Object: Blues music in the pre and post-war period. The reason I chose to study blues music is because its roots are firmly entrenched in the folk tradition. Subsequently the music is expressive in form and often reflects the current social climate. I studied music recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax and recording artists such as Son House, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and considered a series of documentary films directed by Martin Scorsese. Change: Blues music progressed from a form of musical expression contained within rural African-American communities to an international phenomenon which saw the likes of the Rolling Stones, Cream, John Mayall and The Kinks re-recording earlier blues songs with greater commercial success. I believe that this change can be attributed to the structural constructs put in place by the dominant modes of production that recognised a potential market and exploited it for capital gains. Concepts: Primarily the Situationist Internationale’s critique of contemporary capitalist society, analysing the idea that modern life has receded into a spectacular representation which is dominated by the commodity form. Accompanying this idea is the notion that spectacular society is capable of co-opting popular movements which question the status-quo into its own reinforcement. In order to provide a link between the Situationist Internationale and the change which blues music underwent during the pre and post-war period I drew upon commentaries by Richard Middleton and Richard Peterson both of whom analyse the role of the recording industry in fabricating authenticity and exploiting a musical market for capital gain.
Tag: authenticity
~AN ANALYSIS AND ETHICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION~ How can I argue that my experience of Sunseed was ‘good’ beyond scientific measure? Sunseed is a environmental charity that aims to develop, demonstrate and communicate accessible low-tech methods of living sustainably in a semi-arid environment. I have identified two problems in the question of what constitutes ‘authentic living’: 1. Do I treat my environment as the Other? To act selflessly I must transcend the horizon of Being and move away from the ‘thought of being’, to treat the environment as ‘the infinite’. My experience of the world is anthropological and pre-contemplative. How has the problem of the philosophical unavoidability of thematising language shaped our attitude to environmental conservation? 2. How do I escape the ‘Dialectical Deficiency’? The truth of the existentialist concern for the fundamentalness of human subjectivity exposed in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, where concerns become formulas and causes are rules and probability.
Brief Overview of The Catcher in the Rye
The novel is narrated Holden Caulfield, who reveals that he is undergoing treatment for a mental breakdown. He has been informed that he is to be expelled from school at the end of the current semester. Following a distressing evening, Holden decides to return to Manhattan a few days early but instead of going home he chooses rather to book into a hotel. The novel is comprised of the events that take place in the few days between booking into the hotel and his return home. Holden narrates his encounters with various people, both strangers and acquaintances.
Alienation as proof of the presence of the ‘other’
Holden describes himself as trapped on “the other side” of life but it soon becomes clear that his alienation is, at least in part, self-inflicted and that he deliberately employs it as a means of protection. He is continually overwhelmed by his interactions with other people. He is constantly confronted by that which is unfamiliar and ‘other’ to himself. Though his alienation acts as a guard against that which he sees as ‘other’ it is also that which is the source of his pain and anxiety.
Holden’s inautheticity
Throughout the novel Holden expresses his unwillingness to accept change. He is constantly overwhelmed by complexity and wants everything to be eternally fixed. He does not understand everything about his surroundings which is a source of anxiety for him yet he refuses to acknowledge this anxiety. For Heidegger it is through anxiety that we are able to become authentic, however, Holden refuses to acknowledge his anxiety and as such remains in a state of inauthenticity. The apparent “phoniness” of the adult world comes to represent inauthentic living in Holden’s mind, adults seem to be driven by what one ought to do in a particular situation. In Heidegger’s words, the actions of adults are determined by what the anonymous ‘they’ consider to be appropriate. Childhood on the other hand, for Holden, represents an authentic living. As a result Holden is reluctant to enter in adulthood himself. He mistakenly believes that eccentricity is authentic and as such strives to assert his socalled uniqueness, this is represented in the red hunting hat. However, it is clear that he is not entirely comfortable with wearing it. As such it becomes a symbol of his inauthenticity rather than his authenticity.
Death
Two instances of death in the novel, the first is the metaphorical death of innocence. The novel is concerned with what seems to be an ongoing dying of innocence which represents that which Holden cannot quite grasp about the adult world. It is a constant opening up of his relationship with the other. Holden’s breakdown too symbolises the struggle of the ego to remain itself over time, his illness, becomes that which separates him from himself. The second instance of death is the death of his brother, Allie, which serves as a reminder of the impossibility of possibility (Blanchot).
Objectives • I want to look at how much of yourself you have to sacrifice in order to become what you want to be: how much you have to sacrifice your talents for the record company, the fans and even the other band members. • I want to explore how far commercialism has embedded itself in the music industry. • Is it possible to create and release music with any real amount of integrity? • What does it mean to ‘sell-out’? • How can a band keep ‘it’ about ‘the music’? • What does ‘the music’ entail? How Done • I will look at and compare the record contracts of a major label and an indie label. • I will look at Marx’s views on commercialism and capitalism and how they affect culture. • I will assess how much control bands have over their music and what they could do to keep it about ‘the music’ so that they do not ‘sell-out’. What Achieved • By doing this I will have more of an understanding of what kind of balance there needs to be with the band and the record company in order for the music to be heard by enough people without it loosing its integrity.
Objectives: – · To explore the impact of sound recording on the way we interact with music. In the past, people experienced music solely through live interaction: performances, concerts etc. Now music is widely available in recorded form, also through the mass media outlets of radio, television, the Internet. Does this devalue music, simply making it more disposable, or does it transform the potential role of music in a society where traditionally defined boundaries are shifting and collapsing in upon themselves? · To look at the effect of new methods of creating music, such as synthesis and sampling, both on the audience and on the creators of music. Through sampling, music is being made both by recycling and re-contextualising music that has come before, and by reclaiming sources previously dismissed as ‘noise’ to be placed in a musical context. Through sound synthesis, on the one hand acoustic instruments are being mimicked electronically with increasing authenticity. On the other, electronically generated sounds which radically diverge from our traditional sound palette seem increasingly commonplace in a world that is similarly transfigured. · To investigate the way these new techniques reflect the changes in our human/social condition- our relationship with technology, the mechanisation of society. To what extent do changes in musical creation and consumption come about as a result of these social changes, and to what extent do they actually inform the changes. Concepts: – · Mechanisation of society. Simulation and the hyperreal. The shifting role of art in a mass media culture. Territory: – · Western music and culture from the early 20th Century to the present. Sources: – · Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text. Peter Manning, Electronic and Computer Music. Numerous recorded musical sources ranging from early forays into musical experimentation with sound recording, through to contemporary examples.