However, the tangent which would lead ultimately to Instrumental hip hop began in the late 1950’s, when broadcasts from US radio disk jockeys began influencing dance party disk jockeys in Jamaica. The experimentations of these early sound artists using recorded sound as a creative medium would grow to influence the use of sound in radio, film and television. Meanwhile in the US, phonograph technology was pushed to the extreme by John Cage, exemplified in his 1952 work Imaginary Landscape, in which he crafted a densely layered work assembled from a range of phonograph recordings performed on gramophones. The art historian Glen Watkins notes that the editing techniques of splicing and overlay were by definition akin to notions of collage investigated in painting, literature and other art forms (McLeod & DiCola 2011). Schaeffer’s 1948 work Étude aux chemins de fer, an assemblage and juxtaposition of magnetic tape recorded railway train sounds, created a self described “concert of noises” broadcast over French radio. These early experiments with sound collage would become central creative elements in the future of sonic art and music, evidenced in the emergence of the Musique Concrète movement of 1940’s and 50’s Europe, in which technologies such as magnetic tape (see Fig 1), developed with the assistance of experimental musicians such as Pierre Schaeffer, expanded upon the capability and accessibility of manipulating recorded sound (McLeod & DiCola 2011).įig 1: Pierre Schaeffer manipulating magnetic tape on the Phonogène, 1948 – Source: Wikipedia In 1920, Stefan Wolpe performed a playback of eight gramophones at varying speeds, paving the way for similar works throughout the 1920’s including works by the French composer Darius Milhaud (McLeod & DiCola 2011). The act of using pre-recorded sonic material to create new artistic forms began not long after the advent of recorded sound technologies, particularly phonograph technology. Woodie Guthrie’s I Ain’t Got No Home, a reworking of the Baptist hymn This World is Not My Home, is an example of how appropriation can be used as a creative act to rework compositions to affect the opposite social and political impact then intended from the appropriated composition, in this case better working conditions during the Great Depression in the US (McLeod & DiCola 2011). Further examples of appropriation in performed music as present through to the 20 th century. McLeod & DiCola (2011) note a multitude of documented historical examples in European classical music in the works of Brahms and Mendelssohn appropriating elements of Beethoven’s work, Mendelssohn appropriating Wagner, Mahler from Brahms, and so on. However, restrictions on creativity, of which sampling has become a key resister, are stifling the development of both individual and collective cultural forms and pose tangible implications for our broader cultural freedoms as we move further into the 21 st Century.Īppropriation, aside from playing a central role in learning and psychological development, and the biological evolution of life more broadly, has found use in cultural and artistic mediums since the earliest human utterances. As McLeod & DiCola (2011) assert “Sampling is a form of the fine arts practice of collage, but one that is done with audio tools rather than scissors and glue.” This creative practice has indeed become a medium within which musical styles and genres are based and cultural forms are developed. The role of sampling in the myriad musical styles and genres it finds use, is one born purely of a creative methodology, a process to attain a desired creative outcome. “Whatever interests me, whatever I love, I wish to make it my own.” – Igor Stravinsky, 20 th century composer That’s how we learn to paint and make music as well.” – Matt Black, co-founder, Coldcut We all learn by taking in what we hear and see and trying to imitate it, and output it again. “You could say that all humans are sampling machines. It’s about taking the bits and pieces of your influences and forging them into something newer and stronger.” – Siva Vaidhyanathan, cultural historian “Look at how every great poet made culture… It’s all about collage.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |