Performativity?

* Although, note that the Neitzche parallel isn't quite the same thing -- most popular music (say, Celine Dion) is highly Appolonian but also highly performative.

This is a good question which doesn't deserve the quick, casual answer I'm going to have to spit out here, but time presses. For now, something which might not really answer the issue, but still -- while I'm sure it's important to me and my listening, somehow I don't think I immediately sense it in the way Nitsuh describes it. I like to imagine metaconcerts in my head sometimes when listening to music (especially if it's a band I've in fact *not* seen live/on video), though, and it's easy to imagine the settings and the styles of how a performance (or lack thereof) can happen. More to chew over later.

I think my ears, like Nitsuh's, hunger for experiences that are more idosynchratic. While I'm all for technical proficiency and accomplishment - craftmanship, if you will - I get much more out of experiencing someone finding their own individual mode of expression.

I also think that the best songwriters (and I'm talking traditional songwriters, of course, like a Stephen Merritt, or an Elvis Costello, or a Neil Diamond) spice up their Appolonian efforts with their own Dionysian touches, whether they be turns of phrase, certain rhyme schemes, or even familar melodic motifs (AKA "that thing" - that is, you can almost always pick out a Neil Diamond song, no matter who's performing it).

(A) I just thought of a better, simpler definition of what I mean by "performativity." Performativity = anything you're inclined to physically mimic the performance of. Includes air guitar / drums / bass, or any sort of vocalizing that involves squinching up one's face, pointing, or using household items as faux microphones.

(B) Related question: couldn't a lot of what we call "rockism" be explained as a distaste for the lack of performativity in dance music? The usual complaints -- that certain types of music are "cold," "sterile," lacking "soul," or are "just a bunch of guys standing around turning knobs" -- all seem to stem from the desire to hear / visualize a recognizably human performance of the music.

Ahhh, and does this answer the "what is soul?" question? "Soul" = music built from confident, passionate performance? Thus "soul" has nothing to do with composition, except insofar as the composition allows for that sort of performance?

Sorry to post so much, but this line of thought seems to explain so much of everything . . .

Performativity in dance music = er, dancing?

Air guitar = dancing also? (As proved scientifickally by me and the Great Lost GuyB on a thread long ago and far away)

Is what Beyoncé does with her voice Dionysian or Apollonian?

Beyonce's voice certainly SEEMS more spontaneous, when compared to harpies like Mariah & Whitney. (However, her voice isn't as technically polished, or as rangy - perhaps, in her attempts to seem as polished and precise, she comes off charmingly half-ass and "real"?) (This might be a personal prejudice, mind you - I've always sided with less proficient singers if their delivery sounds more authentic, or "soulful".)

One thing I was trying to reason out re: Nitsuh's last few posts & Destiny's Child - I've found the few live performances I've seen of theirs (with a "real" band) lack the soul that their super shiny & produced recorded performances carry. Another case of Dio/Appo collision. I'd wager that soul or authenticity has little to do with the types of instruments used, if they fit within the context of the song - "Independent Women" sounds MUCH better with the sweeps & creeps than with a professional drummer & bass player.

David,

Pop music's sort of the oddball here, because for the past 20 years or so it's been all about mustering every bit of Appolonian energy it can gather and using it all to create a Dionysian effect. It's like theater: loads and loads of precise organization meant, during performance, to seem like complete emotional spontaneity. This goes x10 for a group like Destiny's Child. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of studio time and pouring into creating the impression that Beyoncee & company are just letting it out as they feel it.

And the key to that particular paradox, in pop, is: performance.

As far as someone like Destiny's Child sounding better on record, you have to take into account that the whole performative focus with them is vocal. So if the transfer to a live setup improves the performativity of the instrumentation, but wrecks that Appolonian-as- Dionysian balancing act of the pop vocals, that's why it fails.

And as for the performativity of dance music = dancing: absolutely right. But see how that burden is shifted to the audience instead of the musician? Thus listeners who want performativity actually encoded into the music, and not, to some degree, coming from themselves, are more likely to be rockist, maybe? Dance music = "just add performativity!"?

I'm not sure the distinction between what's conceptual and what's performative is quite so clear. There can be just as much of a performance going on in a very conceptual work, in the sense that an artist like Momus is performing his persona. Admittedly, this isn't a "physical" performance, but that's precisely what's left out of a more conventional definition. What I'm getting at: musicians perform non-physically all the time. A conceptual approach can be equally performative.

Yes, there are definite rockist implications to the conventional definition and preference for performativity.

you boys dont get laid much do you?

Big words make you insecure, do they? ;-)

When I see DC perform (videos; the NBA finals) they don't seem spontaneous to me. And they don't appear to be interested in appearing spontaneous either, in the way that, say, Sean Penn's flicker of a smile does, even though Penn probably did the exact same flicker for like 20 takes. DC's performances seem geared (much like Britney, N*sync, et al) towards visually literalizing their musics' mechanistic flow. They insert their bodies into this music machine, snagging invisible contours from the air, like Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times character reflexively tightening an absent bolt. They are hyper-manufactured: beats, costumes, PR plans, dance routines; Beyonce's arpeggiated runs are readymades placed strategically into a MIDI-mapped pop song; her voice in this case the equivalent of her/Chaplin's body filling gaps in the machine. Dionysus, positivity, sired not by rational Appollo nor subjugated by him, but enmeshed in the division of labor, a writhing nature strapped to its own steel skeleton, the slicing of action and will into replicable moves, interchangeable stars, practiceable dance steps, doable by any contestant off the street given enuf hard work.

The performative aspect of live dance music v. perf. asp. of live rock music is crucial somehow. Rock fans find an identification with the authors of their band's noise, even if it's a negative identification (i.e. Marilyn Manson). It's a delicious kind of body- transference, putting yourself in their place. -- There is no author at a dance club, but complexes of style and energy, so the tools to connect with the authorial moment are gone; there are no motions to mimic or lyrics to sing along to. But damn if there's not a lotta shakin goin on. Rather than this surrogate author, the rock band, a DJ or whatnot provokes Spontaneous Authorial Action from the crowd - the highly individual floppy hip-shake dancing that the centuries- long tradition of public dancing has evolved to. (I don't mean that sarcastically: as far as spontanaeity and originality go, I think the dancing done at modern dance clubs is the most evolved the world has ever produced (outside of a religious context). At a formal level, it is the crudest and most unsophisticated.)

(tho the argument cd be made that Jeff Mills at Limelight - tho he is one of the most authorial DJs - IS a religious context. moved not by identification with a human author but by a confluence of the preordained beats of already-existing texts, transformed by human will. plus Limelight used to be a church.) I will shut up now.

Tracer Hand, you're an Insufferable Cunt, sir — in a GOOD way! (Spent the day reading on how some of the RevMarxists of yore — eg Gramsci — thought that Taylorism as per Modern Times was a Good Thing, because it wd train the worer's body to leave behind all that yucky bourgeois "passion" stuff. cf Peter Wollen on Modern Times, American and Robots in Raiding the Icebox. For my book, y'know. My book which ILM has punched such a schedule hole in. I might QUOTE this, you bastard. Brilliant.)

Does this thread tie in with Gareth's Posh thread? I mean, yes it does - but how?

(worer's = worker's)

see me flail here

Maybe songwriting, like 'playing', is just another example of the autonomic nervous system on autopilot, just with different nerve endings firing neurons.

Toby:

But the thing about performing a persona, Momus-style, is that one seeks to disguise the actual performance -- the more aware we are of the effort put into the performance, the worse he's doing. Whereas with something like an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo, our attention is deliberately directed to just how difficult the performance is, and we're meant to be somewhat amazed and excited that it's being done. It's in Van Halen's interest to make it look easy as well, but it's still like acrobatics: what we're impressed by is the fact that anyone can do the thing in the first place, much less make it look simple.