways in which the
composer undermines earlier figure/ground conventions and builds his work around
the subjectivity and contingency of aural perception.
Tsur demonstrates that the rising pattern of three-note figures which give the
“Moonlight” Sonata its distinctive quality are actually quite similar to a passage in
Mozart’s Don Giovanni. However, while Mozart has “deeply buried” the passage in
110
the background of his opera, Beethoven has chosen to highlight it in his own
composition. Tsur emphasizes that he is not accusing Beethoven of theft or imitation;
he is merely observing that a similar musical device has been employed in radically
different ways by the two composers. In his words, “Beethoven took a piece of
ground music, that has a typically ground texture, and placed it in the focus of the
sonata movement dominating for no less than six minutes the musical space.”
By dislodging a musical device from the deep recesses of the ground and
placing it in the figural spotlight, Tsur argues, Beethoven has engineered an
ambiguous composition, in which “‘the momentary interests of the perceiver’ can be
manipulated to a considerable extent by the performer.” To demonstrate this, he cites
two recordings: one in which the performer emphasizes the ground-ness of the
passage, and another in which the performer emphasizes its figure-ness.
If we recall that (per Berlioz
42
, Barthes
43
, and Attali
44
) Beethoven represents
the definitive composer within the modern ontological framework, we may take his
radical technique as an indication of the modern framework’s broader treatment of
figure and ground. This treatment can be summarized in terms of two key elements.
First, figure and ground are signified by stylistically specific musical attributes.
Melodic, rhythmic or harmonic articulation represents musical figuration, while
homogeneity represents musical ground. Second, the dialectical tension between
figure and ground has become an important tool in the arsenal of modern composers.
In order to exploit this tension, composers may transpose musical elements from the
ground of one work to the figure of another, creating the potential for ambiguous
111
interpretation. This process has important ramifications in the age of digital
sampling, as I will discuss at greater length later in this work.
Origins of the Modern Framework: Materials vs. Tools
The distinction between materials and tools is so deeply implicit in
our understanding of art that few, if any, scholars have ever bothered to describe it
explicitly. According to the ArtLex Art Dictionary, material can be defined as “the
substance or substances out of which something is or can be made,” while a tool is
“any instrument or equipment used to produce or learn about art.”
45
The essence of
this distinction, evident both from the definitions cited above and from the common
uses of the terms within the modern framework, can be distilled down to something
paralleling the “natural vs. artificial” Levi-Straussian binary: materials are
unstructured (“substance”), while tools are structured (“instrument”). Put another
way, tools are templates, allowing humans to impose humanly organized structure
(e.g. art) on a chaotic material universe.
Clearly, this distinction raises some problems; paints are no more or less a
product of human industry than are brushes, and a Jackson Pollock painting is
arguably less structured than the sum of its constituent materials. However, for the
bulk of aesthetic discourse within the modern framework, the distinction holds.
Another way to understand the materials/tools distinction in relation to the Levi-
Straussian binary is to consider the following: regardless of their degree of structure
or chaos per se, materials can be considered a metaphorical subset or extension of
112
the natural world, while tools can be considered a metaphorical subset or extension
of human endeavor. In Trilling’s words, a tool “facilitates the work of the hand.”
46

The tools/materials distinction may also be glimpsed as a given element of
other arguments. Gordon, discussing the changing role of technology in human
industry, defines “skill” as “an understanding of the interaction between tools and
materials”
47
–which suggests that the distinction is common enough to require
neither explanation nor acknowledgment. Wroblewski tacitly suggests that “art” is
categorically defined by the distinction between tools and materials. He does this by
making the obverse argument, defining “craft” in terms of “the unification of tools
and materials.”
48
This distinction is made within the terms of a larger argument;
Wroblewski seeks to locate a new form of human creative endeavor – computer
interface design – definitively within the old art/craft binary. That contemporary
technologists such as Gordon and Wroblewski would examine the relationship
between tools and materials, while few if any modern art theorists have,
demonstrates the degree to which our understanding of art depends upon this
distinction. Such deeply-rooted assumptions only enter our consciousness and our
discourse when a major paradigmatic shift threatens to destabilize the very
ontological framework upon which they are premised.
Just as tools are defined as “instruments” within the modern framework’s
broader discourse of art, musical instruments represent the primary toolset within the
field of music. Their structure determines the locus of aesthetic possibilities available
in the musical work they produce (for instance, the 88 keys on a tempered piano do
113
not readily allow for microtonal melodic variation). However, music’s intangibility
and invisibility make it more difficult definitively to identify the materials involved
in musical production. Traditionally, everything from sound waves and the air they
travel through to abstract musical notes and rhythms to musical styles and codes to
actual compositions have been treated as the material acted upon when music is
produced.
Within the modern framework, discussions of the Western classical tradition
(which tends to emphasize composition over performance) treat the more abstract
elements (e.g. notes and styles) as materials for the composer to work with.
However, discussions of popular and folk music traditions (which place more of an
emphasis on performative interpretation) often refer to the songs themselves as
“material” for the performer to work with. Meyer unconsciously reflects this in his
differing use of the term. Discussing the general principle that musical styles vary
from culture to culture, Meyer argues that they “are not based upon universal natural
relationships inherent in the tonal material itself.”
49
However, discussing research on
Jamaican folk music traditions, Meyer writes that “the folk singers themselves
recognize the difference between the fundamental substratum of the oral material
handed down to them and their own creative actualization of that material.”
50
There
can be little doubt from the context of these two quotes that Meyer is referring to
tonal elements as material in the first case and to actual compositions as material in
the second.
114
Institutional Foundations of the Modern Framework
The modern ontological framework, characterized by the six binary
distinctions described above, has held sway in Western culture for two centuries,
surviving numerous technological, social and aesthetic changes over the course of its
ascendancy. This durability can be attributed in large part to its emplacement within
a dense thicket of what Becker refers to as “art world” institutions. He makes the
argument somewhat succinctly:
For a symphony orchestra to give a concert . . . instruments must have
been invented, manufactured, and maintained, a notation must have
been devised and music composed using that notation, people must
have learned to play the notated notes on the instruments, times and
places for rehearsals must have been provided, ads for the concert
must have been placed, publicity must have been arranged and tickets
sold, and an audience capable of listening to and in some way
understanding and responding to the performance must have been
recruited.
51

As Becker’s description suggests, the institutions comprising the art world(s)
for music may be educational, professional or commercial in nature. I would add
legal institutions to this list, reflecting the increasingly central role of intellectual
property as an element of commercial music practices within the modern framework.
As you may observe, these institutions serve many of the same functions as the
regulatory institutions I described in my first chapter. In point of fact, I would argue
that, in many instances, musical regulatory institutions and “art world” institutions
are one and the same.
In other words, the institutional context surrounding musical production and
consumption serves both a constraining and an enabling role, reinforcing the
115
ontological framework and serving as a boundary for the processes of regulation and
resistance I described in the previous chapter (see Figure 5). Although a thorough
accounting of all the ways in which the modern framework is institutionally
entrenched would require a book-length treatment of its own, I will briefly outline
some key examples below.

Figure 5: Reciprocal Relationship Between Framework and Institutions
One of the early developments within the educational institutional context
was the shift from community-based learning and a guild-based system of
apprenticeship to a modern academic pedagogical model rooted in universities,
academies, and conservatories. Kristeller
52
argues that such a shift among visual
artists in 16
th
century Florence played a vital role in the elevation of painting and
116
sculpture to fine arts – and thus, we may conclude, in the shaping of the modern
framework. Attali supports this conclusion, arguing that “the conservatories were
charged with producing high-quality musicians through very selective training,”
53

thus institutionalizing the separation of artist from audience and amateur. By the end
of the 18
th
century, this institutional shift had become widespread across Europe. The
Paris Conservatory, for instance, home to Fétis and, later, to Berlioz, was founded in
1795 – five years after the publication of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.
In addition to signifying the elevation of music to a fine art and serving as
“special mechanisms [to] sort out artists from nonartists,”
54
pedagogical institutions
supported (and continue to support) the other foundational assumptions of the
modern framework as well. They reinforce through repetition and convention the
other binary distinctions I described above, distinguishing innovation from imitation,
performance from composition, figure from ground, and materials from tools in the
very language of musical scholarship. Today, the logic of the modern framework
underpins virtually all Western music education, from conservatories to
kindergartens, constraining resistance and impeding institutional change. As
Jorgensen argues (and advocates), to dislodge it would require nothing less than “a
revolution in the institution of music education; a pervasive, systemic, ongoing and
radical intervention in the status quo.”
55

The professional institutions surrounding music are equally supportive and
constituent of the modern framework. As Gross argues, “the ideology of talent and
individuality . . . is congruent with the institutional structure of the official, elite art
117
worlds.”
56
Gross refers both to educational systems that reserve training in aesthetic
competency for a small elite and to professional systems of accreditation (e.g. art
galleries, record labels, published criticism) that are institutionally and economically
premised on the scarcity of art and artists. He argues that the combined effect of
these systems fulfills the post-Kantian definition of art as something irrelevant to and
apart from daily life, banishing aesthetic practices and products to a cultural
“reservation.” Attali
57
traces the historical development of this cultural banishment in
the musical sphere, describing the gradual process whereby musical production has
become increasingly professionalized and institutionalized, from the first salaried
court musicians of the feudal era to the popular music stars of the present day.
In the professional institutions surrounding the visual arts, the original/copy
distinction is enforced both through the practice of signing artworks and through the
system of provenance research, which uses “paper trails” and other forensic evidence
to link given works back to the artists who created them. In the field of music, a
given composer or performer may have a “signature sound,” but due to the nature of
recording and mass production, uniqueness and originality are established mainly
through legal means, which I will discuss more fully below. In both music and the
visual arts, professional critics serve as the official arbiters of originality, declaring
some artists innovative and dismissing others as merely derivative. Even if critics
may disagree about which artists deserve which descriptions (although they tend to
agree far more often than not, especially as the years expand between artistic
118
production and criticism), they are nearly unanimous in the opinion that innovation
and imitation are opposite to and incompatible with one another.
Commercial music art world institutions help to sustain the modern
framework as well. Live music typically occurs in designated performance venues,
which architecturally segregate performers from the audience and often make group
participation (e.g. dancing, clapping in time, or singing along) difficult or irrelevant
at best. The vast bulk of venues increase this already wide gulf by incorporating
amplification and transmission technology – such as microphones, sound systems,
video cameras and screens – into the concert experience, technologically enforcing
the unidirectionality of musical expression. These interventions both reinforce and
render invisible the core assumptions of the modern framework. As concertgoers, we
are unlikely to question why the performer holds a microphone and we do not; after
all, we’ve likely paid to become a member of the audience, and it’s our privilege to
hear the artist perform. If we wanted to hear ourselves make music, we could simply
stay at home and sing in the shower.
Likewise, the marketing and rhetoric that characterize the recording industry
tend to emphasize the exceptionality of artists. Countless instances of news, reviews
and advertisements invoke the Romantic notion of genius, suggesting that the
recording industry is structured as a meritocracy, and that its primary function is to
discover, facilitate and share the work of those rare individuals whose native musical
capacity vastly outstrips that of the common individual. I personally remember my
own naïve surprise when, as an intern at a major record label during my final year in
119
college, I realized that, to the A&R executives I worked for, the functional definition
of “genius” was simply the capacity to sell a hundred thousand records. This reverse
logic, so tacit within the industry that it need never be expressed outright, flies in the
face of the mock-meritocratic rhetoric of television shows like American Idol and the
unwaveringly fawning interviews and reviews featured in popular music magazines
and on MTV.
Of course, the Romantic notion of enduring, uncontestable genius is
fundamentally at odds with the increasingly abbreviated fashion cycles of the
modern recording industry. (For an in-depth discussion of the economic, social and
industrial factors underpinning this acceleration, see Wicke
58
, Adorno
59
, Paddison
60

or Caves
61
). No amount of rhetoric can hide from the astute observer that last year’s
genius is today’s tabloid tragedy, or that this year’s genius likely shares the same fate
in due time. The industry has responded to this apparent disjuncture with a brilliant
rhetorical innovation: the now-standard narrative of success, failure and redemption
that characterizes quasi-documentaries such as VH1’s popular television show
Behind the Music and E!’s popular show True Hollywood Stories.
These narratives teach us that a given recording artist’s fall from grace is
neither the result of a fickle audience changing its tastes nor of a fickle industry
shedding its waste. Rather, it is presented as a natural, if regrettable, consequence of
the artist’s coping with his or her personal demons (a definitively Romantic notion),
exacerbated by the rigors of the road and/or the demands of fame. The inevitable
“comeback” of an artist (though he is unlikely to re-attain the heights of his initial
120
renown, he may still win a Grammy or two) at the conclusion of a narrative cements
the Romantic mythos, reestablishing the artist’s exceptionality by trumpeting the
power of his genius over whatever personal failings he may possess. This 15-to-20-
year cycle also conveniently reintroduces the recording artist as a commercially
viable property just in time to capture a whole new generation of consumers.
If the educational, professional and commercial institutions comprising the
art world for music primarily reinforce the modern framework by emphasizing the
exceptionality of art and artists, many of the framework’s remaining binaries are
supported through legal institutions. Originality and uniqueness, for instance, are
both defined and policed through the application of copyright law. According to
Attali, French copyright was first extended to musical scores in 1527 (less than a
century after Gutenberg introduced his printing press), offering publishers the same
exclusive rights over reproduction and sale that were then applied to literary
publishing. However, he also observes that copyright control was not accorded to
composers themselves until 1786. Attali argues that the timing of this shift is
evidence that “in the beginning, the purpose of copyright was not to defend artists’
rights, but rather to serve as a tool of capitalism.”
62
Without disputing him, I would
add that the shift also coincides with the birth of the modern framework.
In America, printed scores were accorded copyright protection at the dawn of
the Republic, in 1790. However, copyright has been extended to numerous other
forms of musical expression in the years since then. Public performances were first
covered in 1889. Mechanical reproduction, a right currently applied to songs on CDs,
121
was introduced in 1909 to cover piano rolls. In 1972, nearly a century after the
invention of recorded sound, a new kind of copyright was developed to describe the
performances (rather than the compositions) captured on records. Television
broadcasts and jukebox playback first were added in 1976.
63
Today, all of these
copyrights and more are used commonly in the music industry, creating a dense web
of overlapping and interweaving protections that constantly is tested and
renegotiated through legislation, litigation and contractual bickering.
The role of musical copyright in enforcing the unique/copy distinction is
fairly narrow in scope, but nonetheless vital to our understanding of music within the
modern framework. For any given musical event, it makes little sense to apply the
binary at all. Performances are both intangible and fixed within a certain place and
time; therefore their uniqueness can never be questioned. Compositions, which are
defined by their existence prior to expression within the modern framework, are not
only intangible, but invisible and inaudible as well; in their case, there is no unique
artifact to be copied. Thus, the unique/copy binary may only be applied to recorded
musical expression, in the form of either a score or a recording. Demonstrably
unique artifacts of musical expression may exist, such as handwritten scores or
“master” tapes, but as I have discussed above, the uniqueness of these objects is
enforced primarily through provenance research.
The vast bulk of musical expression, however, is mass-produced. Printed
scores or manufactured phonorecordings may not be unique in the sense that applies
to handwritten manuscripts, but their place in the hierarchy of uniqueness, which
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distinguishes them from otherwise identical unauthorized and “pirated” scores and
recordings, is enforced entirely through the institution of musical copyright. Given
the overlapping history of industrial development and copyright law’s various
extensions to emerging media and behaviors, I would argue that maintaining the
hierarchy of uniqueness for mass-produced musical expression is, in fact, both its
raison d’etre and its foremost function.
However, music copyright law supports other elements of the modern
framework, as well. While it primarily enforces the unique/copy distinction in the
context of authorized mass-production, it is most often applied to the original/copy
distinction in the context of litigation over the authorship of a song. Typically,
“experts” in the field of music are called upon as witnesses to testify whether a given
composition crosses the invisible line separating legitimate influence from
illegitimate plagiarism. In other words, there can be no objective method for
distinguishing between originality and copying, so the best judgments of those
steeped in the modern framework are relied upon to decide which shades of gray
legally should be rendered “black,” and which ones “white.”
Despite their necessary imprecision, the judgments of these experts are
considered more consequential legally than the perceptions of the composers
themselves. For instance, in the well-known suit Bright Tunes Music Corp. v.
Harrisongs Music, LTD,
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former Beatle George Harrison was convicted of
plagiarizing a song previously recorded by the Chiffons, despite the court’s
acknowledgment that he did so without conscious knowledge or intent. Thus, the
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regulatory power of the judicial system has been employed to maintain rigidly a
definitive binary distinction underpinning the modern framework, even as it
acknowledges the imprecision and subtlety of the creative process involved in
musical production.
The performance/composition distinction is also reflected both in the
structure of copyright law and in the institutional structures that surround it. The fact
that one variety of copyright applies to musical compositions, while another applies
to phonographic recordings of performances, is perhaps the most obvious instance of
this dichotomy. However, the binary distinction can be observed at every level of
copyright’s application to musical practice. Another example is to be found in the
institutional structure of music licensing. Even for the variety of copyright that
applies solely to compositions, one type of license is applied to the performances of
that composition, while other types of licenses are applied to other uses. Within the
U.S., these separate licenses are policed by separate organizations – with collection
agencies such as ASCAP, BMI and SESAC focused on performances of licensed
compositions, the Harry Fox Agency focused on mechanical reproduction of licensed
compositions, and music publishers themselves licensing such uses as
“synchronization” of a composition with a movie or videogame.
Finally, we may observe support for the figure/ground distinction in the
application of copyright to musicological structure. Melody, which is considered the
definitive figural element within the modern framework, is the only component of a
musical composition that is unambiguously accorded copyright protection (lyrics are
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protected as well, but for now let us ascribe to them the status of “non-musical”
compositional components).
Other musical elements, such as harmonies, chord structures, and rhythmic
patterns, which are more likely to be treated as ground than as figural within the
modern framework, are generally grouped by law under the category of
“arrangements.” According to the 1976 Copyright Act, arrangements only may only
qualify for copyright protection under one of two conditions: they must be created by
the copyright owner of the “original work” (e.g. the melody), or created and
copyrighted with the owner’s consent. As Krasilovsky and Shemel observe, most
newly composed and recorded music fails to meet such criteria: “arrangements used
on popular records rarely qualify for copyrighting under either of these conditions.”
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Thus, in one fell swoop, modern copyright law legally mandates a distinction
between musical figure and ground, and reinforces the creative primacy of the
composer and the inviolability of his work that constituted such radical ideas in
Berlioz’s youth.
In short, the educational, professional, commercial and legal art world
institutions surrounding musical practice and production provide considerable
support for the modern ontological framework, reinforcing the binary dichotomies
that characterize this paradigm in theory, structure and practice. But why should this
be? What incentive is there for such institutions to play a role in enforcing the
boundaries of musical practice and innovation? There are two possible answers to
this question, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The first answer is
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inertia, or simple force of habit. According to this hypothesis, art world institutions
emerge to serve narrowly defined purposes in particular places and times, but
become more complex, broad-reaching and resistant to change over time, like a pearl
slowly accreting around a grain of sand.
The second possible answer is that art world institutions support ontological
frameworks, consciously or reflexively, as a form of self-preservation. According to
this hypothesis, the musical codes, practices and technologies allowable within a
given ontological framework are limited to those which will not threaten to
undermine the institutional structures comprising those art worlds, and, more
broadly, a society’s cultural infrastructure.
I argue that both of these hypotheses are true. Institutional inertia can
certainly be observed in structures ranging from our labyrinthine and conflicting
legal system our outmoded and overtaxed educational system, but there is also ample
evidence that the modern framework helps to sustain the larger social, political and
economic systems in which the art world institutions are located. In the following
section, I will briefly discuss a few scholarly perspectives regarding the modern
framework’s social functions, to illustrate this dynamic.
Social Functions of the Modern Framework
It is neither a surprise nor a coincidence that the ascendancy of the modern
ontological framework has paralleled the rise of modern social, political, and
economic structures. As I have argued throughout this work, our musical codes and
practices are intimately tied to our social imagination, and they play an active role in
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the cognitive, psychological and social processes by which we orient ourselves in
relation to others. Thus, we may observe, in the architecture of the modern
framework, conceptual patterns that both reflect and help to constitute the
organizational patterns upon which modern macro-level institutions are founded.
The philosophical distinctions between art and craft and between artist and
audience have helped to remove aesthetic activities from their historical place at the
center of social practice and to sequester them within what Gross calls a cultural
“reservation.” As a result of this sequestration, Gross argues, art’s traditional
communicative function as the repository of a shared cultural lexicon has been
eroded to a significant degree, leading to a fracturing of meaning and erecting higher
barriers to cultural participation.
66
This shift, as other scholars have discussed from a
variety of perspectives, contributes functionally and ideologically to macro-level
processes ranging from class differentiation to capitalism to industrialization.
Bourdieu
67
argues that the seeds of modern class structure were sown in
Kant’s Critique of Judgment. As you will recall, one of the foundations of Kant’s
arguments is that aesthetic experience is distinguished by its “disinterestedness,” and
that objets d’art are similarly distinguished by their absence of functionality.
Bourdieu turns this argument on its head. An absence of functionality, he argues, is a
bourgeois luxury that most members of the working class can scarcely afford. Even
within the universe of objects that we traditionally think of as purely aesthetic (e.g.
paintings and songs), Bourdieu argues that “intellectuals could be said to believe in
the representation . . . more than the thing represented,” while the working classes
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are primarily interested in such objects for the sake of the representative function
itself.
68
In other words, the wealthier and more powerful classes are distinguished by
focusing on how art means, rather than what art means.
Therefore, Bourdieu argues, the status of a given object as “art” is not
determined by any inherent quality it may possess, or by the intentions of its creator,
but rather by “the aesthetic point of view” that is applied to the object. And because
“a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural
competence” that comes with the privilege of extensive cultural education, “this
predisposes tastes to function as markers of ‘class’.” This argument casts Kant’s
aesthetic gaze in a new light – the bourgeoisie’s cultivation of disinterestedness
becomes a form of “moral agnosticism” that desensitizes them to the consequences
of their material and cultural power.
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I find Bourdieu’s monolithic approach to class (he refers to the working class,
en masse, as “the people”
70
) somewhat lacking in nuance, and strenuously disagree
with his suggestion that the sole meaning conveyed by aesthetic activities, objects
and tastes is their social classificatory content. Nonetheless, I find the observation
that aesthetic taste functions as a marker of social class extremely convincing. Few
contemporary Americans would argue with the premise that opera (whatever its
pedestrian origins) is largely the province of the wealthy and powerful. This is
evident in a variety of ways: understanding and enjoying the music requires
specialized cultural competence, concert tickets tend to be quite expensive, and the
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concerts themselves tend to be steeped in other markers of class, such as tuxedoed
ushers, well-dressed patrons, lavishly appointed performance venues, and so on.
However, social classification is not the only social function associated with
the artist/audience binary. Some scholars have suggested that the emergence of these
two categories parallels (and gives weight to) the emergence of the
producer/consumer binary that underpins the modern capitalist economic system.
Attali puts it most bluntly: “the artist was born, at the same time as his work went on
sale.”
71
Conversely, I would argue that the audience was born at the same time as
music became a commodity. In preindustrial societies, music served as a marker of
identity, and participation in musical events would help to solidify an individual’s
sense of belonging to a larger group (national anthems are a vestige of that tradition).
In a consumer society, however, cultural participation is defined not in terms of what
we produce, but in terms of what we acquire. Music still functions as a marker of
identity, but now it is the music we play on our car stereos and iPods, the music we
list and link to in our MySpace profiles, the music we choose on a jukebox in a
crowded bar, that communicates our group affiliations and cultural attitudes.
Similarly, the organization of art worlds within the modern framework may
be understood as models for political relations in the modern state. The hierarchy of
aesthetic engagement (with a handful of artists at the pinnacle, followed by a class of
professional critics, followed a class of connoisseurs or what Kristeller calls an
“amateur public”
72
, followed by the ranks of the uninitiated at the bottom) closely
parallels the hierarchy of political engagement (with a handful of politicians at the
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pinnacle, followed by a class of professional pundits, followed by a class of civically
engaged citizens, followed by the ranks of the disenfranchised at the bottom).
Whether we are discussing cultural production, class structure, economic structure,
or political structure, then, the net effect of the modern framework’s art/craft and
artist/audience binaries are consistent and clear: stratification, hierarchy, and
disenfranchisement, or as Levi-Strauss put it, the loss of a society in which “the
whole of the population participates.”
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Blacking draws similar conclusions, arguing that the specialization of
musical performance is anathema to social and individual well-being. However, he
doesn’t consider this aspect of the modern framework to be merely generative of the
social conditions I described above; he brings the argument one step further, arguing
that the very purpose of the modern framework is to bring about and sustain these
conditions. In his words, the “anesthetization” of musical ability in Western
industrial society is solely a function of political and commercial forces which
require a passive audience of citizen consumers. To ascribe this development to
aesthetic progress or any other inherently apolitical process, Blacking argues, is to
get it backwards: the whole notion of progress exists precisely to justify the ongoing
division of labor and the consolidation of political and material power into the hands
of a few. “Does cultural development represent a real advance in human sensitivity
and technical ability,” he asks, “or is it chiefly a diversion for elites and a weapon of
class exploitation? Must the majority be made ‘unmusical’ so that a few may become
more ‘musical’?”
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While Blacking unequivocally supports the latter conclusion, I accept his
argument with the same caveats I bring to Bourdieu’s. “Class exploitation” is, in my
opinion, both a clumsy and a misleading term. It is clumsy because, as Birmingham
School scholars and others have argued in recent years, the concept of monolithic,
Marxian masses negates the very diversity of symbolic language and expression that
makes the structural denial of cultural participation such a tragedy in the first place.
It is misleading, I would argue, because the elites, such as they are, are neither all-
knowing nor all-powerful. It would be absurd to suggest, for instance, that cultural
dominance is the only motivation sufficient to bring an audience to a performance of
Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro; the opera offers both rich opportunities for aesthetic
pleasure and a thinly-veiled political subtext that challenges, rather than reinforces,
the primacy of the elite classes.
Other elements of the modern framework help to sustain the logic of modern
social, economic and political structures as well. What is the “hierarchy of
uniqueness,” after all, but a model for the hierarchy of production and consumption
in a commercial culture? Whether we are discussing cars or clothing, the same
system of categorization pertains. At the top are the most unique and expensive
goods, tailored to fit the needs of elite customers by the product designers
themselves – the Queen of England drives a custom-made Bentley, and Julia Roberts
wears dresses made exclusively for her by Giorgio Armani himself. Beneath this tier
are the luxury goods, the quality of which are guaranteed by the imprimatur of a top-
tier brand and the well-publicized patronage of the elites – standard issue Bentley
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automobiles and Armani clothes. Beneath this tier are the mass-produced goods –
Hondas and Fords, Gap jeans and Armani Exchange t-shirts. Finally, at the bottom,
are the untouchables of the commercial sphere – chopped-up “beater” cars, cheap
“knock-offs” and bargain-branded sweatpants – goods too cheap and flimsy to
warrant an imprimatur of any kind.
Further examples abound. The performance/composition dichotomy may be
understood as a model for the division of labor in a Fordist industrial organization, in
which the production of a complex product is broken into simpler component parts,
each of which is accomplished by a laborer with “specialized” skills. The elevation
of melody to figural status and the relegation of harmony, rhythm and other
“arrangements” to mere background may be understood as a model for the separation
of the individual from the collective in post-Enlightenment social organization. The
materials/tools distinction supports the propertization of culture: if musical
production may be described in terms just as easily applied to the timber or fishing
industries (entrepreneurs exploit resources, using tools to turn materials into
products), then it is only natural they should be accorded the same legal privileges
and protections to profit exclusively from their work.
In short, the modern ontological framework, which bounds the discourse of
music and thus constrains the processes of musical regulation and resistance, both
owes its continuance to and helps to sustain the larger macro-level institutions that
govern and constitute modern society – economically, politically and
organizationally. Overwhelming evidence suggests that this arrangement is one of
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necessity, rather than simply circumstance; the musical codes, practices and
technologies that are allowed within the modern framework collectively help to
support macro-level social structure, while potentially destabilizing influences are
prohibited.
The New Terrain: Configurable Culture
As I have alluded to earlier, ontological frameworks do eventually break
down under the pressure of overwhelming social or technological reorganization.
While a robust framework may be flexible and strong enough to encompass all
manner of unforeseen changes, some shifts in terrain are simply too great not to rock
even the firmest edifice. We may be witnessing just such a change today. Despite
two hundred years of institutional entrenchment and cultural inertia, rapid changes in
the technology governing the production, distribution, and consumption of mediated
communication currently threaten to undermine the very foundations of the modern
framework. In the hothouse atmosphere of the networked age, a myriad of new
cultural practices have blossomed and bloomed – practices that have no place in the
taxonomy of modernity’s prim gardens. Whether the modern framework will
somehow adapt to these changes, or break under the strain and give way to a new
framework, remains to be seen; it is, in fact, a question I will attempt to shed some
light upon later in this work. However, before I address that question, I must more
fully describe the technological and cultural changes underway today.
Recent advances in communication technology, including but not limited to
such developments as the personal computer, Internet connectivity, accessible media
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editing software (e.g. GarageBand), peer-to-peer file-sharing software, time-shifting
devices (e.g. TiVo), portable media devices (e.g. iPods), portable communication
devices, and writable high-capacity media (e.g. DVD-RWs), have enabled a
paradigmatic shift in the quality and range of relationships individuals may build
with one another, with media organizations, with the products distributed by those
media organizations, and with other forms of creative expression. The social
dimension of this paradigmatic change is commonly referred to as remix culture, a
term generally attributed to Lessig
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, after the practice of “remixing,” or re-editing
media files such as songs. However, for reasons I will discuss shortly, I feel the
terms configurability and configurable culture are more accurate and appropriate
ways to describe the technological and social aspects of this new paradigm.
What, if anything, is new about configurable culture? Arguably, culture is by
definition something infinitely plastic and permutable. No two people express
themselves or understand the world identically, and everyone changes his
perspective over time, largely in response to the people and the expressive materials
he comes in contact with. It logically follows that everyone, in his own way,
contributes to the ongoing reconfiguration of culture, whether through a calibrated
cultural intervention (e.g. art, rhetoric, resource investment) or simply through the
quotidian, and largely unconscious, rituals and interactions of daily life.
What differentiates the newly ascendant paradigm from previous epochs is
the reciprocal interdependence between communication technology and culture, to
the point of symbiosis; in other words, they may no longer be understood in the
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absence of one another. To put it another way, the power and scope of
communication technology has expanded to the point where mediated expression
and interaction have come to approach, and in some cases, to rival, the fluidity,
subtlety and power of unmediated culture. Although research aimed at directly
measuring “presence” and other experiential attributes of emerging media can only
hint at the enormity of this change, we may find additional evidence for it by
cataloging the unique qualities of these new, transformative technologies and by
examining the new social behaviors that both exploit them and help to influence their
development.
Like most paradigmatic shifts, the changes in the quality of media technology
and the nature of mediated behavior are more gradual and emergent than sudden and
immediate. Clearly, society has coevolved with communication technology from
prehistory to the present day, and never in a linear or predictable way. Other scholars
have chronicled the social changes marked by the birth of language,
76
the emergence
of writing and literacy
77
, the development of the printing press,
78
and the mechanical
and electronic storage and transmission of information,
79
to name but a few
milestones.
Similarly, many elements of configurable culture have existed for
generations, from the photographic collage and musique concrete experiments in the
art world of the early-to-mid 20th century, to the samizdat cassette tapes of pre-
Perestroika Soviet culture, to the dub plates, sound systems and “versions” of 1960s
Jamaican music, to the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre of children’s literature
135
in the 1980s. I myself participated in a proto-remix ritual for many years; along with
other fans of the cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the mid-1980s, I would
engage in an ongoing verbal dialogue with the movie screen each weekend –
participating in and contributing to an ever-changing catechism between the
audience and the film’s script.
I could continue to list such historical antecedents to configurability for some
time. However, the configurable media experiences of the present day clearly
outnumber, overpower, and outpace any of these examples by orders of magnitude.
And, most importantly, the ease-of-use of today’s creative technologies and
networked organization of today’s communications infrastructure ensure that the
tools of media configurability are accessible to hundreds of millions of
interconnected individuals. As a result, we have a media and communications system
that is historically unique, possessing all of the following attributes:
- Instantaneous. Electronic and digital media transmit information at light
speed.
- Global. Although there are still countless individuals, communities and
even regions of the globe with limited or no access to telephones, let
alone the Internet, the number and geographic span of those that are
connected is greater than at any point in history.
- Multi-sensory. Standard media technology delivers video, spatialized
audio, and text. Experimental technology also provides olfactory and
kinesthetic/haptic information.
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- Archival. Older media elements may be stored and retrieved at virtually
zero incremental cost or effort.
- Transmissible. Media elements may easily be transmitted between two
individuals, or multicast from one individual to many. Greater distances
no longer introduce significant noise into signals, nor do they represent
significant cost increases. Along with archivability, this feature helps
produce the “time-space distanciation” Giddens
80
discusses.
- Permutable. Media elements (such as songs, articles, photos, etc.) may
be accessed in any order, or used in conjunction with any other media
elements.
- Editable. Media elements may be easily broken down into smaller
components (such as samples or quotes), which in turn may be re-
assembled, permuted, or broken down further. The Planck-length
equivalent for media elements (e.g. the smallest possible irreducible
kernel) is often below the range of human perception, and becomes ever
smaller as higher-definition encoding, storage, and rendering technologies
continue to emerge.
- Networked. The new communications infrastructure is networked, rather
than hierarchical, permitting one-to-one, one-to-few, or one-to-many
contact between any connected individuals. This infrastructure is crucial
to what Castells
81
calls “network society” and “the space of flows.”
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- Interoperable. Unlike earlier technological eras, in which separate
communicative functions were served by distinct technologies (e.g.
electromagnetic broadcasts for TV/radio, film for video editing, copper
wires for phone calls, etc.), all functions are now converging on the same
digital platform. This means that, for the first time, all cultural
participants can create, retrieve, edit and share audio, video, images and
text using a single tool (e.g. an Internet-connected computer).
- Customizable. Database software, menu-based interface design, and
other technologies offer users of communication technology an
unprecedented degree of customizability and control over the nature and
presentation of the information they send and receive. However, these
same technologies also allow third parties, such as marketing companies,
an unprecedented ability to “target” messages to individual recipients.
- Hackable. Every technology is hackable (e.g. can be reverse-engineered,
or used for purposes other than those it was created for), but new media
technologies, by virtue of being built on a common digital platform,
require fewer skills and tools to be hacked. This fact is further
compounded by the networked communications infrastructure, allowing
hacks (many of them malicious, such as trojans, worms, and viruses) to
travel autonomously throughout the network.
The net effect of these developments in communication technology is a
system within which expression itself, recorded and stored within the distributed
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nodes of an ever-growing and ever-changing network, joins language and other
forms of symbolic and metaphorical representation as a vital element of the
expressive palette. There can be little question that this shift enables an
unprecedented plasticity (every cultural artifact can be used by anyone, in any way,
to create new cultural artifacts of any kind) and recursivity (expression becomes
expression becomes expression), drastically expanding the locus of expressive
possibilities. I am tempted to invoke a metaphor commonly used in software circles
to describe a drastic enhancement in the toolset or interface for a given program:
upgrading from a box of eight crayons to a box of 128. However, in this case a more
appropriate metaphor would be something along the lines of upgrading from the
abstract concept of “color” to a box with an infinite number of crayons in it.
The social consequences of this shift to a configurable communications
infrastructure, and the uses to which we will eventually put these new tools for
creative expression, are far from certain. As communication scholars have long
argued
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, new technologies do not necessarily require specific uses. Even
technologies designed and distributed explicitly for a given purpose are routinely
applied to tasks far afield from the intentions of their makers (as when we use a
cigarette lighter to open a bottle of beer, or an electric power line as a conduit for
Internet connectivity). Generally, society finds its own uses for new technologies,
and helps to shape the future direction of technological innovation by doing so. In
the case of configurability, as I have discussed, the holistic infrastructural change has
been an emergent consequence of a myriad of smaller, more purposeful changes; the
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net result would have been difficult or impossible to predict based solely on one
subcomponent of the larger process.
However, it is already clear that configurable technologies have given rise to
a multiplicity of new cultural practices running the gamut from art to
communications to business and marketing. Several theorists in addition to myself
have attempted to grapple with the scope and consequences of these changes in
recent years, by integrating these new cultural practices into some larger frame of
reference. As I alluded to above, Lessig is credited with coining the term “remix
culture,” which he uses to describe a creative environment in which the ability to edit
and redistribute mediated expression – such as audio and video – is democratized as
a result of lower costs and lower barriers to expertise. Despite the techno-pizzazz of
his terminology, Lessig downplays the culturally disruptive potential of new media
technologies, evidently for rhetorical purposes. His legal advocacy for thinner
copyright protection and a more expansive creative commons is premised on the
notion that remix art simply uses new tools to do what’s always been done – namely,
to put one’s own “spin” on previously existing cultural ideas and creative
expressions. In his words, “remix in art is, of course, nothing new. What is new is the
law's take on this remix.”
83
Manovich makes a similar claim, arguing that “the two
kinds of remixability [symbolic and technological] are part of the same
continuum.”
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Although I agree wholeheartedly with Lessig’s call for a reexamination of
intellectual property law and a legal recognition of the right to remix, I must disagree
140
with his and Manovich’s claims of continuity between past and present cultural
practices. Riffing on a melody written by someone else using a saxophone or piano is
a fundamentally different process than chopping up a recording of someone else’s
rendition of a melody and then resequencing it to produce your own melody using
computer software. To be sure, the sense of cultural give-and-take, of participation in
a larger dialogue, remains. But a vital degree of abstraction – a buffer, if you will,
between the participants in the dialogue – has been removed. The locus of action is
no longer limited to the idea of the music. What is acted upon in these new practices
is the musical expression itself. To put it a slightly different way, the processes of
cultural digestion, assimilation, and reformulation, which were historically limited to
the confines of our own minds, have been externalized. They now take place in plain
sight (or sound), where we can experiment with cultural permutation
phenomenologically and collectively via technological interface, rather than simply
letting them reverberate within our mind’s eye (or ear).
Another point on which I differ somewhat with Lessig is the question of
scope. He presents the new communications infrastructure and toolset primarily as a
boon to production, suggesting that the democratization of access to the means of
creative expression will suddenly turn every willing consumer into a producer.
However, he also evinces some ambivalence about these claims, referring to the new
generation of musical remixers as “a whole host of ‘composers’”
85
, using quotation
marks as a tacit qualifier (we may call them composers, but perhaps they aren’t
really, he seems to suggest). Manovich is more willing to examine the impact of new
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technologies on consumption, observing that cultural artifacts such as music and film
have become increasingly “modular” and “granular,”
86
cut down into chapters and
songs instead of movies and albums, thus allowing them to be accessed and used in
novel recombinatory ways by end users.
However, neither scholar addresses what seems to be the larger picture here:
namely, that new technologies do not simply enhance preexisting practices of
cultural production and consumption; they help to undermine the producer/consumer
dichotomy itself. The question of whether cultural production and consumption
constitute a binary opposition, or simply exist at opposite ends of a long and fluid
spectrum, was effectively moot during much of the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries. If any
vast region of “gray area” lay between the two poles, it was inaccessible to most
members of society because of the limits of commonly available media technologies.
With the emergence of configurability, however, we have seen a rapid colonization
of the gray area between consumption and production, and an explosion of new
cultural practices that range from what a real estate broker might refer to as
“consumption-adjacent” (e.g. user-created music play lists; DVD bonus features;
videogame character setup and design) to those which might be termed “production-
adjacent” (e.g. mash-ups; remixes; machinima; game mods). Such behaviors would
not only have been impossible before configurability – many of them would have
been unthinkable.
Configurability and the Mainstream
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At what point does an “underground” cultural practice or community become
so prevalent that it deserves to be called mainstream? And what are the social
consequences of this phase shift? For the past few years, configurability has been
simmering just below the threshold of cultural ubiquity. Less than a decade ago,
many still marveled at the rapidity with which a new movie trailer, political gaffe,
popular song or embarrassing celebrity photograph would appear online, circulating
“virally” through social networks via email, instant messages or Web links. Today,
no such meme can enter the public sphere without instantly becoming the subject of
countless remixes, mash-ups and creative appropriations, which then become
circulated with a rapidity and scope that is often equal to or greater than that of the
artifacts they are derived from. The infamous photo of Elián González at gunpoint,
Howard Dean’s candidacy-killing war whoop, Paris Hilton’s home sex video, and
the clumsy, videotaped broomstick-wielding of a teenage Canadian would-be Jedi
named Ghyslain Raza are just a few of the myriad cultural artifacts that recently
entered popular consciousness in one form, but became enshrined in our cultural
memory only after being refracted through the lens of a thousand subjective
reinterpretations.
Some recent theorists
87
have invoked Habermasian concerns about the effects
of configurability, arguing that, far from becoming an element of the mainstream,
these new practices are undermining the very notion of common culture and
fracturing the public sphere. If each of us has the ability to select and reject the
nature of the information we encounter based on our individual tastes and
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preferences, the argument holds, then each of us will have a completely different
sense of what is going on in the world around us. Furthermore, if each of us has the
ability to alter and recirculate information as we see fit, there can be no confidence in
the quality, veracity, or objectivity of the information we encounter. And if we can’t
agree on a consistent worldview, based on authoritative information, then we can’t
make intelligent collective decisions; in effect, democratic society is doomed in the
era of the blog and the remix.
Others are concerned about the growing prevalence and visibility of
configurable cultural practices for an entirely different reason: they feel that the
commercial embrace of the remix amounts to a form of neutralization. According to
this argument, the ethic of participatory culture that informs configurable practices is
lost, once the institutions comprising the culture industry become involved in the
production and distribution of configurable content. In this scenario, the remix
becomes simply another generic category, a new and exciting flavor of pre-packaged
culture available to paying customers. Doug Thomas makes this argument about “the
culture of bricolage . . . in the consumption of computer software” – in essence, he
decries the very customizability that, in my opinion, underpins configurability. He
writes that, far from being a tool for the empowerment of computer owners, an
accessible and configurable interface only “serves to separate the user from the
machine, effectively rendering the computer as an opaque object.”
88
Galloway
89

echoes this argument in his discussion of Internet protocols as a mechanism of social
control, and Chang
90
, Hebdige
91
and Neal
92
make somewhat analogous arguments
144
about historical musical forms, describing how community-driven musical practices
were appropriated by corporate interests and stripped of their sociopolitical
underpinnings before being marketed to consumers as hip-hop, reggae, and soul
music, respectively.
In short, the increasing prevalence of configurable cultural practices has
evoked concerns among some that individuals will use new technologies to
undermine institutional authority, and concerns among others that institutions will
use new technologies to undermine individual liberty. Both sets of concerns share a
similar premise: if the delicate détente balancing individual freedom against
institutional authority is tipped too far in either direction, the foundation for our
social and political system will erode, conjuring the twin specters of anarchy and
fascism.
Although both arguments have their merits, each has its weak point, as well.
Three decades of postmodern theory have provided us with ample reasons to
question the notion of a master narrative, and to mistrust the authority of
institutionalized information brokers. The idea that society can – and must – agree on
a consistent worldview, supported by a canonical subset of information sources, has
been revealed as a convenient mask for the exercise of power. Haraway famously
dismisses the single-worldview concept as the “god-trick,” equally shunning
uncritical relativism for what she calls “situated knowledge”: the (Aristotelian)
notion that any honest, accurate, and therefore socially egalitarian worldview must
account for a “multiplicity of local knowledges,” due to the unique and limited frame
145
of reference embodied by each member of society.
93
Arguably, this is exactly the
function of remixes, mash-ups, and many other elements of configurable culture:
they are the instantiation of situated knowledges, manifested and distributed via the
very media that were once reserved exclusively for elements of the master narrative.
By this argument, then, it is not democracy per se that is under threat in the age of
the remix, but vested power, enforced by authoritative (or authoritarian) information.
Similarly, concerns that configurable technology (at least when employed at
the “consumption-adjacent” end of the spectrum) will undermine, rather than
enhance, the agency of individual users, echo Marxian fears of “false
consciousness.” People might think they’re being given more control over their lives,
this argument holds, but in reality, they’re being ensnared within an invisible prison,
deprived (like the hapless extras in The Matrix) of even seeing the walls that hold
them.
This argument both underestimates the agency of individuals and
overestimates the powers of institutions. As Frank argues in his analysis of 1960s
counterculture and the media,
94
the relationship between individuals and institutions
in the production of culture has always been more of an ongoing negotiation than a
matter of outright revolution, wholesale appropriation, or pitched battle between
polar opposites. Far from being either a socialist uprising or a cleverly-packaged
marketing ploy aimed at capturing teenage spending allowances, Frank argues, the
counterculture represented a new organizational, aesthetic and ethical paradigm that
corporations embraced wholeheartedly (perhaps to a greater degree than their own
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customers) for their own good. Without such a corporate embrace, which both
mainstreamed and amplified its message, he argues, the counterculture as a social
phenomenon may never have existed. Bernard-Donals supports this contention
through an analogous argument, writing that the relationship between the avant-
garde and the mainstream is essentially reciprocal and symbiotic, rather than purely
combative: “the marginal is dependent upon the canonized, and what’s in the canon
was almost always once at the margins.”
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This symbiotic dynamic, characterized by negotiation rather than all-out
warfare, is even more vital in the age of configurability than it was during the 1960s.
The blurring of the lines and colonization of the gray area separating cultural
production from consumption has just as many implications for the institutions that
comprise the culture industry as it does for the individuals that comprise culture. As
configurability emerges into the mainstream, it is changing the very notion of what a
“mainstream” is, altering the traditional media interaction habits of individuals, the
business practices of media organizations, and thereby requiring a considerable
renegotiation of the relationships between the two. This process can be witnessed in
nearly every sector of the cultural landscape today, and in the practices and products
that traditionally comprise the mainstream.
As I write these sentences, in late Summer 2006, the most culturally
dominant popular song in recent months has been “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, a
collaboration between rapper/singer Cee-Lo and DJ Danger Mouse, who rose to
prominence two years ago through his extraordinarily popular yet unauthorized and
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non-commercial mash-up of Jay-Z and the Beatles, dubbed The Gray Album. In
recent weeks, critics have called the song “the hottest hit of the summer,”
96
“the song
of the summer,”
97
and “clearly the top song of summer 2006.”
98
These assessments
are influenced by market success: the song has already spent 12 weeks on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at second place, and has spent 11 weeks on the UK
Singles Top 75 chart, including a nine-week stint as #1. However, praise for the song
is influenced equally by a less measurable signal of success; namely, that “Crazy,”
itself the product of configurable cultural practices
99
and the first chart-topper by an
underground mash-up artist, has become an extremely popular subject for mash-ups,
remixes, covers, and other creative reinterpretations, hundreds or thousands of which
are widely available through both commercial and “underground” music distribution
channels. In other words, mainstream musical culture at present is both deeply
influenced by and constituent of configurable cultural practices.
Although music is arguably the best-known venue for cultural
experimentation with configurability, it is hardly the only area in which this new
paradigm appears to be exerting a growing influence. As I write, New Line Cinema
is preparing to release a film called Snakes on a Plane, which owes both its
significant pre-release popularity and elements of its plot to innumerable blog posts,
video mash-ups and remixes, doctored photographs, and other configurable cultural
artifacts produced by members of the general public in anticipation of the film’s
release.
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After advance word of the film was leaked via a screenwriter’s blog in the
summer of 2005, the one-two punch of its absurd title and a star turn by Samuel L.
Jackson (perhaps the most remixed and mashed-up actor in cyberspace) attracted
legions of film buffs, satirists and fans to produce “songs, apparel, poster art, pages
of fan fiction, parody films, and mock movie trailers”
100
about the film. The
unexpected buzz influenced New Line’s production and marketing strategy
considerably. The studio undertook additional shooting to add new, racier scenes to
the film – including dialogue that originated in online parodies, such as Jackson’s
expostulation: “I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking
plane!”
101
Additionally, the studio leveraged the advance Internet hype in its own
marketing strategy, offering visitors to the movie’s official site a chance to win
prizes and recognition simply by accumulating votes from other online users in a
contest to be named “the #1 fan” of the film.
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Configurable practices appear to be increasingly influential in the business
and culture of videogames, as well. Today, the title Counter-Strike is the most
popular “first-person shooter” game on the Internet – in fact, it is the most popular in
history.
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According to the Valve Corporation, which runs Steam, the primary
online gaming network that supports such games, Counter-Strike currently garners
roughly 5 billion player minutes per month – more than three times the volume of its
next competitor, Counter-Strike: Source. Third on the list is yet another Counter-
Strike title. Together, these three titles comprise over 92 percent of the total user
minutes on the Steam servers accounted for by the top 35 games combined.
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In the fast-paced business of videogames, in which four or five years
constitutes a new generation of gaming technology (and a new generation of
gamers), it is unusual for a single title to maintain its dominance for even a few years
(although multi-title franchises, such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty can
remain powerful brands for far longer). Thus, it is impressive that the game Counter-
Strike has maintained its high degree of popularity virtually from its initial beta
launch in 1999 until the present day. What is extraordinary, however, is that
Counter-Strike wasn’t created by a commercial game developer, or distributed
initially by a commercial publisher. It began as a “total conversion mod” of another
game called Half-Life. Two fans of the game, Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, decided to
replace its futuristic alien-battling plot and artwork and single-player gameplay with
a more contemporary counter-terrorism-themed plot and artwork, and multi-player
gameplay. Although they retained Half-Life’s “game engine” – the fundamental
software responsible for rendering graphics and organizing the data structure – they
replaced all of the visual and auditory elements driven by that engine with their own
artwork, and reorganized the structure of the game to match their needs.
In 2000, Valve hired Le and Cliffe to create a commercial version of
Counter-Strike, which was released to retailers in time for that year’s holiday season.
The stand-alone retail version of Counter-Strike, unlike the earlier, unofficial
versions, does not require that Half-Life be installed in order to play it. However,
existing Half-Life owners can still freely download the Counter-Strike mod, and the
mod has been bundled with retail versions of Half-Life as a value-added feature.
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Finally, the ethic of configurability is on the ascent even within the rarefied
world of “high art.” In a way, this cultural sector has come full circle. In the years
following World War II, avant-garde composers like Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer
and John Cage – recognizing the aesthetic cul-de-sac presented by Schoenberg’s
twelve-tone compositional technique and the serialist experiments that followed –
began to experiment with sampling, tape manipulation, and sound synthesis to
expand the musical palette beyond the harmonic, rhythmic and timbral limitations of
the traditional Western orchestra. Although these techniques have remained vital
among avant-garde composers in the intervening decades (and have broadened with
the introduction of digital sampling and sound editing), they never achieved the kind
of widespread adoption and mainstream appreciation within the “classical” world
that sample-based musics like hip-hop and techno have achieved among “popular”
audiences and performers.
This finally appears to be changing. In the summer of 2006, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Two channel – which primarily broadcasts opera,
classical music and jazz – initiated a new programming feature: a series of contests
called “Compose Yourself,” inviting listeners to submit their own music to be
featured as on-air programming. The first contest in this series, which is open for
submissions as I write these words, is called “Remix the Ring.”:
You are invited to Remix The Ring! Well, actually just part of
it-the famous Ride of the Valkyries. Download the file of
Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and remix it in any
way you see fit. Mash it, chop it, layer it, turn it upside down.
Your remix can have a dance feel, or be completely avant-
garde. Let your imagination be your guide.
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The CBC has reserved $3,250 in prize money, as well as airtime, to reward
the contest winners. Needless to say, a paid contest, hosted and promoted on the Web
site of a Western nation’s premier classical music broadcaster, inviting people to
inject a “dance feel” into Wagner’s operatic work, is a far cry from the relative
marginality accorded to Henry, Schaeffer and Cage. “Avant-garde” is still a stylistic
option – in this case, the term appears to mean “lack of a danceable beat” – but there
is no question that the configurable techniques themselves are becoming mainstream
fare, even within the classical music community. Furthermore, the CBC is not only
reflecting the growing popularity of the remix aesthetic in its programming
decisions; by soliciting remixes from all of its listeners, rather than established
composers, it is also acknowledging the inherent participatory cultural ethic
associated with the remix movement today. In the days of Henry, Schaeffer and
Cage, the notion of a classical music broadcaster opening its gates to compositions
submitted by its listeners would probably have seemed absurd.
In short, the growing incidence and influence of configurability in the
entertainment industry and other art worlds has neither extinguished art world
institutions, nor lulled individuals into a false sense of control over their cultural
environment. Rather, the introduction of configurable technologies has intensified
and aided the ongoing negotiation between individuals and institutions in the
production, distribution and consumption of cultural information. Many people who
may have listened to music or watched a film passively (or even critically) a decade
ago are now making their criticism manifest, expressing their situated knowledges
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through the medium of the mash-up or the remix. Cultural institutions that may have
relied solely upon market research and rote formula as the keys to profitability a
decade ago are now learning to harness the collective intelligence of their customers
– not only as a way to learn more about their market, but as an engine of innovation
and a means of reanimating moribund styles and material.
However, the process is far from flawless, and the outlook is not necessarily
rosy. For every successful negotiation, there are countless cease-and-desist orders,
hacks, counter-hacks, and other missed opportunities. The problem isn’t necessarily
ignorance or malice on the part of either institutions or individuals, but rather one of
language and precedence. The modern ontological framework, which sets the
boundaries of discourse within which these negotiations take place, is simply being
stretched beyond its capacity by configurable technologies and practices, rendering
meaningful discussion – and therefore effective negotiation – difficult at best. This
becomes apparent when we recall the set of definitive binaries that constitute the
modern framework, and consider their application within the context of configurable
culture.
Crisis: Configurability and the Modern Framework
I have just discussed the ways in which configurability pries apart the
production/consumption dichotomy, revealing an expanse of newly accessible gray
area between the two polar extremes. Earlier, I discussed the role of the modern
ontological framework in sustaining the production/consumption dichotomy, and the
ways in which modern social, economic and political institutions predicated upon
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that dichotomy help to maintain the framework’s dominance. It should come as no
surprise, then, that configurability’s destabilizing influence extends far beyond
production and consumption, to the foundations of the modern framework itself.
The art/craft dichotomy, which is perhaps the most pivotal constituent
element of the modern framework, faces an immediate challenge in the age of
configurability. For just as configurable cultural practices defy the logic of pure
production and consumption, they also defy the logic of pure aesthetics.
Photography, cinema, and recorded music are all widely held to be comfortably
located within the pantheon of legitimate Arts-with-a-capital-A (although each has
its stalwart detractors), taught at conservatories, and picked apart with the same
critical ferocity as is commonly applied to painting or literature. Yet leading
practitioners of each of these fields today routinely use the techniques of
configurability (and thus the language of configurability) to produce their works.
From the composite digital photographs gracing the covers of today’s glossy
magazines (a nose from photo #12 matched with a mouth from photo #27) to the
post-production-centric direction techniques of filmmakers like George Lucas and
Robert Rodriguez (a performance by one actor from take 3 sharing the frame with a
performance by another actor from take 7) to the studio wizardry of music
“superproducers” like the Neptunes and Dan "the Automator" Nakamura (layers
upon layers of diverse samples seamlessly harnessed to a single groove), commercial
and fine artists across a broad spectrum of aesthetic discourses are taking advantage
of the unprecedented opportunities for plasticity and pastiche offered by configurable
154
technologies. Yet if these practices are unequivocally deemed “art,” then what of
production-adjacent practices, such as mash-ups, remixes, and Photoshopping? And
if the rubric somehow stretches to include them, what of configurable practices
located even deeper within the gray area, such as karaoke or anime music videos?
And what of consumption-adjacent practices? In the final analysis, if every
customized MP3 play list and digital photo slideshow is to be considered a work of
art, then the category has lost any vestige of meaning it had within the modern
framework; the line must be drawn somewhere for the category to hold. Yet, as the
gray area between production and consumption becomes increasingly populated with
new cultural practices, the boundary separating art from craft is becoming
increasingly difficult to locate.
A similar ambiguity confronts the artist/audience distinction as
configurability becomes ascendant. From a theoretical standpoint, configurable
practices challenge Kant’s dictum of “disinterested” aesthetic pleasure, which
introduces a distance between artwork and audience that arguably precludes critical
inquiry, let alone tinkering. Instead of enjoying art in reverent awe, an increasing
number of people are confronting it head on, treating artworks as the starting point
for cultural engagement, rather than the endpoint of a one-way conversation. Perhaps
this was always the case on some level; Kant notwithstanding, there is ample reason
to believe that audiences have always had an “interest” in the art they encountered.
However, configurability presents people with the tools to turn that interest into
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expression, allowing them to share their responses with other interested parties, and
to invite responses of their own.
From a practical standpoint, the sheer number of people engaging in
configurable cultural practices undermines the premise of artist exceptionality. If it is
becoming increasingly difficult to say which practices and products qualify as art
and which do not, it is becoming equally difficult to say who is an artist and who is
not. Mid-twentieth-century fine arts movements such as pop and conceptualism
pioneered the concept of curatorial art, suggesting that simply organizing the work of
others is a legitimate aesthetic enterprise in its own right. The rising profile and
power of the DJ in popular musical culture from the 1970s to the present echoed this
elevation of the curatorial role to artist status. Today, however, configurability
allows everyone with an iPod, TiVo, or personal computer to become what Ivey and
Tepper
106
call the “curatorial me,” wading through the volumes of cultural
information now available via digital communication networks and selecting and
organizing subsets of that information for personal or public consumption.
Paired with the power to remix, mash-up, and otherwise reconfigure such
cultural information, the rise of the “curatorial me” makes it virtually impossible to
arrive at a functional distinction between artists and audiences in the age of
configurability. Of course, the traditional rationales of “genius” and “talent” are still
very popular currency, but today these concepts are more amorphous than ever.
What does skill mean in a curatorial context? How can we separate the quality of a
DJ’s work from the quality of the work he is showcasing? If the concept of genius is
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predicated on an artist standing apart from or rising above his contemporaries, how
can we apply it to an artist whose palette consists of his contemporaries’ work? Of
course, there are many potential answers to these questions; remixes and mash-ups
may be understood as the next step in the evolution of subjective distortion, and
therefore proof positive of an artist’s quality, or they may be understood as simply
another form of derivative work, proof positive of an artist’s mediocrity.
These open questions suggest that the dichotomy distinguishing an original
from a copy is as deeply undermined by configurability as are the distinctions
between art and craft or artist and audience. Obviously, the techniques of digital
pastiche, whether applied to images, sounds, video, or other forms of expression, are
premised on the act of reproduction. If the “aura” of the original was threatened by
mechanical reproduction in Benjamin’s day, then the “authenticity” that replaced it is
threatened by digital reproduction today. Technology is no longer being used
primarily to produce straightforward facsimiles, flawed only in their “perfection”
relative to an original work; in its own way, such an act reifies the primacy of the
work being reproduced. Today, configurable technology is often used to distort even
as it reproduces, according little or no primacy to the “original” work.
This subversion of the mechanism of authenticity has its correlative in an
inversion of the hierarchy of uniqueness. The ostensibly unique and irreplaceable
artifacts at the top of the pyramid become immediately suspect; if reproduction has
become the dominant mode of creation, what are we to make of something that
makes grand claims to have been born ex nihilo? It requires the same degree of faith
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and suspension of logic as the story of Adam and Eve. In the meantime, the
untouchables from the bottom of the pyramid – the unauthorized and rough-hewn
reproductions of the economic or cultural underground – have become increasingly
glorified as truly authentic. An excellent example is the burgeoning popularity of
hip-hop “mixtapes,” music collections by aspiring rappers and DJs that eschew
traditional record label distribution (and sample licensing), but often sell thousands
of copies or more. Mixtapes are widely held to be a more genuine reflection of urban
American culture than commercially distributed hip-hop, and ironically (but not
surprisingly) are being used by record labels themselves to identify – and
unofficially promote – promising new acts.
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Configurability challenges the performance/composition dichotomy as well.
One immediate problem is the question of process. According to the modern
framework, composition precedes expression, and is therefore more fundamental and
worthy of our respect and admiration. However, this linear model breaks down when
it is applied to a creative process in which composition requires expression as a
precondition. In its place, we have a cyclical model in which expression and
composition alternate, with no clear origin or terminus: X samples music by Y, who
in turn samples music by Z, ad infinitum.
Further compounding this is the fact that the line separating performance
from composition (like those separating art from craft, artist from audience, and
original from copy) is becoming increasingly difficult to discern. Although some
configurable musical practices involve performative aspects, such as DJs spinning
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vinyl in front of a live audience, such practices are neither necessary to the form nor
clearly demarcated from composition itself. In a way, configurability combines two
preexisting challenges to the performance/composition dichotomy – improvisation
and mediation – into a single, formidable challenge.
Improvisation has been the hallmark of African-American (and, more
broadly, Afro-diasporic) musics for centuries, from the jubas and field hollers of
slavery-era rurality to the jazz and hip-hop of 20
th
- and 21
st
-century urban life. Each
of these forms involves a structure or template within which collective improvisation
can take place, providing a distinctive balance between individual liberty and
communal responsibility. Thus, performance becomes integral to composition; songs
may exist in inchoate form prior to performance, but their expression cannot be
predicted or determined until the moment the music unfolds.
Mediation – the production of music for recorded rather than “live”
expression – is a newer threat to the performance/composition dichotomy than
improvisation, but it predates configurability by decades. As Gracyk
108
argues, rock
music was the first musical form in which the recording – rather than the score, the
live performance, or any other manifestation of the music – was the definitive
artifact. Works like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the
Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds can no more adequately be represented by a live concert
than they can by a series of black marks on a white page. Thus, composition and
performance collapse into a single, indivisible entity. Configurability pairs this
singularity with the collectivity and unpredictability of improvisation – not only are
159
configurable musical forms like hip-hop and mash-ups replete unto themselves
(“autographic,” to use the terminology of Gracyk and Goodman
109
), they are also un-
fixed, living works that may be tailored to the time, place and company in which
they take form.
Configurability (as the word’s second and third syllables may suggest) calls
the figure/ground distinction into question, as well. As I have discussed, the modern
framework defines figuration in terms of specific music elements (e.g. temporal
emplacement within a given sonic ground, melodic articulation against rhythmic
and/or harmonic patterns), and affords composers the ability to produce “ambiguous”
works, in which given compositional elements can be performed as either figure or
ground. With configurability, the distinction is even further eroded. Figure or ground
from one work, when sampled or sequenced, quite literally becomes ground or figure
in another work, as when the “break” from a given song – the disruptive rhythmic
articulation emerging from an otherwise consistent drum beat – is looped to produce
the consistent “breakbeat” serving as the background of a new song.
New technology also allows us to expand our understanding of the sonic
landscape beyond music. Meyer’s argument that “in ‘aural space’, in music, there is
no given ground”
110
rings hollow once we have learned to listen through the
metaphor of sampling. Industrial noise, public conversations, and even
environmental music are all part of our daily soundscape. When music was made
exclusively with acoustic instruments, these noises generally seemed far enough
beyond the locus of compositional applicability as to be rendered irrelevant, or at
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best a diverting nuisance.
111
Today, such noises are a prime subject of sampling, and
thus they become relevant to our musical codes. This relevance turns ambient noise
into an ongoing ground against which all music (and silence) is interpreted figurally.
It is no surprise, then, that the mash-up should emerge in the age of the iPod. We are
now accustomed to hearing two or more musical events at once, on different levels
of perception, as we navigate public spaces while listening to our own private
soundtracks; it was only a matter of time before this schizophonia was addressed
dialectically and aesthetically.
Another effect of sampling technology is that melody has ceased to be the
necessary figural component in compositions; in many hip-hop songs, for instance, a
sampled melodic riff will play in the background while a rapper dominates the
foreground. Given that copyright law and other music institutions are built around
the premise of melodic figuration, this has become a practical problem in addition to
a philosophical one.
Finally, configurability undermines the materials/tools distinction just as it
undermines the other fundamental dichotomies of the modern framework. In 1967,
the philosopher James Feibleman wrote that, because of recent developments in
material science, “the distinction between materials and tools has at last been broken
down. Man constructs the matter he wants in the way he wants it.”
112
One could
make an analogous argument about cultural production today. If the atomization
(literally) of chemical processes drastically expanded the creative horizons for
industrial manufacturing by liberating us from the constraints of preexisting
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chemical formations, then the atomization (figuratively) of cultural processes is
drastically expanding the horizons for creative expression by liberating us from the
constraints of preexisting cultural formations. As Feibleman might say: Man
constructs the culture he wants in the way he wants it.
This atomization of culture undermines the categorical distinctions between
materials, tools and products (e.g. art), because those distinctions are premised on
structure. By the definitions I cited above, materials are chaotic, while tools are
organized. In an age when culture is infinitely permutable, when it can be
decomposed and recomposed as often and as easily as the imagination permits, such
definitions have no basis. Is an MP3 of a song a piece of material, a tool, or a
finished product? The answer, of course, is all three; the categories still exist, but
their definitions have changed from inherent to relational. One man’s product is
another woman’s tool is another man’s material, and so on. As for the Levi-
Straussian binary undergirding the materials/tools distinction, both material and
cultural atomization present a significant challenge. Today, one could argue, either
everything is natural, or nothing is.
In short, configurability presents a significant challenge to each of the binary
distinctions that comprise the core of the modern ontological framework, forcing us
to confront the fundamental ambiguities that have always existed at the heart of those
distinctions. As a result, the framework itself faces a fundamental crisis: either it will
be significantly reworked to accommodate the myriad new configurable cultural
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practices, or it will give way to a new framework altogether; either way, the crisis
demands resolution.
This is not solely an academic concern; the resolution of this ontological
crisis has significant social and political repercussions. Because the framework sets
the boundaries of discourse about music, because music can be considered a form of
cognitive-affective capital influencing macro-level social structures, and because this
capital has been the site of fiercely contested regulation and resistance since the
dawn of recorded history and perhaps for longer, we must acknowledge that the
resolution of this crisis will help to determine the organizing principles of post-
industrial society for years or perhaps for centuries to come.
Of course, no one – not musicians, record executives, federal commissioners,
or even academic theorists – can possibly predict macro-level change, especially on
the basis of purely micro-level events. Yet every lawsuit, every municipal statute,
every aesthetic innovation contributes in some small way to the ongoing negotiation
between institutions and individuals, to the shifting balance of power between
regulation and resistance, and to the eventual resolution of the crisis of
configurability.
In the pages that follow, I will attempt to weave these slim and disparate
strands together into a tapestry that tells a story – in other words, to examine musical
discourse for clues about social change. How are musicians, commercial
organizations, legal institutions, and everyday people reacting to the crisis of
configurability? How are they changing their conceptions of “art,” “artistry,” and
163
“originality” in the context of new technologies and musical practices? Which ideas
are being abandoned, which are altered, and which will be maintained intact? And
what are the potential social ramifications of these changes? In order to address these
questions, I will draw upon interviews with dozens of artists, executives, and legal
practitioners, survey data reflecting the behaviors and beliefs of thousands of
individuals, and a healthy dose of cultural exegesis.
164
Notes to Chapter 2

1
Kristeller, P. O. (1952). The modern system of the arts: A study in the history of
aesthetics (II). Journal of the History of Ideas, 13(1), 17-46; p. 46

2
September 26, 2005, Interview on PRI’s The world. Transcript downloaded 4/4/06
from http://www.theworld.org/globalhits/2005/09/26.shtml

3
Berlioz, H. (1966). The memoirs of Hector Berlioz (R. Holmes and E. Holmes,
Trans.). New York: Dover.

4
Ibid, pp. 46, 59, 135

5
Ibid, p. 193

6
Ibid, p. 193, emphasis in original

7
Ibid, pp. 194-5

8
Kristeller, P. O. (1951). The modern system of the arts: A study in the history of
aesthetics part I. Journal of the History of Ideas, 12(4), 496-527

9
Ibid, p. 506

10
Ibid, p. 506

11
Kant, I. (1996). Critique of judgment [excerpt]. In D. Townsend (ed.), Aesthetics:
Classic readings from the Western tradition. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett; pp.
154-187; p. 161.

12
Woodmansee observes that Karl Philipp Moritz published an essay suggesting the
centrality of disinterestedness to the enjoyment of art in 1785, five years before
Kant’s Critique of Judgment was published. See: Woodmansee, M. (1994). The
author, art and the market. New York: Columbia University Press.

13
Kant, Critique of judgment.

14
Trilling, J. (2005, November 3). The aesthetic of process – and beyond. Lecture
delivered at Alfred University. Retrieved May 18, 2006 from
http://ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/perkins_lect_series/trilling/trillingtalk.html

15
Elias, J. A. (1984). Plato’s defence of poetry. Albany, NY: SUNY Press; p. 2

165

16
Kristeller, The modern system of the arts (parts I and II).

17
Ibid

18
D'Olivet, F. (1997). The Secret lore of music (J. Godwin, trans.). Rochester, VT:
Inner Traditions

19
Kristeller, The modern system of the arts (part II).

20
Definitions retrieved from Answers.com, April 26, 2006.

21
Definition retrieved from Answers.com, April 26, 2006.

22
Kant, Critique of judgment.

23
Gross, L. (1995). Art and artists on the margins. In L. Gross, ed., On the Margins
of Art Worlds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

24
Kristeller, The modern system of the arts (part II).

25
Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The political economy of music (B. Massumi, Trans.).
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1977);
p. 15.

26
Southern, E. J. (1983). The music of black Americans. New York: Norton; p. 7.

27
Attali, Noise, p. 15.

28
Blacking, J. (1974). How musical is man? Seattle: University of Washington
Press.

29
Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Hoffman, R. R., & Feltovich, P. J. (eds.) (2006).
Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

30
Kristeller, The modern system of the arts (part I); pp. 496-7

31
Benjamin, W. (1968). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In
Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace.

32
Lowinsky, E. E. (1964). Musical genius – evolution and origins of a concept – II.
The Musical Quarterly, (50)4, 476-495; p. 479.

166

33
Goehr, L. (1992) The imaginary museum of musical works: An essay in the
philosophy of music. Oxford: Clarendon Press; p. 2.

34
Becker, H. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; p. 10.

35
Attali, Noise, p. 47.

36
cited in Tsur, R. (2000). Metaphor and figure-ground relationship: Comparisons
from poetry, music, and the visual arts." PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for the
Psychological Study of the Arts, article 000201. Retrieved from
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_tsur03.shtml on May 16, 2006.

37
Cherry, E. C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech with one and
with two ears. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 25, 975-979.

38
Beech, J. R., & McKeating, R. L. B. (1980). Comparison between listening to and
shadowing a play for selective attention. The American Journal of Psychology,
93(3), 529-538; p. 529.

39
Meyer, L. B. (1961). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press; p. 186.

40
Ibid, p. 137.

41
Tsur, Metaphor and figure-ground relationship.

42
Berlioz, Memoirs.

43
Barthes, R. (1977). Musica practica. In Image – music – text. (Stephen Heath,
Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 149-154.

44
Attali, Noise.

45
Delahunt, M. R. (undated). ArtLex Art Dictionary. Retrieved May 18, 2006 from
http://www.artlex.com.

46
Trilling, The aesthetic of process.

47
Gordon, R. B. (1988). Who turned the mechanical ideal into mechanical reality?
Technology and Culture, 29(4), 744-778; p. 769

48
Wroblewski, D. (1991). The construction of human-computer interfaces
considered as craft. In J. Karat (Ed.), Taking software design seriously: Practical
167

techniques for human-computer interaction Design. New York: Academic Press; pp.
1-19.

49
Meyer, Emotion and meaning in music; p. 60. [emphasis added]

50
Ibid; pp. 251-252. [emphasis added]

51
Becker, Art worlds; p.2.

52
Kristeller, The modern system of the arts (part I).

53
Attali, Noise; p. 63.

54
Becker, Art worlds; p. 16

55
Jorgensen, E. R. (2002). Transforming music education. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press; p. 146.

56
Gross, Art and artists; p. 14.

57
Attali, Noise.

58
Wicke, P. (1982). Rock music: a musical-aesthetic study. (R. Deveson, Trans.)
Popular Music, 2, 219-243.

59
Adorno, T. W. (2002). On popular music. In R. Leppert (ed.), S. H. Gillespie
(trans.), Essays on Music, pp. 437-469. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

60
Paddison, M. (1982). The critique criticised: Adorno and popular music. Popular
Music, 2, 201-218.

61
Caves, R. E. (2000). Creative industries: Contracts between art and commerce.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

62
Attali, Noise; p. 52.

63
Krasilovsky, M. W. & Shemel, S. (1995). This business of music (7th ed.). New
York: Billboard Books.

64
420 F.Supp 177 (S.D.N.Y., 1976)

65
Krasilovsky & Shemel, This business of music; p. 243.

168

66
Gross, Art and artists.

67
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (R.
Nice, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

68
Ibid; p. 5.

69
Ibid; pp. 2, 29, 47.

70
Ibid; p. 5.

71
Attali, Noise; p. 47.

72
Kristeller, The modern system of the arts (part II); p. 44

73
Charbonnier, G. (1969). Conversations with Claude Levi-Strauss (J. Weightman &
D. Weightman, Trans.). London: Cape. (Original work published 1961)

74
Blacking, How musical is man?; p. 4.

75
Lessig, L. (2005, November 28). Why crush them? Newsweek International, 48;
Lessig, L. (2005). The people own ideas! Technology Review, 108(6), 46-53.

76
Dunbar, R. (1998). Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.

77
Ong, W. J. (2002). Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge.

78
Eistenstein, E. L. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.

79
McLuhan, M. (2001). Understanding media. London: Routledge.

80
Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.

81
Castells, M. (2000). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.

82
Williams, R., & Edge, D. (1996). The Social Shaping of Technology. Research
Policy, 25, 865-99.

83
Lessig, Why crush them?

169

84
Manovich, L. (2005). Remix and remixability. Downloaded July 20, 2006 from
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=19303&page=1

85
Lessig, Why crush them?

86
Manovich, Remix and remixability.

87
Van Alstyne, M. W. & Brynjolfsson, E. (Forthcoming). Global village or
CyberBalkans: Modeling and measuring the integration of electronic communities.
Management Science. Downloaded 9/21/2007 from http://ssrn.com/abstract=756445

88
Thomas, D. (2002). Hacker culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press; p. 147.

89
Galloway, A. (2004). Protocol. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

90
Chang, J. (2005). Can't stop won't stop. New York: St. Martin's Press.

91
Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut 'n' mix: cultural identity and Caribbean music. London:
Comedia.

92
Neal, M. A. (1999). What the music said: Black popular music and black public
culture. New York: Routledge.

93
Haraway, D. J. (1991). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism
and the privilege of partial perspective. In Simians, cyborgs and women: the
reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge; pp. 183-201.

94
Frank, T. (1997). The conquest of cool. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

95
Bernard-Donals, M. (1994). Jazz, rock ’n’ roll, rap and politics. Journal of
Popular Culture, 28(2), 127–138; p. 130.

96
Vaziri, A. (2006, July 20). Haven't heard of Gnarls Barkley? 'Crazy,' their runaway
single, is the hottest hit of the summer. San Francisco Chronicle. Retieved August 2,
2006 from
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/20/DDGB8K1SHC1.DTL

97
Howell, A. (2006, July 31). 'Crazy' for a Summer Anthem. All Things Considered,
National Public Radio.

98
Katz, L. (2006, July 19). ‘Crazy’ love; Artists are mad for Gnarls Barkley song.
The Boston Herald. Section: The Edge. p. 40
170

99
The song’s instrumental track samples Gianfranco and Gianpiero Reverberi's “Nel
Cimitero Di Tuscon” from the soundtrack to the 1968 film Django, Prepare a Coffin.

100
Snakes on a Plane. (2007, September 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Enclyclopedia.
Retrieved September 21, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_on_a_plane

101
Klosterman, C. (2006). The ‘Snakes on a Plane’ problem. Esquire, 146(2).
Retrieved August 2, 2006 from
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/060706_mfe_August_06_Klosterman.
html

102
Snakesonaplane.com, retrieved August 2, 2006.

103
Counter-Strike. (2006, August 1). In Wikipedia, The Free Enclyclopedia.
Retrieved August 3, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike

104
Steam powered game statistics. Retrieved August 3, 2006 from
http://steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html

105
Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). downloaded August 11, 2006 from
http://www.cbc.ca/thering/remix.html

106
Ivey, B. & Tepper, S. J. (2006). Cultural renaissance or cultural divide? The
Chronicle Review, 52(37), B6

107
Jones, S. (2006, April 21). Money in the mixtape; Rappers build street cred, sales
via underground. USA Today, p. 1E.

108
Gracyk, T. (1996). Rhythm and noise: An aesthetics of rock. Durham: Duke
University Press.

109
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols (2
nd

Edition). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

110
Meyer, Emotion and meaning in music, p. 186.

111
Some composers, such as Charles Ives and Charles Mingus, have more directly
engaged such sounds within the context of their instrumental works, but they tend to
be the exception rather than the rule.

112
Feibleman, J. K. (1967). The philosophy of tools. Social Forces, 45(3), 329-337;
p. 334.
171
Chapter 3 – Drawing Lines in the Sand

[T]he distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic
character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary
from case to case.
- Walter Benjamin
1

The line between artist and audience is pretty much gone. I remember
when I got my first digital production rig, I was like, ‘my god, man,
this is like communism – the means of production are in the hands of
the people.’
- Steinski
2

To address the questions I raised in my previous chapter, I relied upon two
sources of data. The first was a survey, fielded in the summer of 2006. Written and
analyzed by myself and Marissa Gluck under the aegis of our consulting firm, Radar
Research, and fielded by another commercial research firm called Intellisurvey, the
survey aimed to quantitatively measure awareness, attitudes and behaviors
surrounding configurable cultural practices in the United States. In all, we surveyed
1,765 U.S. adults aged 18 and older, and the quantitative data the survey yielded
(some of which I will cite in this work) were weighted to represent the U.S. adult
population as a whole, based on the 2000 census. The survey also included an
opportunity for respondents to offer open-ended write-in responses, positioned at the
end of the questionnaire. The open-ended survey question was worded as follows:
“We welcome your general thoughts about remixes and mashups, as well as any
feedback about this survey.” The responses to this question were diverse and
illuminating, and I have cited them liberally in the pages that follow.
3

172
The second data source I relied upon was extensive interviews, conducted
primarily in person and over the phone, with configurable music practitioners, music
industry executives, and music attorneys. If the Radar Research survey was intended
to capture the attitudes and behaviors of people more likely to engage in what I have
termed consumption-adjacent practices, these interviews focused more on the
production-adjacent side of the spectrum. In all, I conducted about 60 hours of
interviews with nearly three dozen sources. Most of these interviews were conducted
in the Fall of 2006; however, some were conducted as early as 2003, and some as
recently as the Fall of 2007. Because the use of language as discourse is so central to
my research premise, I cite my interviews verbatim whenever possible; however, on
some occasions, I have stripped the quotes of extraneous “ums,” “y’knows,” and
half-finished words or phrases, for the sake of clarity on the written page. In no way
have any of these emendations changed or altered the meanings of the quotes
themselves. I also refer to my interviewees by the names they indicated a preference
for – which in most cases is their musical alias, rather than their given name.
Yes, But is it Art?: Configurability and the Art/Craft Binary
In the course of my interviews, the terms “art” and “artist” were commonly
applied to configurable music time and again, by practitioners, executives, attorneys
and others. However, there was widespread acknowledgment, both tacit and explicit,
that these terms are a challenge to define precisely in the context of sample-based
music production, and that the utility of the distinction between art and craft may be
on the wane.
173
Si Begg, a London-based techno DJ and producer, echoed a prevailing
sentiment, saying “I think you can’t really draw a line. I think because there’s no
real moment when it flips over from one to the other . . . it’s a very gray area.”
4

James Kirby, a Stockport, UK-based sound collagist who produces under the name
V/VM, expanded on this notion, specifically associating the blurring of the lines
between art and craft with the convergence of expressive media: “I don’t think it
makes sense to distinguish [between art and craft]. The way I think these days is, that
you can just use anything these days and be creative, in all forms, such as video.”
5

Mysterious D, a San Francisco-based DJ and co-founder of the popular mash-
up club franchise Bootie, expressed ambivalence on the question, finally focusing on
the distinction between teachable skill and innate talent (a subject I will address in
greater detail in the following section on the artist/audience binary) as the deciding
factor: “Is it a craft or is it an art? It’s hard to explain . . . I see art in it besides craft.
‘Cause basically as a craft almost anyone can learn. And not anyone can really make
a great mash-up.”
6

Survey respondents offered a range of opinions on the subject. Some, such as
this California woman in her 50s, offered qualified support for mash-ups and remixes
as art: “I have never done any but would consider it an art form, therefore, any use of
existing material would be changed into something new, and would not be
plagerizing [sic]. I do think getting permission would be the ethical thing to do,
though.” Others, such as this Utah man in his 20s, expressed a greater degree of
ambivalence, reflecting support for the institutional regulation of musical production:
174
“It can be an art, but is a kind of art that may turn into a threat to the creators of the
original content if it is not governed in some way.” Finally, some respondents, such
as this California man in his 40s, rejected any claim of configurable music to the
category of art: “You might as well let a chimp play the pianno [sic].”
Interestingly, this pejorative comparison of a new expressive form with the
work of animals has a long history in the rhetoric of music criticism. As Slonimsky
relates:
An anonymous cartoon printed by G. Schirmer in New York
in 1869 under the title, ‘The Music of the Future,’ displays
eight cats (labeled A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A), several donkeys,
and a group of goats, as participants in a Wagnerian orchestra.
The score on the conductor’s stand reads, ‘Liszt’s Symphonic
Poem.’
7

While many of the interviewees and survey respondents expressed
ambivalence about the art/craft binary in light of configurable music practices, they
nonetheless drew on a variety of traditional concepts in attempting to maintain a
distinction in the face of ontological uncertainty. One of the primary analytical
methods, familiar from some of the academic literature on “remix culture,” was the
attempt to demonstrate continuity between past cultural forms and configurable ones.
As Mark Vidler, a Watford, UK-based mash-up producer, DJ, and professional remix
producer who works under the name Go Home Productions explained of his work,
“you still borrow from things, whether you copy licks on a guitar or on a sampler. To
me it’s still art. It’s a blank canvas, you’re taking pieces and adding them.”
8

This argument is especially interesting in light of the fact that configurable
music’s derivativeness is used as evidence to justify its categorization as art. This
175
line of reasoning seeks to undermine the exceptionality and originality that routinely
characterize the category of art (as I have reviewed previously, and will discuss in
greater depth later in this chapter) – not in order to destroy the categorical distinction
itself, but to admit a broader range of practices into the category, thus ultimately
reinforcing its legitimacy.
Go Home Productions’ characterization of mash-ups as “pieces” added to a
canvas” echoes another common approach people took in attempting to place
configurable music within the art/craft dichotomy: comparison to visual art forms.
Like many configurable music practitioners, Go Home Productions explicitly
invoked Warhol in his discussion of mash-ups: “Andy Warhol was an artist, yet he
would paint a Campbell’s soup can. So what’s wrong with someone taking
something that exists and putting it in a different context with your own added
flavors? It’s still an art form.”
9
Marc Geiger, a Senior Vice President in the music
division at the William Morris Agency, which represents musicians such as Britney
Spears, Gnarls Barkley, and Prince, made an almost identical comparison: “I don’t
think personally it’s fair to not call Warhol an artist because he didn’t actually design
the soup can. So I don’t think it’s fair to not think of a remix artist or a remix or a
rearrangement of existing source code and not call it art.”
10
Some survey respondents
made this connection as well – for instance, one Illinois woman in her 50s wrote
that:
I think there are some copyrighted materials that are
considered so much a part of our society (an image of a
Campbell's Soup can, for instance, the label of which I would
assume has some protection as to its design, etc.) that their use
176
should not be considered theft, particularly because it is
clearly owned by Campbell and not by the creator of the art.

Other 20
th
century visual art forms were frequently invoked as well. In
speaking of mash-ups, music journalist and critic Bill Werde opined: “I feel it’s a
legitimate art form that falls into the paradigm of collage.”
11
Many musicians made
the same comparison, in the same context. Mark Nicholson, a UK-based mash-up
and breakbeat producer who records and performs under the name Osymyso, argued
that “sampling is collage. It’s like cutting out pictures and putting them together.
That’s the obvious equivalent.”
12
DJ Adrian, a San Francisco DJ and guitarist, and
co-founder of mash-up club Bootie, argued that a larger ethic of pastiche unifies
mash-ups, collage, and other tactile, visual and digital forms: “Part of the appeal of
mash-up music is the juxtapositioning. But you can apply that juxtapositioning to
any kind of art form, really, whether it be fashion or visual arts.”
13

I asked DJ Adrian and Mysterious D (who refer to their collective efforts as
“A+D” – a linguistic homage to the “A+B” formula for mash-up construction) why
artists like Warhol, Duchamp and the collagists were so often invoked by sample-
based musicians. They acknowledged that the comparison is explicitly strategic – in
effect, a rhetorical comparison to legitimized art forms of the past as an appeal for
artistic legitimacy today:
Aram: You guys are using all these visual art metaphors to
describe what you do.

DJ Adrian: True.

Mysterious D: Yeah.

177
Aram: Why is that?

DJ Adrian: Probably because it’s there’s a historical precedent
of –

Mysterious D: People understand that more. So you use what
people have already understood and accepted as art. You
know, nobody accepted pop art as art when it began. They
didn’t believe it was art at all. And now years later they do.

...

DJ Adrian: If someone, you know, kind of disses what’s
happening, you know with audio collage, let’s call it. We call
it mash-up. But, you know you could say audio collage. And,
you know, does that make it sound, you know it’s like, oh, see
this actually is an art form as well. And there’s a historical
precedent there. And this is it.
14

However, the strategic use of visual art metaphors in reference to sample-
based music didn’t necessarily mean that every configurable music practice merited
inclusion in the “art” category. Some interviewees were quick to emphasize that the
comparison didn’t eliminate the need for discriminatory evaluation. As Steve Stein, a
legendary New Jersey-based DJ and hip-hop producer who records and performs
under the name Steinski, explained when invoking Duchamp: “If you put a urinal on
the wall of an art gallery and you sign it, then you’re making all kinds of statements,
and it is art. I’d have to hear and see the DJ to see if he’s putting the urinal on the
wall, or if he’s just taking a leak.”
15

Thus, many of the people I spoke to sought to legitimize configurable music
by placing it within the “art” category – even as they acknowledged that the art/craft
distinction was breaking down. In order to account for this seeming contradiction,
interviewees relied upon many traditional categorical markers of art to draw a “line
178
in the sand” – a signpost in the gray area separating the configurable music they
considered art from other configurable practices that didn’t make the cut. These
signposts included creativity, innovation, authorship, labor, and – significantly –
Kantian disinterestedness (although Kant was never explicitly referenced).
Creative transformation and aesthetic innovation were the most-often cited
markers of artistry among configurable musicians. As Jordan Roseman, a San
Francisco-based mash-up producer who records, performs and publishes books under
the name DJ Earworm argued, “if you’re gonna be creating art, you’ve transformed
it. And so the degree to which you’ve transformed it is the degree of artistry
involved.” Significantly, DJ Earworm defines transformation more by intellection
than by measurable artifacts: “Evidence of thought, you know. Evidence of decision
making. . . . each decision that you make that alters the sound of it is a creative step. .
. . So the number of decisions you make is related to how much of the act of art
making you’re doing.”
16

Other configurable musicians echo this emphasis on intellectual
transformation, reflecting Gross’
17
observation (discussed in the previous chapter)
that the definition of artistry in the modern and post-modern eras has shifted from
execution to intellection, consigning mere technique to the craft category. Osymyso,
for instance, said that he divides configurable music into “two areas.” The first
consists of “things where you’re just cutting things up and editing. I suppose there’s
an art to it, but it’s not as creative as coming up with something yourself.” But he
emphasizes that “there’s a sliding scale. Just chucking two songs together is not as
179
creative as chucking 101. [Osymyso is perhaps best known for his 2002 mash-up
Intro Inspection, which uses samples from 101 songs]. One is a little more cerebral,
it gets you excited. The other is just DJing. It’s not uncreative, it’s just not pushing
the boundaries or anything.”
18

This notion of “pushing the boundaries” – of innovation, a classic badge of
artistry within the modern framework – was echoed in Si Begg’s evaluative criteria,
as well. On the “art” side of the fence, Begg told me, is Freelance Hellraiser’s classic
2001 mash-up, A Stroke of Genius [often referred to as A Stroke of Genie-us], which
combines instrumental music by retro-rockers The Strokes with pop vocals by
Christina Aguilera: “He didn’t even change the vocal structure, but to me that was an
incredibly creative and inspired move to do that. Even though he didn’t write one
note of music and he only used two sources, it was a very creative move.” However,
“the craft end of things,” in Begg’s view, is characterized by “a working DJ who just
has created his own edited [version of a song, for use at a club] . . . because it’s
probably not that much different from the original.” In the murky gray area between
these two extremes, he told me, is Madonna’s 2005 single Hung Up, which
prominently uses an ABBA sample, “because she didn’t change the context. It was
still a disco record. ABBA intended it to be a disco record.”
19

Survey respondents echoed musicians’ concerns about the “creativity”
involved in sample-based music, although many were unwilling to draw a line in the
sand, electing instead to simply categorize all configurable music as uncreative. As
one Pennsylvania man in his 60s wrote of configurable cultural forms: “it's a way for
180
someone that is ‘uncreative’ to use someone elses work as a base so they can ‘create’
something of their own. I think lazy is a word that covers their work. Like adding
one letter in a scrabble game to profit from someone elses ideas. [sic]”
The ambiguity regarding creativity in the context of configurable music
contributes to ambiguity surrounding a related concept, as well: authorship. As I
have discussed in the context of the artist/audience binary, authorship typically
functions as a badge of artistry and exceptionality, creating value for a work through
its association with an individual (and vice versa). In discussing art and craft in the
context of configurable music, many interviewees invoked authorship as a gauge of
creativity, and therefore as a conceptual boundary of artistry. Osymyso, for instance,
argued that, for the majority of mash-ups, “It’s not making an individual piece of
music as such, it’s a DJ tool. It’s something to facilitate the DJ set, and I don’t think
many people would honestly say ‘this is my creation’.”
20

Similarly, Si Begg acknowledged that configurable technologies are eroding
the boundaries between art and craft, and invoked authorship as a dividing line
between them:
Everything’s getting so digital that people are just re-editing
tracks themselves just for the way they like and they’re not
trying to pass them off as their own. They’re just saying,
‘Well, I prefer it like this. I didn’t like that bit so I just took it
out,’ kind of thing. So they’re not professing to be particularly
artistic. They’re just – it’s . . . more of a craft or something.

However, Begg acknowledged that between these two extremes, “there’s a big gray
area.”
21

181
Not every configurable music practitioner accepted authorship as a marker of
the art/craft distinction. Kevin Foakes, a British DJ and mash-up producer who
records for the Ninja Tune label under the names Strictly Kev and DJ Food, told me
he hadn’t released a commercial record in five years, but had released three or four
albums worth of material in that time over the Internet. “They’re still works that I’ve
put my name to,” he said. “Whether they’re works of art is debatable.”
22

The emphasis on creativity, innovation and authorship as the badges of
artistry espoused by many interviewees and survey respondents is not only a staple
of modern aesthetic theory and a common belief among Americans in general, it’s
also an institutionalized distinction, enshrined in the very language of copyright case
law, and in the constitutional articles such law stems from. A 1991 Supreme Court
decision written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in Feist Publications, Inc., v.
Rural Telephone Service Co. argues that telephone book listings do not constitute
authorship, because “the sine qua non of copyright is originality.” Originality, the
decision continues, necessitates “a modicum of creativity.”
23
As intellectual property
attorney Bob Clarida explained to me, Feist essentially draws a line between art and
craft, using creativity and originality as standards, because “a copyright only protects
authorship. It doesn’t protect, in that case, what it called ‘industrious collection.’”
24

Whether and when configurable music practices live up to Feist’s “modicum of
creativity” standard, Clarida told me, has yet to be tested or established in a court
decision – although he said that it’s “hard to imagine that someone doing a remix or
sample collage” would not live up to this threshold.
25

182
I will discuss shifting definitions of “creativity” and “innovation” within a
configurable context at greater length further on, when I discuss interviewees’
treatment of the original/copy binary. In the matter of the art/craft dichotomy, it is
simply enough to say that an evaluation of the former binary is essential in the
evaluation of the latter. However, interviewees brought other evaluative criteria to
bear on the art/craft distinction, as well.
One concept that emerged from my interviews is the notion that the degree of
effort involved in production has some bearing on whether configurable music
counts as a legitimate art form – and that conspicuous labor is an essential factor of
the aesthetic. As Osymyso put it:
I want to see that there’s a labor of love involved, that there’s
some sweat involved, because the software makes it just so
easy. I like to make it clear that what I’ve done was not done
in just two seconds. That’s where Intro Inspection came from
– you can’t deny that it just took many hours. Of course, I
could do it quicker now and probably better on the newer
software, but it wouldn’t matter as much.
26

Similarly, DJ Paul V, a radio DJ who hosts a mash-up show on
KDLD 103.1 FM in Los Angeles (as well as producing his own mash-ups
and hosting mash-up clubs at local venues) told me that he’s not
impressed by mash-ups that use preexisting, commercially released a
capella rap vocals as a starting point, because it’s just too easy: “I’m
more blown away when someone has to take a track as it is and somehow
strip out the vocals themselves, and really put that effort into putting it
with something else.”
27

183
Survey respondents echoed this sentiment in their responses. The
Pennsylvania man I cited above alluded to it in his characterization of configurable
cultural forms as “lazy.” This New York woman in her 40s made the point more
explicitly: “Derivative works only become original creative content in their own
right when a decent amount of work goes into producing something new.” Music
attorney Ronald Bienstock shared this assessment as well, telling me that, in his
opinion, “sometimes, sampling is just laziness.”
28

However, the labor standard for artistry in the context of sample-based music
was accompanied by caveats from all quarters. The survey respondent from New
York added that “there are some situations where it's theft and unethical, no matter
how much work is put into it.” Osymyso, on reflection, decided that given his own
creative experience, the standard was insufficient: “I sometimes have an idea that
will take five seconds, and it’s sometimes better than one that would take five days,
so artistry’s not all about time. It’s in the end product.”
29
And USC law professor
Jennifer Urban, who also serves as Director of the university’s Intellectual Property
Clinic, reminded me that, from a legal standpoint, “copyright doesn’t care how much
work you put into it. Copyright only cares about creativity.”
30

Another standard sometimes applied to the art/craft distinction in the context
of configurable music was commercialism or market viability. Reflecting the post-
Kantian precept that art is defined by its absence of functionality, several
interviewees expressed mistrust, disdain, or devaluation of music produced with
marketability in mind, and expressed support for the concept of aesthetic purity, or
184
“art for art’s sake.” As Mark Gunderson, a Bay Area-based instrumentalist and DJ
who co-founded the band Evolution Control Committee and goes by the name
TradeMark G, explained:
On the craft side, I would put things like Coldcut in their more
poppy vein. Because their music is reasonably sellable. . . . On
the art side, I see things like Negativland. They are totally not
interested in rocking the house. They are interested in cutting
up tapes and assuaging their sociopathic senses. They’re really
about trying to exhibit their iniquities in an artistic way, made
for music’s purpose and not to sell. . . . I’m kind of collapsing
craft with marketability.
31

Survey respondents also expressed a belief that configurable cultural products
produced outside of a commercial context are exceptional, and should be accorded a
special, protected status. This Illinois man in his 40s echoed the sentiments of many
others: “I personally don't see anything wrong with that as long as it's not used in a
commercial way (i.e. to make money from it's [sic] use).” DJ Adrian made a
strikingly similar comment: “I think you should be allowed to do whatever the hell
you want to do with these tracks, as long as you’re not profiting from it.”
32

Record industry executives drew a distinction as well. Hosh Gureli, former
club DJ and current vice president of A&R (Artists & Repertoire) in the dance music
division at major label Sony/BMG, put it bluntly: “I’m having trouble with the whole
‘art’ question because my job is to make records that sell. The record companies
don’t think in terms of art, they think in terms of business and commerce.” While
Gureli expressed doubt that music produced by amateurs would be considered “art”
by most people, he also emphasized that “having a commercial hit doesn’t mean
you’re making art either, because it could be very bland.”
33

185
This Kantian logic is also reflected in our legal system, according to law
professor Jennifer Urban. As she explained to me, “useful articles are not
copyrightable. . . . The creative elements, however, are – so long as they can be
separated from the utilitarian function.”
34
Therefore, insofar as configurable music
products such as mash-ups are denied copyright protection (a point I’ll touch upon
further later in this chapter), one can argue that they are consigned to the “craft” side
of the fence by existing legal theory and practice.
Despite the many evaluative criteria interviewees and survey respondents
cited in their efforts to draw a line in the gray area separating art from craft, several
people I spoke with acknowledged that categorical judgments represent the opinion
of the viewer more than they do any truth about the work under assessment. As
Strictly Kev told me, “it’s an incredibly subjective thing. I can listen to one mash-up
and it’s art, and I can listen to another one and it’s just crap.”
35
Marc Geiger of
WMA shared this sentiment: “I have a very egalitarian view on content that’s only
separable by good and bad. And good and bad is ultimately subjective anyway.”
36

Survey respondents echoed this as well. As one Florida man in his 40s wrote, “it is a
fine line between art and copying, only the true artist knows the difference.”
Matt Wand, a sample-based musician from the UK, best known as a founding
member of Stock, Hausen & Walkman and as head of independent record label Hot
Air, agreed that art/craft distinctions are subjective, but he also linked this
subjectivity to increasingly open-ended standards and practices associated with non-
commercial production in a configurable technological environment. In his words,
186
“it’s definitely an art form, by today’s standards . . . it is just activity, and it’s open to
everybody, and the most naïve people can make something that’s appealing.”
37
In
other words, he associates the ambiguity and subjectivity related to parsing the
art/craft binary in a configurable context directly with the newly democratized
capacity for music production and distribution, and the emerging social, ethical and
aesthetic codes associated therewith – e.g. configurable culture.
The ambiguity and subjectivity surrounding art/craft distinctions, and the
rhetorical and intellectual strategies that musicians and others bring to bear when
trying to make sense of configurable music in this context, have their analog in the
treatment of a closely-related binary, the artist/audience distinction. If we cannot
clearly say what constitutes an art and what does not, then how can we continue to
speak confidently of the traditional division of labor separating artist from audience?
I explore this and other questions regarding the role of the “artist” in a configurable
music context, in the following section.
Some Kid in his Bedroom: Configurability and the Artist/Audience Binary
As with the art/craft binary, there was widespread acknowledgment among
the people I spoke with that the line separating artist and audience is difficult or
impossible to locate definitively in a configurable music context. Matt Wand
summed it up the most succinctly: “I can’t draw the line, I definitely don’t draw the
line – he’s artist, she’s audience – I can’t do that at all.”
38
Similarly, Pete Axelrad, a
Los Angeles-based mash-up producer and DJ who goes by the name DJ Axel by
night and works as Director of Finance at New Line Records by day, told me that
187
“it’s just a gray area. . . . I don’t know if you can separate it any more, really. . . . I
mean, is a DJ an artist?” I asked him whether he could answer his own question, and
after struggling for a definitive answer, he told me he couldn’t, because “it’s too
gray.”
39

Eric Kleptone, a Brighton, UK-based mash-up producer, expanded on this
notion, attributing the ambiguity to a larger shift in the logic of production and
consumption within a configurable technological environment, and definitively
supporting the shift as a positive development:
Everything is breaking down in a good way. . . . Once upon a
time . . . there was a line. You know, the edge of the stage was
there. The performers are on one side. The audience is on the
other side, and never the twain shall meet. . . . [Now] this
really is becoming part and parcel of what people are starting
to expect from media that they’re purchasing. That they
should be able to personalize it or manipulate it in some way.
Or at least have the freedom to do so. . . . Now, being an artist
is not the same as – you’re not necessarily giving people
finished product. You’re giving people an unfinished product.
A platform that they can do stuff on.
40

The notion that both aesthetic production and consumption are fragmenting,
with new roles and behaviors rushing to fill the untracked gray area opening between
them and allowing an unprecedented degree of communication, collaboration and
fluidity between makers and users, was echoed by many interviewees. However,
several observed that the existence of a gray area between the traditional polarities
doesn’t necessarily imply that everyone occupying the intermediate region plays the
role of artist or audience to an equal degree. To the contrary, many remarked on the
increasing subtlety of the shades and gradations within this gray area. In Eric
188
Kleptone’s words, “if you do want to draw a straight line between the artist and the
consumer, then there are a million points on that graph. And there’s another million
arriving every day.”
41

Similarly, DJ Earworm echoed Ivey and Tepper’s
42
argument about the
“curatorial me,” metaphorically comparing the configurable gray area between music
producer and consumer to the traditional curation that takes place within the visual
arts:
If I put a painting up on the wall no one’s gonna say I’ve made
art, right? . . . But what if I had 100 paintings and I arranged
them in some sort of mosaic form? Well that might be art. And
I might be an artist. But . . . where’s the point where I have
made art and I am an artist? And that’s a gradual fuzzy thing .
. . you can always find points in between on the continuum
where it’s gonna stump almost anybody.
43

DJ Earworm’s metaphor of mash-up practitioner as curator reflects a larger
thread that ran through many of my conversations. Once they had acknowledged that
several distinct points lay on the spectrum from artist to audience member, a great
many of my interviewees sought to define these points – in effect, to draw multiple
lines in the sand. DJ Adrian, echoing Lessig,
44
argued that a new category of
engaged consumer is emerging: “it's active entertainment. You're not just passively
downloading music and consuming it, you're actually altering it to your own
tastes.”
45
DJ Paul V shared this sentiment, placing the newly engaged consumer
within a graded continuum: “I think it goes from passive fan to active fan to the next
level. . . . Whether they’re all artists, that’s debatable. There’s levels of technical
189
skill, musical skill, execution. It’s kind of like an onion, layered. I don’t know if it’s
so black and white.”
46

While DJ Earworm and DJ Adrian focused on the emergence of an engaged
audience developing a consumption-adjacent relationship to media, TradeMark G
sought to identify his own role at the midpoint of the scale between artist and
audience:
What I think is happening is that there’s been a real rise of an
intermediary level. The DJ has become a very big class in
music. . . . They’re not necessarily artists, but they kind of are.
They’re not necessarily the audience, either. There is
definitely some kind of blurring of the lines, but it’s happened
in a way that we’ve sort of added a new level.
47

In some ways, the emergence of the category of the DJ as an intermediary
level between artist and audience overlaps with more traditional roles in the art
worlds of the modern framework. I have already mentioned curation. Other concepts,
such as criticism, connoisseurship, and appreciation bear some resemblance as well.
As Mysterious D told me, people often begin making mash-ups “because you like so
many diverse styles of music to begin with. The mash-up [producer] is both the
consumer and an artist, you know. I mean mash-up artists generally have huge music
collections and love music.”
48

Far from viewing the double-consciousness of the DJ as a deficit or evidence
of inferiority, many of the configurable musicians I spoke with said they considered
the fandom implicit in much sample-based music to be a key asset, and a favorable
quality in comparison to traditional definitions of artistry or musicianship. As Matt
Wand told me, “that’s a really important part of being an artist – is being a good,
190
informed and slightly fanatical audience.” In fact, he said, “that might be all there is
to it, to being an artist. The rest of it is just time [required for] the skills that you
develop.”
49

The existence of a connoisseur or critical class of aesthetic appreciation has
often – and reasonably – been viewed as a social marker of elitism or socioeconomic
class distinction.
50
However, many of the configurable music practitioners I spoke
with saw it from the opposite vantage point: rather than raising the bar for entry into
practices of consumption, the emergence of the DJ lowers the bar for production,
allowing a larger number of people to enter the ranks of the creative. Viewed from
this standpoint, DJ culture is inherently communitarian (or, as Steinski remarked, in
the quote that begins this chapter, “communism”
51
), rather than elitist.
DJ Adrian told me he feels that mash-ups share much in common with earlier
aesthetic movements premised on a lower barrier of entry and a grassroots
production ethic – specifically, with punk:
I think that bootleg and remix and mash-up culture is basically
the new punk rock. . . because 20 years ago, punk rock was the
reaction against the bloated, so-called corporate rock. It was a
total DIY aesthetic. Do-it-yourself. Anyone could do it.
Anyone could pick up a guitar, learn three chords, and play
punk rock.
52

Similarly, Matt Wand associated configurable music with the folk revival
movement of the 1960s, and with the (quasi-mythical) folk musical culture the
earlier movement valorized, in which authenticity was premised on oral transmission
and an absence of property relations to music: “Music has shifted back to feudal
times . . . there’s no more money in content, is there? Music making has become a
191
folk thing, there isn’t much of a career to be made in it. It’s just something that
people do, making content for each other.”
53

Wand’s comment reflects a sentiment echoed by many I spoke with: namely,
that configurable technologies are a proximate cause of the communitarian ethic
associated with DJ culture. This is because, as Wand observes, technologies such as
peer-to-peer file sharing undermine the economic mechanism by which creators are
compensated for their work. However, it is also because the new networked
communications infrastructure allows for the emergence of communities of shared
interest on a global scale. In fact, some have argued that mash-ups constitute the first
new musical movement without a geographic center. As mattcatt, a London-based
sound designer and DJ, told me during the early years of the mash-up movement, in
2003, “this is the first true internet based music culture with two way appeal, because
we can share tracks and play radio to each other and chat about interests.”
54

While configurable music practitioners acknowledge a breakdown of the
traditional artist/audience dichotomy and celebrate the communitarian values
surrounding the emergence of liminal roles such as the DJ/active
fan/curator/connoisseur, many are quick to emphasize that gradations of quality,
professionalism, and artistry still do exist. And in making these qualitative
judgments, many of the people I spoke to – including some of those who
championed the “DIY” ethic of inclusiveness – felt compelled to reinforce the
artist/audience dichotomy, and the premise of artistic exceptionality, by setting forth
new evaluative criteria. As DJ Adrian told me, “like punk rock, just because you can
192
do it doesn't mean it's going to be good. There's definitely people who rise to the
top.”
55

Some people I spoke with were willing to extend the mantle of artistry to all
or most configurable music practices. V/VM told me, “I think people who use
samples are artists. Why not? It’s just what’s there, isn’t it? If you take something
and do something with it, yeah I guess you’re an artist.” However, he acknowledged
that he didn’t invest much significance in the concept of artistry: “but how relevant is
that term today, anyway?”
56
Similarly, DJ Earworm told me, “I consider a lot of
mash-up artists to be artists. I mean, most of them.”
57

On the other side of the spectrum, some – mostly those with predominantly
non-creative roles in the music industry – were unwilling to label any sample-based
musicians as artists. For instance, Tony Zeoli, a dance music industry veteran and
Vice President of Music at StarStyle.com, told me that, in his opinion, popular DJ
and producer “Peter Rauhofer is a remix producer. He’s not an artist in his own
right.”
58
Zeoli emphasized that this assessment was in no way a negative reflection
on Rauhofer’s work, which he enjoys and respects – it was simply a taxonomic
categorization. Similarly, music attorney Ronald Bienstock, who has been involved
in sampling litigation since the 1980s, told me, “I’m a pro-artist guy. I’m always
gonna say that the composer of a true piece of composition should be . . . protected
from those who would claim that they now have some ownership rights in that by
merely [making] a technical change.”
59
In other words, in Bienstock’s estimation,
remixers and mashers never constitute artists in their own rights, and as mere
193
“technicians,” (or craftsmen) do not deserve to wear the badge of authorship. Some
survey respondents reflected this absolutist assessment as well. As one California
man in his 30s opined, “people who do this are leaches [sic] on the real creative
society.”
Although it was less common, some configurable music practitioners shared
this absolutist negative assessment. Go Home Productions, for instance, told me that
“DJs should be playing between bands. I really hate the ethos of the DJ being an
artist. . . . it’s not something I’d want to stand up for an hour and a half to watch.”
60

However, most of the people I spoke to espoused a belief that the tipping
point between artist and audience lay somewhere in the middle of the configurable
music landscape, among the many shades of gray. Many of the evaluative
mechanisms they mentioned reflected the ones I’ve already discussed in the context
of the art/craft binary; most frequently, the concepts of originality and creative
transformation were invoked. As TradeMark G told me,
The way that you use samples can also define whether you’re
using them as a DJ or as an artist. The longer, the more
recognizable the samples, the less your personal artistry or
sense of style and technique gets through. I’m more inclined to
think of someone who fragments samples as an artist than
someone who uses whole phrases.
61

Another evaluative criterion that emerged from my conversations – almost
entirely from interviews with music industry executives – was the notion that artistry
is defined by the presence of an audience. As Marc Geiger of WMA succinctly put it:
“If the audience thinks it’s art then it’s art.”
62
As Hosh Gureli of Sony/BMG –
himself a former club DJ – told me, “All of it’s art. Even the DJ just playing one
194
record after another, if he’s playing to a crowd, like a comic standing up there or a
person in a play, the person’s job is to make sure that the dance floor’s filled.”
63

While it may seem surprising that members of musical regulatory institutions would
be willing to extend the mantle of artistry so easily to emerging configurable
practices, it also makes sense. To define an artist solely by the existence of an
audience – regardless of creative process, output, or qualitative criteria – is the purest
possible expression of the modern framework, because it prizes the artist/audience
binary above all other considerations.
Although interviewees were largely ambivalent and divided regarding the
concept of artistry within a configurable context, there was a surprising degree of
consistency in their approach to related concepts: those of skill, talent and genius.
Configurable music practitioners tended to agree that skill is an essential ingredient
of successful sample-based music, and that it’s an acquired trait, rather than an innate
one. As DJ Adrian told me, “you can throw together a mash-up without that much
skill. But to throw together a good one you definitely need skill. And skill is
something that’s learned, really.”
64

Echoing the modern framework, interviewees defined skill in terms of a
capacity with both physical and conceptual tools. V/VM consciously compared
facility with music editing software to instrumental expertise: “You still have to
invest a hell of a lot of time learning a certain software to get a good result. It’s just
like learning to play the guitar or something.”
65
DJ Earworm identified specific
conceptual skills necessary for making mash-ups. In his estimation, skill is “knowing
195
how to make songs, keeping rhythm, knowing how to keep them in time. Knowing
how to arrange them. Knowing how to produce them. Knowing how to choose
them.”
66
However, many interviewees told me that, while skill is a necessary
component of artistry, it is not sufficient in and of itself; as Osymyso remarked, “you
can have someone technically skilled who’s got no creative side.”
67

The “creative side” of artistry in a configurable context, according to many
the people I spoke to, is reflected in the notion of talent, which is more conceptual
and less procedural than skill. As Osymyso told me, “talent is the ability to know
what’s going to work with what.”
68
For Strictly Kev, talent in mash-ups is a state of
mind, or a mode of receptivity to aesthetics: “You put two things together from two
different times that would never, ever go together. That, to me, is talent – hearing
that, listening melodically.” He also associates talent with the concept of creative
transformation and innovation, defining it as “originality and flair and the ability to
keep going, keep changing and mutating, doing the unexpected, confounding
people’s expectations.”
69

In keeping with this traditional conceptualization of talent, many
interviewees also espoused the belief that the trait is either innate, exceptional, or
both. DJ Axel proposed the former: “I think that you could have like raw talent. And
the skill is the refinement.”
70
Tony Zeoli proposed the latter: “not everyone has
talent. . . . [it's a] a special gift of being able to create something that other people
enjoy.”
71
And Si Begg proposed both:
On the talent front, I think you have to have a certain ear for it.
You have to have an ear for what will work. And which some
196
people just have. . . . that’s a kind of talent which I think you
can’t – which is comparable to a musical talent in that you
can’t teach someone that. I don’t think you really learn it.
72

However, not all interviewees supported this formulation. Steinski, while
accepting the concept of talent in the context of configurable music, questioned the
notion that it constitutes a building block of artistry: “I would not say that a DJ set
with beat matching is art. It’s a talent. It’s like, what record are you picking, and how
are you playing them? DJing is a talent, I don’t know if its an art.”
73

Eric Kleptone rejected the concept of talent altogether, arguing that it is
simply a subjective judgment imposed on creators from without: “Talent is really –
it’s in the eye of the – that’s more in the eye of the audience.”
74
Interestingly, this
formulation echoes the assertions of Geiger and Gureli that artistry is defined by the
presence of an audience; however, while the music industry executives used this
argument to reify the concept of artistry, Kleptone used it to the opposite effect.
While most respondents adopted the modern framework’s treatment of skill
and talent more or less intact, they were generally much more ambivalent about the
concept of genius. Perhaps the most traditional treatment of the concept came from
Mysterious D, who emphasized its extreme exceptionality: “Genius I actually only
ever use with [DJ] Earworm. Everybody else is talented. Genius is a rare thing.”
75
Si
Begg espoused a fairly traditional treatment of genius as well, proposing the notion
that geniuses are the rare individuals who reformulate aesthetic codes: “I think the
geniuses to me were probably the people that go further back, like Afrika Bambaataa
197
and people like that – the early pioneers of hip-hop who were doing it before anyone
really knew what they were doing. There was no words for it and they just did it.”
76

Osymyso echoed Begg’s assessment about the genius of configurable music
innovators, but with an important distinction: “I think a genius is someone that
comes up with a concept from nowhere that no one had before. Like scratching. The
guy that came up with the idea of the mash-up wasn’t necessarily a genius, but he
had a genius moment.”
77
This mid-thought shift points to a common thread in my
conversations with configurable music practitioners: namely, that individuals aren’t
geniuses, but that they are capable of having “genius moments.”
Several interviewees used almost exactly the same term. DJ Earworm
(himself a genius, in Mysterious D’s estimation) told me, “I can say there’s definitely
moments of genius in many producers. Whether I would call them, you know, a
consistent – I don’t know. There’s definitely, you hear these moments of inspiration
in certain times.”
78
Eric Kleptone was even less equivocal:
I don’t think there’s been any genius [in configurable music].
There’s been some moments of genius. And that goes for
everyone from John Cage to Stockhausen, Steinski, Cold Cut,
The Art of Noise, Negativland. You know, Public Enemy.
People like that. They have intense flashes of genius. DJ
Shadow. But none of them are actual geniuses, they’re just
very good at what they do. . . . I think it’s something that you
channel. It’s not something that you are.
79

Other interviewees made a slightly different, but analogous argument:
namely, that individuals aren’t geniuses, but their works or ideas can be. As DJ Paul
V told me, “An idea can be genius, or someone’s passion about it can be genius, but
that doesn’t make them a genius.”
80
V/VM was even more reticent to use the label,
198
combining the concept of “genius moments” with the concept of “genius works,”
focusing on the exceptionality of individual products created at discrete moments in
time: “Maybe some works are works of genius that they’ve done. But I don’t think
anybody’s body of work is genius.”
81

Finally, some interviewees focused the inherent subjectivity of the term.
Echoing Eric Kleptone’s assessment of talent, for instance, TradeMark G opined that
“genius is in the ear of the listener.”
82

Thus, most configurable music practitioners seemed uncomfortable with
traditional formulations of genius, as characterized by the exceptional individual
single-handedly reordering aesthetic codes through sheer force of will. However,
music industry executives and survey respondents were much more willing to use the
term – both positively and negatively – in the context of configurable music.
When I asked Hosh Gureli of Sony/BMG about whether there are any
geniuses of sample-based music, he responded:
Hosh: I really think you have to give Puffy [hip-hop superstar
and impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs] his due, because he
really brought sampling to a whole new height with the I’ll Be
Missing You tribute to Biggie [Smalls]. He did that without
even getting permission [from Sting, whose composition he
sampled], and he used so much of the record, but he got
permission and they even performed it together. That was a
groundbreaking record.

Aram: So that was genius?

Hosh: Yes. Biggie did that with a lot of records too.
83

The fact that Gureli cites Diddy as a genius of configurable music is
significant for a number of reasons. Most obviously, Diddy is one of hip-hop’s most
199
successful performers, and in music industry parlance, “genius” has often been used
interchangeably with “consistently profitable.” However, Gureli clearly means more
than this in his analysis; for him, the genius of Diddy seems to reside in the
magnitude and brazenness of the rapper/producer’s sampling relationship to his
source materials. Ironically, as I will discuss in greater detail in the following section
of this chapter, these are the very qualities that made Diddy almost universally
reviled among the configurable music practitioners I interviewed.
Other music industry executives were equally willing to apply the term
“genius” to sample-based musicians. Pete Ganbarg, a veteran major label A&R
executive who currently runs an A&R consulting firm called Pure Tone Music, cited
Diddy, echoing Gureli’s assessment. He also cited DJ Danger Mouse, the mash-up
artist who vaulted to fame and eventually to commercial success with the group
Gnarls Barkley after his 2004 release of “The Grey Album,” an unauthorized mash-
up of Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” and The Beatles’ eponymous release, typically
referred to as “The White Album.” In Ganbarg’s words, “The Grey Album” is “a
brilliant piece of music, and the artist is basically utilizing two classic canvasses to
create his art.”
84

Tony Zeoli, despite denying the title of “artist” to remix producers (as quoted
above), supported the notion of genius in a configurable context, tacitly reinforcing
the artist/audience dichotomy by defining the term through the scope and scale of a
work’s reception: “Can some people consider a remixer a genius? I think absolutely,
if you recognize the fact that there’s a human being that can sit down at a board and
200
basically create music from scratch, and have thousands of people all over the world
dance to it.”
85

The only categorical rejections of the term “genius” in a configurable musical
context came from survey respondents. Though they were not asked about the
concept of genius explicitly, some used it in their survey responses anyway. As one
Florida woman in her 30s remarked of configurable cultural products in general, “I'm
sick of the sameness of these forms. After more than a decade of remixed music,
remade movies/tv shows [sic] and mashed-up video footage, I am ready for some
originality again. Genius is original, not re-used.”
Currently, the legal treatment of the artist/audience dichotomy within a
configurable musical context is as ambiguous and contradictory as the attitudes and
beliefs expressed by my interviewees. As music attorney Gary Adelman, who
formerly produced sample-based music and ran a techno music label called Liquid
Sky, explained to me, purely sample-based works such as techno songs and mash-
ups have historically been denied copyright, the legal marker of authorship:
Gary: Under the copyright law of 1976, he who creates owns.
That’s the basic premise of copyright law. Copyright is an
expression. And if you create it, you own it. . . . when a
copyright is generated, the author or the creator is the owner
[unless they waive that right, as is the case with many
recording contracts].

Aram: So is there an example of the Court assigning a new
copyright to a sample-based work?

Gary: No. Not that I’m aware of.
86

201
However, law professor Jennifer Urban told me that, theoretically, copyright
protection could be applied not just to sample-based music, but to the entire range of
gray area between musical production and consumption. This is because a special
subclass of copyright exists for the creative selection and arrangement of preexisting
materials, in addition to the production of works from (putatively) raw materials:
Aram: Is a person who creates an iPod play list an artist or
not?

Jennifer: Sure. If it’s a creative selection and arrangement.
Yeah.

Aram: From a legal standpoint?

Jennifer: Yeah. . . . I mean I’ve never heard of anybody trying
to enforce a copyright on a play list, but I know of lots of
books that are made up of chapters by lots of other people,
right? And the book is held to be separately copyrightable as
a compilation.
87

Attorney Bob Clarida made a similar observation, telling me that in a recent
case called Caffey v. Cook,
88
“the Court held that the selection and arrangement of
songs in a musical revue was protectable, even though the plaintiff had no copyright
in the songs. . . . [therefore] I think it’s not a stretch to say that selection and
arrangement of samples within a hip-hop track should be protectable.”
89

If we recall that, for DJ Earworm, skill in producing mash-ups is defined in
part by “knowing how to choose” and “knowing how to arrange” source materials,
90

Urban’s and Clarida’s arguments for the application of “selection and arrangement”
protection to configurable musical practices seems to be completely supportable.
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However, even if the Court were to agree, and grant copyright protection
(and, therefore, institutional acknowledgment of artist status) to configurable music
practitioners on this basis, they would still enjoy an inferior level of protection (and
therefore inferior status) to traditional composers and instrumental performers. This
is because, as Clarida explained to me, copyrights granted on the basis of selection
and arrangement enjoy the “thinnest” possible copyright protection: “you basically
have only a protection against, you know, actual literal copying of your selection and
arrangement.”
91
In other words, even a trivial change in the placement of a single
sample within a work (for instance, if a mash-up producer were to switch the places
of the 100
th
and 101
st
song fragments in Osymyso’s Intro Inspection) would be
enough to destroy copyright protection.
One of the most interesting aspects of my discussions with musicians and
executives about the borderline separating artist from audience was the frequency
with which interviewees resorted to a single rhetorical device to justify their
arguments. This device centered around a fictitious strawman, generally referred to
as “some kid,” and usually located either in his bedroom or in his basement.
Whatever credits, qualifications or accolades were being extended to a given
configurable music practice or producer, they were simultaneously denied to “some
kid” on the basis of his amateurism, inexperience, or isolation.
The prevalence of the “some kid” argument was especially high among music
industry executives. For instance, DJ Paul V (who straddles the professional fence,
as both a radio DJ and an active mash-up producer), in extolling the virtues of Go
203
Home Productions, argued that GHP warrants being called a “musician” because “he
knows how to play an instrument” in addition to simply DJing. This affects the
quality of GHP’s sample-based work, he told me, because “I think a musician’s head
obviously has a different approach because they create music themselves. So that has
to have an effect on how you hear things and how you approach things. As opposed
to some kid in his bedroom, who doesn’t play an instrument.”
92

Similarly, Pete Ganbarg of Pure Tone Music used the same strawman to
champion the artistic exceptionality of certain configurable music practitioners: “The
kid who is making a play list on his iPod is not necessarily a musician . . . I think that
you’ve got the great DJ minds of this generation. They’re artists in their own right
for sure.”
93
Hosh Gureli of Sony/BMG used this argument as well, telling me that
“someone in the basement putting two beats together, they could love it and to them
it’s art. But to the majority it might not be art.”
94

Although the “some kid” trope was most prevalent among industry
executives, some configurable music practitioners used it as well. During an
interview with DJ Adrian and Mysterious D, the use of the term actually led to a
lengthy discussion between the two of them about its meaning and significance
within the context of the artist/audience binary in configurable music, which bears
repeating here in full:
Mysterious D: Mash-ups are so easy to make with software.
You’ve got a kid in his room plopping an a cappella of any
song over an instrumental of any song and it’s a mash-up. But
he’s not an artist.

Aram: Why not?
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Mysterious D: Because he’s not really using it for an artistic
form. He’s just fucking around with software basically. Kind
of like somebody who likes three chords on their guitar . . . do
you call them a musician or are they not a musician? It’s hard
to say. You might call them a musician technically. But if you
described to your friends, ‘this guy’s a musician, but he only
knew three chords and can’t play anything else and doesn’t
choose to,’ I mean, then are you missing, you know –

DJ Adrian: But couldn’t you say, couldn’t you make a
judgment call that was like, ‘Sure he’s an artist but he’s a bad
artist.’ Just the same way you would say, ‘Yeah, he’s a
musician but just not a very good one.’

Mysterious D: Good point. . . . So I use that because that’s
what the media tells everybody. That’s not how we see it all,
to be honest. I’m just used to using that because I’m gonna go
with what most people believe. They call them ‘bedroom
producers’ and so on and so forth.

DJ Adrian: ‘Bedroom remixers.’

Mysterious D: But we happen to know that a lot of the people
that are involved in it [mash-ups] are either already doing
[professional] remix work, they’re DJs for X amount of years
and a lot of them are ex-band members. So it’s not just some
kid in his bedroom. So I use that as cliché. Although there are
that. There are kids –

DJ Adrian: And they’re amazing.

Mysterious D: So, and I refuse to call that ‘less than,’ even
though it gets implied as that in the media. And it gets implied
as if, ‘it’s a kid in his bedroom – it couldn’t possibly be as
good.’ Again, going back to the DIY aesthetic of punk rock,
which is why we think it’s okay. Yeah, you’re right, he didn’t
know how to play his instrument, and he still made some sort
of brilliant world-changing music. So that kid in his bedroom
isn’t that big of a deal. I think that could actually be brilliant.
It’s not a negative or not a cutback.
95

205
I believe that the deep ambivalence about nomenclature and categorization
reflected in this exchange strikes at the heart of the larger sense of ontological
uncertainty I have discussed throughout this work. And the curious admixture of
pride and deprecation that inheres to the concept of the “bedroom producer” and to
the double-consciousness of the DJ echoes the same uneasy balance that
characterized the concept of double-consciousness for another liminal social group
when Du Bois first coined the term, over a century ago, in The Souls of Black Folk.
96

This becomes especially apparent when we look at the ways in which
configurable music practitioners use the term in reference to themselves. DJ Axel,
who has worked as a professional DJ on both a full-time and part-time basis for
much of his adult life, told me that he considers himself a “bedroom producer,” and
that this appellation means that he is “part of a community of mash-up artists.”
97

Tony Montana, one of the earliest mash-up practitioners, used the term as well when
I interviewed him in 2003, associating it explicitly with mash-ups’ illegality and
outlaw image (an association reinforced by his choice of DJ name – Tony Montana
was the name of the fictional Cuban crime lord played by Al Pacino in the 1983 film
Scarface):
Tony Montana: only some of the stuff i do .. is “leagle”

Aram: what about the other stuff?

Tony Montana: its bedroom producing [sic]
98

DJ Danger Mouse, who is probably the best-known mash-up producer today
due to the popularity of “The Grey Album,” appears to go out of his way to
206
emphasize the bedroom as both his physical and spiritual location in interviews he
grants to the press. In a 2006 profile in The New York Times magazine section, for
instance, the mash-up producer, whose given name is Brian Burton, told journalist
Chuck Klosterman that the idea for the album-length mash-up came to him suddenly
one day while he was cleaning his room. This moment of clarity becomes the turning
point of the 5,000-word article, meriting an entire paragraph consisting solely of the
sentence: “It was at this point that Burton decided to straighten up his bedroom.”
99

Similarly, in a 2004 interview in Remix magazine, DJ Danger Mouse told
interviewer Rob Kirby that “I do almost all of my preproduction in my bedroom. I
have to be working next to a bed when I’m coming up with new stuff.”
100

In its ability to communicate both deprecation and pride, both otherness and
selfness, to suggest both the bonds of community and the exile of the outlaw, the
term “bedroom producer” resembles nothing more than a well-known racial epithet
that has been used against (and by) African Americans for centuries. The
implications of this correlation, and of the articulation between DJ-consciousness
and double-consciousness as we traditionally understand it, are complex, to say the
least, and I will attempt to unravel them more thoroughly at the conclusion of this
work. For now, I will simply observe that part of the significance of the bedroom as
the locus of identification is its universality; we all have bedrooms, and in a
configurable technological environment, we are all producers to some extent. In
short, “some kid” isn’t just a convenient rhetorical device; it’s us.
207
Something Borrowed, Something New: Configurability and the Original/Copy
Binary
As with shifting definitions of art and artistry, many of my interviewees
explicitly addressed the growing ambiguity of the original/copy distinction in the
context of configurable music. As Go Home Productions asked rhetorically, “What is
theft, and what is borrowing? What is paying homage, and what is advancing? . . . I
think I would find it hard to draw a definitive line.”
101
Similarly, Matt Wand asked,
“How far can you go with a quotation? Or can you just jump up in front of a
Metallica gig, shout your name, and say, ‘that was my gig’? . . . the problem is, it’s
hard to say where the line is, where it’s the style of the person, and nothing to do
with the samples.”
102

Echoing their comments about the other “gray areas” I have discussed, many
interviewees suggested that there are gradations of black and white separating the
traditional binary between “original” and “copy.” As Si Begg told me, “there’s a
scale, and on one end there’s just ripping people off . . . then at the other end there is
something that’s such a creative use that you’ve moved a million miles away from it.
. . . I guess most people are somewhere in the middle.”
103

Yet, despite the many shades of gray they saw, many of the people I spoke
with felt compelled to draw a “line in the sand,” developing new discriminatory
criteria to reinforce the eroding border between original and copy. One of the most
prevalent mechanisms was the notion that, through sheer force of will, a person may
inject enough of their own personality or vision into sample-based material to
208
complete the alchemical transformation from “taking” to “making.” This concept
was reflected in the notion of personal “style” that Wand mentioned above, and in
Go Home Productions’ assertion that “personally, I try to add as much of myself as
possible into the final thing that I do.”
104

Other interviewees echoed this focus on personal style as an arbiter of
originality within a sample-based aesthetic. Several compared it to stylistic
originality in tactile arts or instrumental music. Tony Zeoli, for example, told me that
a remix producer can have a “signature sound” that’s so identifiable it’s “like their
handwriting.”
105
Similarly, Strictly Kev told me that, among configurable musicians,
“people have styles in the way they do things, in the same way that a guitarist would
have. They’ve got something that’s identifiable.”
106
And Eric Kleptone told me, “you
can recognize people’s style [the same way you would] recognize someone’s style
on a saxophone or on a piano.”
107

But of what, exactly, does this elusive concept of style consist? In a context
where most or all of the sonic material being employed originates in the work of
another author, how and when does a new author’s voice emerge? In a context where
conversations between the hand and the ear are mediated by conversion to machine
language and back again, how can gesture or nuance remain?
Some interviewees cited the “selection and arrangement” processes I referred
to above as the distinguishing factor between configurable musicians. In Si Begg’s
words, “which bits you use, how you arrange them, that’s gonna be a personal
style.”
108
Similarly, DJ Adrian told me that an original stylist can be identified in part
209
because he uses “source material that no one else touches.” For instance, he said,
“there’s a new guy on the scene . . . and he’s not all that great, you know,
production-wise, yet. But he has been using crazy things like Klaus Nomi and Sigue
Sigue Sputnik and things like that” as mash-up ingredients, which makes him
instantly recognizable despite his relative inexperience and obscurity.
109

In addition to selection and arrangement of materials, some configurable
musicians I spoke with discussed specific production techniques, the resulting sonic
artifacts, and the other ways in which a producer underscores the transformation of
the sample as markers of personal style. For Jesse Gilbert, a Los Angeles-based
sound designer, software developer and sample-based experimental musician, the
most important production element is the spatialization of sound: “Foregrounding
and backgrounding and how you position the samples becomes all important, I think.
How you create texture, How you create depth. How you understand something
about the musicality of the sample.”
110
According to DJ Paul V, stylistic originality
for sample-based artists lies in “the production value or what they were able to do
maybe through filters or through processing, EQing, whatever, to alter the source
material . . . I think nuance is what the best mash-makers are able to have in their
mixes.”
111

For DJ Earworm, the relationship between source materials is the primary
locus of stylistic originality, and this may relate to selection, arrangement,
production, and even lyrical considerations:
[Stylistic originality can reside] in the way that they think
about words, or maybe the interplay of the words. You might
210
recognize it in the song choices. The relationships between the
songs. Some people like prefer ironic relationships. Some
people like puns, you know. Some people just want to have
genre clash. The way that the arrangement might build or flow
over time. You know, some people might bring in the
instrumental as the vocal. . . . People might like echoes or
cleansers or, you know, there’s all these signatures where you
can often hear the voice of the mash-up artist. . . . One thing is
that the mash-up community isn’t so large, that sometimes you
can recognize just by, you know, song choice, even.
112

Thus, for configurable musicians, stylistic originality can reside in the
selection of source materials, the selection of samples from those materials, the
temporal and spatial arrangement of samples, the transformative techniques applied
to those samples, or the hermeneutic interplay between samples and techniques that
characterize the work as a whole. And, as Si Begg observed, the richness and
subtlety of style are augmented by the archivability and accessibility of the
configurable technological infrastructure: “If there wasn’t so much music to choose
from, it’d be much less creative, but because there’s this enormous wealth of music
out there, that’s kind of what makes it interesting.”
113

Of course, the concept of stylistic originality requires the existence of its
opposite: the concept of stylistic unoriginality, or derivativeness. While most of the
musicians I spoke with were loath to mention specific examples of derivative
sample-based work, many acknowledged that it can be just as common as stylistic
derivativeness in a traditional, instrumental musical environment. If originality in
configurable music resides in the factors I mentioned above, such as selection,
arrangement and production, derivativeness resides there as well. According to
Strictly Kev, “I’ve heard people copying mixes that I did . . . the same tracks, the
211
same cuts, done the same way.”
114
Go Home Productions echoed this assessment,
telling me that derivativeness in the mash-up aesthetic is something “you can tell in
the artists they use [as source materials] but certainly in the way they put two artists
together.”
115

However, not everyone I spoke with agreed that stylistic originality and
derivativeness could be heard in the work of sample-based musicians. As Osymyso
told me, mash-ups may already be reaching the point where stylistic innovation is
virtually impossible:
There’s only a small percentage of people in electronic music who
you could definitely recognize once you put a track on. Kid Koala, DJ
Shadow. . . . When it started and it was fresh, I think the idea was so
new that you could identify who did it, and it was art. But now, it’s so
common, that you’re just using a technique that already exists.
116

For TradeMark G, stylistic originality may exist, but on a subtle enough level
to elude the detection of the untrained ear: “Negativland has come to a point where
they’ve got a certain style of editing, an original approach to choosing material . . .
[but] as far as a level of recognizability or derivativeness that’s obvious to someone
that doesn’t have my ear, I don’t think there are many examples.”
117
Eric Kleptone
agreed, framing his observation in terms of the influential impact of a select few
stylists: “people like John Oswald and Negativland have considerable amount of
impact on a lot of people. And you can hear that.”
118

Another approach to the original/copy binary that emerged from my
conversations with configurable music practitioners is rooted in a set of procedural
questions regarding how much of the source materials are used whole-cloth in the
212
new work, how recognizable or obscure the source materials are in the mix, and the
nature and degree of transformation that should be applied to a given sample by a
producer in the process of creating a new work. TradeMark G succinctly summarized
many of these considerations:
It’s frustrating as an artist that in the end, people don’t remember your
work; it’s the source work that they’ll remember. Add to that the
[legal] risk that you take by sampling something recognizable. Add to
that the popularity that you’ll hopefully receive by sampling
something well known and doing it in a good way. You’re starting to
take a real risk. This is the conundrum: how recognizable things do
you sample? How far do you go with it? Do you leave the sample
unmolested so it has more power as an original source, do you
fragment it so it’s unrecognizable, adding my value but decreasing the
risk of recognizability? . . . as an artist, it’s a sort of tight-rope that
you walk.
119

While nearly all of the configurable music practitioners I interviewed shared
these same questions, there was no consensus regarding their answers. Some
musicians told me that they believed the key to originality lay in the size and nature
of the samples taken from the source recordings. As Go Home Productions told me,
“I think it depends how much of the sample you’ve used. If you’re just using a
backing melody, and you add 15 layers that are complementary, you’ve created
something original.” On the other hand, “If you’ve just taken a sample of the middle
eight [bars] of a Beatles song and you start manipulating that, you’re using a lot of
the original sample.”
120

Even among musicians who applied this standard, however, it was
acknowledged that there was no obvious bright line separating original from copy. In
Osymyso’s words:
213
What the cut-off is, I have no idea. It’s very difficult to say
you’ve created a new composition when the chunks are so big
of the one you’ve taken it from. So maybe it has something to
do with chunk size as well. It’s when it stops being about the
song the chunks are from, and starts being about the new
song.
121

A separate, but related issue, is the question of how central a sample is to the
new work it helps to create. In Go Home Productions’ opinion, “there’s a lot of
artists who use samples intelligently, in combination with instruments, so the sample
just adds to what they’re doing, rather than them adding to the original sample. . . .
It’s how you use that sample that should determine whether it’s really your tune.”
122

As a counter-example, GHP cited Madonna’s unoriginal use of ABBA in the song
Hung Up – much as Si Begg did above, in our discussion of “creativity” as a
criterion in making art/craft distinctions. Osymyso echoed GHP’s argument, telling
me that “if you move away from the original core melody and song structure, then
it’s a new composition.”
123

The question of recognizability raised by TradeMark G was one of the most
contentious among interviewees; everyone I spoke to had a different take on the
subject, and the opinions varied widely. Some people told me that the key to
originality in sampling is total obscurity. Go Home Productions, for instance, told me
that “the clever sampling is when they take something and you still don’t recognize
it, in its remix form. It’s how you disguise it.”
124

The aesthetic of obscurity may have some of its roots in resistance to musical
regulation. As Marc Geiger told me, “if you cut up the samples fine enough – and
many artists I know have done – [it’s] not recognized as a sample, and they get all
214
the money because it’s masked.”
125
Other sample-based musicians and IP attorneys
confirmed this observation, telling me that obscurity in sampling was a necessary
strategy to avoid paying royalties, not for the purposes of keeping “all the money,”
but in order to eschew the permissioning and market influence inherent in
commercial music – in effect, to eliminate money’s role in music entirely. As Fred
von Lohmann, a senior intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) told me, “the nature of mash-ups is being influenced by
RepliCheck technology,” a commercial brand of production software that “checks”
CDs before they’re replicated to make sure they don’t contain unlicensed
copyrighted material. Von Lohmann explained that “certain kinds of things escape
its attention – pitch-bending, shorter samples, et cetera,” and therefore these aesthetic
decisions have become more prevalent among mash-up producers.
126

However, many of my interviewees rejected the aesthetic of obscurity in
sample-based music. Some opted for what might be called an aesthetic of quasi-
recognizability, in which originality is gauged by the audible transformation of sonic
materials from their source state. As Strictly Kev told me, there are many options
regarding “how you manipulate that sample. Are you going to play it straight, keep it
in its original context, completely take it out of context, chop it up, rearrange it, use
it literally as sound, take the whole melody?” Ideally, he said, “you can chop
something up to the point where you know what the original is, but the melody is
different.”
127
V/VM also told he “used to love taking full tracks and absolutely
215
twisting them beyond belief and putting them out.” However, he emphasized, it’s
always important to keep your source materials audible to the listener:
I think if you flip something so much, it might be recognizable but it’s
still your own. I guess the tipping point is, even though its still
recognizable – you could listen to it and be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s The
Lady in Red’ [by Chris De Burgh] – but where someone listening
would say, ‘What the hell’s happened to it? It sounds decrepit.
Something horrible’s happened to this file.’
128

As mattcatt told me, the aesthetic of quasi-recognizability is not only
preferable, it’s definitive in the case of “glitch” music – a sub-genre of electronica
characterized by sonic distortions resembling the accidental artifacts produced by
faulty recording media and playback equipment. In his words, “glitch relies on the
base track being remotely recognisable in order to justify the annihilation!”
129

Steinski also praised the aesthetic of quasi-recognizability, telling me that for him,
“original” configurable music is “still based in actual music – you can hear
drummers drumming, bass players playing, people singing, but it’s kind of altered –
so it’s not like techno, or something that’s completely synthetically-based.”
130
In
other words, Steinski argues that larger, more recognizable samples actually produce
more original music than songs based on smaller, less recognizable ones.
As with the aesthetic of obscurity, the aesthetic of semi-recognizability has
some roots in strategic necessity. As Osymyso explained to me, allowing listeners to
recognize some or all of a work’s source materials can make it more accessible to
them, paradoxically allowing the producer to take greater aesthetic liberties: “If you
want to get people to listen to something that’s slightly more unusual, abstract or
216
difficult, you put something recognizable that they like in there and you’ve kind of
won half the battle – because it’s instantly recognizable, they’re going to like it.”
131

Interestingly, Hosh Gureli of Sony/BMG made an argument parallel to
Osymyso’s, but with a market-oriented twist. Recognizable samples are valuable
tools in a commercial producer’s arsenal, he told me, because they allow music
sellers to take advantage of consumers’ preexisting affinities with the source
materials. In his words, “'when you try to make a hit record, you try to take – not in
all cases, but in the rhythmic format, which is ‘Top 40’ right now, with few
exceptions – that when you put samples into music, it insures more likelihood of a
hit.”
132
Similarly, Pete Ganbarg of Pure Tone Music told me that:
Certain artists are going to use samples, replays,
interpolations, stuff like that to help gain a wider audience. . . .
For me, sampling is a great way to take something familiar
and create something new out of it because familiarity is
something that people are comfortable with. So if you’re able
to take an older record and use it to create something new so
that more people will listen to, enjoy and ultimately buy your
music, I’m all for it. Why not?
133

Other interviewees told me they believed sample recognizability wasn’t
simply permissible in configurable music, it was positively paramount. As DJ Adrian
explained, “I really appreciate the beauty – [Mysterious] D and I both do – of
maintaining sort of the integrity of the original song and adding something brand
new to it, i.e. a brand new vocal [sample], and manipulating it into a completely
different song.”
134
Some survey respondents shared this notion that sample-based
music incurs an ethical debt to the sampler, on behalf of the sampled. As one New
217
York man in his 20s wrote, “as long as you acknowledge the original creator of item
and do justice to his work I think remixes and mashups should be acceptable [sic].”
This premise that originality can be achieved, not by obscuring a song’s
sources, but by celebrating them, is one aesthetic factor that sets mash-ups aside
from most other forms of sample-based music. DJ Adrian consciously acknowledged
this, telling me that “if it gets glitched out beyond belief, where it’s unrecognizable
from its source material, then you’re starting to get more into a remix [than a mash-
up style].”
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DJ Paul V echoed DJ Adrian’s emphasis on recognizability as an essential
element of the mash-up style, explaining that the aesthetic language of the mash-up
is premised on the interplay between two or more known variables: “if I hear a new
mash-up of two tracks I’ve never heard before, I’m less interested. Because that
takes twice as much time to know what the tracks are. It kind of takes away the
discovery of how it’s different than how I knew it.”
136

Strictly Kev told me that this emphasis on recognizability was the very factor
that interested him in mash-ups in the first place: “Stealing big samples, that was one
of the things that attracted me to it, really. That was one of the things that amazed me
about mash-ups, is that there were people who were so untouchable that were just
being brazenly sampled.”
137
In other words, the onus to protect the “integrity of the
original,” as described by DJ Adrian, is fundamentally inseparable from Strictly
Kev’s desire to touch the untouchable, erasing the boundaries dividing amateur from
professional and producer from consumer, with one fell cut-and-paste.
218
Within the mash-up aesthetic, then, the only way to be original is to
acknowledge one’s debts to others. Furthermore, to oppose or obscure the sampling
of a song is paradoxically tantamount to sullying its “integrity.” The tacit assumption
here is that the appearance of creation ex nihilo is a flat-out lie, by definition. As
Matt Wand summed it up: “Everything is derivative. It’s just, really, if you think
something is stylistically original, you’re not familiar with the sources of derivation.
. . . It’s really just a question of how many strands, how many layers there are to the
derivation.”
138

Significantly, this celebration of “brazen” sampling, and elevation of sample
recognizability to the level of moral necessity, do not constitute carte blanche for
configurable music producers. If recognizability is essential to originality, it doesn’t
necessarily insure it, either. Earlier in this chapter, I quoted Hosh Gureli and Pete
Ganbarg of Pure Tone Music calling Sean “Diddy” Combs a “genius” of
configurable music – in part, for the brazenness of his samples, especially in the case
of I’ll Be Missing You, his tribute to the late Biggie Smalls featuring samples from
The Police.
However, although I never mentioned Diddy in my questions, a number of
the mash-up producers I interviewed cited him – and I’ll Be Missing You in
particular – as derivative or downright dishonest for, as Go Home Productions
described it, simply “taking the opening riff from Every Breath You Take and
slapping a hip-hop beat under it.”
139
Osymyso put it the most concisely, explaining
that I’ll Be Missing You “isn’t in any way a new song. You’d say, ‘that is someone
219
rapping over The Police.’ It’s a very difficult thing to define, but the Puff Daddy
stuff is soulless. It’s just not clever.”
140

Mash-ups’ emphasis on recognizability of sources is not solely an aesthetic
decision, nor one premised entirely on the ethic of acknowledging one’s own
influences. According to many of the producers I spoke to, mash-ups have an added
function, analogous to the relationship of blogs to mainstream media: they keep
commercial music honest, by exposing the aesthetic debts and appropriations of
mainstream pop. As DJ Paul V told me, “people do that all the time. They’ll make a
mash-up out of someone being inspired by something that came before. I mean, the
‘Dean Gray’ album [a 2005 mash-up album by Party Ben and team9, mixing tracks
from Green Day’s “American Idiot” with classic songs by artists such as Smokey
Robinson, Aerosmith and U2] is twelve tracks of that.”
141
DJ Adrian told me that
such influence policing is one of the highest aims to which a mash-up producer can
aspire: “A great mash-up . . . makes you realize that all Western music is kind of the
same.”
142

However, this critical aspect of the mash-up aesthetic can sometimes be
missed entirely by its own targets. As Matt Wand recounted to me, producer
Soulwax created a mash-up of Kylie Minogue’s contemporary club track Can’t Get
You Out of My Head with New Order’s classic Blue Monday in 2002. The songs are
sufficiently similar that the result sounded, in Wand’s estimation, “kind of
redundant.” However, the track became popular, receiving widespread radio airplay,
and Minogue eventually added a live version of the mash-up to her touring act. This
220
poses a troubling challenge to the mash-up ethic, as Wand explained to me: “What
happens when people don’t pick up on pieces being totally derivative? The masher
put them together to show that point, but she missed the critical point of it . . . it was
just a superimposition to kind of show how derivative the thing was.”
143

The ambiguity of the original/copy binary in the context of configurable
music also has significant implications for questions of ethics and law. What debt
does a sample-based artist owe to those being sampled, and what mechanisms can
we use to judge the relative claims each has to “ownership” of the resulting
configurable music product? There are no clear answers to these questions, from
either an ethical or legal vantage point.
Just as many of the survey respondents argued that configurable music is
intrinsically unoriginal, many also suggested that it is intrinsically unethical. As one
Alabama woman in her 40s wrote, “I feel any original material belongs to owner and
their rights. [sic] Anything copied from it is not right.” Another respondent, a
California man in his 50s, argued against the ethicality of sampling as a social
mandate: “Artists should learn to create for themselves. We are in dire need of NEW
music. Go to school and learn how to use YOUR brain to create something nEW
[sic].” Another man from Texas in his 40s argued that legal sanctions against
sampling amount to a form of social sanctioning: “Let us praise the people that
produce original material and make those who can’t pay for there [sic] whimsy.”
Interestingly, some configurable music practitioners – mostly those involved
in the commercial music industry to some degree – echoed the notion that
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unpermissioned sampling amounts to a breach of ethics. DJ Axel, for instance, told
me that “the original composition of actually coming up with an original bass line
and an original drum beat and an original hook – I’m stealing that. . . . Somebody
composed the song. And I stole it.”
144
Similarly, Dan “The Automator” Nakamura,
one of the world’s most famous and successful commercial music producers, told an
interviewer that sampling requires a stricter ethical code than quoting:
I would say, as a writer, if somebody quotes a couple of
paragraphs of mine in the context of something larger, then I
don’t really have the right to say anything about it. All
literature and all writing is built on that. . . . When it’s a
recording, [however], it could be the guy’s voice. Maybe he
doesn’t want to lend his voice to this project, so I respect that
side of it.
145

Interestingly, Nakamura’s double standard is echoed in contemporary sampling
caselaw, as I’ll discuss further shortly.
If sampling was deemed unethical by many survey respondents and
interviewees, it had its proponents as well. As one Connecticut man in his 20s
argued, the development of configurable music is inevitable and therefore
permissible: “remixes and mashups are part of evolution.” Another Louisiana man in
his 30s was so supportive of configurable music that he used all capitals in his
response: “I LOVE TO HEAR OLD MUSIC RE-USED. IT IS GREAT!” Of course,
nearly all of the configurable musicians I spoke with believed that their behavior was
ethical. Si Begg echoed a common sentiment – that sample-based music is often
more original than instrumental music, and that the law is unfair for failing to
recognize this fact. As he lamented about contemporary pop band Franz Ferdinand,
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“they’re very much copying the style, the sound, even the image of these bands
[from the ‘80s], but you’ll never get sued for doing that.”
146

Some people reported qualified support for the ethicality of configurable
music. One idea that surfaced several times was the notion that, as a New Hampshire
woman in her 20s wrote, “If you are going to create a remix it should be better than
the original.” A Minnesota man in his 50s echoed this sentiment, writing that
“Sometimes remixes are better than the original.” However, configurable musicians
did not tend to share the belief that this should be an ethical threshold – mostly,
because they believed the threshold was too high. As Strictly Kev told me,
“occasionally, you’ll get [a remix] that’s better than the original, but that’s pretty
rare.”
147

Another ethical qualifier that emerged in my conversations with configurable
musicians was the notion that sampling is ethical as long as the sampler
acknowledges and pays his debt to the sampled artist. However, they reported that,
paradoxically, current copyright laws prevent them from doing so, by forcing
sample-based artists to choose between unaffordable or untenable licenses and
underground, non-commercial distribution. As DJ Earworm told me, “You know, I
would love to give it, you know, to be able to sell my mash-ups. And get some
money to the people who deserve it. I mean like the artists mashed up. And keep a
little for myself.”
148
Osymyso told me he accepts the notion of sample licensing in
theory, but thinks it hasn’t been successful in practice: “I think if you take something
like that, you should come to an agreement with the person who owns the copyright,
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pay them their due. But I think the copyright owners have taken it way too far.”
149

Significantly, payment was not the only kind of duty sample-based musicians
reported having to their sources. As Si Begg told me, “I think it’s important to give
people credit. I think, in some ways, that’s even more important than the money.”
150

The legal landscape for configurable music is no less murky than the ethical
one; in fact, a comprehensive analysis of the situation would require a book-length
treatment of its own.
151
However, I will briefly review some of the legal concepts
and decisions bearing on the question of originality.
Currently, one of the more ambiguous aspects of music copyright law regards
the question of whether there should be a de minimis defense for sampling – in other
words, whether samples can be small enough in size to no longer constitute copies,
in the sense of violating the reproduction rights of the works they are taken from
(and therefore, to qualify as new or original works). There is a common
misperception – cited by some interviewees and survey respondents – that a “3-
second law” (or a 5- or 10-second law) sets a legal de minimis threshold. In actuality,
there is no legislation addressing this question, and the most recent caselaw is
confusing at best, and self-contradictory at worst.
Recorded music is accorded two copyrights: one for the sound recording (the
“master” copyright), and one for the composition (the “publishing” copyright).
According to two relatively recent court cases, there is a valid de minimis defense for
samplers relating to the publishing copyright, but no de minimis protection relating to
the master copyright.
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In the first case, known as Newton v. Diamond, hip-hop band The Beastie
Boys used a six-second sample of a James Newton song, consisting of three notes
played on the flute using a distinctive “multiphonics” technique. Although they had
obtained a license for the master copyright, they had failed to do so for the
publishing right. Newton sued, claiming infringement, but the Court found for the
defendants, arguing that “when viewed in relation to Newton’s composition as a
whole, the sampled portion is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively significant.”
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In the second case, known as Bridgeport v. Dimension, hip-hop group
N.W.A. sampled a two-second guitar riff from a Funkadelic song, putting it through
many of the de-tuning and editing processes that I have discussed above as marks of
stylistic originality within the configurable music community. However, because
they had not acquired a license from the owner of the master rights, N.W.A. were
found guilty of infringement. As the Court wrote in its decision, de minimis
standards did not apply; instead, there was an absolute edict against unpermissioned
use of a phonorecording: “Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as
stifling creativity in any significant way.”
153

Several intellectual property attorneys told me they disagreed with the
Bridgeport decision. In Jennifer Urban’s words, it was “a whacked-out decision . . .
because Congress is the body that is able to decide what the appropriate scope is. Not
the Court.”
154
Similarly, Bob Clarida told me that he thought the decision was just
“flat out wrong. You know, the idea that the de minimis doctrine somehow does not
apply to sound recordings I just think is flat wrong. . . . I think at that point, you’re
225
not copying somebody else’s expression.”
155
However, Ron Bienstock told me he
supports the Bridgeport decision, arguing that sample length is not a sufficiently
consistent gauge of originality to merit legal support for a de minimis standard. In his
words, the most original part of a song “may just be a five, six note phrase. All of a
sudden so you say you can take that? What becomes de minimis? I think once you’ve
sampled you’ve sampled.”
156
TradeMark G agreed with Bienstock’s negative
assessment of sample length as an arbiter of originality (if not necessarily with his
support of Bridgeport’s conclusions): “The threshold [for originality] changes
depending on what kind of sample you’re talking about. Don’t bother trying to put a
time frame on to it. . . . there’s no point in trying to do that.”
157

However, despite the legal implications of the Bridgeport ruling, several
interviewees told me that de facto de minimis standards often apply. As I mentioned
above, Marc Geiger of WMA told me that “if you cut of the samples fine enough –
and many artists I know have done – [it’s] not recognized as a sample and they get
all the money.”
158
Attorney and former techno producer Gary Adelman echoed
Geiger’s observation, but offered a more nuanced analysis of the pros and cons
associated with this procedural loophole:
A lot of the elements of especially techno and electronic music
are just, you know, you can’t pinpoint where they came from.
It’s just too difficult. . . . If you know anything about
electronic dance music, you know that they’re the worst
offenders of sampling that there is. So god knows where they
got it from. Most electronic dance artists are happy just to get
their music played and sold. They’re not really worrying
about, you know who’s using it. ‘Cause they’re the worst
offenders.
159

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In other words, configurable musicians who chop up their samples finely
enough can elude regulatory oversight and associated expenses, but by the same
token, it’s harder to prevent other configurable musicians from using their work in an
uncredited fashion, and nearly impossible to produce a commercially viable product.
Other legal opinions and concepts can be applied to the question of
originality in the context of configurable music, as well. Bob Clarida cited three
additional cases that bear directly on the subject: Feist v. Rural Telephone Service
160

(briefly discussed above), which “would elevate the appreciation of the level of
authorship in a hip-hop record” because of its emphasis on the copyrightability of
selection and arrangement; Campbell v. Acuff Rose
161
, which introduces the concept
of “transformative use” as an element of “fair use” defenses against copyright
infringement; and Amsinck v. Columbia
162
, which argues that the threshold for
infringing use of a copyrighted work in another work should be market harm (e.g.
diminished sales). However, though all three of these decisions offer viable
arguments recognizing the originality of some sample-based works, none of them
loom nearly as large as Bridgeport’s absolute prohibition against unlicensed uses of
recorded materials in influencing the decisions of artists, music distribution
companies, and judges in the current sampling environment.
163

Although this may seem like an intractable situation, Gary Adelman (who
was 40 years old at the time of our interview) told me that he feels the laws will
eventually “evolve” to reflect the subtleties of perspective reflected in my interviews
227
with configurable music practitioners – largely because of generational shifts in the
composition of the judiciary. In his words:
As [younger people] start becoming judges and understanding
digital technology and understanding sampling in a different
way than people that are 55 now do, I think that there’s going
to be more cases decided on the side of the sampler . . . and
finding that there’s more and more . . . for lack of a better
word, ‘fair use’ of these samples. Because, look, you can take
three notes from anybody and you could twist it, turn it,
reverse it, you know, and it doesn’t sound a bit like the
original. But if some forensic music guy can go in and undo it
all and he can prove that that’s sampling, well, why should
that be sampling? The guy obviously created something out of
something else. So why should that be sampling? And I think
that people of my generation, when we become judges, are
going to go in that direction and say that’s not sampling. But
currently it is.
164

A final aspect of the original/copy dichotomy that bears investigating in the
context of configurable music practices is the question of uniqueness. In the absence
of a concrete original work, does digital reproduction still dilute the perception of a
work’s value? How is scarcity defined and interpreted in a medium based on a
limitless stream of ones and zeroes? Does the increasing intangibility of expression
continue to find its counterweight in the fetishization of the author or the physical
object? Does the hierarchy of uniqueness still hold sway, in either its traditional or
inverted form? As with my other questions, interviewees offered a range of reactions
and responses on these subjects.
A significant number of interviewees told me that the concept of uniqueness
couldn’t – or shouldn’t – be applied to configurable music. Eric Kleptone put it the
most bluntly, telling me, “to hell with uniqueness.”
165
Matt Wand told me that the
228
concept of uniqueness doesn’t make sense given the mechanics of configurable
music: “I guess I’d have to say that uniqueness is irrelevant in terms of sampling . . .
people have tried to impose uniqueness on it, but you kind of have to give up.”
166

Similarly, Si Begg told me that, with digital music, “there’s no real product. It’s just
a bunch of zeroes and ones at the end of the day, and [they’re] infinitely
reproduced.” However, he added that “I don’t view that as a problem, really. That’s
fine.”
167

Marc Geiger of WMA also linked configurable technologies to a shift in the
value proposition associated with uniqueness – but from an economic, music
industry perspective: “My take on [uniqueness] is that it’s purely qualitative. If
there’s a degradation in quality or a bootleg album . . . that wold be the
corresponding drop in value. [But] the Internet blew it all apart [because] there’s no
degradation in quality.”
168
In other words, Geiger argues that the entire conceit
underpinning the hierarchy of uniqueness – and therefore the economics and
regulation of music distribution – has become untenable in the age of perfect, infinite
reproduction of information.
Some configurable musicians offered more socially-oriented analyses.
Closely echoing Benjamin’s prizing of the democratization of aesthetics over
“aura,”
169
V/VM told me: “I don’t think it’s very important for sample-based music
to be unique. I think it’s very important for a lot of people to be able to listen to it,
because it’s still very marginalized.”
170
And echoing Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted
argument that “he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself
229
without lessening mine,”
171
Osymyso told me that “the originality of something isn’t
diluted with copying.”
172

TradeMark G took a historical perspective, suggesting that configurable
technologies are simply returning the status of music to its original, pre-commodified
state. In his words, music is “a time-based art, which produces no original. Even
back before computers, you still didn’t have an original for a song you’d make – you
could perform it, or write it out, but neither is really the original.”
173
In other words,
the notion of a unique musical product was simply a convenient fiction aiding
commerce and abetted by the mechanics of pre-configurable capture, storage and
distribution technologies.
However, despite the prevalence of the “to hell with uniqueness” sentiment
among my interviewees, there was some ambivalence about relinquishing the
concept altogether, and some interesting strategies for preserving uniqueness in the
face of its obsolescence. These sentiments are reflected in Mysterious D’s comment
that “we’re actually playing with stuff that’s already reproduced a million times.
And, again, that’s where the live thing comes in handy . . . I do think that, you know,
art in its original form should have more value, you know. And it should continue to
be valuable.”
174

This notion that live performance “comes in handy” as a substitute for the
uniqueness of a recorded music artifact, and helps to preserve the value of music as a
product, was echoed by many of the configurable musicians I spoke with. As DJ
Earworm told me, “I think the way that generally musicians capitalize on the
230
uniqueness, not so much by autographs, you know, it’s their concerts. . . . Many
mash-up artists are DJs as well. And you go to the live performance and you get that
uniqueness.” However, this is not simply an abstract concern for sample-based
musicians. If uniqueness is a component of value in a commercial context, then it is
also a key to remuneration. As Earworm explained further, live performance is “the
only way that a mash-up can really make money, unless they do [commercial]
productions . . . the value’s always in the uniqueness. So that’s why I’m DJing.”
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However, one of the challenges for configurable music in a live context is
how to communicate the uniqueness of the event to an audience. This is a problem,
because the practice of producing mash-ups or remixes can be less than dynamic to
watch or to contemplate; as V/VM told me, “people think all you have to do is press
buttons.”
176
Consequently, configurable musicians must strategically emphasize the
now-ness of their performances by altering their musical praxes. As Osymyso told
me, he’s “currently trying to figure out a way of creating a performance so when
people are attending the performance they are aware that that moment is a one-off,
that you can’t download a performance. . . . It’s a unique moment, and ideally you’re
doing something that happens only once.”
177

One of the most interesting strategies I encountered in my research was
TradeMark G’s. When he performs with the Evolution Control Committee, part of
his act involves bringing audience members on stage to spin the “Wheel of Mash” –
a ramshackle, six-foot device similar to the one spun by contestants on television’s
“Wheel of Fortune” (see Figure 6). The device has an inner wheel and an outer
231
wheel, both spinning on the same axis, each of which contains the names of six
different recording artists. When the two wheels are spun, the pointer identifies one
of 36 possible combinations, which TradeMark G then mashes together on the spot.
Despite the somewhat contrived nature of this spectacle, he told me, it’s a useful tool
for communicating the value of live performances to an audience, because “the
nuances of it are all unique. There will never be that combination again.”
178

Figure 6: TradeMark G and an Audience Member Spinning the “Wheel of Mash”
Another strategy some configurable musicians reported for preserving the
uniqueness of music in a configurable context was the notion of limited distribution
– essentially, imposing artificial scarcity on an infinitely reproducible resource.
232
Strictly Kev told me that, paradoxically, this strategy is inherent to much
configurable music because it isn’t released through mainstream channels, and
addresses a niche audience. In fact, he argued, this is a fundamental aspect of the
mash-up ethic: “You’re taking something mass produced and boiling it down into
something that’s incredibly unique, that will then be redistributed to a smaller
audience.”
179

DJ Adrian and Mysterious D echoed this sentiment, and debated its
implications in greater detail:
DJ Adrian: If it’s harder to get ultimately – I mean, because
there’s a limited amount, then there’s a more perceived value.
And with mash-ups, because they’re illegal, you can’t go
through your regular distribution channels. . .

Mysterious D: Yeah, some songs are up for one day. And
maybe only, let’s say, ten people downloaded it. Probably
more than that. But say a hundred or 200 or 500 out of a
billion people. It becomes, then, that song becomes limited
and a little bit of piece of artwork because you can’t get it
again.

DJ Adrian: And maybe you assign more value to it because of
that. You know, like for instance the ‘Dean Gray’ album . . . it
got a cease and desist order. . . . So, you know, does the value
of it go up because it was harder to get?

Mysterious D: Yeah.

DJ Adrian: Even though it’s free and it’s there’s a million
copies of it. Yeah.
180

In other words, according to DJ Adrian and Mysterious D, illegality produces
scarcity, which produces perceived value. This suggests that the inverted hierarchy
of uniqueness is actually created and sustained by musical regulation – specifically,
233
by current copyright laws, which prevent most mash-ups from being distributed via
mainstream commercial channels.
However, not every configurable musician I spoke with agreed that
artificially imposed scarcity is meaningful or even possible in a configurable music
context. As Matt Wand told me, “if someone releases something that’s an edition of
50 CD-Rs, it doesn’t make that much difference, does it, because someone can easily
copy that. . . . I don’t really think very much about those kinds of things.” However,
Wand told me that such matters had been more important to him “in the past, when I
ran a label”
181
– further suggesting that questions of uniqueness and value are often
primarily important for commercial, rather than aesthetic, reasons.
If limited distribution of the finished product was one strategy for uniqueness
reported by configurable musicians, limited access to source materials was another.
As Matt Wand told me, “that might be the answer to the question of finding
something unique – is the land-rush for ancient, crusty 7-inches [a vinyl record
format] or albums that there was just, like, 100 ever made, so no one else can have
that sample. You’re the first to the motherlode.”
182
Similarly, Strictly Kev told me
that “it’s the essence of DJ culture really – finding things that no one else had . . .
you’re looking for that thing that’s not mass-produced, that hardly anyone’s got.”
183

These sentiments reflect a long tradition in the hip-hop and DJ communities of
“digging in the crates,” which has been discussed extensively by Schloss
184
and
others.
234
While this ethic of finding rare samples from dusty and discarded vinyl
records makes sense in the context of configurable music genres such as hip-hop or
techno, it makes less sense in the mash-up community. As I have discussed above,
mash-ups are premised on the notion of recognizability and critique of pop culture –
there’s no sense in mashing together samples no one’s ever heard before. However,
this hasn’t stopped the mash-up community from reposing value in unique source
materials; rather than rare vinyl samples, they have shifted their focus to original
master recordings of popular songs.
Most mash-ups are made using instrumental tracks and a capella vocals
digitally extracted from commercial releases; though the extraction techniques have
become increasingly sophisticated, the results still typically bear the sonic artifacts of
the process, diminishing the sound quality and the marring the purity of aesthetic
intent. Sometimes, as with the case of Jay-Z’s “The Black Album,” which DJ Danger
Mouse used to make “The Grey Album,” a capella vocals are made available by the
record label, but these are broadly accessible, and confer less value on the resulting
mash-up than a digitally extracted vocal would.
On rare occasions, however, a mash-up producer may gain exclusive access
to master recordings, with or without the permission of the recording artist or record
label that owns them. In these cases, the masher is able to produce a mash-up that not
only sounds better than anyone else’s could, but may actually be impossible to
produce without such access. As DJ Earworm explained it:
The material I’m using is, you know, these MP3s and even
CDs and stuff that’s just floating around everywhere. That
235
doesn’t have any uniqueness to it. I mean, if I was taking the
master tapes, that’s different. Because then I’d be able to
create this amazing master that was, you know, beyond the
quality that anyone else could do.
185

Go Home Productions has actually obtained access to master tapes for some
popular recordings, after the copyright owners heard his unlicensed, digitally-
extracted mash-ups and decided to allow him to reproduce his work in higher quality
for commercial release. While this allowed him to more fully realize his aesthetic
vision, it also posed something of a double-edged sword; the exchange typically
involves a quid pro quo, in which the masher may be asked to make aesthetic
decisions he wouldn’t make on his own. In GHP’s words:
When I did Rapture Riders – The Doors with Blondie – it was
a vocal take that only had the drums in it, but they were low
enough so I could disguise it. But it was so much easier when
The Doors guys gave me the master tapes, so I could just have
the vocals. But some of these record companies will not give
you these parts unless you’re working for them, so you have to
do the best you can do, you know?
186

Similarly, Matt Wand told me that while he loves working with master tapes
for aesthetic reasons, sanctioned access actually narrows the range of available
aesthetic possibilities. In his words, “the problem with the sanctioned remix is it cuts
off the idea that you can use anything else – the whole world of sampled music –
because if you use other copyrighted material, the label that sanctioned the remix
doesn’t want to be sued by another group.”
187

This ambivalence about the benefits of label-sanctioned access to master
tapes was echoed in my conversations with configurable musicians about the
sanctioned or unsanctioned uses of samples in general. As Si Begg told me, “if I do
236
sample something, I don’t think ‘Oh, am I allowed to use this or not?’ But when I
have the finished product, then, yeah, I do have to think, ‘Is anyone going to want to
release this . . . and does this render it unsalable in a way?’”
188

Some configurable musicians told me that the unsanctioned nature of the
idiom was part of what initially appealed to them – after all, terms like “bootleg” do
carry an air of illegitimacy. However, this minor thrill of the forbidden is hardly
enough of an incentive to keep producers engaged. As TradeMark G told me, “there
is a certain fun of sampling something without permission, knowing that you could
get in trouble for it. But that’s a juvenile delinquent feeling that I got over a while
ago.”
189
Most of the musicians I spoke with reported a general lack of concern
regarding the question of sanctioning, except as a practical matter related to aesthetic
or remunerative opportunities, as discussed above. V/VM summed this attitude up
best: “I’ve never had permission to remix anything. I’ve never looked to have
permission. It’s not important to me – if I want to do something, I’ll do it.”
190

A concept closely associated with the strategies of limited distribution and
rare source materials, and the question of sanctioned distribution, is the fetishization
of the physical recording artifact itself. As Matt Wand told me, the time-honored
strategy of limited physical releases has been employed successfully in some cases
as an antidote to the loss of perceived market value associated with digitization: “I
see people releasing DVD editions of five because they want a collector to pay 2,000
pounds. If the collector wants to pay for it, that’s good. And if an artist needs to find
some way to create a market for himself, it makes sense.”
191

237
Other interviewees expressed a personal preference for physical media, but
acknowledged that the perceived uniqueness and value of such objects will continue
to diminish as configurable culture becomes normative. As V/VM told me, “I like a
physical object in addition to a virtual one. I’m still of that generation where I like to
have something in my hand. But I think for younger people it’s not as important – all
they want is the music.”
192
Hosh Gureli of Sony/BMG shared this sentiment: “I can
touch it, I can feel it, I can listen to it, I can look at it, great. . . . But guess what – that
paradigm is changing, too. Music now, there’s only one thing you’re going to be able
to do with it – and that’s listen to it.” While he said he’s resolved to adjusting to this
change professionally, Gureli told me he also regrets it. In his words, “music is just
files now. And that’s a little sad, because . . . I don’t want to use the word ‘earthy-
crunchy,’ but you can smell vinyl. Even a CD, you can hold it in your hand.”
193

However, not everyone bemoaned the waning of the fetishization of physical
products. Echoing Bourdieu’s argument about commodity consumption as a mark of
class distinction,
194
Eric Kleptone told me, “I would glad to see that go out the door.
Because it’s, I mean, it’s incredibly fake. I don’t think it adds any value other than a
kind of fake social standing for people to collect these sorts of things.” To Kleptone,
the absence of uniqueness, and the resulting incapacity of music to be used as an
instrument of commercialism, is one of the main benefits of working in the mash-up
idiom. In his words:
I think people are being fooled, for the most part. You know,
they’re getting a false sense of worth out of their art products.
I think something that is given for free and is listened to as a
free product or something, you know, there is no way that you
238
can misinterpret the intentions behind it. And I think that is a
really important facet, particularly, of the way the mash-ups
and so forth [have] gone online – is, there is no commercial
intent really behind it. Although, you know, we all want to
make a living. . . . I think that that’s a very important factor in
when the audience listens to it. They’re not being sold
something. So they listen to it with more open ears.
195

Live From a Hard Drive: Configurability and the Composition/Performance Binary
As with the other foundations of the modern framework I have discussed, the
distinction between performance and composition has become increasingly
ambiguous in the age of configurable music. Can composition precede expression
when a DJ is juggling beats between two vinyl platters, or dropping samples and
effects into a sequence in Ableton Live or another software program? Does a
sequencer constitute a score, or an instrument? What would it mean for one
configurable musician to “cover” or “perform” the work of another? These concepts,
so integral to our traditional understanding of the division of labor in musical
production, become elusive and slippery when we try to apply them to sample-based
musical practices.
Many of my interviewees acknowledged that they had difficulty making such
distinctions in the context of their own behaviors. As Si Begg told me, “there’s many
tunes in which those kinds of rules just don’t apply any more. And certainly with the
performance side of things, it does get very blurry with computers. What’s
performance and what’s just playing back stuff? It does get quite tricky.”
196

Similarly, DJ Axel said he had trouble parsing performance from composition at all:
“If we’re gonna consider that using ProTools [sound editing and sequencing
239
software] is a performance, and it’s its own instrument, and you’re manipulating
samples to put them in a way that makes a song, that’s the composition part of it.
Then composition and performance are kind of the same thing. So, yeah, it’s
simultaneous.”
197
Tony Zeoli shared this sentiment as well, telling me, “I don’t think
that you can separate the two. . . . If you’re blending [tracks] or if you’re mixing . . .
then you’re composing a whole new work at that time.”
198

This ambiguity makes it especially difficult for configurable music
practitioners to describe their own roles within the process of music creation. Si
Begg told me he’s “sometimes a composer. Sometimes more of a producer than a
composer. But that’s all composition, really. It’s just not always composing
melodies. It’s more arranging noise.”
199
Similarly, in speaking of his well-known
work Raiding the 20
th
Century (released under the name DJ Food), Strictly Kev told
me:
I wouldn’t say I composed it. I’d say I arranged it. I see myself
as an editor. I don’t see myself as a musician or composer. I
collect things. I take them apart, and I put them back together.
That’s how I see my role. I would say I’m a producer or
arranger. Maybe I am all of these things.
200

When I asked DJ Axel how he would describe his role in musical creation, he
initially resisted calling himself a composer as well – largely because, as a music
industry executive in charge of licensing songs, he is legally and procedurally
required to deny that appellation to other configurable musicians who lack copyright
permission and control over their works. However, he eventually added it to his long
list of self-applied titles:
240
DJ Axel: Producer, engineer, arranger and performer,
definitely. Conductor, like Quincy Jones, not actually playing
an instrument. Conducting an orchestra definitely. It’s the
composer part [that's difficult to address] and it’s hard to
extract myself from the fact that I work in this industry. You
know. It’s hard to – because I deal with this stuff every day.
So it’s hard to, like, not think about that. The fact that it is
already an existing composition that I’m using. Yeah, so I
might draw the line there actually.

Aram: And say what?

DJ Axel: And say that I’m the director. Or I’m the performer,
engineer, arranger, conductor. But the actual comp – you
know, now we’re just splitting hairs. Fuck it. I’m all of that.
You know, I mean, again, we’re dealing in semantics.
Ultimately, I am making a song. Verse, bridge, chorus. I may
be stealing stuff. I may play some stuff on my own. I may,
like, play a little bass line in my ProTools or something to put
it over the top. Yeah, I think mash-up artists are composing.
Not composing new music, but composing remix music.
201

However, as with the other gray areas configurable technologies have opened
between the stark polarities of the modern framework, many of my interviewees told
me they have developed some kind of criteria to draw lines in the sand, reinforcing
the eroding boundaries between composition and performance. DJ Earworm offered
an interesting distinction: “”if you do it in real time, it’s called musicianship. And if
you do it ahead of time, it’s called composition.” However, he acknowledged that
new production techniques have even eroded the temporal distinctions between
“now” and “later”: “With Ableton Live, the lines are really blurring. And you’re able
to sort of arrange music just ahead of time, in a way. And you can kind of, looking at
it and seeing what’s gonna be playing. And then you make decisions.” Naturally, this
blurring of temporal lines renders Earworm’s line in the sand blurry as well. As he
241
concluded finally, “so DJs are sort of right in between, you know, composition and
performance.”
202

Other interviewees suggested that the line between composition and
performance may, like the distinction between original and copy, have something to
do with the number and size of sonic elements being appropriated for the new work.
As TradeMark G told me, “I look at this whole progression of samples in music as a
linguistic thing. If a song is a sentence, made of up words and letters, if you’re
DJing, the samples are probably words. If I’m composing, the samples are probably
letters.”
203
Osymyso combines Trademark G’s emphasis on sample size with DJ
Earworm’s temporal focus, suggesting a spectrum of distinction between
composition and performance: “It’s composition when you’re taking a lot of
elements and using them to create completely new song-based things. The far end of
the scale is a performance, mixing one or two elements together in real time. That’s
what a DJ does. It goes right along the scale.”
204

Interestingly, both Osymyso and TradeMark G use the term “DJ” here as a
proxy for “performer,” or “performance,” in contrast to “composer” or
“composition” – even though they, like most of my interviewees, frequently used the
term in a way that encompassed the entire spectrum of configurable music practices.
The ambiguity and plasticity of this term further reinforces my earlier observations
regarding the multifaceted nature of “DJ consciousness.” Like the term “bedroom
producer,” the term “DJ” often functions as a useful strawman, applied to behaviors
and individuals that do not merit inclusion in a traditional, well-defined or highly
242
respected category. However, the term can also be self-applied, and used either as a
mark of pride or as a means of self-deprecation.
Several mash-up producers told me they believe their work to be mostly or
entirely composition, as opposed to performance. As Mysterious D told me, for
mashers, “the performance isn’t as important because what we’re trying to showcase
is production and the actually individual tracks.”
205
Similarly, DJ Earworm told me
he believes that “a good mash-up artist is a good composer. Because, you know,
you’re moving these parts around and giving it new form.”
206

The fact that mashers can emphasize composition over performance, despite
their theoretical entanglement, suggests another common line in the sand: for many
configurable musicians, performance is defined by the existence of a live audience
(much as the term “artist” may also be defined by the existence of a live or remote
audience, as I have previously discussed). Strictly Kev put it most concisely: “I don’t
really think of myself as a performer, unless it’s in the context of DJing in front of a
crowd.”
207
Tony Zeoli agreed, telling me that when “you’re sitting in a studio and
you’re finding and tweaking sounds and you’re creating a body of work, you’re
composing, right? And then when you’re out on the live stage, performing that work,
then you’re performing.”
208
Trademark G made the same argument, but emphasized
that the distinction was really a subjective judgment: “There’s an obvious division –
when I do a live performance, the audience is witnessing the performative aspect and
vaguely aware of the compositional aspect.”
209

243
However, the notion that performance of configurable music is defined by the
presence of a live audience has its theoretical weaknesses, and its detractors. For one
thing, traditional notions of performance don’t require a live audience; for example,
a solo musician in a recording studio is still said to be “performing,” even if he’s the
only person within earshot. Given that a sample-based musician’s instrument is the
recording studio, this makes the distinction very difficult to parse. Mysterious D
acknowledged that this presents some obstacles to drawing a clear line in the sand:
“When you’re, you know, rearranging the songs, are you a performer? It’s a very
interesting, complicated question. ‘Cause you’re not – and you are.”
210

Another theoretical problem with the live-audience definition of performance
is that, according to some of my interviewees, having an audience is integral to the
compositional process. DJ Axel, for instance, told me that “it’s like a comedian
trying out new material before they go on Kimmel or something,” meaning that his
compositional methodology is an ongoing process of refinement before an audience.
He explained how he composed a recent mash-up:
I had to try out something before I actually worked it out. So I
had the composition. The concept of the composition. Very
vague. Performed it a little bit to see what would work and
what wouldn’t work. Tested it out. And then when I got it I sat
down and performed, engineered, arranged and composed
it.
211

In other words, for DJ Axel, the modern framework’s assumption that
composition precedes expression falls flat on its face, or is completely
inverted. If any linear order exists in this process, expression precedes
and constitutes composition. In fact, the reality appears to be far more
244
cyclical than linear, consisting of a continuing dialogue between Axel and
his audience – many of whom are mash-up producers, as well.
The difficulties parsing configurable music performance from composition,
and the focus on live audience as a definitive constituent of performance, become
even more troublesome in light of a problem I mentioned above, regarding the
uniqueness question. To wit, that most configurable music production techniques do
not translate into scintillating stagecraft. These are not unrelated issues; the fact that
configurable music uses recorded sound as its starting point, and studio equipment as
its primary mechanism, means that the practice of creating it in front of a live
audience can seem redundant, disingenuous, boring, or all three.
As Go Home Productions explained the dilemma of using “preexisting
material” as the basis of live performance: “I can reproduce this stuff and play it out
to a club. But to me, it’s not a performance at all . . . it’s purely DJ. It’s composition.
. . . How am I to perform Michael Jackson mixed with The Beatles in front of 1,800
people? It’s ludicrous.”
212
Interestingly, in contrast to Osymyso’s and TradeMark
G’s statements above, GHP uses the term “DJ” here to mean “composition,” and not
performance; yet, like the other two configurable musicians, he reflexively uses the
term negatively, as a counterexample: “not X, but DJ.”
But what’s most interesting about GHP’s description is the fact that he
considers a live performance to be a “reproduction” – a simulacrum – suggesting that
the recorded version of his work constitutes the original artifact. In other words, once
again, expression is viewed as the initial step in configurable music production;
245
composition in this case is merely an afterthought – a necessary conceit allowing the
musician to reproduce his work for the purposes of audience appreciation, and
commercial gain.
I have already discussed one technique configurable musicians have used to
cope with the problematic nature of live performance – creating configurable
instruments that emphasize the physicality and ephemerality of the event through
sheer spectacle. TradeMark G’s “Wheel of Mash” (described above) is one such
example. Another is the DJ team of Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow; on a recent tour,
their set was preceded by an instructional video explaining to the crowd the
mechanics of vinyl-based DJ techniques, and emphasizing that the two DJs would be
using only original-issued 45-RPM vinyl “singles” to make their music, because the
smaller, faster discs provide a greater challenge to manipulate than LPs, let alone
CD- or MP3-based turntables, which have recently gained popularity among DJs..
Another technique many configurable musicians have used is to turn the
absurdity of the event into the subject of the event. As Matt Wand told me, it has
become commonplace “for people with a laptop to just push a button and mime –
and some people have turned that into an art form in itself – to perform theatrics to
what is essentially a prerecorded thing – which could be quite good.”
213
V/VM told
me he has used this technique extensively: “I perform a lot of these messed-up
versions in a live sense, but obviously it’s not live. It’s playback. But I mime them so
horribly, like the worst cabaret show you’ve ever seen.”
214

246
Ironically, then, performing an exaggerated or poorly executed simulacrum of
studio techniques on stage may confer more legitimacy, authenticity, and/or
showmanship on a musician than simply standing at a laptop or turntable and
faithfully recreating the physical motions of actual sonic production. It should be
noted that this performative strategy is not entirely unique to configurable musicians;
it has been used in the past as an inoculation against the indignity of “lip-synching”
by performing artists on television. For instance, Phil Lesh, the bass player for the
Grateful Dead, once famously held a broomstick instead of his bass on a “live”
television appearance that, to the band’s chagrin, used a pre-recorded music track
rather than an actual microphone feed. More recently, during a “live” appearance in
2004 on NBC’s sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, pop singer Ashlee
Simpson broke into a bizarre dance when the show’s technicians played a different
pre-recorded track than the one she had initially expected to lip-synch to.
Methods of parsing the performance/composition dichotomy, and of
addressing the problems of live performance in a configurable context, tend to differ
depending on the style of music in question. There is a wide gulf, for instance,
between the strategies of mash-up producers and those of turntablists. Turntablism is
a variety of configurable music – often considered an offshoot of hip-hop – in which
a DJ spinning vinyl emphasizes his skill through extended improvisation, using a
rapid sequence of difficult techniques such as backspinning, cutting, scratching, and
beat-juggling. As Mysterious D explained to me, “turntablists are less interested in
247
composition [than mash-up producers]. They’re not writing the music; they’re
simply interested in the skill part.”
215

Clearly, the division between mashers and turntablists is preceded by
centuries of musical rifts between composition-oriented and performance-oriented
musicians; Mysterious D’s claim that turntablists are not “writing the music” echoes
arguments by proponents of European classical music against improvisation-based
African American musical forms such as blues and jazz, or by pop singer-
songwriters against heavy metal guitar virtuosos. In fact, this comparison was made
explicitly by several of my interviewees. DJ Adrian, for instance, told me:
I think turntablism, in its purist sense, isn’t really about music,
so much as it’s about skill and technique. You go and see a
really amazing turntablist, that’s kind of like the equivalent of
going and seeing Yngwie Malmsteen. Do you see Yngwie
Malmsteen because he writes great songs? No! You see him to
play 5,000 notes a minute.
216

For some reason, Malmsteen, the heavy metal guitarist known for his
innovative “shredding” techniques, was often cited by interviewees as shorthand for
“complexity/quality of technique surpassing complexity/quality of compositional
material,” generally in the context of discussions about turntablism. Like Sean
“Diddy” Combs, Malmsteen seems to have acquired an iconic status as a negative
example among configurable musicians, rarely requiring further explanation. And, as
with Combs, this antipathy is understandable; if Combs can be seen as the poster
child for the rift separating big money from independent musicians, Malmsteen (like
his stated idol, Niccolò Paganini) can be seen as the poster child for the gulf
248
separating professional instrumentalists from amateurs. For musicians dedicated to
blurring or eradicating such distinctions, the two are equally anathema.
Of course, like all the dynamics of configurable musicianship I have
discussed, the turntablism/mash-up division is not nearly so neat and tidy as I have
presented it. For instance, some musicians, such as DJ Z-Trip, could easily be
categorized as both turntablists and mash-up artists. DJ Adrian would disagree with
this statement; as he told me, “Z-Trip works my nerve, because he's erroneously
comparing what he does, which is turntablism, and comparing it to mash-ups.”
217

However, as TradeMark G, told me, the distinction is philosophical, not absolute:
“By Adrian’s definition, you compose a mash-up. By Z-Trip’s definition, you
perform a mash-up.”
218

Although most of the musicians I interviewed come from the mash-up,
techno and hip-hop communities, there are other vantage points on the
performance/composition dichotomy, as well. For instance, Jesse Gilbert, whose
work could be classified as more academic or experimental than most of my other
interviewees, told me that he considers all work produced in a sequencing
environment like ProTools – whether mash-ups, hip-hop, or techno – to be
“arrangements,” whereas his own work is “more of an instrument model, where
you’re creating a software which is doing sample manipulation live, in response to
gestural input by a performer.”
219
In other words, for Gilbert, software creation is
composition, improvisation using this software constitutes performance, and most of
the other musicians I interviewed are doing neither, but simply “arranging.”
249
From a legal standpoint, the performance/composition dichotomy in
configurable music is as confusing and unresolved as the other binaries I have
discussed. As attorney Bob Clarida told me, when it comes to configurable music,
the existing legal categories “don’t do a very good job. They’re not very flexible.
They’re not very well suited to other kinds of creative practices that people do.”
220

The legal categories that do exist, law professor Jennifer Urban told me, suggest a
“stark privileging of the act of composition over the act of performance” – a
philosophy she explicitly linked to the notion of “the romantic composer who sat in
his studio”
221
– in other words, to the modern framework.
Specifically, under current American copyright law, only expression in a
fixed medium – such as a score or a recording – merits a copyright, and the badge of
authorship. Therefore, musicians who perform in front of an audience, but don’t
record their shows or keep written records of their work, do not qualify for copyright
protection, and are not credited as composers.
As I have discussed above, configurable musicians are not granted new
copyrights for their work unless they add “original” elements, such as new lyrics or
instrumentation to those works, and this eliminates the great bulk of mash-up and
techno music from consideration. Therefore, according to existing copyright law, and
despite their own self-description to the contrary, mash-up and techno producers are
not legally considered composers. And to the extent that the recording industry
accounts for them at all, they are generally considered “producers” – a work-for-hire
position with no ownership stake in the finished product.
250
Some legal scholars have argued that, just as composition and performance
are merging in a configurable context, the traditional legal divisions separating the
two categories should be erased, and that new legal categories should be created,
specifically to suit the mechanics of configurable music. Lawrence Lessig, for
instance, wrote the following on his blog, regarding “The Grey Album”: “Should the
law give DJ Danger Mouse the right to remix without permission? I think so.”
222

Similarly, attorney Gary Adelman told me that he favors “allowing artists to sample
and to utilize master rights the same way they’re allowed to use underlying
compositions . . . I’m advocating a compulsory license.”
223

Jennifer Urban told me she considers it “very unlikely that there will ever be
a compulsory remix license.” This may not be the only route toward resolving the
ambiguities and inconsistencies of configurable music law, however. Urban also told
me she believes that “a voluntary collecting society license will happen as soon as
labels make it to the realization that digital media is physically uncontrollable, but
licensing will get everyone paid.”
224
In other words, musical regulatory institutions
will eventually be forced to accommodate the dynamics of configurable culture, by
market pressures if not by statutory ones, as the modern framework inevitably
continues to erode.
Hooks and Hearts: Configurability and the Figure/Ground Binary
As I have discussed in previous chapters, figure/ground distinctions in
Western instrumental music are fairly well delineated by an established sonic
symbolic language, and by the capabilities and limitations of non-configurable
251
instrumentation. However, the unprecedented range and plasticity of aural expressive
possibilities presented by configurable music technologies means that configurable
musicians have the opportunity to reevaluate the meaning and function of
figure/ground distinctions in their work. Among my interviewees, there was a broad
range of engagement with this question. Some respondents told me that challenging
the traditional figure/ground relationship was central to their work, others told me
they preferred to use established figure/ground delineations, and still others told me
that they rarely considered the question, if ever.
As V/VM told me, configurable music technologies don’t require him to
engage the question at all, liberating him from the constraints of traditional
composition: “I’ve never really thought about it in terms of foreground and
background. For me, it’s the whole thing, it’s the end result. . . . I’ve never given
much thought to melody, or to what people remember.”
225
Similarly, Si Begg told
me: “I don’t think in terms of foreground and background. . . . I’m more interested in
trying to make things a sonic whole, I suppose, without trying to break things down
into traditional parts as such.”
226

Strictly Kev told me that, while he may not consider his music to be a “sonic
whole” in the way that Begg does, he finds figure/ground distinctions difficult to
parse, given the multiplicity of elements he combines in his work. In his words,
“you’ve got four backgrounds and four foregrounds. It’s not clear cut any more.”
227

However, Strictly Kev’s work should not be confused with postmodern pastiche;
although he combines a variety of elements into a new whole, it is anything but
252
ahistorical. His “Raiding the 20
th
Century” release, for example, functions explicitly
as a sonic history and genealogy of 20
th
century recorded music.
Steinski told me that traditional figure/ground relationships often don’t play a
role in his music either. But, he told me, this is neither because it constitutes a “sonic
whole” nor because of the complexity and variety of its constituent elements. Rather,
he rejects the Eurocentrism of the modern framework, and argues that hip-hop (his
most frequent style of work) is Afrodiasporic, and follows a rival aesthetic tradition:
Depending on how deeply into hip-hop you are, you may not
ever need a foreground. There are some guys, like me, who
can sit around and listen to the same beat going around and
around for 20 minutes. That takes it back to whatever valley
humans existed in and sprang from in Africa, is drums. . . .
The idea of melody and voice as foreground and bass and
drums as background is kind of a Western concept. And hip-
hop doesn’t always conform to that.

However, Steinski also acknowledged that, in his more market-oriented work, he is
more likely to follow traditional figure/ground distinctions: “Bass and drums are the
background, and, if I’m going to do a piece of music for a film or commercial, where
I have a guitar or a singer or piano, that’s going to be the foreground.”
228

Mash-up producers were far more likely to acknowledge a traditional
figure/ground relationship in their work than techno, hip-hop or experimental
musicians. This is because the relation between figure and ground is actually central
to the aesthetic. As Eric Kleptone explained, “with mash-up, what you’re actually
doing is you’re mashing up foregrounds and backgrounds. You’re taking a
foreground from one piece and you’re putting it to a background on another
piece.”
229
Similarly, DJ Adrian told me: “for me, it’s more like, ‘hey, I like this rap
253
and now I’m going to put it over music that I really like’ . . . because, ultimately, the
music is the bed.”
230

This willingness to take on traditional figure/ground dynamics could easily
be misunderstood as a mere artifact of mash-up technique: if a musician is only using
one vocal track and one instrumental track, how could he avoid replicating the
modern framework’s binary distinction? However, further inspection reveals more at
work here. DJ Earworm, whose work is known for incorporating a greater
multiplicity of elements than the standard “A+B” mash-up template, agreed with
Eric Kleptone and DJ Adrian, telling me that “vocals are almost always in the
foreground. And so . . . usually the instrumentals become the background.” He
reconciles this precept with his omnivorous sampling habits by explaining that the
mash-up aesthetic itself helps him to navigate between the many layers of sound
competing for attention within his works:
There can only be one thing in the foreground at once. I mean,
in a successful mash-up. You don’t want to challenge people
to pay attention to two things at once. It’s just too hard. Unless
one of them’s been repeating for a while. . . . I definitely think
about background, foreground, and make sure that there’s only
one voice expressing itself at a time.
231

This process of negotiation, then, is the fundamental to the mash-up aesthetic.
Thus, while the form may at first appear to take on the traditional figure/ground
distinctions inherited from the modern framework in a direct and uncritical fashion, I
would argue that it does so precisely in order to examine those distinctions, and by
doing so, critiquing them as well.
254
We can observe this further in the way mash-up artists sometimes change the
figural positioning of a sample as it travels from its original setting to its role in the
configurable work. As TradeMark G told to me, “in some cases, you’ll have sampled
materials that will already have been considered in a foreground/background kind of
way. . . . But in other cases, you’re sampling something more fragmented, and you
do have to consider how that comes together [using] your artistic sensibility.”
232

Several mash-up producers explained to me how their own “artistic
sensibilities” operate in this context. Osymyso (another mash-up producer known for
expanding the form far beyond the A+B template) told me, “the roles are changed
with sampling – what may have been just a little backing vocal may have been
brought to the front.”
233
Eric Kleptone gave me a concrete example of how he might
take a Beatles sample out of its original figural context: “You can get hold of the
drum track for Strawberry Fields Forever, which is really quite crazy at the end . . .
you can make that the foreground of a track . . . you can take background content and
pull it into the foreground. You can manipulate the order of pieces.”
234

DJ Earworm offered an even more in-depth explanation of how figural
recontextualization operates within his aesthetic:
You might have A express the verse and A-with-B expressing
the chorus. And then C has been going on sort of
unrecognizably as the instrumental. But then finally the bridge
comes and then C becomes the foreground. And there’s a
certain amount of satisfaction from the tension of recognizing
something’s there and maybe the wanting to hear it, and then
it finally comes to the foreground. . . . So, sort of playing with
the foreground and background is a big part of the
arrangement.
235

255
For many mash-up artists, then, examining, critiquing, and playing with
traditional figure/ground relationships is a central element of the process and the
aesthetic, and even the raison d’etre of the style itself. It may be argued, therefore,
that the true foreground of a mash-up isn’t A or B or even C; it’s the relationship and
recontextualization between the constituent elements that identifies a work and
makes it memorable – in other words, the juxtaposition itself functions as the
foreground.
Several of my interviewees made this point explicitly. As Go Home
Productions told me, “I don’t think there’s a foreground in a mash-up. It’s a
composite. It’s the final results of the melding. . . . If you were going to describe
Madonna’s new single, you wouldn’t sing the high part. You’d say, ‘it samples
ABBA.’”
236
TradeMark G made a similar observation: “Another element of it is
juxtaposition. Recontextualizing something makes it stand out more. If I reuse that
assertiveness training woman as a lead vocal in a new song, that’s not where you’d
usually hear her. That recontextualization makes things stand out.”
237

I don’t mean to suggest that figural recontextualization is unique to mash-
ups; in fact, the technique is common across the entire range of configurable musical
styles. Mash-up producers simply use this technique to a slightly different effect, by
putting it into conflict with the appearance of traditional figure/ground distinctions,
which happens less often in other configurable styles.
The technique is so prevalent, in fact, that configurable musicians in each
style claimed it as their own, sometimes to the exclusion of other styles. Jesse Gilbert
256
told me that, in his work, “there is a constant morphing and foregrounding and
backgrounding that can be done, so that there is no longer a kind of binary system,
but that things can be moved in and out of foreground and background with a totally
different kind of facility.”
238
Similarly, Steinski told me he used the technique, as
well: “Taking it from the background to the foreground is what rap did, with the
drum. Taking it from the foreground to the background is what a lot of [other] people
are doing. Using foreground as foreground and background as background is a mash-
up.”
239

If, for many configurable musicians, the juxtaposition between constituent
elements has become so central that, as Tony Zeoli put it, “whatever is in the music
is all foreground to me,”
240
then what can be said to constitute the background?
According to Si Begg, it depends on the context in which the music is heard. In a
dance club, he told me, other pieces of recorded music constitute a form of
background: “You have to take into account that quite possibly the first two minutes
and the last two minutes [of your own song] might be mixed in with something else.”
However, he told me, he also makes “music for a social environment. It’s music that
people can be talking over.” In that context, “there’s gonna be chatting and drinking
and hanging out,” and he accounts for those anticipated ambient noises within his
aesthetic.
241
Matt Wand made a very similar observation: “with mobile phones, your
conversations and your choice of music have suddenly become public. The private
has become public. The music itself has become just a background.”
242

257
In other words, both Begg and Wand perceive an increasing erosion of the
boundaries separating recorded music and the social environment in which it
functions, and reflect those observations and expectations within the configurable
aesthetic – although Wand characterizes his music as the background, rather than the
foreground, relative to ambient social noise. Both Begg and Wand attribute this shift
to the roles that configurable technologies now play in our lives, which are making
recorded music a more pervasive element of our social environment, even as they
conversely allow musicians to integrate environmental sounds into their work.
While some interviewees argued that configurable social practices are
influencing the perception of figure and ground within their music, other musicians
made the reverse argument: that figure/ground relations in their work may influence
social formations. As Tony Montana explained to me, “a good mash up / bootleg is a
culture clash .. 2 styles that shouldnt work together but do [sic].”
243
Similarly, V/VM
told me that “I’m layering instruments which are never, ever layered together. [I like]
to cross regions so you can have Chinese instruments playing with Indian
instruments, with, like, bagpipes.”
244

The function of these sonic “culture clashes” is not solely textural, nor purely
aesthetic. To the contrary, they often serve as models for the bridging of the social
chasms characterized by those aesthetic divides. As DJ Adrian told me, “that’s
definitely part of the appeal of mash-up culture, is the cross-pollination of scenes and
culture.”
245
Similarly, Mysterious D told me that such cross-pollination is one of the
258
primary purposes of Bootie, the multi-city mash-up club that she and DJ Adrian
jointly operate:
The audience in San Francisco is so mashed up, like the
music, and that’s one of our most – we’re most proud of. Is
actually to bring people that would never hang out together for
a party night, for a fun night where they can all actually, like,
have something in common. And have a good time. And be in
the same place with people they would never even talk to. Or,
you know, definitely clubs they wouldn’t be in with the same
people. You know, gay, straight, alternative, mainstream, you
know, the whole everything.
246

Within the commercial music industry, people rarely, if ever, discuss the
technical distinctions between figure and ground. However, there is an analogous
concept: that of the “hook.” True to its name, a hook is an element of a song that is
intended to stick in people’s minds, and to give the song its own identity. Typically,
when songs are marketed via audio or video channels, the hook is excerpted as a
stand-in for the song as a whole.
As veteran A&R executive Pete Ganbarg explained to me, the industry has
come to view configurable technology as a boon in some respects, for its ability to
recycle hooks from one song to another. In his words, his job “is to make
commercial music that’s going to sell as many copies as possible, and what sells
commercial music? Hooks. So in sample-based music, if I’m able to use a sample
which gives me another hook, I like as many hooks as I can fit in a tackle box.”
247

However, the relationship between hooks and configurable music is not
always so straightforward. For instance, Strictly Kev told me an anecdote about a
track he produced in 2000 that sampled Quincy Jones’ song The Pawnbroker. In his
259
words, he had “chopped it up and rearranged the rhythm section” in a way that made
the song conspicuously different, but still quasi-recognizable, and then had “written a
melody over the top, with horns.” Because Kev wished to distribute the song
commercially, he tried to license the samples from Jones. Jones agreed, but insisted
on receiving 100% of the publishing royalties for the song – in essence, arguing that
none of Kev’s additions, including his new melody, constituted original composition.
As Kev described it, he believes that he and Jones each believed their own
contribution constituted the foreground of the work: “That [melody] to me was the
hook of the song, but in his eyes, his sample was the hook.”
248

This subjectivity about the role of sampling in figure/ground relations, and
vice-versa, has added to the legal ambiguity surrounding configurable music
practices. Typically, in music law, the melody of a song – traditionally considered
the foreground, as I have discussed previously – earns a greater degree of copyright
protection than other musical elements such as chord progressions or rhythm tracks.
As several of my interviewees explained to me, this distinction is not written into the
letter of the law; theoretically, every part of a song should be equally covered by
copyright. However, in practice, the figure/ground distinction has become standard
for a variety of reasons.
The first reason, as law professor Jennifer Urban explained to me, is that
“copyright law tries to protect only things that are original, and a melody often seems
more original.” Another reason, attorney Bob Clarida told me, is that courts often
tend to have “a sort of a notationalist bias. You know, if people say, ‘Well, gee, it’s
260
not in the notation, so therefore it’s not part of the composition.’
249
” A final reason,
Urban told me, is “because everybody on the jury and the judge have some exposure
to the Western Romantic idea of how music is perceived, [so] there’s probably going
to be a trend towards privileging the foreground.”
250
In other words, the modern
framework, manifested in the concepts of originality, notational composition, and the
Romantic ideal of the artist that I have discussed previously, is sufficiently powerful
to provide a de facto legal distinction between figure and ground, despite the absence
of any statutory justification.
Given that it’s not always clear whether and when a sample qualifies as
figure or ground, or whether configurable music even contains distinguishable figure
and ground, this throws the protectability of sample-based works, and their relation
to the works being sampled, deeper into legal limbo. As attorney Gary Adelman told
me, “I don’t think the law has addressed it all, actually.”
251
In practice, this often
means that configurable musicians are denied authorship and copyright protection.
The only caselaw bearing upon figure/ground relations in a configurable
context that any of the attorneys I spoke with could cite was Harper & Row v. Nation
Enterprises,
252
a 1985 case regarding print publishing, in which the U.S. Supreme
Court held that an excerpt of Gerald Ford’s memoirs reprinted in The Nation
magazine constituted copyright infringement because, although it was just a short
passage, it constituted the “heart of the work.” As Jennifer Urban explained to me,
this concept has been applied to music-related cases as well, and she believes “you
could fairly make some connection between the heart and the foreground.”
253
I
261
would argue that based on my discussion of the “hook” above, one could just as
easily make a connection between the heart and the hook.
One of the few instances where the “heart of the work” argument has been
applied to an actual configurable music work was the famous incident in which
David Bowie and Freddy Mercury sued rapper Vanilla Ice for sampling the bass
hook of their song Under Pressure in the rap tune Ice Ice Baby. Though the suit was
eventually settled out of court when Vanilla Ice agreed to share publishing royalties
with Bowie and Mercury,
254
Urban told me that the sampling in this case “was seen
as a copyright infringement because it was the heart of the work” that was taken,
despite the brevity of the sample.
255

This anecdote helps to exemplify some of the difficulties presented by the
dissolution of the figure/ground distinction in a configurable context. Like
Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, in which the escalating series of three-note figures
can be heard (or performed) as either figure or ground, the bass riff in Under
Pressure constitutes both ground (as a rhythmic ostinato) and figure (as a hook). By
sampling this segment, Vanilla Ice unwittingly imported this ambiguity into his own
song, where it was eventually resolved as figure.
This is partially because of the Western musical bias toward viewing melody
as figural; as attorney Ronald Bienstock told me, because rapping is not typically
melodic, “everything your ear is drawn to [in a rap song] on the melodic side will be
the sample.”
256
In other words, the bass riff became definitively melodic only when it
was removed from its initial surroundings and placed in a context otherwise devoid
262
of tonal information. But the outcome of this case is also evidence of an implicit bias
against configurable culture within our musical regulatory institutions; if a dispute
between a configurable musician and one operating within the traditional framework
needs to be resolved, and it rests on an ambiguous question such as whether a
sampled bass riff constitutes figure or ground, the institutional response will almost
certainly be to side reflexively with the traditional musician.
“The Technology is the Tool”: Configurability and the Materials/Tools Binary
As with the other aspects of the modern framework I have discussed above,
my interviewees offered a range of perspectives regarding the materials/tools binary
within the context of configurable music. Some told me the categories had no
meaning in the context of their work. As V/VM told me, “I never think of it in that
way.”
257
Others didn’t simply accept the existence of the traditional categories, but
essentially re-stated the premises of the modern framework itself.
DJ Paul V, for instance, told me that he considers mash-ups to be “art”
because, echoing Wroblewski’s
258
formulation, the process consists of the
application of tools to materials: “If art is basically taking elements that are at your
fingertips, whether it’s paint, dirt, cement, and being able to rearrange it and congeal
it or whatever you want to call it, into something that’s your own, that’s art.”
259

Similarly, TradeMark G echoed the modern framework’s precept that tools impose
order on materials:
There’s a real feeling that you get after doing a piece of work,
you sort of feel like you’ve championed the things that you’ve
sampled. Like you have completely conquered something. . . .
263
You really feel like you’ve cut down and reshaped your source
into your own image. It gives you a godlike feeling.
260

However, though many of my interviewees told me they considered
themselves to be using tools and materials in the production of configurable music,
both terms were subject to a range of interpretations among the musicians I spoke
with.
Some interviewees told me they considered songs – in the sense of a
composition combined with a performance – to be their materials. DJ Adrian, for
instance, told me that an essential question in mash-up construction is “how much
source material is being used? How much of the original integrity of the song is
maintained?” Later in the same conversation, he used the same term again, telling me
that “it’s the right time and the right place for [mash-ups to emerge] in our culture,
because we’re being bombarded with so much source material.”
261
Strictly Kev also
focused on songs when I asked him about his methods, telling me, “as far as
materials go, anything – any format, any genre, if something catches my ear.”
262

Other interviewees made a distinction at once subtle and significant, telling
me that they considered phonorecordings, rather than songs per se, to be their
material. As DJ Earworm told me, “all sound is material. Any kind of digital sound
that you can find . . . the materials are, you know, the music files that – my music
collection, and the music that’s available on the Internet. And, you know, just the
world in general.”
263
Similarly, Matt Wand told me that “the material is the
recordings,”
264
and Go Home Productions told me that “the material is the record or
the CD.”
265
TradeMark G expanded on this point, discussing the aesthetic
264
considerations of focusing on the recording, rather than the song: “Part of putting
sample-based music together has to do with making do with what you’ve got . . .
You don’t approach it in terms of melody, harmony and so on, you approach it in
terms of drums, instruments and vocal samples.”
266

As TradeMark G’s comment suggests, many of the configurable musicians I
spoke with maintain highly organized collections of materials they have culled from
“raw” sources, such as CDs and MP3s. Typically, these collections take the form of a
“sample library,” stored on a digital medium, such as a hard drive. As Jesse Gilbert
told me, “almost all of the stuff that I do in either performance or, like, sound design
stuff, is made from preexisting samples. I tend to use them as kind of raw
materials.”
267
Similarly, Eric Kleptone told me, “I have hard drives full of samples.
And you know, like, tapes and vinyl and stuff like that. But it’s very much organized
in the same manner that someone would organize, you know, raw materials. They’re
stacked up. They’re in folders with labels. They get sifted. They get processed.”
268

Kleptone’s portrait of digital and physical media coexisting side-by-side in
neatly organized stacks is very much an image of our transitional moment. Many of
the DJs and producers I spoke with reported using MP3s, CDs and vinyl at various
times and in various contexts, although there appears to be a strong trend away from
the vinyl albums that defined DJ music at its outset, and toward purely digital
materials. Ironically, the fetishization of vinyl (such as the performance by Cut
Chemist and DJ Shadow that I described above) only makes this more evident by
265
contrast. As DJ Axel explained to me, he believes the evolution from physical to
digital materials is both a natural and a necessary evolution:
Technology’s moving pretty fast. And then, of course, there’s
all the purists who say it should be vinyl or nothing. And then
what’s funny is that I’ve run into CD purists. It’s like, well,
why pick that technology? . . . It’s arbitrary. And it’s like I
always say, that there’s no point in being a purist with
turntablism, ‘cause it was always technology-based. . . . What
difference does it make? I mean, vinyl, sure it looks cooler.
But it deteriorates in quality, it’s heavy, it scratches, you
know. I mean, yeah, I’m not a purist.
269

Similarly, DJ Adrian told me that “our source material is usually digital,” and
that, if he found a vinyl record containing music that wasn’t available in a digital
format such as CD or MP3, he would immediately “rip that vinyl as an AIF file into
my computer so I can start chopping it up.”
270

Naturally, as an increasing number of musicians report using digital
materials, the tools are increasingly digital as well. As DJ Adrian told me, the growth
of configurable music, and of mash-ups in particular, is fueled by the increasing
accessibility of audio editing software: “The reason all of this is happening now isn’t
because people hadn’t thought of it – it’s because the tools are there and affordable. I
mean, you couldn’t do this 10 years ago, because you didn’t have cheap software
that could do it.”
271
Osymyso also told me he considered software to be his primary
tool. Once you have your digital materials, he told me, “you do something to it with
the tool, which is software.”
272

Go Home Productions told me that he considered hardware, rather than
software, to be his instrument: “to me, the tool is the computer.”
273
Strictly Kev
266
echoed this sentiment, but emphasized that he still uses a vinyl rig sometimes as
well: “All I need is a computer with a sampler, or a pair of turntables and a mixer as
my tools.”
274
DJ Earworm told me that the combination of hardware and software
constituted his toolset: “the instrument is the computer. And the music production
software.”
275

Still other interviewees cited a range of traditional and nontraditional
instruments as elements in their toolboxes. Si Begg told me that, although he
“come[s] from a techno background,” he still integrates acoustic and electric
instrumentation into his work: “I still play some instruments. Guitars and stuff. And
then taking it to the computer. And then sampling it. So it was an instrument but now
it’s become a fragment of kind of a sample . . . you’re using it as just this kind of
chunk of audio.”
276

As Matt Wand told me, he and some of his colleagues have reached a bit
farther afield: “The technology is the tool . . . the tools could be anything. I have a
couple of friends – he plays Dictaphones, and she plays bricks. She’s a classical
flutist, but she’s rejected it all, and now plays bricks.”
277
Clearly, the use of everyday
objects as musical instruments has a long and storied history predating
configurability, but the philosophy that “the technology is the tool,” so central to the
configurable music ethic, makes such decisions both less philosophically alien and
less awkward to accommodate mechanically. In other words, the difference between
playing a guitar and a brick is trivial, once they’ve both been digitized and imported
into a sample-based sequencing or editing environment.
267
Thus, according to my interviewees, the tools for configurable music
production may include software, computer hardware, audio production equipment,
or traditional and nontraditional acoustic instrumentation. However, several
configurable musicians also added an additional tool to the mix: their own minds and
ideas. As DJ Adrian put it, “the tool is whatever software or, you know, equipment
or gear that you’re using to put it together – and your skill set of putting it
together.”
278
Similarly, Eric Kleptone told me that when samples “get processed,”
the process is “a combination of computer software and my brain.”
279

Strictly Kev told me he believes that intellection is the most important tool in
creating configurable music is the mind of the maker – precisely because the other
tools are so flexible and powerful. “You can pretty much do anything you want in
terms of sampling technology these days,” he told me, explaining that as a result,
many people become gearheads – getting hung up on the latest and greatest
equipment. However, he said he believes that the production equipment “doesn’t
have to be the best. It’s what you’re putting in that should be the priority. It’s the
imagination, not the hardware.”
280

While these earnest appraisals of the value of the human factor in
configurable music may at first glance seem trite, I believe they offer a significant
confirmation of a point I argued earlier in this work. Namely, that one of the ways in
which configurability departs from earlier modes of cultural production is that it
makes cognition socially transparent in a way it’s never been before. The “black
box” of the human mind merges with the fully auditable and visible interface of the
268
computer, and the result is that we may witness the acts of reception, interpretation,
reinterpolation and response – the entire cycle of cultural participation – reflected
through a monitor and a pair of speakers. When Kleptone uses the word “process,”
therefore, it has a double meaning – the sample is being processed by a computer in a
mechanical sense, but it is also being processed by his own mind in a cultural sense –
and the two processes are inextricable from one another.
As to the product created by the application of tools to materials, most of my
interviewees tended to agree with DJ Earworm’s assessment that “the finished
product in this case is, you know, the polished mash-up.”
281
However, this statement
may be interpreted in two different ways. Some, such as Go Home Productions,
pointed to the actual physical medium, or the digital files produced by the creative
process: “the finished product is what comes out of my CD burner.”
282
Others, such
as TradeMark G, emphasized the abstract song itself: “the finished product is
intellectual property, and you can’t point to it.”
283

Thus, my interviewees reported a range of opinions and attitudes regarding
the tools and materials at work in configurable music production, and regarding the
products created by the application of tools to materials. But, as with the other
binaries I have discussed, configurability also appears to be blurring the lines
between these categories to a certain degree.
One of the ambiguities presented by configurable music production is the fact
that, for many musicians, finished products often constitute their materials, and vice
versa. As DJ Earworm explained to me, “for a mash-up artist, the idea is: the
269
material is usually finished, you know, finished material that is generally known to
others . . . but the irony is that the materials are also finished products.”
284

Other musicians told me that not only do other people’s finished products
constitute their source materials – oftentimes, their own products do as well. As Si
Begg told me, “what I’ve started doing more and more for stuff I release is actually
kind of sampling my own back catalog and messing about with my own stuff, which
has been quite interesting.”
285
Jesse Gilbert told me that he doesn’t simply mine his
catalog of finished work, but that like the mythical Ouroboros, which eats its own
tail, he samples his own product as he’s creating it – and that this process makes it
very difficult for him to distinguish between the traditional categories: “Tools and
materials don’t apply [as categories] because the software that I use can do live
sampling, and I can live sample my output. So I can route the output back into the
input and I can use that as a raw material. So maybe there’s no difference between
raw material and final product.”
286

There is also some ambiguity regarding the distinction between tools and
products. This is partially because many of the configurable musicians I spoke with
actually produce their own tools – including software, sample banks and hardware.
As DJ Earworm told me, “The tools are the software. And I’ve built some of the
tools and I’ve borrowed other people’s tools.”
287
As TradeMark G, who has build
some of his own instruments mechanically (such as the Thimbletron, a sample-
triggering rig in which wired thimbles glued to the fingers of gloves serve as contacts
270
for electrical circuits) told me, he also incorporates a range of borrowed, built, and
modified tools into his arsenal:
I could use someone else’s tools, but it helps if I can add
things like plug-ins into it to accentuate and influence it to do
things it wouldn’t do out of the box. Even better is if I write
my own software, or create my own electronics. Creating my
tools gives me a lot bigger ability. It’s like [Marshall]
McLuhan’s quote: ‘We create our tools, and thereafter, our
tools shape us.’ And that’s what’s happening here.
288

At the heart of this ambiguity is the fact that the computer – the foundation of
configurable music production – is such a multifaceted machine that it can constitute
material, tool and product simultaneously. As TradeMark G observed, “computers
have the benefit of being very flexible. . . . I see it as both: as not only a tool in and
of itself, but as a tool that makes other tools, that can make other tools, and so on.”
289

Similarly, Tony Zeoli told me that “if you’re creating a sample bank, you’re
composing at the same time while you’re creating a tool to use, which becomes a
product that you embed in a final product.”
290

Intellectual property law does not address the erosion of the materials/tools
binary at all. In fact, it contains an interesting contradiction. As attorney Gary
Adelman explained to me, when it comes to configurable music, “the tools are legal.
But what you’re creating is illegal.”
291
In other words, people are allowed to possess
computers and audio editing software, but they are not allowed to apply those tools
to copyrighted materials owned by another party (except in the case of “fair use” –
which is becoming increasingly harder to defend legally).
271
However, within the modern framework, the definition of an artwork is the
product created by the application of tools to materials. Therefore, if the law
acknowledges that a configurable musician is doing so – by holding him liable for
copyright infringement – it logically follows that he should also be accorded
authorship status, and granted a copyright for the new work. But, as I have discussed,
this is not the case. In other words, a configurable musician is legally held to be
producing an artwork (tools applied to materials) to the extent that it constitutes
theft, but not to the extent that it constitutes creation.
Furthermore, the Bridgeport decision, which ruled there is no de minimis
protection for the sampling of a phonorecording, rejects any acknowledgment of the
erosion between the categories of materials, tools and products. However, attorney
Bob Clarida told me he believes this should be amended: “at the very least, you
should be able, you know, make some kind of use of somebody else’s material as a
building block. As a piece of raw material.”
292

272
Notes to Chapter 3

1
Benjamin, W. (1968). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In
Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace; p. 232.

2
Phone interview, 9/29/2006

3
I offer only this single citation for the survey write-in responses, because I quote
them so frequently, and because they share a single source. The citation is as
follows: Radar Research/Intellisurvey Configurable Culture Survey (unpublished).
July, 2006, n=1,765. Population: U.S. Adults 18+ (results weighted to 2000 census).

4
Phone interview, 10/31/2006

5
Phone interview, 10/4/2006

6
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

7
Slonimsky, N. (1965). Lexicon of Musical Invective. Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press; p. 183.

8
Phone interview, 10/2/2006

9
Phone interview, 10/2/2006

10
In-person interview, 11/17/2006

11
Phone interview, 10/17/2003

12
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

13
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

14
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

15
Phone interview, 9/29/2006

16
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

17
Gross, L. (1995). Art and artists on the margins. In L. Gross, ed., On the Margins
of Art Worlds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

18
Phone interview, 10/6/2006
273

19
Phone interview, 10/31/2006

20
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

21
Phone interview, 10/31/2006

22
Phone interview, 9/11/2006

23
499 U.S. 340 (1991)

24
Phone interview, 12/18/2006

25
Phone interview, 9/14/2007

26
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

27
In-person interview, 9/8/2006

28
Phone interview, 11/22/2005

29
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

30
In-person interview, 12/14/2006

31
Phone interview, 9/25/2006

32
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

33
Phone interview, 10/19/2006

34
In-person interview, 12/14/2006

35
Phone interview, 9/11/2006

36
In-person interview, 11/17/2006

37
Phone interview 10/16/2006; emphasis added

38
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

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In-person interview, 11/13/2006

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40
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

41
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

42
Ivey, B. and Tepper, S. J. (2006). Cultural renaissance or cultural divide? The
Chronicle Review, 52(37), B6

43
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

44
Lessig, L. (2005, November 28). Why crush them? Newsweek International, 48;
Lessig, L. (2005). The people own ideas! Technology Review, 108(6), 46-53.

45
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

46
In-person interview, 9/8/2006

47
Phone interview, 9/25/2006

48
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

49
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

50
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (R.
Nice, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

51
Phone interview, 12/7/2006

52
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

53
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

54
Email interview, 11/3/2003

55
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

56
Phone interview, 10/4/2006

57
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

58
Phone interview, 12/7/2006

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Phone interview, 12/5/2006

275

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Phone interview, 10/2/2006

61
Phone interview, 9/25/2006

62
In-person interview, 11/17/2006

63
Phone interview, 10/19/2006

64
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

65
Phone interview, 10/4/2006

66
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

67
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

68
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

69
Phone interview, 9/11/2006

70
In-person interview, 11/13/2006

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Phone interview, 12/7/2006

72
Phone interview, 10/31/2006

73
Phone interview, 9/29/2006

74
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

75
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

76
Phone interview, 10/31/2006

77
Phone interview, 10/6/2006

78
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

79
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

80
In-person interview, 9/8/2006

81
Phone interview, 10/4/2006
276

82
Phone interview, 9/25/2006

83
Phone interview, 10/19/2006

84
Phone interview, 11/28/2006

85
Phone interview, 12/7/2006

86
Phone interview, 12/13/2006

87
In-person interview, 12/14/2006

88
409 F. Supp. 2d 484 (S.D.N.Y. 2006)

89
Phone interview, 12/18/2006

90
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

91
Phone interview, 12/18/2006

92
In-person interview, 9/8/2006

93
Phone interview, 11/28/2006

94
Phone interview, 10/19/2006

95
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

96
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903/1989). The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Penguin.

97
In-person interview, 11/30/2005

98
Instant message interview, 11/3/2003

99
Klosterman, C. (2006, June 18). The D.J. Auteur. The New York Times, Magazine
Section, p. 40.

100
Kirby, R. (2004, July 1). Danger Mouse. Remix Magazine. Downloaded July 29,
2007 from http://remixmag.com/mag/remix_danger_mouse/

101
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277

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Phone interview, 10/31/2006

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In-person interview, 11/4/2006

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In-person interview, 11/13/2006

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In-person interview, 9/8/2006

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Phone interview, 10/31/2006

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Phone interview, 10/2/2006

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Phone interview, 10/6/2006

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Phone interview. 9/25/2006

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Phone interview, 10/2/2006

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In-person interview, 11/17/2006

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Phone interview, 11/9/2005

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Phone interview, 10/4/2006

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Email interview, 11/3/2003

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Phone interview, 10/6/2006

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Phone interview, 10/19/2006

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Phone interview, 11/28/2006

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In-person interview, 12/4/2005

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In-person interview, 12/4/2005

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In-person interview, 9/8/2006

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Phone interview, 9/11/2006

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Phone interview, 10/16/2006

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Phone interview, 10/2/2006

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Phone interview 10/6/2006

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In-person interview, 12/4/2005

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145
RU SIRIUS (2006). Show #69 (Interview): Dan The Automator. Downloaded
September 25, 2007 from http://www.rusiriusradio.com/2006/10/10/show-69-dan-
the-automator/

146
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149
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151
For an excellent example, see: Demers, J. (20060. Steal this music: How
intellectual property law affects musical creativity. Athens, GA: University of
Georgia Press.

152
388 F. 3d 1189 (9
th
Cir. 2003)

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410 F. 3d 792 (6
th
Cir. 2005)

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Phone interview, 12/5/2006

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Phone interview, 9/25/2006

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Phone interview, 12/6/2006

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499 U.S. 340 (1991)

161
510 U.S. 569 (1994)

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862 F. Supp. 1944 (S.D.N.Y. 1994)

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Phone interviews, 11/22/2005; 12/18/2006

164
Phone interview 12/6/2006
280

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Phone interview, 11/15/2006

166
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

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Phone interview, 11/6/2006

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In-person interview, 11/17/2006

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Benjamin, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

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Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

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In-person interview, 11/4/2006

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Phone interview, 9/25/2006

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In-person interview, 11/4/2006

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Phone interview, 10/16/2006

182
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

183
Phone interview, 9/11/2006

184
Schloss, J. G. (2004). Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan

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281

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Phone interview, 11/6/2006

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Phone interview, 9/25/2006

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Phone interview, 1/4/2006

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192
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Phone interview, 10/19/2006

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Bourdieu, Distinction.

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In-person interview, 11/13/2006

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Phone interview, 12/7/2006

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282

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Lessig, L. (2004, February 24). The black and white about Grey Tuesday. [blog
post]. Downloaded 8/21/2007 from
http://lessig.org/blog/2004/02/the_black_and_white_about_grey.html

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Phone interview, 12/6/2006

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Email interview, 8/22/2007

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283

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Phone interview, 9/25/2006

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In-person interview, 11/13/2006

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Instant message interview, 11/3/2003

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Phone interview, 10/4/2006

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In-person interview, 12/5/2005

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471 U.S. 539 (1985)

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McLeod, K. (2001). Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual
Property Law. New York: Peter Lang; p. 87

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In-person interview, 12/14/2006

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Phone interview, 12/5/2006

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Wroblewski, D. (1991). The Construction of Human-Computer Interfaces
Considered as Craft. In J. Karat (Ed.), Taking Software Design Seriously: Practical
Techniques for Human-Computer Interaction Design. New York: Academic Press;
pp. 1-19.

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In-person interview, 9/8/2006

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Chapter 4 – The Lessons: Configurability and the New Framework

There’s a whole lot of stuff that’s going to be changing in a mad way,
and the intersection of culture and law, which includes art, is going to
be writhing like a dying animal that’s been hit by a car.
- Steinski
1

In another campaign, 'The Second Coming', Nike offers up a TV
[commercial] featuring 10 of its top NBA basketball stars for
consumers to mash up online. At the site, NikeMashUp.com, visitors
can select a soundtrack and short video clips and arrange them on a
timeline.

All mash-ups, though, end with the tagline ‘The Second Coming’ and
the Nike swoosh logo, and consumers can't add their own text or
pictures, allowing Nike to pre-empt the problems Chevrolet had with
a mash-up campaign last year in which its Tahoe SUV was mocked
by opportunistic users.
- Media Magazine
2

As I discussed in previous chapters, configurable technology and cultural
practices are posing a significant challenge to the modern ontological framework,
undermining each of the fundamental binaries that constitute our understanding of
music and society for the past two centuries. However, even as these all-
encompassing boundaries are eroding, musicians and social institutions are engaged
in the same dialectical tension between regulation and resistance that has
characterized musical culture throughout history, and this process continues to
contribute to cultural innovation.
Some believe that configurable music is a fundamentally critical cultural
form, simply by virtue of the fact that it relies upon preexisting expression as its
genesis. As Tony Zeoli of StarStyle.com told me, “I think that definitely there is
288
always some kind of critical [aspect] – whether it’s humor, whether it’s political,
whether it’s romance . . . even in the most blasé form.” This is because he considers
the remixer’s contribution to be a “critical addition” to the work being remixed.
3

Others consider configurable music to be intrinsically resistant, by virtue of its often
illicit nature. As music journalist Bill Werde told me, “mash-ups are an act of
resistance, and inherently political, because they’re illegal.”
4
However, not everyone
shares these opinions. As Pete Ganbarg of Pure Tone Music told me, “I think it’s
more of ‘how can I best make my artistic statement’ than it is a criticism about
somebody’s music.”
5

By and large, the majority of American adults seem to agree with Ganbarg.
As part of its 2006 Configurable Culture Survey, Radar Research asked: “How
important do you consider the following reasons for creating remixes or mash-ups?”
6

On a five-point Likert scale (5 meaning “very important”), “Cultural criticism” came
in 6
th
place, with an average score of 2.4, and “Social protest” was the least favorite
response, with an average score of only 2.1. Far more important reasons, according
to survey respondents, were “For the fun of it” (2.9), “Hone technical skills,” (2.7)
and “Create art” (2.7).
289

Figure 7: Reasons for Creating Remixes or Mash-ups
However, as I discussed in an earlier chapter, one of the most interesting
aspects of the regulation/resistance cycle is that neither regulators nor resisters must
necessarily think of themselves as being engaged in any process larger than their
own immediate needs and ambitions. “All politics is local,” as Tip O’Neal famously
said, and the same may be said of cultural politics as well. In my interviews with
configurable music practitioners, executives and attorneys, I found ample evidence
that configurable music engenders resistance to musical regulation at every
intersection of institutional site (legal, ideological, commercial) and community site
(aesthetics, praxis, technology). But, while some of my interviewees viewed their
struggles as skirmishes in a larger cultural war, others simply told me that their
ambitions went no further than circumventing immediate obstacles erected by
musical regulation of one kind or another.
290
Resistance to Regulation Among Configurable Musicians
Clearly, as I discussed in my first chapter, it would be futile to argue that the
entire universe of musical regulation and resistance fits neatly within the schematic
boundaries of my or any other taxonomy. Aesthetics, praxis and technology are as
mutually dependent and deeply intertwined, as are legal, ideological and commercial
institutions, and rarely could an act of regulation or resistance be characterized as
solely belonging to one category, and not to another. However, for the sake of clarity
and comprehensiveness, I will continue to use this taxonomy to discuss musical
resistance within the configurable music community, and simply acknowledge at the
outset that each categorization is fluid and debatable.
Several configurable musicians told me about aesthetic decisions they have
made that may be understood as Aesthetic Resistance to Legal Regulation. Most
common, of course, is the sample-based aesthetic itself, which typically bypasses the
legal barriers erected by copyright law. V/VM made an interesting observation,
telling me that he views the market saturation of commercial music as an aesthetic
imposition, and that he feels it is within every person’s rights to alter the sonic
material within the public sphere to suit his needs and tastes. In his words, once
commercial music has entered the marketplace, “it just becomes public domain to
me. You just think, ‘Why not? It’s about time.’ It’s always there anyway; it may as
well be anybody’s track to do anything with. Hearing the same thing over and over
again, it’s like, ‘I need to hear this in a different way.’”
7

291
While V/VM is simply trying to alter his immediate environment to suit his
individual tastes, Eric Kleptone told me that he conceives of his aesthetic as a kind of
political statement against the legal strictures placed on music and culture. He
doesn’t “really want to be seen as a pirate” from a legal standpoint, he told me – in
fact, the sonic material he uses “doesn’t necessarily have to be stolen, that’s not an
essential to form part of the work.” Rather, his group’s name (The Kleptones) and
high-profile sampling practices, featuring recent popular artists, are “just playing on
public perception” of configurable musicians as thieves, in order to emphasize the
injustice and absurdity of that characterization. As he explained, “activists have been
getting themselves arrested on the street to publicize their causes. So getting cease-
and-desist orders online is not really any different. It’s a way to kind of publicize
your cause.”
8

According to attorney Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, this tension between legal regulation and aesthetic resistance has
produced aesthetic changes in configurable music. As he explained to me, the legal
prohibition against distribution of unlicensed samples “drives the entire music genre
underground, which itself changes the nature of the enterprise through self-selection.
The only people who make this kind of music are those who are willing to be
renegades in the first place.” Musicians less likely to challenge authority by nature,
he told me, “will go make different kinds of music.”
9

Other interviewees discussed behaviors and strategies that may be
categorized as Practical Resistance to Legal Regulation. According to Si Begg, a lot
292
of configurable musicians commit unintentional resistance, just by virtue of the fact
that they are breaking the laws – even if their ambition is to celebrate
unconditionally the music they are sampling. In his words, “people tend to see
something they like, and they want to use it, so they take it . . . You’re breaking the
law. But you’re doing it anyway, so I guess that’s kind of being a bit of a freedom
fighter of sampling whether you like it or not.”
10

DJ Earworm told me that he consciously crosses legal boundaries – not to
make a political statement, or to “stick it to the man” – but because it liberates him
from many of the considerations that complicate aesthetic production within the
sanctioned commercial sphere:
More than the fact that I’m willing to risk something by
putting my stuff out there, I’m willing to invest all this time
into something which has no legal mechanism to pay me back.
And there’s a certain purity in that, that everyone who’s doing
this is really doing it because they love doing it. And there’s
no one out there with the illusion that they’re gonna become
the next mash up star and be able to pay their mortgage.
11

As I will discuss further on, Earworm may be wrong on this final point; many
configurable music practitioners do see their work as a potential gateway to careers
in commercial music. However, for Earworm, the principle applies: resisting legal
sanctions against sampling is a way for him to achieve a greater “purity” in his work.
Due to the sweeping prohibitions against breaking the copy-protection
technology found on all DVDs, most commercially available music downloads, and
some CDs – even in the service of legally sanctioned “fair use,” as I discussed in my
first chapter – nearly every configurable musician engages in Technological
293
Resistance to Legal Regulation at one point or another. In cases where musicians
bypass the technological barriers to sampling copy-protected CDs, they aren’t merely
violating statutory law such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); as
the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann told me, they are also contractually violating the end
user license agreement (EULA) attached to these CDs, which “expressly ban remix
culture as a question of contract law.”
12

Breaking copy-protection technology is hardly an arcane practice reserved for
a doughty few sample-based musicians who wish to push legal and aesthetic
boundaries. Nearly every configurable musical practice, from production-adjacent to
consumption-adjacent, requires a degree of flexibility that digital rights management
(DRM) and other technological impediments prohibit. As a result, there has been a
steady demand for DRM-circumvention technology. Such software, including
PlayFair, later renamed HYMN (which bypasses Apple’s FairPlay DRM software),
and FairUse4WM (which bypasses Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio DRM) has
been available freely on the Internet for years, is continually updated as quickly as
the DRM software manufacturers can update their own encryption algorithms, and
has been downloaded by untold millions of users.
Several practices described by my interviewees may be categorized as
Aesthetic Resistance to Ideological Regulation. Some configurable musicians
directly integrate politically or ideologically-oriented sonic materials into their work,
in order to critique the individuals or ideological concepts contained in those
materials. Tony Zeoli told me he “look[s] to remixers and producers to add elements
294
of speeches and even Donald Rumsfeld or [George W.] Bush when they sound
wack.” This accomplishes three goals, he told me. First, it’s a way to exert power
over these subjects, in sonic effigy. Second, it’s a form of ridicule; Bush’s
malapropisms, often hilarious even on first listen, can sound terrifying or absurd if
looped over and over. Finally, he told me, it’s a method of news dissemination and
political advocacy. In his words, sampling a public figure in a dance-oriented track is
“a way to key in people who aren’t politically savvy or conscious, to hear something
that they should be hearing, because they don’t read the newspaper or whatever.”
13

Other interviewees told me that they view their work as a way to resist
ideological regulation in the form of cultural hegemony or aesthetic strictures. DJ
Adrian told me he views mash-ups as “culture jamming. It’s total, it’s really fucking
with pop culture. . . . you’re subverting the dominant cultural paradigm, and turning
it into something that you probably personally like. And that’s what’s really cool.”
14

Similarly, V/VM told me that configurable music offers him a way to strip away
what he views as the superficial sheen of institutionally-sanctioned and industrially-
standardized beauty on popular music, revealing what he considers the ugliness and
emptiness beneath it:
These days, a lot of the pop hits, the vocal is so processed. If
you start messing around with it, it comes out sounding
extremely horrible because it’s already been processed in the
first place, it’s not a natural voice. Because obviously the
person singing couldn’t sing before. I think it’s like removing
the gloss from the top, stripping that layer of gloss paint from
the top and revealing what’s beneath. It’s like peeling an apple
and seeing the rotten core in the middle.
15

295
Some configurable musicians told me they consider their work to constitute
what we may categorize as Practical Resistance to Ideological Regulation. As
Strictly Kev told me, he views his work as an act of resistance against the ideological
premise that institutional sanctioning of musical praxis is morally right, or socially
beneficial: “I think the whole bootleg/mash-up thing is flying in the face of all
authority. Why should we let ‘the man’ stop us? . . . By the time it’s officially
sanctioned, it’s dead and gone. People don’t have time to wait these days.”
16

To Si Begg, resistance to ideological regulation of music is more personal
than political. He told me that he resents the fact that the mass media are “pushing
[music] into your intellectual head space, yet they’re still saying it’s theirs. Even
when it’s become part of the culture.” Therefore, he told me, sampling is simply a
way of reasserting control over one’s own nervous system and cultural environment.
The act of sampling, he told me, amounts to telling musical regulatory institutions:
“You’ve been pushing this stuff down our throats for the last 20, 30 years, and now
we want to do something with it. Now you get upset about it. Saying it’s yours.”
17

Interviewees also offered some interesting perspectives on Technological
Resistance to Ideological Regulation. To DJ Adrian, the sudden accessibility of
music production and distribution equipment within a configurable technological
environment undermines the ethic of professional exceptionalism, the power of
consolidated capital, and the mechanism of centralized control. As he explained to
me, “ten years ago, to be a decent remix producer, you needed to have $30,000 worth
of gear. Now, you can have free pirated software on a cheap computer and still make
296
it sound damn good. . . . The mash-up community is Internet-based, which means
that it’s open source. It’s global.”
18

To Jesse Gilbert, configurability offers the opportunity to resist against
another kind of ideological regulation of music technology. Specifically, he believes
that traditional music editing software, which “sequences” audio clips along a strict
timeline, represents an instrument of socially regulated timekeeping, and a
continuation of the musical and temporal regulation presented by traditional Western
scoring and orchestral organization. By building his own music processing software,
Gilbert told me, he can harness the power of configurable technology without
inheriting the constraints of the modern framework. In his words, “sequencers are all
about this kind of regulated time-space. Everything is about accuracy. And there are
all kinds of notions about rhythmic divisibility, about the imposition of the tempered
scale onto synthesizers.”
In Gilbert’s opinion, the musical regulation represented by synthesizers and
sequencers has a very pointed political purpose: to extend European cultural
hegemony into the 21
st
century by creating tools that reify its logic and preclude
alternative representations of time and space. As he told me, “my feeling is that it has
to do with almost a reaction to the postcolonial moment.”
19
He conceives of his
work, therefore, as more than just an aesthetic exercise, but as a cultural intervention
geared towards globalizing and democratizing the process of temporal and spatial
organization.
297
One of the most frequent forms of resistance described by my interviewees
was Aesthetic Resistance to Commercial Regulation. At the most local and
immediate level, DJ Axel told me that his interest in mash-ups was born of the fact
that, as a professional club DJ in Los Angeles, he was often required to play exactly
the same popular hip-hop songs that the clubs’ patrons were likely to have heard on
commercial radio in their cars en route to the clubs. He told me he considered this
requirement to be “artistically offensive and boring,” so he decided he would play
the popular music he was required to play, but would “mess with it” by mashing it up
with other songs. Axel considers the mash-up aesthetic, therefore, to be a form of
“protest” against the “mindless” conventions of the Los Angeles club scene.
20

DJ Earworm told me that he considers the mash-up aesthetic to constitute
protest on a larger scale. While he balks at the notion that he is somehow critiquing
songs themselves by mashing them up, he feels that the music industry itself is
generally the subject of critique within the aesthetic. Specifically, he told me that he
rejects the industry’s use of genre as an instrument of social distinction and market
segmentation, and hopes to use mash-ups as a way to raise consciousness about these
matters, and a as a way to protest the industry’s role in the process. In his words,
mash-ups “let people enjoy stuff that they ‘ought’ to be critical of, and that their
social cues tell them that they should be critical of. . . . I think most mash-up artists
are critical of the music industry. But not the music.” When I asked him what
elements of the music industry he felt mash-up producers are reacting against, he
told me, “the marketing muscle. The RIAA. The anti-piracy efforts.”
21

298
Matt Wand told me that his work constitutes aesthetic resistance against
commercial regulation on an even larger scale; rather than reacting against individual
employers, or even large-scale commercial institutions, his focus is on resisting
capitalism itself. Echoing DJ Earworm’s comments about the aesthetic “purity” that
comes from eschewing commercialism, Wand told me that “you try to make a
culture that’s as abhorrent as possible, in order to keep people away from it, in order
to keep it untainted by the money men and the powers that be, and to keep it from
being dragged into the limelight and the mainstream.”
22

Several interviewees also told me that they believe the entire range of
configurable music practices – from file sharing to remixing – represent a form of
Practical Resistance to Commercial Regulation. Eric Kleptone told me he feels that
the major record labels have stopped “trying to convince people that they’re cool and
hip,” and have become more honest about their role as “the bad guys,” by suing their
own customers for file sharing, licensing their music at exorbitant rates, and sending
cease-and-desist orders to configurable musicians that can’t obtain or afford
sampling licenses. Consequently, he told me, “I think a lot of the audience is gonna
retaliate about, just the feeling that they are being conned by [the labels], that they
have been conned in the past. So there’s a kind of air of retribution there.”
23

Similarly, Go Home Productions pointed to the shift in cultural power
engendered by configurable technologies as a genesis of practical resistance – not
just against record labels, but against commercial recording artists, as well. In his
words, commercial music “now is very much in the public’s hands. And people can
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do what they want with it, and throw it back, and share it. And some artists like it,
and some artists don’t. And the record labels don’t know what to do with it, that’s for
sure.”
24

Our final category, Technological Resistance to Commercial Regulation, can
be seen in countless configurable music practices, including: the circumvention of
DRM technologies, which I discussed above; the use of iPods, video game
controllers and other consumption-oriented devices as musical instruments (the iDJ,
which allows iPod-based music to be manipulated like vinyl, has become an
increasingly frequent weapon in the modern DJ’s arsenal); and, of course, in the act
of sampling itself – whether the source of the sample resides on vinyl, optical disc, or
hard drive.
Configurable musicians are, for the most part, keenly aware that they are
flouting the intentions of musical regulatory institutions when they engage in such
behaviors – and, for many, this is part of the attraction. As DJ Earworm told me, “it’s
fun and naughty. It’s always fun to be naughty. Especially when . . . there’s DRM
and they pipe down on, you know, all the music companies are not even selling us
music any more. They’re licensing it, lending it to us.”
25
In other words, Earworm
conceives of his technological interventions as a way to reclaim ownership over the
music file itself, and thereby, to reassert cultural power over musical production.
Configurability, Cooperation and Cooptation
Of course, no underground or counterculture is purely resistant; as Thomas
Frank so eloquently writes of the complex dance between cultural regulation and
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resistance since the 1960s in The Conquest of Cool, “hip is the cultural life-blood of
the consumer society.”
26
And today, there are not many ideas or trends hipper than
remixes, mash-ups, and DJ culture. Shortly after DJ Danger Mouse’s “The Grey
Album” prompted millions of downloads in 2004, the idea of the mash-up became
nearly ubiquitous in the popular press, with the New York Times even listing the
“mainstream mash-up” in its annual roundup of “The Year In Ideas.”
27
Even more
recently, Time Magazine conferred the ultimate mainstream bona-fides on
configurable culture, choosing “You” (the reader) as the magazine’s annual “Person
of the Year” in 2006 (see Figure 8). Although there is something contradictory and
even unnerving about the flagship of corporate-owned print media telling its readers
that “You control the Information Age” (Is it a concession of defeat? Disingenuous
pandering? Or merely standard journalistic overstatement?), the move signals a shift
in mainstream mythology regardless of its motives.
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Figure 8: Time Magazine’s cover depicting “You” as the 2006 “Person of the Year”
Predictably, many configurable musicians feel ambivalently about the recent
commercial embrace of their subculture. DJ Adrian told me he views the commercial
intervention as regrettable, but par for the course: “We have seen, in the past few
years . . . corporate America trying to co-opt it. ‘Oh! Youth culture! What’s hip and
now! Mash-ups! Let’s co-opt it!’ That’s the American way.” However, he told me,
he doesn’t feel that cooptation poses a significant threat to configurable music’s
resistant potential, because musicians will continue to produce innovations more
rapidly than commercial efforts can encompass them. In his words, “bootleggers will
always be one step ahead. Because they’re going to think of things that wouldn’t be
possible being put together in a corporate boardroom.”
28

302
However, other configurable musicians have told me they are already seeing
commercial influence on their practices and aesthetics. DJ Axel, for instance, told me
that he switched his focus from hip-hop to rock-oriented mash-ups because “I
noticed that they were getting more radio play.”
29
DJ Paul V, who spins mash-ups
for commercial radio broadcaster Indie 103.1 FM (KDLD in Santa Monica,
California), confirmed Axel’s hunch, telling me that the radio station executives
won’t allow him to air mash-ups that lack a rock element, despite the fact that this
prevents many of DJ Paul V’s top choices from getting airplay:
Well, they’re not going to play a Missy Eliot vs. Beyoncé
mash-up. Because in their mind – we have a difference of
opinion. In my mind, I think the whole point of a mash-up is
to step outside of your preconceived, your locked-in. But I
don’t run the radio station, and they do have a format,
obviously, which is indie, alternative, British, you know –
guitar-based music. They don’t play Missy Eliot, they don’t
play Beyoncé, whatever.
30

From the music industry side, cooptation appears to be both a necessary and a
successful strategy. As Hosh Gureli of Sony/BMG told me, he views the current
commercial embrace of configurability to be completely consistent with the music
industry’s historical practice of co-opting youth culture: “Every generation, the kids
liked something that goes against the establishment. That’s why Napster, Kazaa, and
all those things – who made those things happen? Kids. To beat the system. But the
corporations are realizing, if you can’t beat ‘em – join ‘em.” According to Gureli,
this thought process is the genesis for a rash of recent business agreements between
record labels and online music distributors. As he told me, “that’s why we’re making
deals with MySpace now – so we can get a piece of the action.”
31

303
Configurable musicians have reaped some benefits as well from the increased
commercial interest in their work – namely, they’re able to make some money, and
in some cases, to bridge the gulf separating from “amateur” from “professional,” to
the extent that the gulf still exists. As early as 2003, mattcatt told me that he was
beginning to receive financial offers and free and legal access to a capellas from
“publishers who recognise the value of being mashed.”
32
More recently, Eric
Kleptone told me that “there’s a couple of other things that I’m looking at doing.
Maybe doing some commercial remix work. And also a couple of film soundtracks.
So this has given me avenues into other things – the work I’ve done as a mash-up
artist.”
33
Similarly, Go Home Productions told me that he’s willing to downplay the
illicit nature of his work if it leads to commercial work:
I think in the early days, I felt like I was doing something
naughty, but I’ve kind of looked beyond that, and thought
‘What if I make something creative [that] the artist would
actually want to use? [Labels and artists are now saying] ‘We
appreciate the mash-up you’ve done, but how’d you like to do
a remix?’ Which I enjoy equally as well.
34

DJ Earworm has discovered that his fame has a DJ has led to opportunities a
bit farther afield. In 2006, Wiley published a how-to book that he penned, called
Mashup Construction Kit.
35
However, Earworm is quick to emphasize that, despite
the money and fame he’s received in the wake of the book’s publication, he still
barely makes enough from music and publishing combined to cover his basic
expenses: “I’m pretty well known, but I don’t make good money. You know, I’m
really poor. I’m struggling.”
36

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Conclusion: ‘Plus Ça Change’ or Paradigm Shift?
I have nearly reached the conclusion of this work, and have yet to
conclusively answer my fundamental question. Does configurable music presage an
ontological break in our understanding of what music is and how it operates, and
therefore threaten a breakdown of the existing social order? Or is the rise of the DJ
simply one more development in an ongoing dialectic between cultural regulation
and resistance, as easily contained within the strong yet flexible boundaries of the
modern framework as atonality, the birth of sound recording, and the electrification
of blues and rock music?
Clearly, the answer to this question is more one of judgment than of
empirical proof, and even historians of our era will differ regarding the social
significance of the striking changes we are currently witnessing in the nature and
capacity of communication media, and in the aesthetic codes and practices that
exploit these media.
It would be easy to argue, conservatively, that despite the rise of configurable
technologies, nothing much has changed in the cycle of cultural production and
consumption, and that our social institutions stand as strong as ever, above the fray
of petty fashion and the relentless churn of musical style. As I have described in this
chapter, configurable music appears to be following a well-worn path from margin to
mainstream – regulation, resistance, innovation, reification, cooptation, and
ultimately cooperation, as practitioners and regulatory institutions seek their mutual
benefit from the rising popularity of a new musical trend.
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Of course, the process does have – and always has had – its detractors, but
one could argue that their objections will recede into noise as the sound of
configurability reaches its popular apex. How many now remember the stalwarts
who complained that the Newport Folk Festival would overshadow and overexpose
the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk revival movement, or the bebop aficionados
who attempted to resist the migration of musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy
Gillespie and Thelonious Monk from Harlem after-hours clubs to glitzy midtown
roosts? If these people are remembered at all, it is mostly as weathered talking heads
in music documentaries, most likely portrayed as victims or cranks who suffered
from trying to impede the inevitable.
On the other hand, there is much to suggest that a larger paradigmatic change
is at hand. The unavoidable conclusion from my interviews is that each of the
fundamental binaries that characterizes the modern framework is breaking down;
again and again, interviewees described “blurriness,” “gray areas” and “spectrums”
emerging where clear lines once appeared to exist, and where our musical regulatory
institutions still insist they do.
Though the configurable musicians I spoke with universally recognized this
trend, their responses to it were understandably varied and ambivalent. Musicians
tend to reflexively reinforce the boundaries of the modern framework, drawing lines
in the sand, when the perceived legitimacy of their behavior or their ability to profit
from it is at stake. Of course they have evaluative criteria distinguishing better from
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worse and original from derivative, they told me; otherwise, they are all in danger of
being classified as derivative, uncreative, not valuable.
Similarly, many configurable musicians are perfectly willing to strive for
uniqueness, or to draw lines in the sand separating composition from performance, in
the context of remuneration. Because of the categorical rejection of configurable
authorship by our legal institutions, the range and number of wage-earning options
open to configurable musicians is extremely limited. Consequently, they are much
less likely to reject stark categorization when a paycheck depends on it.
However, outside of these exigencies, most configurable musicians tended
not only to acknowledge the erosion of the modern framework’s boundaries, but to
welcome, and even celebrate it. Throughout my interviews, configurable musicians
consistently distanced themselves from the binary categories of the modern
framework, or sought to encompass them within a new, unified categorization: they
are neither fans nor artists, they are both fans and artists; they are neither performers
nor composers, they are both performers and composers; their workstations are
neither mere tools nor mere materials; they are tools, materials, and finished products
all at once.
Music industry executives, by contrast, are equally cognizant of the changes
wrought by configurability, but are generally much more emphatic about the need to
shore up the modern framework against any challenges. They are willing to view
configurable music as an art form, but only with the traditional rules intact: artist
exceptionality (to the point of conferring genius status on individual artists – a step
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almost universally rejected by the musicians I spoke with), division of labor, and of
course, the use of the bottom line as the ultimate evaluative mechanism. To these
interviewees, configurability is primarily seen as just another fashionable new
musical style (or group of styles) to be packaged, marketed and sold, like any other.
However, even some interviewees in the music industry acknowledged that
configurability doesn’t constitute business as usual, and that it poses fundamental
challenges to the music industry’s modus operandi. For instance, consider this brief
exchange with WMA’s Marc Geiger, regarding the sustainability of the original/copy
binary:
Aram: Do you think that it is going to hold up in the age of sampled
music? I mean, do you think that the industry will be able to continually –

Marc: I think I already answered it. I said the Internet blew it all apart.

Aram: Okay. So it’s over?

Marc: It’s over.
37

If we accept the premise that configurability is undermining the modern
framework, disrupting the historical cycle of musical regulation and resistance, what
conclusions can we draw from this realization? What assumptions or values will
replace the ones codified by Kant and elevated to the level of dogma by the
Romantics? And what may be the social consequences of the newly emergent
framework? Again, there is no empirical method to answer this question; we are still
in configurability’s infancy, and frameworks emerge from a lengthy process of
cultural negotiation and consensus. However, there are a few general premises we
308
may abstract from my interviews, and these offer some promising indications of the
cultural logic of configurability.
First, there is an emerging value that we may call Configurable Collectivism
(although the term Configurable Individualism would apply just as well). This
represents a reorientation of the relationship between the individual and the
collective. One of the strongest indications of this attitude is in configurable
musicians’ rejection of the premise of artistic exceptionality. Although my
interviewees were willing and able to make value judgments, acknowledging relative
degrees of artistic merit and disparate levels of cultural participation, they tended to
reject the concept of the artist as a separate class of individual, or of art as a separate
class of human endeavor. Furthermore, they soundly rejected the notion of artistic
genius, opting to elevate individual works themselves to the level of exceptionality,
rather than the individuals who produced them.
This ethic is also reflected in configurable musicians’ emphasis on
acknowledging sources, and on emphasizing the collective nature of cultural
production. Nearly every style of configurable music has developed its own language
of what is typically called “citation” in academic research and publication – rejecting
the notion of creation ex nihilo that underpins the modern framework, and positing
all cultural production as a collective enterprise. The variation between styles such as
mash-ups, techno and hip-hop seems to reside more in questions of sample size and
recognizability than in disparate levels of dedication to the ethic of acknowledgment,
which each shares in its own way. Ironically, as many of my interviewees told me,
309
the greatest limit on their ability to share both reputational and monetary rewards
with their sources and influences is the current copyright regime, which
counterintuitively incentivizes musicians to claim the mantle of originality and
individuality, disguising their creative debts for fear of incurring insurmountable
legal and financial ones.
The social significance of configurable collectivism is potentially enormous.
The individual represents the atomistic, indivisible unit of social policy and
imagination within the modern framework, and the blurring of the lines between
individual and collective endeavor is no less a threat to the modern framework than
the quantum theory’s blurring of the lines between wave and particle was to
Newtonian physics. I don’t mean to suggest that society is returning to some
preindustrial state of absolute collectivism – such as the Tsarist Russian peasantry,
who, as Pipes relates, “had no opportunity to acquire a sense of individual identity”
in relation to a collective which “submerged the individual in the group.”
38
Nor am I
predicting or advocating a society in which some institutional ideal of collectivism is
enforced at gunpoint, as with the Soviet system that replaced the Tsarist one.
However, it seems clear that configurability engenders a more fluid distinction
between individual and group than the modern framework can encompass, and that
this must entail a renegotiation of the balance of cultural power and a reinvestigation
of our atomistic social theories and the institutions that make them manifest.
The second general premise that emerges from my conversations with
configurable musicians is the Reunion of Labor. As many of my interviewees told
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me, the erosion of the performance/composition and artist/audience binaries in
configurable music makes it difficult or impossible for them to locate themselves
within the modern framework’s division of musical labor. The premise that
composition, arrangement, production, performance, criticism and appreciation are
or should be conducted separately, by discrete individuals, simply does not jive with
the experience of configurable music practitioners, who generally encompass all or
most of those functions within a single, integrated process. This transformation is
already so complete that the only definition of “performance” most configurable
musicians can fathom requires the existence of an audience – a term that, by their
own accounts, is becoming increasingly indistinct.
Moreover, the collapsing of the traditional orchestral or popular music group
structure – both of which serve as models of social organization, as I have discussed
– into the digital “one man band” of the laptop or turntable rig further undermines
the premise of the division of musical labor into categories such as “conductor” and
“instrumentalist.” In configurable music, all roles associated with musical production
and consumption become contingent, fluid, and, in terms of the distribution of
cultural power, equivalent.
Again, the social ramifications of this musical change are potentially
significant. The division of labor has been a foundation of economic, cultural and
social organization for centuries, and is considered the sine qua non of the capitalist
system in an industrialized society. At the very least, the reunion of labor in
configurable music undermines an important ideological vector for this system, and
311
helps to model an alternative system of social and economic organization. More
radically, it may signal a shift away from the “alienation” of labor that Marx first
described, in which workers deprived of a stake in the goods they produce become
disenfranchised and divested from cultural, political, and even interpersonal
processes, as well.
This shift is arguably already underway in today’s globalized labor market; as
Castells
39
persuasively argues, labor in the “network society” has become
increasingly “flexible,” as the value and function of information has displaced other
forms of capital in our economic system. This newly flexible workforce bears both
the burden and the benefit of free agency; job security has diminished, even as
labor’s powers of self-determination and negotiation have increased. It is easy to see
how, if the modern ontological framework reflected and amplified Fordist labor
organization, the emerging configurable music framework similarly reflects and
amplifies this new model of production. The DJ, like the knowledge worker, carries
his capital with him – as a snail carries its shell. The old model of bosses, employees
and consolidated capital – like the old model of conductors, instrumentalists and
stable orchestras – is increasingly giving way to one of a network of peers, uniting
and separating labor and capital on an ad hoc basis to achieve specific, targeted ends.
The third general premise that emerges from my interviews is the Collision of
Public and Private. This trend is evident in the way that many configurable
musicians understand figure/ground relations in their work. Rather than viewing the
musical recording as a self-contained and complete artifact, these musicians conceive
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of the audio they produce as part of a larger atmospheric soundscape, likely to
interact with ambient social, industrial, and musical noises wherever and however it
is audited. Likewise, they consider all of these sounds – from other recorded songs to
the bleeps and bloops of electronic gadgets to the sound of bricks colliding – to be
fair game as ingredients for their own work. As I quoted Matt Wand in the previous
chapter: “The private has become public. The music itself has become just a
background.”
40

This insertion of public noise into private, and vice versa, is even further
exacerbated by another factor described by my interviewees: the fact that the creative
process itself, once confined invisibly and inaudibly within the boundaries of the
human skull, has suddenly become transparent and auditable, as the computer
processor has increasingly taken on the role as an extension (in a McLuhanist sense)
of the human mind. To put this another way: at one time, creative processes were
defined as internal, and cultural processes were defined as external. With the
introduction of configurable technologies and practices, the line separating these
levels of activity has blurred; the creative and the cultural are now one – and thus,
what was once an exclusively private domain has now become public, and vice
versa. This fact is part of my justification for merging psychological theories (e.g.
the systems framework) and sociological theories (e.g. social network analysis) into
a single, integrated model for understanding networked culture, as I outlined in my
first chapter.
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As with my other general premises, the collision of public and private in
configurable music suggests many social ramifications. As other writers and theorists
have noted, the traditional boundaries separating public from private in our society at
large are rapidly eroding, as surveillance mechanisms pervade city streets;
democratic governments rush to legislate away constitutionally protected rights
prohibiting detainment, search and seizure; mass media promote forms of
entertainment, such as “reality television,” normalizing the public judgment of
private foibles and failures; and, most importantly, untold legions of Internet users
post their names, photos, audio/video recordings, opinions and predilections to social
networking Web sites and blogs.
We have yet to understand the net effects of these rapid social and
technological changes, but clearly they entail a shift of some kind in sociopolitical
and cultural power relations. As Foucault argued in Discipline and Punish,
institutionalized surveillance of individuals (exemplified in Jeremy Bentham’s model
prison, the Panopticon) constitutes institutional control over individuals. This is
because, in his famous equation, knowledge equals power, and more specifically,
knowledge of is an instrument of power over: “power and knowledge directly imply
one another . . . there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a
field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the
same time power relations.”
41

Given the growing institutional surveillance over individuals, and the
concomitant shift in power relations between institutions and individuals, there are
314
essentially only three strategies an individual may undertake. One is to ignore the
process completely – to think “I’ve got nothing to hide, ergo nothing to worry
about,” or to convince oneself that the benefits to our security represented by
increased surveillance outweigh the detriments to our privacy. The second is to
disappear as thoroughly as possible, by encrypting and obscuring the information we
transact, and by refusing to use credit cards, mobile phones, ATMs, or any of the
myriad points of surveillance we now encounter in our daily lives. Gene Hackman’s
character in the 1998 film Enemy of the State, an ex-NSA operative named Brill,
exemplified the extreme of this strategy, living within a self-constructed copper cage
to shield him from electromagnetic detection.
The third strategy for coping with institutionalized surveillance – one that
appears to be increasingly popular – is to participate in the surveillance processes
(both as surveillant and object of surveillance) actively and transparently. By
employing this strategy, individuals can both mediate and understand the personal
information they are transacting, and mitigate the inequity of information flow (and
therefore social power) by surveilling the institutions in return. This is exactly the
strategy undertaken by the protagonists in Cory Doctorow’s newest novel, Little
Brother,
42
in which a group of teenage computer hackers, building a virtual samizdat
network between the XBOX game consoles in thousands of teenagers’ bedrooms,
document and expose the abuses of power committed by the Department of
Homeland Security after they have been injustly and detained and tortured in the
wake of a terrorist attack.
315
Configurable music, which explicitly acknowledges the erosion of
public/private boundaries, and strategically integrates the entirety of our public
soundscape (including “private” property) into its aesthetic, constitutes exactly this
sort of intervention. By actively transcending the boundaries of the modern
framework, DJs model and promote forms of listening and information transaction
that are tailored to undermine the power exerted by what we may call the
“panaudicon” of musical regulatory institutions. In other words, configurable
aesthetic codes serve as templates for active social participation in self-surveillance
and institutional surveillance, and in so doing, champion the third strategy I outlined
above.
The fourth general premise that emerges from my interviews is the Shift from
Linearity to Recursiveness. Several of the modern framework’s fundamental binaries
are characterized by linear processes and organizational precepts. The artist/audience
and composition/performance binaries, for instance, both reflect and reinforce the
logic of the “value chain” and the “supply chain,” economic and business
management concepts predicated on the assumption of a linear process in the
production of anything, including cultural artifacts. The premise of these concepts is
that music (like any product) is composed (designed), performed (manufactured),
recorded (productized), distributed, and audited (consumed) – consistently flowing in
one direction from genesis to completion.
However, as many of my interviewees informed me, this linear logic does not
apply to their musical production processes. For many configurable musicians,
316
creation begins with consumption, just as artistry begins with audition. Furthermore,
as I described, the modern framework’s assumption that composition invariably
precedes performance is challenged by creative processes such as DJ Axel’s, in
which a more subtle and complex process of experimentation and refinement, relying
on both compositional and performative elements, characterize his workflow.
Other linear aspects of the modern framework are challenged by
configurability, as well. The blurring of the original/copy distinction undermines the
premise that copies are defined by their subsequence to originals. Similarly, the
notion that tools may constitute products, and products may constitute materials,
completely erodes the linear assumptions of the modern framework’s materials/tools
binary, in which production begins with materials and ends with a finished product.
In each of these cases, linearity is replaced by recursiveness – in which any stage of
the process may constitute beginning, middle or end, depending on the context and
the vantage point of the observer.
The social significance of this shift goes far beyond the obvious challenge to
linear models of economic production and consumption. As many theorists have
argued, linear logic, narration and argumentation are the hallmarks of Western
culture, and have been for millennia. Ong, for instance, argues that linearity is a
feature of literacy, and vice versa: “sparsely linear or analytic thought and speech are
artificial creations, structured by the technology of writing.”
43
Similarly, Postman
argues that “the resonances of the linear, analytical structure of print . . . could be felt
317
everywhere”
44
in the early American republic, during the dawn of the modern
framework.
The challenge to linearity posed by configurable culture, therefore, amounts
to a challenge in to the epistemological processes that characterize modernity, and
that reach back to the dawn of literacy and rational discourse. I am hardly the first
theorist to draw a connection between the introduction of networked communication
technologies and the development of recursive modes of narration, analysis, or other
epistemological processes; arguably, it is one of the central tenets of postmodernism.
However, I feel that the recursive logic inherent in configurable music differs from
some other recursive expressive forms, such as postmodern literature, in an
important respect. Postmodern literature employs recursive and nonlinear narrative
structures as a strategic challenge to the aesthetic strictures of conventional
narrative, and as a symbolic reflection of the disjunctive consciousness that
characterizes life in contemporary, post-industrial society. Configurable music,
though it may do these as well, is primarily recursive because nonlinear logic is
inherent to the process itself. In other words, configurable musicians may be more or
less inclined to view their work as a strategic intervention or as a comment on the
state of our society, but they are bound to the logic of recursiveness simply by virtue
of their choice of expressive media.
In a sense, then, configurable culture poses a greater challenge to the linear
logic of modernity than postmodernism did – precisely because it is a reflexive
movement, rather than a deliberate one, and therefore portends a shift in the
318
epistemological habits of society at large, rather than just the avant garde or the
intelligentsia. Put another way, configurability in practice lives up to many of the
promises made – but never fully delivered upon – by postmodern theory.
The fifth and final general premise suggested by my interviews is the
Emergence of DJ Consciousness. As I discussed in my prior chapter, interviewees
described a form of double-consciousness regarding their work and their lives – an
onus to view configurable music practices both from within and from without – that
closely echoes W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous characterization of the African American
experience. This can be witnessed in the ambiguous use of the term “bedroom
producer,” which can function as a strawman “other” one minute and as a proud or
consciously pejorative self-appellation the next. Similarly, the term “DJ” itself often
seems to operate linguistically as a category or symbol whose referent is simply
“other than.” This can be seen in the ways that interviewees used the term somewhat
contradictorily to mean both “not performing” and “not composing” in their
discussions of the composition/performance dichotomy. Despite this fact, a
considerable number of the configurable musicians I spoke with (and thousands of
others, if not more) chose a professional alias beginning with the letters “DJ” (e.g.
DJ Axel, DJ Adrian, DJ Food, etc.). “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-
consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,”
Du Bois wrote.
45
DJs, as I was told by many of my interviewees in many different
ways, are always hearing themselves through the ears of others.
319
But what can it mean that a cultural strategy and state of consciousness
typically associated with a historically marginalized and disenfranchised social group
have also come to characterize the figure of the DJ? And what are the implications of
the fact that configurability is now ascendant, and is coming to characterize
American mainstream consciousness?
My interpretation – and this phenomenon is clearly open to others – is that
the very act of engaging culture through a configurable lens entails a recognition that
we are all marginalized and culturally disenfranchised by the principles of aesthetic
exceptionalism, the division of musical labor, and the propertization of expression
that characterize the modern framework. Conversely, we are empowered by the act
of embracing both self-ness and other-ness simultaneously through reconfiguring and
reimagining our cultural environments.
In fact, each of the other general principles I have outlined – configurable
collectivism, the reunion of labor, the collision of public and private, and the shift
from linearity to recursiveness – in some way bears upon this fifth general principle.
Configurable collectivism problematizes the stark contrast between “self” and
“other” represented by the modern myth of the individual. The reunion of labor
requires configurable musicians – like flexible laborers – to see themselves from
without, in order to successfully transact their intellectual labor and capital with
others. The collision of public and private has obvious consequences for DJ
consciousness, exposing internal processes to the scrutiny of others, and allowing
each of us to encompass the universe of cultural information within our
320
communicative lexicons. And the shift from linearity to recursiveness means that,
because there is no such thing as a finished product, each of us depends on others not
just to interpret, but to extend the meanings of our own expressions.
The emergence of DJ consciousness, therefore, may be understood as a
harbinger of the rise of a network consciousness, or network culture (the distinction,
as I have discussed, becomes increasingly blurry), or what we may alternatively
understand as the epistemological analog of Castells’ “network society.”
46
This
emerging consciousness recognizes the inequities of the modern framework, and
attempts to rectify them through the democratization of cultural power. This is not to
suggest that everyone will somehow become equal participants in an economic,
political, or social sense, but simply that a new fluidity exists, in which each of us –
forced to confront our public selves through the monitor of a surveillance camera or
a MySpace profile editor – will have the ability to retrieve, reconfigure, and
redistribute such information, and in so doing, to participate in the production of
shared meaning.
Of course, it would be naïve to expect or suggest that configurable culture
and society does or will constitute some form of utopian free-for-all. The most
obvious caveat is that the very technological changes precipitating these cultural and
social ones are contributing to an accelerating threat of global ecological (and
sociopolitical) catastrophe, burying poor and politically disenfranchised communities
around the globe under mountains of toxic waste, and rapidly warming our
atmosphere to levels previously unknown during humanity’s brief tenure on this
321
planet. Unless we address these problems immediately and comprehensively, not
only will the emerging configurable technology infrastructure cease to be
sustainable, but our species itself may face extinction as well.
On a less alarmist note, it is clear from my interviews that many of the social
inequities and disjunctures that have plagued our society in the past will not be
magically eradicated by the rise of configurable culture. One thing that struck me
during my research is that nearly every configurable music practitioner I spoke with
was male – and this wasn’t for any lack of effort on my part to balance the scales. Of
the dozens of people I interviewed, only two musicians – Vicki Bennett (who records
under the name People Like Us) and Mysterious D – were women. According to my
interviewees, this disparity reflects the actual makeup of practicing DJs. As Si Begg
told me, “I think there definitely is a gender gap, yeah. You’d be lying to say there
wasn’t.” He told me he attributes it more to disparate cultural training than to active
bias within the community: “I think it’s just, traditionally, geeking out with a
computer is seen as a men’s kind of a boys’ club thing. But I think it’s changing . . .
most people I know would certainly be more than happy to see more women doing
it.”
47

Mysterious D agreed with Si Begg to an extent, telling me that she had never
experienced any personal resistance to joining the mash-up community. However,
she traced the roots of the imbalance to the traditional disparities – born of both
explicit bias and cultural training – within musical culture and economies at large:
The music industry in general is dominated by males. Even
though girls play guitar. Girls DJ. Girls do all these things. It
322
just seems to be a lot rarer. And do I know why that is? That’s
a much bigger conversation. I think that it has nothing to do
with mash-up culture. I think it has to do with music culture in
general. . . . And also, you know, I hate to generalize, but guys
tend to like gear more than girls do, and mash-ups are a gear-
based thing. It’s all about production. And, again music does
seem to be, like, a boy’s world just in general. . . . The girls
want to come dance to it, and the boys want to figure out how
to make it. At Bootie [the mash-up club she co-founded].
48

As Mysterious D notes, the gender gap in configurable music appears to be
“all about production” – more specifically, explicit bias is not required, because men
in general are culturally trained to feel more comfortable with the means of
production than are women. Whether this will change as a result of the increasing
accessibility of configurable technologies remains to be seen. The fact that my
interviewees didn’t report any explicit gender bias within their communities is
promising, but as Hargittai and Shafer have recently shown, women continue to
perceive their technology skills to be inferior to those of men regardless of their
actual skill level, and this may have an inhibiting effect on their participation in
mash-ups and other configurable musical practices. In Hargittai and Shafer’s words,
“Women's lower self-assessment vis-a-vis web-use ability may affect significantly
the extent of their online behavior and the types of uses to which they put the
medium.”
49

Another visible disparity that emerged from my interviews was racial and
ethnic. Many of configurable music’s foundational innovations were developed in
the context of Afrodiasporic aesthetics, practices and communities – from the dub
versions of 1960s and 1970s Jamaica to the hip-hop and turntablism of 1970s and
323
1980s New York City. However, nearly every configurable musician I interviewed
was white. While this may represent more of a methodological shortcoming on my
part than the gender gap I described above – after all, there are many African
Americans and other non-white practitioners of configurable music – I believe it also
reflects a fundamental disjuncture between white, African American, and other
ethnic communities within configurable music itself.
I have two reasons to draw this conclusion. First, my method for recruiting
interviewees – flawed though it was – unintentionally reflected and underscored a
preexisting racial insularity within the musical communities I observed. This is
because I began with a few seed musicians whose work I found interesting or
relevant – of several ethnic backgrounds – and, after successfully interviewing them,
asked them about other musicians I should speak to, relying upon these introductions
as a “foot in the door.” Among hip-hop musicians, who constitute a relatively diverse
musical community (though it generally still codes itself as an African American
expressive form), either lack of luck or lack of tenacity limited my initial pool of
interviewees; for example, Steinski, who is white, responded when I contacted him,
while Talib Kweli, who is black, did not (even though I had a stronger preexisting
social connection to the latter musician).
However, as I discovered, the mash-up and techno musician communities are
overwhelmingly white in their racial make-up. This is why nearly all of my initial
“seed” musicians within these communities where white (except DJ Danger Mouse,
whom I reached out to but did not successfully interview), and why most of the
324
mash-up and techno musicians I was subsequently introduced to were white, as well.
To the extent that black, Latino, Asian and other ethnic groups are represented within
these communities, they must either constitute a small enough population to have
eluded significant representation in my sample, or, more likely, are sufficiently
disconnected socially from white practitioners that my methodology of asking for
introductions from musicians I interviewed did not bring me into frequent contact
with them.
My second reason for concluding that historical disjunctures between racial
and ethnic communities continue in configurable music rests in the aesthetic and
ethical codes propounded by many of my interviewees. As I discussed in previous
chapters, the aesthetic logic of configurability differs broadly from one style to
another. For instance, while mash-ups tend to be song-oriented, focusing on the
narrative arc connecting a song’s verses, bridge and chorus, and downplaying the
performative aspects of the form, hip-hop and turntablism tend to be more loop-
oriented, focusing on the variations and deviations from a repeated theme, and are
thus more deeply tied to the processes of improvisation and performance. This is
evident in the gap between Steinski’s description of “guys like me who can sit
around and listen to the same beat going around and around for 20 minutes,”
50
and
DJ Adrian’s insistence that, in his music, “there’s a break that goes into a bridge, and
then there’s a chorus, whereas, it’s not just the same loop over and over and over and
over again.”
51

325
The difference, as Steinski observed explicitly, and as should be evident to
even those without formal musicological training, is that mash-ups tend to follow a
more traditional European structural logic, while hip-hop and turntablism tend to
follow a more traditional Afrodiasporic structural logic. In a word, mash-ups are
coded as “white,” while hip-hop is coded as “black.” The distinction is culturally
significant in spite of the facts that (a) neither community is racially monolithic –
especially accounting for people who primarily listen, rather than produce, (b) both
styles abound in exceptions (i.e. song-oriented hip-hop, and loop-oriented mash-ups),
and (c) the characterization of European music as song-oriented, and African music
as loop-oriented, is a drastic generalization that reduces millennia of tradition
representing hundreds of cultures and thousands of styles into a stark and
unforgiving binary. This is because, in contemporary American society, the
black/white binary, which holds such a dominant role in our cultural mythology and
collective imagination, has been reinforced by centuries of sonic codification, and is
reified and reinforced, rather than undermined, by such marketing tactics and
stylistic developments as “crossover” and “fusion,” even when they are strategically
used as musical models of social integration.
We are accustomed to hearing music through a racial lens, and have arguably
reduced many of our contemporary popular musical styles to racial grotesques that
emphasize these differences precisely in order to play on the semiotics of identity.
Current African American musical styles such as hip-hop and R&B tend to exhibit a
prioritization of rhythmic instrumentation and a focus on melismatic and non-
326
melodic vocal improvisation that vastly outstrip many of the African and
Afrodiasporic styles that comprise their aesthetic lineage. In the meantime, current
popular music coded as “white,” such as rock and country, have shedded much of the
rhythmic drive and improvisatory performative and structural approaches that
characterized their earlier incarnations, and increasingly emphasize the melodic and
compositional aspects of the works.
Thus, the differences between configurable musical styles such as mash-ups
and turntablism must not be understood as accidents of cultural history, the
inevitable result of disparate racial and ethnic groups each bringing its own
idiosyncratic musical aesthetic training to a new set of production tools. Rather, we
must view these new stylistic precepts as definitive statements of social identity,
formed by the anything-but-arbitrary transplanting of aesthetic codes from
instrumental musical styles onto new configurable production technologies and
practices. Significantly, this is happening despite the rhetoric of universalism and
social integration that so many configurable musicians espouse. Mysterious D, for
instance, exulted that “mash-up culture’s open to everybody. That’s what’s really
cool about it. There’s definitely no whatsoever, like, bias on gay, straight, black,
white, girl, boy.” Yet, in the same interview, she told me that though she “like[s] a
lot of turntablist stuff,” she views mash-ups and turntablism as “doing two different
things,” and argues that “turntablists are less interested in composition. They’re not
writing the music. They’re simply interested in the skill part.”
52

327
In future iterations of this work, I would like to explore the intersection of
configurable music and racial politics more thoroughly, and to rectify my
methodological shortcomings not only by interviewing a more diverse range of
mash-up, techno and hip-hop artists, but also by exploring configurable musical
styles that reflect ethnic categorizations beyond the black/white binary, such as
reggaeton, bhangra, and karaoke. For now, I will simply observe that, as much as
configurability offers hope for the reorganization of social and cultural institutions
along more egalitarian precepts, it is hardly immune to the gender and race-related
inequities and disjunctures that characterized pre-configurable culture.
Finally, I would observe that, as with all social and cultural transformations,
there are many powerful individuals and institutions with a stake in the existing order
of things, and they will not sit idly by as their power is diminished by changes of any
kind, no matter how profound. I have already described many of the ways in which
musical regulatory institutions are attempting to confine the scope of configurable
music’s resistant potential, through legal, ideological and commercial means.
However, there is also resistance to change at a higher level, in the form of backlash
against the ethic of configurability in general.
This backlash is currently epitomized in the work of scholars such as Andrew
Keen, whose recent book, The Cult of the Amateur, excoriates blogs, YouTube, and
Wikipedia as examples of the ways in which democratized cultural production
ostensibly impoverishes our culture at large. In his words, “democratization, despite
its lofty idealization, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling
328
expertise, experience and talent [and thereby] threatening the very future of our
cultural institutions.”
53

As I hope I have shown in this work, I disagree with Keen on every point but
his last. Far from “truth” itself, what is actually being undermined is an ontological
system that reserves the power to determine what is true and false for a privileged
few. If civic discourse is under attack, it is only at the hands of Fraser’s
disenfranchised and disaffected “counterpublics,”
54
fighting for a voice despite
historical exclusion from Habermas’ rarefied “public sphere.”
55
And, as my
extensive interviews show, expertise, experience and talent are hardly “belittled” by
configurable musicians; these terms continue to hold much value within the
communities I surveyed. However, the concepts are being actively challenged and
redefined, in a continuing effort to craft aesthetic and ethical codes that
simultaneously encompass both evaluative criteria and social inclusion, both
individual accomplishment and collective endeavor.
As to the fate of our cultural institutions, I have to agree with Keen. Their
future is certainly in doubt. But institutions exist to serve the needs of the people that
inhabit them, not vice versa. And if the people who create culture by participating in
it daily – producing, consuming, and rushing to colonize the growing gray area in
between – demand a new set of institutions to serve our needs, no force on Earth can
stop us from building them.
329
Notes to Chapter 4

1
Phone interview, 9/26/2006

2
McKenzie, H. (2007, February). Digital message rings loudly in Nike Town.
Media, pp. S29, S31-S32.

3
Phone interview, 12/7/2006

4
Phone interview, 10/17/2003

5
Phone interview, 11/28/2006

6
Radar Research/Intellisurvey Configurable Culture Survey (unpublished). July,
2006, n=1,765. Population: U.S. Adults 18+ (results weighted to 2000 census).

7
Phone interview, 10/4/2006

8
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

9
Phone interview, 11/9/2005

10
Phone interview, 10/3/2006

11
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

12
Phone interview, 11/9/2005

13
Phone interview, 12/7/2006

14
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

15
Phone interview, 10/4/2006

16
Phone interview, 9/11/2006

17
Phone interview, 10/31/2006

18
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

19
In-person interview, 11/13/2006

20
In-person interview, 11/30/2006
330

21
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

22
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

23
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

24
Phone interview, 10/2/2006

25
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

26
Frank, T. (1997). The Conquest of Cool. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

27
Ferguson, W. (2004, December 12). The mainstream mash-up. The New York
Times, 12 December 2004, Section 6, p. 82.

28
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

29
In-person interview, 11/13/2006

30
In-person interview, 9/8/2006

31
Phone interview, 10/19/2006

32
Email interview, 11/3/2003

33
Phone interview, 11/15/2006

34
Phone interview, 10/2/2006

35
Roseman, J. (2006). Mashup construction kit. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

36
Phone interview, 11/29/2006

37
In-person interview, 11/17/2006

38
Pipes, R. (1990). The Russian revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; p. 95.

39
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (Second Edition). Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.

40
Phone interview, 10/16/2006

331

41
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan,
Trans.). New York: Vintage; p. 27.

42
Doctorow, C. (2008). Little brother. New York: Tor Books.

43
Ong, W. J. (1988). Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge; p. 40.

44
Postman, N. (1999). Building a bridge to the 18
th
century: How the past can
improve our future. New York: Vintage; p. 144.

45
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903/1989). The souls of black folk. New York: Penguin; p. 5.

46
Castells, The rise of the network society.

47
Phone interview, 11/6/2006

48
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

49
Hargittai, E. & Shafer, S. (2006). Differences in actual and perceived online skills:
The role of gender. Social Science Quarterly, 87(2), 432-448; p. 444.

50
Phone interview, 9/29/2006

51
In-person interview, 12/4/2005

52
In-person interview, 11/4/2006

53
Keen, A. (2007). The cult of the amateur: how today’s Internet is killing our
culture. New York: Doubleday; p. 15.

54
Fraser, N. (1989). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of
actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere
(p. 109-142). Cambridge: MIT Press.

55
Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An
inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (T. Burger & F. Lawrence, Trans.).
Cambridge: MIT Press. (Original work published 1962)
332
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Asset Metadata

Creator Sinnreich, Aram Arthur (author)

Core Title Configurable culture: mainstreaming the remix, remixing the mainstream

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 10/31/2007

Defense Date 10/19/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cultural regulation,innovation,mash-up,music,network society,OAI-PMH Harvest,remix,resistance,sampling

Language English

Advisor Gross, Larry (committee chair), Demers, Joanna (committee member), Thomas, Douglas (committee member)

Creator Email aram@sinnreich.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m902

Unique identifier UC1134222

Identifier etd-Sinnreich-20071031 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-590228 (legacy record id),usctheses-m902 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Sinnreich-20071031.pdf

Dmrecord 590228

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Sinnreich, Aram Arthur

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu