Pop Tourism

Who is paying artist rightful dues and props' versus who is merely tomb raiding?

As I see it, we not only appropriate global cultures, but our own too. The weird thing for me as a Scottish musician is that the Scots music Alan Lomax collected in the 1950s is as foreign to me as Laotian traditional music. If all traditional musics are 'dead', all musicians are 'tomb raiding', whether pilfering about in their own national heritage or in someone else's.

The good faith / bad faith issue then becomes, do musicians acknowledge the fact that their (eg) African roots are plastic, and just have fun with the signifiers (hurrah for Scratch Pet Land, Belgians with an electronic take on Africa!), or do they scrabble around looking for racial and political justifications for their use of the mummy's left toe? Do they reach, in sleevenotes and interviews, for authetication and legitimation?

It's not a question of how global musicians are, but how boringly guilty they can sound, or how refreshingly guilt-free (Scratch Pet Land! Banzai!)

Dub reggae is a particularily good example of what I call 'good faith' in the context of your question: a music that has come to terms with electronic estrangement, mastered its technology, is playing with it and having a whale of a time. And, I'm sure you'll agree, a music very little concerned with notions of copyright, ownership, or 'paying artist rightful dues and props'. Leave that to the guilty, Jason, those desperate to prove that they're not fleecing the world for gold!

What exactly is the "uncannibalised" element in dub? Rocksteady evolved in Jamaica from local hommage to MUSIC HEARD OVER THE RADIO FROM THE US: it's a version of airwave-touched R&B. R&B = a classic technologised mongrel of swing, blues, Appalachian folk, and eee-lectricity

Better word than TOURISM ("They" are tourists; "we" are EXPLORERS) = CRUISING. The good/bad, radical/dark is more elegantly tied up in that.

Byrne's artistic failing these last 15 years has been his self-effacement.

I think it is the nature of artists today to pick and choose ideas. In my aspirations as a musician, only theoretical at present, I often hear a rythmn or a bass line or something an go oh well maybe that would go well with that or might become something if you did that to it. I don't know if you can really draw a distinction between those with shamelessly pick and mixing and those trying to go deeper since once a sound is out there it is very much in the public domain and open for anyone to develop and interpret

The difference now, I think, is simply that the melding and influence of various musical traditions is a whole lot more visible and a whole lot more self-conscious. When we imagine, say, South African vocal music taking in the influence of black American music, we imagine it happening rather organically---that is, people managing to get their hands on radios, tuning in to the sound of the West, and liking it enough to let it become a part of their tradition. That image is a far cry from the current stereotype of the culture-mixer: a DJ flipping through the "world" or "exotica" bins at his local record store, making very purposeful and deliberate decisions to incorporate Bengali rhythms with Afro-Brazilian vocal styles with Indonesian gamelan structures with what-have-you. I think the things that strike us as "tourism" (or "false metal") are these deliberate meldings, which seem to lack the competence or joyfulness as cultural mixes where the person creating them actually seems to have a deep knowledge of---and, more importantly, a deep love for---all of the different heritages being combined. Precisely what everyone from Paul Simon to Macha seem to lack.

The word "appropriation" = crap analysis. USE OTHER WORDS PLEASE. More on this if I can calm down. Rage = nothing to do with this thread incidentally.

You're certainly right: some great music has emerged from what we might refer to as members of one musical tradition "misunderstanding" or "differently interpreting" another. But I guess this brings us around in a circle again, because I still think we all have a clear sense of when an artist is getting another tradition "wrong" and when an artist is reconstituting elements of another tradition in some new and previously unimagined way. I suppose the imagination element might be the key here: if you try to imagine a late-80s Soviet band playing L.A. rock and getting it "wrong," without a whole lot of effort you'll come pretty close to a lot of what was going on over there. But I doubt many people, given copies of the White Album and Brazilian material by Caymmi or Dick Farney, would be able to mentally construct the sound of Os Mutantes. I suppose what we're getting at here is the ability to pick and choose elements of different traditions that are coherent, that combine to form something that's not merely a mix but something of a new form in itself.

And, above: Perhaps Paul Simon was a bad example, as there'll obviously be difference of opinion on his validity. I just always felt like he was squashing the South African / Brazilian traditions he was borrowing from, sort of reducing them to the barest superficial level of existence, like the 127th channel in a 128- channel mix. Granted, I haven't heard those records in some years, and back when I did hear them, I found them pleasant enough.

[It's part of why PS fought so hard AGAINST HIS INTERESTS AS A SMARMY LIBERAL — ie against the [so-called] ANC Cultural Boycott — to get Graceland made and toured: because it spoke deep to something; which is evanescent and spectral and softvoiced and... If it were just a cool momentary flavour, as a mere shallow market-device, he'd have dropped it the moment he ran into v.choppy waters: why risk re-branding yrself as a self-obsessed fascist bastard? But the rekkid wasn't "abt" him: it was "abt" something bigger than him ,which he didn't entirely understand. So he chased a weird phantom, at peril to his own respectability).

For subsequently attempting to get money back off Ladysmith Black Mambazo — if that's what the story is, and if it's true — he is of course complete robbing wank-scum. But that has no bearing on the expressive issue.

Certainly not, it just becomes easier with the birth of radio, before that you get european classical music in various countries. Then immigrant/slave cultures mixing in the colonies. It is just that today it is so easy both conciously and subconciously.

My guess is that people who feel this way probably wish that America were Britney-free too. You can agree or not with the sentiment, but there's not necessarily a double standard of "we're allowed to be silly, trashy and frivolous and you noble savages are not" at work. Maybe they don't want frivolousness under any circumstances.

Yeah, that post made me feel kind of defensive, since I've listened to college radio since the mid-80s *and* since I like Brazilian music. I personally don't know anyone who fits that bill. I'm sure that anyone who does think that way is wrong, but I really don't like these types of arguments that go, "oh you know, there are these types who think x and who do x and they're wrong", without naming names or giving examples. It's been hurled at indie music and college radio people for as long as I've known those people, or been one for that matter. What's funny is that college radio folks IME tend to be the most musically curious people I've met. People who only listen to Os Mutantes without checking out other Brazilian music are no more guilty of closed-mindedness than people who rely only on commercial radio for their information: Os Mutantes sell more because they've been hyped and name-checked so much in the press. That said, people who have Os Mutantes but not other Brazilian music in their collections aren't necessarily self-congratulatory about that - if anything, a lot of fans tend to focus on how sympatico Os Mutantes are with current trends in the US and less on the fact that they're Brazilian (and therefore "world") - not surprising given their stylistic palette and the fact that one of them is the daughter of an American.

Look, in learning about anything, whether it be particle physics or early modern drama or Argentine monetary policy, people have to start somewhere. To deny them that is to deny them the opportunity to learn about things at all.

But if you don't believe me, feel free to walk into third grade classrooms during math, and go, "Addition? That's so lame. Oh, and I suppose once you've got that down, you're going to start on subtraction and multiplication, aren't you? What a colossal dud."

Mark, please may I adopt 'This has become urgent and key!!' as my catchphrase to be used in almost all situations?

So I guess my thought here is that "tomb raiding" isn't the issue with me so much as how the "world" music is being used in various home environments, what it beats down and raises up. What's missing so far from this thread, interestingly, is how you yourselves use the world's music in your lives - I presume in ways that are idiosyncratic and simply don't register in the discourse of music journalism.

Another interesting phenomenon - interesting at least in that no one seems to be commenting on it, and that it's not being played for its signifiers - is the frequent insertion of Hispanic musical elements into pop and r&b. I'm thinking of Debelah Morgan, 'N Sync, Bryan Adams, Toni Braxton (a diverse bunch, no?). Seems to me that Justin Timberlake's singing on "Tearing Up My Heart" and "Bye Bye Bye," and the basic melodic patterns of those songs, is a lot closer to Latin freestyle (TKA, Cover Girls, etc.) than to New Kids or Bell Biv Devoe.

I regret to inform the public that much of the "worldbeat" I play becomes relugated to pleasant but unobtrusive music I listen to while reading or cleaning house. I wonder if this is how American pop music is utilized by kids in Bhutan or middle-aged couples in Tuvalu. But the dudek--now, that can make me cry!

Another trend: East Asian motifs in hip-hop. All over the place in the last couple of years, and not just where you'd expect them (e.g. RZA's Ghost Dog soundtrack), but in Ja Rule's "Between Me and You." I like the motifs, but have nothing to say about why they're there. Maybe they're just an example of hip-hop's never-ending quest to incorporate something new. Like, "I've got Ivan Julian's 'Blank Generation' guitar line." "Yeah, well I've got Chinese flutes, and time is on my side, nyaaah nyaaah."

But Tarden's point about the ongoing Latin tinge makes me think of something else (the converse of this thread's starting idea): people absorbing foreign sounds without knowing that the source is foreign. Well, I suppose that the Troggs, for instance, knew that "Wild Thing" was from a U.S. sound, but they didn't know that the sound got to the U.S. from Mexico and the Caribbean. That is, Dylan self-consciously used the "La Bamba" chords in the chorus of "Like A Rolling Stone"; Richard Berry was self-consciously writing a Caribbean-like number when he did "Louie Louie," which made sense since its quick I-IV-V-IV- I (V-minor for "Louie Louie") was already a basic piano vamp in Cuban and New York Latino music. And so after the Kingsmen hit, boogalooers tried to cross over by building tracks solely around the vamp: Ray Baretto's "El Watusi" and Joe Cuba's "Bang Bang." The Blues Magoos covered Cuba's "I'll Never Go Back To Georgia," but by-and-large I think most garage bands were ignorant of the fact that their music had Latino and Caribbean sources.

By the way, I think you and Tarden are too quick to stomp on the word "depth." Not that the word hasn't been put to awful uses, but still I'll usually take depth over shallowness, thank you. I'll say that people who take the time to understand my ideas have done far better commenting on them, pro or con, than those who don't. Not too many inspired mistakes. (I can think of only one, in fact: Michael Freedberg; he'd somehow misremembered one of my Voice pieces as picturing working girls at their sewing machines moving their feet to Company B. If only it had.) When Greil Marcus misread Quine (con) and Kuhn (pro), he didn't do anything interesting with the result, he just reinforced his conventional ideas. Whereas when Dylan got Nietzsche correctly he was able to come up with a heartwrenching retort (the rejection of the eternal recurrence at the end of "Memphis Blues Again").

Another term I'd like to add to this thread. "Content." As in maybe the Stones covered Muddy Waters "I Can't Be Satisfied" so that they could say, "I feel like smashing this pistol in your face." By content I don't just mean lyrics, of course. When I was in San Francisco, a lot of lesbians danced to world music. The content here would be how they danced. (And I don't know the content, since I rarely witnessed it.)

By the way, nothing I've ever read makes me think that either Jamaicans or the Rolling Stones misheard American r&b. It doesn't take mishearing to understand the untapped possibilities in a music.

I am going to try something glib and perilous, like, er, the idea of the bisexual in a world only just now clumsily getting used to homo and het as creatively different yet interdependent. If black music/white music = homo/het (or vice versa, same diff, whatever, calm down), then latino = bi. Just when you get yr head round it, it messes with the powerful simple opposition, and you no longer know where you are. (In ref purely the trans-atlantic community, obviously... I have not the slightest will to — or idea HOW to — expand this idea to include the vast and multivalent Asian aspect...)

...I just wanted to give this line it's own post, for us to better appreciate its brilliance.

The Latinos in hip-hop seem to be expressing "Latin" mainly through language and accent while sticking to the same hip-hop beats and melodies as the non-Latins. (Compare to disco and club music in general, which is shot through with the Latino influence - but club vs. hip-hop, of course, is yet another severe tension).

On the other hand, Latin club music seems to be eagerly incorporating hip-hop and a grab-bag of other things - I say this, ignorantly, on the basis of a recent K-Tel compilation More Latin Club Mix 2000, which seems all over the map and extraordinary, Joey Beltram dark- techno murder beats played under salsa piano, this programmed next to Europop and rumbas, raps added to virtually anything. Can anyone tell me more?

(And like Tarden I realize that I'm overlooking different situations in different places, Miami in particular - Miami Bass was the one hip- hop scene that really took in the club influence, took in Baker-Robie and maybe, for all I know, took in Ledesma and Martinee and aspects of the Miami Sound. But I don't know, since Miami was never high- profile anywhere I was picking up hip-hop radio. I think that Miami (more than d'n'b) may have been a big influence on Timbaland, hence the resemblance between his beats and the Baker-Robie speed beats of old. But I don't know.)

In general, the genre (hip-hop) as a whole is so secure in the hip- hopness of its beats and raps and its cut-and-paste identity that it's willing to paste in any old (and new) melodic and tonal anything without stressing over whether that thing has r&b pedigree. Compare to c&w, which is perpetually obsessed with whether it's losing its eternal twang.

In terms of "club," many of the most influential DJs/producers, from the beginning to now, have been Hispanic. Masters at Work are the most obvious example; those guys have recorded everything under the sun, from M/A/R/R/S-style hip-hop cut-ups to pounding vocal house anthems, but DJ Sneak's "You Can't Hide from Your Bud" is one of the most influential house records of the 90s for its filtered disco cut- up. Quite a ways from the K-Tel comp, but it shows how important Latin music continues to be even in the haughtiest underground-dance circles.

I think the possible next step in miami bass's incorporation into hip hop will be MCs rapping at half-speed under regular miami bass beats. There's a remix of Mya's "It's All About Me" (R&B, I know) which demonstrates the idea quite nicely: the BPM is much faster, but the vocals are actually slightly slower than the original.

Agreed on "Back That Azz Up" - morose string-swept action, the music could almost be from Aphex Twin's Richard D. James album. My favourite Cash Money track however is The Hot Boys' "Help" - glitzy horn blasts, baroque harpsichord runs and beats tripping over themselves - love it.

The situation is different with a lot of indie hip hop, where the MCs cover a much broader range of material but the DJs are trapped in a stultifying worship of some pure hip hop ideal (from Eric B to Prince Paul to The Bomb Squad to RZA), placing much of the music's self-identification within the music. There are of course exceptions to this, but it seems to be the most common approach.

Something I was thinking about the other day: assuming hypothetically you're against the practice of stealing from other genres, which is worse: "Addictive", or Oasis's "Hindu Times"? Is stealing direct from the subcontinent more or less justified than worshipping at the alter of those who stole from the sub- continent?

By "practice" do you mean "pop tourism" as practiced on the ILM board of as practiced elsewhere (by musicians, for instance)?

I'm not sure that Truth Hurts and Quik sampling Mangeshkar in 2002 is different in kind from the Real Roxanne and Howie Tee sampling Elmer Fudd in 1986: it's not so much tourism as grab bag/party favors. But we'll see if there are any consequences, followups, imitations. What I struck me about "Addictive" was how much the sample ruled the song.