Contextual incongruity and musical congruity: the aesthetics and humour of mash-ups

Brøvig-Hanssen, Ragnhild; Harkins, Paul

doi:10.1017/s026114301100047x

Cited by 26 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…It can be argued, however, that Parra's decision captures both the 'contextual incongruity'by injecting material unrelated to the scientific inspiration that was behind the Inscape projectand 'musical congruity' that typically emerge in these kinds of repertoires. 24 As to Parra's deliberate references to other composers, a short passage within the fifth section of Inscape pays tribute to Pierre Boulez's Répons (1984) through an allusive imitation of its orchestration and a particular use of live electronics. This choice was deliberate: the soloists and the electronic technology developed in Inscape exist because of Boulez's creation of IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, both of which in turn featured in the première of Répons.…”

Section: Different Trails 59mentioning

confidence: 99%

Different Trails: On the Multiple Genetic Roots Determining a Distributed Compositional Project

Besada¹

2019

Tempo

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Although it is a mistake to believe that the material traces left by a composer's practice can help us to properly reconstruct the creative process, compositional sketches may throw light on it. Nevertheless many such accounts take their respective case studies as isolated objects that are, unfortunately, sometimes decontextualised from the whole record of their authors. Ethnography potentially offers a better methodology and auto-ethnographic accounts, third party observations, and mixtures of these approaches have already been applied to contemporary music. This article aims to combine both these approaches in a discussion of a recent compositional project at IRCAM, carried out by a team of three people. I consider how the previous artistic experiences and achievements of these people, jointly and separately, have had a substantial impact on their shared project. In addition, as the case study had a scientific underpinning, I comment on the cognitive bridge that the composer had to build between scientific and musical conceptions.

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Section: Different Trails 59mentioning

confidence: 99%

Different Trails: On the Multiple Genetic Roots Determining a Distributed Compositional Project

Besada¹

2019

Tempo

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“…Our specific focus on musical copying in this article could be viewed as one aspect of a broader and more profound practice of ‘commons-based peer production’ (Benkler, 2006). The value of copying in popular music culture has been a salient theme in writings on remixes and mash ups (Brøvig-Hanssen and Harkins, 2012; Lessig, 2008; Shiga, 2007) and in those writings that offer both a philosophical and policy-ware counter argument against the corporate demonisation of piracy (see McLeod and DiCola, 2011; McLeod and Kuenzul, 2011). We take inspiration from the way this body of research has argued for the importance of copying and how it has facilitated aesthetic change, bonds of social communication and individual creative fulfilment (enabling users of media and art forms to become creators).…”

Section: Copying and Digital Circulation: Resistance Adaption And Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Copying, copyright and originality: imitation, transformation and popular musicians

Negus

Street

Behr

2017

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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With copyright becoming ever more important for business and government, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the practices and values associated with copying in popular music culture and advocates a more critical approach to notions of originality. Drawing from interviews with working musicians this article challenges the approaches to copying and popular music that pitch corporate notions of piracy against creative sharing by citizens. It explores differing approaches to the circulation of recordings and identifies three distinct types of creative copying: i) learning through imitation, ii) copying as transformation, iii) copying for commercial opportunity. The article then considers how copying is caught between a commercial necessity for familiar musical products that must conform to existing expectations and a copyright legislative rationale requiring original sounds with individual owners. The article highlights how legacies from a long history of human copying as a means of acquiring knowledge and skills leads to a collision of creative musical practices, commercial imperatives and copyright regulation and results in a series of unavoidable tensions around originality and copying that are a central characteristic of cultural production.Keywords: musicians, copying, copyright, recording industry, originality. Yet, copying has increasingly been perceived as a problem by music industry trade organisations seeking to profit from selling commodities to consumers, whilst maintaining a legal regulatory framework premised on intellectual property. In this paper we explore the tensions as popular music practice collides with competing artistic impulses, commercial incentives and legal imperatives. We draw from interviews with professional UK based musicians working mainly within and across rock, jazz and sample based genres, and those who work with and represent musicians, in order to open up discussion about broad similarities regardless of differences of genre and cultural identity. The quotations and paraphrased issues in this paper are drawn from in-depth interviews with 21 full time working musicians (some also gaining income from giving instrumental tuition), aged between their early 20s and early 60s. We selectively approached musicians with sustained careers of releasing recordings and performing and with some degree of experience of practices relating to copying and copyright. The aim of this study was very much to explore issues in depth through qualitative research, asking musicians to articulate and to reflect upon matters that they rarely address overtly in their practice. Whilst keen to hear from practitioners working across different genres within popular music, as broadly understood, and to get a sense of how attitudes and practices may have changed over time, we did not seek a 'representative sample' of anything (aware also of the practical and philosophical problems of making any claims about any 'sample'). We did not ask musicians how they defined their class, racial o...

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“…I would suggest that there are at least three ways in which understanding the emergence and decay of the mash up can help us start to stake out some analytical territory within which we can begin to place this form more firmly in its time and draw some sense of its relevance for our own. First, the defining characteristics of the classic mash up, the deliberate juxtaposition of seemingly contrasting songs, has been consistently cited as a template for what was briefly one of the most recognized and celebrated forms of sampled‐based music (Boone, ; Brovig‐Hanssen, ; Brøvig‐Hanssen & Hanssen, ; Serazio, ; Shiga, ; Sinnreich, ). Second, the way in which the classic form of the mash up contributed to and influenced the development of its particular tradition of sample‐based music is representative of several key aspects of the larger evolution of this tradition that I briefly detail below.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The potentially rich concept of “incongruous borrowing” is clearly relevant, if not applicable, to the central traditions of American popular music, especially the use of preexisting musical materials in minstrelsy, jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. See Brøvig‐Hanssen and Hanssen (), Bartlett (), Solis (), Coyle (), and Mahar ().…”

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confidence: 99%

The emergence and historical decay of the mash up

Fairchild

2017

Journal of Popular Music Studies

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The mash up has descended dramatically from the once dizzy heights of prominence it enjoyed at the turn of the 21st century. For a form that once attracted a great deal of attention from a fair number of music journalists and academics alike, its comparative lack of visibility is striking. However, I argue here that this decay is not due its decreasing relevance, but its absorption into an increasingly expansive, pervasive musical tradition, the tradition of sample‐based music. The purpose of this article is to show how the historical assessment of mash up remains too tightly tethered to an intellectual tradition that posits its rebellious subversion of the dominant regime of intellectual property in the music industry as its primary fount of meaning. Therefore, as the intensity surrounding issues of intellectual property and piracy have faded, so has the seeming relevance this musical form. However, I suggest that if we look at this form from within its tradition of musical practice, we can understand its particular band of relevance and influence on contemporary sample‐based music more completely.

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Contextual incongruity and musical congruity: the aesthetics and humour of mash-ups

Cited by 26 publications

References 17 publications

Different Trails: On the Multiple Genetic Roots Determining a Distributed Compositional Project

Different Trails: On the Multiple Genetic Roots Determining a Distributed Compositional Project

Copying, copyright and originality: imitation, transformation and popular musicians

The emergence and historical decay of the mash up

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