Weekend Tunes

Here you go.

Buraka Som Sistema - Wawaba
Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing
Flipper - Sex Bomb
Buzzcocks - Fast Cars
Mayer Hawthorne & The County - Just Ain't Gonna Work Out

1984

You can find George Orwell's 1984 on-line in its entirety here. Go directly to Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
Below you can watch the famous 1984 commercial by Apple introducing the Mac to the world.

A Propos de Nichols...

Nichols readings from Introduction to Documentary. Articles will stay online for one week -get them while you can.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Mass Comm Course Packet

Here is the course packet divided into 4 files. My suggestion is to download all 4 so that they don't get lost in the shuffle as new posts are added to the site. There will probably be a couple of extra articles during the course of the semester. Enjoy.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Hit Me Baby One More Time...Literally?

A look at the history of music torture by Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files:

There's an ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash that introduced a pig-tailed Britney Spears to the world in 1999 -- so much so that Jive Records changed the song's title to "... Baby One More Time" after executives feared that it would be perceived as condoning domestic violence.

It's a safe bet, however, that neither Britney nor songwriter Max Martin ever anticipated that this undercurrent would be picked up on by U.S. military personnel, when they were ordered to keep prisoners awake by blasting ear-splittingly loud music at them -- for days, weeks or even months on end -- at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

The message, as released Guantánamo prisoner Ruhal Ahmed explained in an interview earlier this year, was less significant than the relentless, inescapable noise. Describing how he experienced music torture "on many occasions," Ahmed said, "I can bear being beaten up, it's not a problem. Once you accept that you're going to go into the interrogation room and be beaten up, it's fine. You can prepare yourself mentally. But when you're being psychologically tortured, you can't." He added, however, that when music was introduced, at the end of 2003, "It makes you feel like you are going mad. You lose the plot and it's very scary to think that you might go crazy because of all the music, because of the loud noise, and because after a while you don't hear the lyrics at all, all you hear is heavy banging."

Read the rest at The Huffington Post here.

Also, take a look at the Zero db (against music torture) initiative launched by Reprieve, a UK based legal action charity. [If you have headphones on connected to your computer LOWER THE VOLUME before loading the Zero db site.]

Documentary History I

The chapters from the Bill Nichols book will be up by the weekend. In the meantime here are the first two chapters from Eric Barnouw's Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. Barnouw organizes his history around the figures of the filmmakers and the films that they made. These first two chapters detail the pre-history of the cinema (Prophet) and the early experiments in the form (Explorer/Reporter/Painter).

Barnouw Chapter 1
Barnouw Chapter 2

As a bonus here's the Frank Zappa 'Nanook tribute', "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow/Nanook Rubs It" medley from apostrophe (')

Folk From Around The World

from Democratic Republic of Congo: Konono No. 1 - Ditshe Tshiekutala
from Ireland: The Dubliners - Home Boys Home
from the Mississippi Delta: Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night
from the Mississippi Delta: Alan Lomax Collection - Arwhoolie (Cornfield Holler)
from North Vietnam: A Brao Song

from India: Ravi Shankar - Dhun
But this is not 'folk music' as we defined it, rather it is an example of the 'high' in a different cultural and social context

Western Art Music

Beethoven - Symphony N.9 d-moll Op. 125 (extract)
Text by Schiller here.

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 "Moonlight"
Chopin - Nocturne b-moll Op. 9 No. 1

Schumann - Dichterliebe, Opus 48, "A Poet's Love"
Text by Heine here.
Schumann - Liderkreis, Op. 39, "Intermezzo"
Text by Eichendorff here.

Schubert - An Silvia (D891 1826)
Text by Shakespeare here.

Lady GaGa vs. Bruce & Pete Seeger

vs.













Click here for Lady GaGa video.

These videos are for discussion in class.

How Musicians went from Servants to Stars

The virtuoso instrumentalist and composer as superstar: Franz Liszt.

Very nice and timely interview on WNYC's Soundcheck with Tim Blanning author of The Triumph of Music a 'social history' of musicians in the west (remember what we said about musical knowledge --the difference between knowledge 'in' music and knowledge 'about' music and in this last instance the difference between metatextual knowledge and metacontextual knowledge). This is a very good example of the metacontextual knowledge we are interested in building. Required listening.

Download entire interview mp3 here.

Stream interview.

Welcome To The Pop Music & Mass Culture Class

Readings Week 1:

in Cambridge Companion:
-Introduction + Chronology
-Theberge, "'Plugged In': Technology & Popular Music"
-Frith, "The Popular Music Industry"
-Frith, "Pop Music"

in Garofalo:
-Introduction + Chapter 1: Tin Pan Alley

from Durham & Kellner (eds), Media & Cultural Studies: Keyworks

-Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
nb. You can find this on-line here in PDF format or here in an interactive audio-visual presentation.

from Frith & Goodwin (eds), On Record

-Adorno, "On Popular Music"
nb. You can find this essay together with "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" co-written with Max Horkheimer --an essay which if you have not read should definitely do so-- here.

-Riesman, "Listening to Popular Music"
nb. Find it here on JSTOR --requires subscription. You can access it from computers on-campus. If you have problems get help from the kind library people.

-Hall & Whannel, "The Young Audience"
Here.

City of God's Son

An homage to 90s New York hip-hop, gangster films and the circulation of the image of the gangster in popular culture, City of God's Son is another step in remix culture. Featuring legendary soul singer Joe Bataan. A sound film/hip hop opera by Kenzo Digital. Free download of the entire audio form of the project here.

Recording Industry vs. The People

Recording Industry vs. The People



For the first time the proceedings in an RIAA against a private individual will be televised. The case is RIAA vs. Tenenbaum.

CVN (Custom Virtual Network) will “narrowcast” the audio-visual coverage to the website of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which will make the recording publicly available for all non-commercial uses via its website.

The argument will be on Thursday, January 22nd, at 2:00 p.m.

The RIAA initially tried to block the diffusion of the arguments but the judge in the case did not grant the objection stating: "While the Plaintiffs object to the narrowcasting of this proceeding, .... their objections are curious. At previous hearings and status conferences, the Plaintiffs have represented that they initiated these lawsuits not because they believe they will identify every person illegally downloading copyrighted material. Rather, they believe that the lawsuits will deter the Defendants and the wider public from engaging in illegal file-sharing activities. Their strategy effectively relies on the publicity resulting from this litigation."

Curious, in other words, that a strategy predicated on a 'hit one to educate a hundred' criteria is asked to be removed from the public. Is the RIAA ashamed of something and would rather keep these litigations under wraps and simply rely on predominantly sympathetic news reports and rationalizations. Maybe they hope that the re-educational potential of the lawsuits spreads better through word of mouth.

Lessig on Colbert

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

The Tropa de Elite is looking for Henry Jenkins...

...then Capitao Nascimento reads the book: twice!


Enjoy.
Classes this coming semester and related posts: Popular Music and Mass Culture; Surveillance; Documentary Film; Film Aesthetics; Mass Media