ISP Blogpost — Journal #1
This blog is to be used for my weekly journals in my ethnographic research into online musical communities. I have chosen to use a blog to embed my work in the relevant world that I am discussing — that is, the internet and global media. In future weeks I plan to invite people and musicians who have experience with the ideas I am discussing in their own work (be it scholarly or musical) to articulate a response to help my own (and hopefully their) understanding. In this week’s first journal for my ISP I will discuss my initial thoughts in undertaking this research project in relation to the first five chapters from Music and Technoculture edited by Rene Lysloff and Leslie Gay Jr.
I began this research project with the aim of analysing how the internet and global media technologies spawn new musical internet communities whom operate under semantics and aesthetics in a projection of their identity. Prior to any research, I believed that the veil of media separates the artist’s physical setting and their identifiable musical community provides a place of decontextualized musical style, in which musical forms from around the world can be appropriated into new musical settings. I am concerned about the politics of identity, appropriation and culture in this issue. I came to this idea extending mostly from my own musical life, separate from the academic world (although this helped inform the idea) yet the more I read discourse surrounding music and technology (from Music and Technoculture) it becomes evident there is more issues relating to ethnomusicological ideas and issues of representation at play.
The introductory chapter in Music and Technoculture from Lysloff and Gay provides a key starting point in general discourse around online communities, bringing in Andrew Ross’ idea of ‘technoculture’. Ross defines technoculture as communities and forms of cultural practice “that have emerged in response to changing media and information technologies, forms characterized by technological adaption, avoidance, subversion, or resistance”. I find this a helpful way of looking at the process of media and communities, in the way that these communities emerge as a response, and take on their own distinct way (such as resistance or adaptation) to working with technology in crafting an identity. This chapter then goes on to discuss ethnographic approaches for these new communities, particularly methodological distinctions. Ontological, pragmatic and phenomenological approaches allow us to see “technology as a culturally saturated component of human activity”. With this in mind, analysis of the interaction, knowledge and experience of these communities allow us to probe into how media technologies inform meaning in the technological scape. Within this exists new ideas of ‘authenticity’ which is embedded within the technological baggage and changing ways of what authenticity means to new communities. This chapter emphasises that we need an academic discourse surrounding these new emerging technoscapes.
Switching gears a bit, Chapter Two from Lysloff provides a distinctly relevant ethnography into the sorts of internet communities I am interested in — that is ones that operate solely online in which the context and meaning for their musical production takes place almost entirely on the internet. Lysloff’s descriptive approach by use of metaphors (such as calling the internet ‘Softcity’ and describing users as ‘ghosts in the machine’) is helpful in discussing the somewhat abstract use and understanding of the internet. What I found very interesting from this chapter is the idea of internet ‘presence’ and how online, it can only be inferred. Users work in solidarity however come together to form ‘imagined communities’ (from Benedict Anderson) through mediated understandings of where meaning lies within these communities (in Lysloff’s case, internet ‘mods’ which put emphasis on exchange of virtual music files extending from one type of digital musical software). These communities come together online, although often not at the same time, usually physically separated, to form a collective identity.
Chapter Three from Timothy Taylor discusses ideas of ‘glocalization’ stating that the “global and local are no longer distinct”. Taylor briefly discusses the history of international trade highlighting that the idea of globalization is not actually new, and it is not helpful to treat it as such. However in terms of music, it is becoming increasingly common for musicians (not aware of their own power relations) appropriating music from “old, forgotten” cultures invoking a sense of authentic exoticity. Using the case study of the band Enigma using recordings of Thailand singer Kuo, Taylor discusses how Kuo has been stripped to an exoticised primitiveness removed from his own context being now treated as anonymous. By becoming more in tune with ‘glocalization’ we can show resistance to the idea of schizophonia, i.e resist splitting sonic signifiers from their signified. I think this chapter will be helpful in my future research where I look into appropriated music in new contexts, however not necessarily from other cultures. I am interested in this idea of schizophonia but intend to also look into contexts in which the sonic signifier is removed from the signified, but evokes a connection to the original source (for example, the use of a sound to evoke a sense of nostalgia).
Chapter Four from Paul Theberge goes down a similar path as Taylor, discussing the ‘fetishization’ of world music in the case of sample libraries (used as sound packs for digital music production). Schizophonia takes place as music taken from the world cultures are then appropriated and modified into a short sound clip. These clips are ‘invested with cultural significance’ from the companies discourse around the files, stating how they travelled the world to search for authentic, primitive music. These narratives of a colonial past exist in the sounds discourse and appropriation, such as the sound ultimately being edited and rendered for use in Western samples. This leads to the idea of ‘schismogenesis’ — the differentiation and interaction of world cultures being intensified by economic and industrial interests in the global marketplace. As technology is mediating this relationship with culture in the first place, we must not simply take mediated technology at face value. This will become relevant to my work in looking how some sounds can be ‘invested with cultural significance’ and the amount of depth and authenticity these sounds can contain.
Chapter 5 from Tong Soon Lee involves a case study into the use of the loudspeaker and radio technology that have become essential in the important adhan, the call to prayer in the Muslim community of Singapore. Although in my research I do not intend to place significant focus on traditional communities, this chapter provides key insights into the breadth of how media technology affects culture in relation to global politics. The prayer is sacred and helps regulate daily life amongst the Muslim community in Singapore, yet as a result of urbanization of the country, Muslims who traditionally lived within hearing of the call from the mosque in an ‘acoustic community’ became displaced and integrated with other communities in Singapore. As a result, the Muslims employed a loudspeaker at the mosque to call for the prayer five times a day. Yet as a result of the new multi-ethnic makeup of the landscape, this came under scrutiny as an audible public disturbance. As a result, the speakers were faced inward, and the prayer has become broadcast on the local Islamic radio station. The Muslim communities spatial relationship became extended and decentralized and now has an emphasis on cultural self-production in an abstract shared space. Lee discusses how previously many scholars discussing globalized media find that it ‘alienates’ the individual. However in this case Lee has shown how technology can also democratise this space.
In this journal for this week I have spent much time summarizing chapters from Music in Technoculture. While this is helpful, in my upcoming journals I will place more emphasis on my own research into these communities to help inform my final research project. This will take place as discussion of ideas from my own personal experience and ethnographic work into the operation of musical communities embedded on the internet. The most prevailing thought that I am left with this week is one that should have been far more obvious to me when I began this project. And that is, why are these ideas relevant to me, and why am I so very interested in them. At first I believed that it was just because that’s “where the world is going” but it has become increasingly clear that these thoughts are so prevalent in my mind because of my socio-economic circumstance. Typically speaking, the majority of people whom makeup facets of the internet come from a first world country and are white males. This issue of my own representation, perspective, and understanding will need to be closely discussed among my research.
