Old music in the time of streaming

Not this type of streaming. "Truckee River, Tahoe" byUnofficialSquaw.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

A few weeks ago, NPR produced a series of new articles about the opportunities, perils, and possible future streaming music as it has become for many the main way of accessing music. These articles were an update of a series they produced in 2015, which I covered on this blog.

While this new series of articles covered some important issues in the new world of streaming, such as how new stars are made, how artists get paid (or not), even how music is written differently, I noticed one strain that was absent in the coverage: how people find and listen to music that is not coming out now. There were several in-depth reports of pining after old methods of distribution (cassette mixtapes, Tumblr, and early alternative streaming services) that helped people discover music, but even those focused on how people found the new music of time.

But there is a lot of music out there that is not new, but undiscovered to many people, and what is apparent from NPR's coverage is that the major streaming services care less about this older music than promoting new music.

Not on streaming?

It turns out there is a lot of older music that is not available via streaming; it was only ever distributed on physical formats. It costs a non-negligible amount money to put and keep music online (not just the format transfer, but keeping track of rights and revenue), and if the music doesn't fit a service's criteria, it doesn't get posted. Jazz and classical music are only 1% each of the music market, but they and other genres produce a lot of music. Because there is so much music online, many assume that everything is online—but this is patently false.

Where does music go to die?

Modern streaming services, like the old-school record labels, don't take care of things that they don't think are going to make them money. This was part of the reason that the master recordings that burned in the Universal fire were stored in bad conditions and not cataloged well—Universal did not justify spending money on something that wasn't making money for them now. For streaming services, how do they decide when a song or album isn't worth posting on their platform? What about taking down songs or albums or genres that aren't earning enough money or have rights problems too complicated to deal with?

The Universal fire also showcases the ephemeral nature of recorded music—it has to be stored somewhere, even if it only is distributed via streaming. And unlike with physical media, where multiple copies are distributed that can be re-discovered, the access-only model streaming services control what who has a copy. What happens when streaming services decide an album that was only released on streaming should be taken down? And then a fire or simply bad cataloging causes the label or streaming service to lose track of the music? Or, maybe more likely, a popular streaming service suddenly goes bankrupt and shuts down overnight? (After all, Spotify has still never really made a profit).

In these cases, the music ceases to exist, for all intents and purposes. I predict that in 30 years, 2050, our era will be known in music circles as the “lost years” because there will be a lot of music that just isn’t available because no one was able to collect it and streaming companies decided it was not worth preserving.

Under protection...from preservation

Before the 2018 Music Modernization Act (MMA), there as no federal copyright protection for sound recordings produced before 1972, but instead a loose patchwork of state copyright applied. The MMA patched up this loophole, at least as far is streaming is concerned, but in doing so, it greatly extended protections for older music—which while these protections are good for a few artists and acts that are still well-known and popular, the protections are certainly bad for lesser-known music. Long copyright terms before passing into the public domain only hurt the chances that preservation will occur for these older recordings—and there are some major preservation problems. Magnetic media (such as cassette tapes) and even CDs not stored in optimal conditions may deteriorate in less than half of the time of their copyright terms, so we may get to the point where we are allowed to copy recorded music, only to find it doesn't exist anymore. The MMA does allow some preservation exceptions for recordings that aren't being commercially exploited, but there are some somewhat cumbersome steps you need to take first—and these exceptions would not have been part of the law at all if some library organizations hadn't lobbied for them. Finally, those services that do take the steps to preserve these recordings have to pay a lot of money to digitize and keep the recordings accessible—and who knows when someone will decide it is not worth it for their organization, either?

Let's figure out a way to keep old music available, okay?

What do you think?

Failure to critique hyper-masculinity in the Killers’ “The Man”

One of the top-selling albums of 2017 was The Killers’ Wonderful Wonderful, which debuted no. 1 on the billboard charts in late September. The lead single on the album was “The Man”, released back in June 2017. “The Man” is a great song, with a catchy rhythm section and melody, certainly one of the best songs The Killers have produced. There is lots of room to breathe in the melody, and they have fun playing with all of that space. The form is interesting: the chorus doesn’t come in until 1:25 into the song, after two verses and some stalling, and this delayed entrance (the first time out of the tonic key) comes with a big payoff. The 2nd time around, the chorus (B) has this pretty awesome vocal-heavy extension (B2) that only comes back after the 3rd chorus and bridge (B–C–B2). Just a few more small touches that make the song: try just following the bass on a listen—it is just spare enough during the verse, and gets increasingly complex as the song progresses, raising the tension. And I think my favorite thing in the song is this rhythm guitar 16th note figure that only comes in during the 3rd chorus.

The video is pretty great, too—it presents several versions of lead singer Brandon Flowers (or perhaps one version in different timelines) in different hyper-masculine poses: as a sequined cowboy gambler, a Las Vegas show performer, a playboy, a wannabe motorcycle stunt artist, and a guy in a wife-beater grilling steak and shooting guns outside his trailer. By the end of the video, though, all of the versions of himself have been abandoned, thrown out, shown to be a facade, or failed in some other way. Through the video, “The Man” can be read as a self-deceptive ego-trip, a satire and critique of hyper-masculinity.

The problem with the song is, however, that separated from the video, the music and lyrics do not actually convey any critique of the masculine caricature it depicts. There is no lyrical content from the song that ever signals that the hyper-masculine is something to avoid—instead, the character claims that they’ve got nothing to learn, don’t need any help, and don’t care about anyone else. The lyrics never venture quite far enough into absurdity, or at least far enough that someone taking the song at celebratory face value would notice. The lyrics never show that “the man” does need help or is not at the top of the game. This is especially problematic given our cultural moment—for example, the #MeToo movement, who criticize the very type of entitled men described in “The Man”, a movement that gained steam just a few weeks after Wonderful Wonderful came out. 

The music doesn’t convey any satire, either. Music can provide irony (see my post from 2014 about BNL’s Shopping), but in “The Man”, while the rhythm section and falsetto background vocals borrow from disco (a historically un-masculine genre), the song swaggers throughout with fist-pumping facility. There is no attempt to take down “the man” musically. Sure, this type of swagger is what rock music is good at—one could argue that is the original point of the genre. But while the video suggests an attempt that the song is something other than a celebration of toxic masculinity, the source material doesn’t give any hint of that. For a song that is supposed to critique, it is entirely too easy to take it at face value.

By contrast, Sting’s best song on his latest album 57th and 9th was “Petrol Head”, a song also depicting hyper-masculinity, but instead with an automotive angle. It is a much more lyrically clever song and, while still not critiquing its masculine caricature much (there is a somewhat deprecating verse), the song is cheeky and inventive enough that its lack of critique is more forgivable—hyper-masculine people usually don't make lengthy allusions to Moses. Well, maybe Charlton Heston.

I’ll be listing to “The Man” for a while to come—after many repeated listens, I still haven’t gotten tired of it—but always with a grain of salt, and trying not to sing along with the toxic masculinity.

What do you think?

Parody and copyright, pt. 2: When the copyright owner holds all the chips

Last March, I wrote about my experience posting a parody music video on YouTube. I got some encouragement from my readers to dispute EMI’s copyright claim to the music video, and so I went ahead and submitted my dispute. When I entered the dispute process, YouTube presented me with a list of pre-selected possible arguments for the dispute. I selected the option “this video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder. It is fair use under copyright law,” then wrote a very brief explanation that this music video was a parody and protected under Fair Use. Here's a screenshot of my dispute submission:

At the top of the screenshot, you see the tail end of the 20(!) organizations that have a copyright claim on “Dynamite.” Also, note the threatening language of terms and conditions.

I got a response from YouTube only a few days later in an email: “After reviewing your dispute, Sony ATV Publishing has decided that their copyright claim is still valid.” They are keeping my video up and continuing to monetize it—exactly what they were doing before. I wasn’t given an exact reason, but instead a list of two possible reasons:

    •    The copyright owner might disagree with your dispute.
    •    The reason you gave for disputing the claim may have been insufficient or invalid.

In other words, the publisher itself (notice the official copyright claimant has changed from EMI to Sony ATV—Sony ATV owns EMI publishing, but I'm not sure why the initial claim when through as EMI and then changed during the dispute) made the sole legal judgement about the Fair Use of their own intellectual property. There is no outside or impartial judge making these decisions—the publisher has all the power. So unless the publisher decides that the music used is a completely different composition (and maybe not even then), they have no incentive to grant the appeal. Further, though I needed to give a reason for the dispute, they didn’t even need to give a reason why the dispute was turned down. I think it is very possible Sony ATV didn’t actually watch the video—instead, they probably researched the person who filed a dispute (me) to see if they had a lawyer. The whole process is fishy, but YouTube probably agreed to the process for two reasons: 1) it is two expensive to hire their own lawyers to handle the appeals, and 2) the publishers have the financial power to slap YouTube with a very expensive lawsuit, whether right or wrong, and YouTube would rather be making money on the videos.

Now, there is a process to appeal the dispute decision, but from what I understand, the stakes are higher:

If I appeal, there is no option of keeping the video up—either I win and the video stays up without monetization, or it gets taken down. But for the publisher, the decision is exactly the same the second time around—and since I don’t have a lawyer, there is still no incentive for the publisher to do anything but deny my claim again. As I would prefer to have my video up, making a very small amount of money for Sony ATV, I’m not planning on doing filing a second appeal.

What happens when you post a parody video on YouTube? Copyright, that’s what

When fake lyrics are better than real lyrics

More than six months ago, I posted a YouTube video that had been at least two years in the making. Around 2014, a misheard a phrase in Taio Cruz’s pop hit “Dynamite.” “Gotta let go” changed to “Galileo” (a leap I was not the first person to make), which eventually grew into “Ganymede,” a parody song about the four largest moons of the planet Jupiter. The new parody lyric was memorable while being educational, and also had the advantage of actually rhyming. After I put the lyric to paper, I realized that I wanted to share with a wider audience, but the lyric sat while I tried to find someone else to perform the music and make a video. Last summer, 2016, I realized a music video wasn’t going to happen unless I made it myself, so I bit the bullet, taught myself GarageBand and iMovie, and made it. Here’s the final product:

This treatment is not a cover, but a parody—instead of putting my own spin on someone else’s artistic vision, this parody derives humor from the music being recognizable. Because of this, I put a lot of effort trying to recreate the sounds of "Dynamite" with the tools that came prepackaged in GarageBand (though I transposed it down a minor third to fit my voice), with mixed results.

Wait, is that legal?

Something interesting happened less that 48 hours after I had privately posted the video on YouTube—YouTube’s music algorithm identified the song as “Dynamite acapella cover” and additionally, EMI music claimed the song as their property and then optioned it for monetization (meaning they put a commercial in front of it). I was impressed that the algorithm was correct in identifying the song title, even if the version was wrong, but is EMI correct in claiming ownership of the music?

Recorded music actually has two copyrights—one for the underlying musical composition (usually controlled by the publishers) and one for the actual recording (usually controlled by the producers); that is why when someone records a cover, they still need to get copyright permission from the songwriters. In my case, it is the publishers (EMI) that asserted their rights over the underlying composition of “Dynamite” on the basis that it's cover version.

But parodies are a special case: in order to make their comic point, they need to borrow music, otherwise the joke doesn’t make sense. Courts have protected parodies under copyright Fair Use, which is a legal doctrine in copyright law that allows use of copyrighted material in a limited way, usually with a transformational intent. Fair Use is how we can quote other copyrighted works without asking permission or getting sued all the time; or how the news can show video clips; or we can xerox parts of a book—the point is we are not using the copyrighted material to steal financial or other gain from someone else, but critiquing it, putting into another context, or changing it into something else.

Fair Use is complicated, but to boil it down, parody is protected because it conveys a transformational message that can only be accomplished by using a fairly large portion of the original material. This 2012 article from Library Journal (also a good introduction to some of the problems of posting a parody video) raises another important point—defining something as parody can be tenuous. Parody has to make fun of the material itself, instead of just being satire (which is not protected). Does one need to ask for permission to write a parody, though, like Weird Al does? The answer is no; asking permission is not a legal requirement for Fair Use. Also, if people could sue you just because you made fun of them, it would be curbing free speech.

A new approach

Since 2012, publishing companies have realized that putting down take-down notices on YouTube videos is unsustainable, bad PR, and might even squelch free advertising. Instead, they’ve just decided to monetize these videos, which is what happened with my music video "Ganymede." The YouTube algorithm, though, analyzes music, not lyrics, so it will automatically flag anything that sounds like the original, regardless of if it a parody or not. This is a big problem with the system. There is a mechanism to dispute the copyright claim, but most people don’t have the time or money for the legal battle which may ensue or just don't understand copyright law (and can you blame them?) The result is that these companies make money off of someone’s else work.

I believe “Ganymede” is a parody and should be protected under Fair Use, but on the other hand, I’m not interested in making money. Six months after posting, the video still only has less than 200 views, so it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any viral YouTube fame. I'm not planning on disputing the claim at the moment.

But the video was fun to make and I learned a lot about making music—and copyright.

What do you think? Should I dispute EMI’s copyright claim?

Update 6/26/2017: I decided to dispute the claim; you can read about what happened here.

Changing up TV theme songs

Theme songs are important for TV—they signal the start of the show and brand it. The theme song can also channel the emotion of the show, both conveying the show designers’ emotion and releasing the viewers’ stored emotion (if the viewers have formed an emotional attachment to the show). If an American TV show has an opening theme, it is usually the same for all seasons, though in later seasons it may get a rewrite or two. The closing credits are also similar or the same to the opening theme, though not always.

Many recent Japanese Anime, however, operate differently, with a new theme song for every season. Being used to American TV, it was somewhat jarring to get to a second season of a show and hear completely new songs for both the opening and the closing credits. I can see the advantages—one theme song over multiple seasons can get boring, especially if you are watching the shows in a short period of time. Also, new theme songs can shape a different feeling for different seasons, which could be great for a storytelling arc. New materials also lets the show show progression, which is important for TV, where presenting a story over a long time can be a strength.

There are some problems, though. What if the new theme songs just weren’t as good as the first ones? This was certainly the case with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, a great anime series that I just finished (and would recommend). The first theme songs (with the opening and closing credits) were very good, catchy, and really fit the character of the show. I quickly became attached to these songs, not just because they were well-written, but because I associated them with the new, exciting show. Because they are the first things people associate with a show, the first theme songs are really the most important ones, and when a show chooses to pick a new one, it runs the risk of letting some people down. And I was let down by the second season’s theme songs—not because they were necessarily bad, but because that for me, they didn’t work as well as the first season’s songs.

I can understand why the creators of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood decided to change the themes every season—it allowed them to create new opening and closing animation sequences that matched more closely what was happening in the show that season. It also allowed them to promote other artists’ music, and this practice may be one reason for the still-profitable music industry in Japan.

Once I got used to the idea of new theme songs for each season, I wondered if this idea could be used even better. One could imagine taking this practice to the extreme and having different opening music for every show, but it would be costly and difficult to animate new opening and closes sequences every episode, and you would lose the branding abilities of the music (though the creators of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood did animate new sequences to the same music to great effect on several occasions). So it seems that a song every season can be a good compromise. One strategy the show’s creators employed only once, but could have been used a lot more, is bringing back older themes when the story might call for it. It would be a great way to bring back emotions from earlier in the series, or create needed tension, or foreshadow events. Do you know of any TV shows that have done this?

Since your are probably curious, and even if you aren’t, here is my ranking of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood theme songs, with some notes:

1. 1st season, end credits ("Uso," by Sid) - An expansive melody that starts with an innocent-sounding pentatonic melody, not unlike the simple attitudes of the brothers. As the theme progresses, thought, it adds a driving rhythm. Also, the best credit images, with a completely different animation style. Seriously, I've had this song stuck in my head for a month.
2. 4th season, end credits ("Shunkan Sentimental" by Scandal) - The initial electric guitar melody tied best into the ends of episodes, add adding an excitement to the end that leaves the viewer believe that the next episode will continue the story in a great way.
3. 1st season, opening credits  ("Again," by Yui) - Also has a simple beginning with a child-like voice that breaks into richer and more powerful guitar chords. The quick delivery of the lyrics adds interest and urgency.
4. 2nd season, opening credits ("Hologram" by Nico Touches the Walls) - This is the one piece that was effectively reused in the penultimate episode of the show.
5. 3th season, opening credits - ("Golden Time Lover," by Sukima Switch) - Second-best constructed animated sequence credits, that had the normal snapshots of the season's animation and characters, but also told a story in itself.
6. 4th season, opening credits ("Period," by Chemistry)
7. The other four songs

Would you have picked a different ranking order? Why?

Vocab: pentatonic, rhythm

Pop music as genre fiction

Musical genre.

We use musical genre labels all the time for important reasons: to try to make sense of the overwhelming selection available, to signal the generational influence of this music to older music, and to sell recordings (the main reason why genres were developed by record companies).

Sometimes, though, I ask myself: why are so many pop songs about love and sex, when there are so many other emotional things to write about? Why do so many groups use the same instrumentation? Why are songs within a genre of similar length? If you ask these questions to artists or record producers, I imagine the answer might be “well, that is how pop music is done” or “if we do it that way, it will probably sell,” or “that’s the way I learned to do it.” But I want to dig a little deeper.

To try and make more sense of how musical genres operate, I’ve recently started thinking about music genre (pop music genres especially) in terms of literary genre fiction, such as science fiction, fantasy, romance, or mystery novels. People enjoy having variations on their favorite theme in popular literature, and the same is true in popular music. I myself read the science fiction/fantasy genres almost exclusively. Here are some ways that pop music genres are similar to genre fiction (or course, as with any generalizations, there are exceptions).

Songs in the same popular music genre usually share:

1. Similar vocabularies, both musically and lyrically
Literary genres have themes and similar protagonists, and this happens in popular genres, too. You wouldn’t have a punk song that is gushingly romantic because it would seem out of place, musically and culturally.

2. Similar structures
Like the hero’s journey in novels (especially fantasy), pop music has developed a length and structure (ABABCB), though some popular genres will stretch the length of this form or have their own common structure. Of course, the popular form changes over time, just like romance novels have evolved over time—for example, for a long time the favorite popular American music structure was AABA, which in turn evolved from an extra long chorus.

3. Similar themes
For much of pop music, that theme is love and sex, but we know that country music or death metal have their own conventions.

4. Subgenres
Each genre has divisions, with different people carving out their own favorite repeated themes, or narrative structure.

5. Similar ways of distribution
For SciFi/Fantasy, it’s a book trilogy; for music genres, it would be an album with a certain number of tracks or a length. Pop musicians have to put out an album, even if everyone knows there is only going to be three good songs on it.

So why would analyzing popular music this way be useful? It has certainly proven useful for literature—genre theory is a big field among literary academics, but it isn't quite so developed in music. I think this type of genre classification could be helpful for composers/songwriters, too, because once genre conventions have been identified, it is easier to break barriers and mix things up; it is exciting to have someone take a well-known genre convention and either use the themes, structures, and vocabularies better or differently than the rest of their genre, or bend the genre expertly enough that the old genre is apparent in the new piece of art.

I’m sure there is much more to say about this, but I’ll stop for now. Is comparing music genres with genre fiction helpful for you at all? Or is it unhelpful?

Streaming music: ownership and beyond

I've talked about music and streaming in the past on this blog, but I haven't come close to talking about all the important issues. Today, NPR posted the first article in a series about how streaming music is changing music today, both in the way we listen to music and the music industries themselves. I'm looking forward to reading more about their insights.

One of the big points of today's article is ownership:

"For a large part of the recording industry, the move to embrace streaming actually solves a long-time paradox: one of ownership...Streaming, at least the label-sanctioned version, puts the genie back in the bottle. Every time you click play on a streaming service, from Pandora to YouTube to Spotify, you're licensing the right to listen to the song in that particular moment, whether you pay a subscription or sit through an ad. Ownership is never even an option."

The idea of ownership is important to libraries, which were founded on the idea that because they buy media, they in turn can loan it out. Streaming is a problem for libraries, because even if libraries are allowed to subscribe to streaming services (which is unusual), they still don't own and so can't preserve the media; and we know from experience that media producers aren't very good at preserving their own collections. It is also more expensive for libraries to subscribe to big streaming databases year after year (though they may be given access to a wider selection). The move toward more streaming will cause, and indeed has already caused, some big problems in terms of preservation and access now and in the future.

I also liked the following list of questions from the article, questions that still need to be answered about people's behavior in the face of music streaming:

“Do we listen differently when we have unlimited options? Does the rise of the streaming service eliminate the very need for a library of one's own, or does it just change how we acquire and interact with that library? Do your musical preferences belong to you? What role do listeners play in ensuring the life of music and the livelihood of musicians?”

These are all questions that would warrant at least a blog post, if not a book. Perhaps we'll learn more about these later in NPR's series.

Into the Woods and the disregard of “Show, Don’t Tell” in musicals

This week, the movie version of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods came out on home video. First, I just want to say that I think Disney did a great job of adapting the musical to the screen. Sure, there were some changes, but I think most were justified and worked.

Also, I noticed recently that during Jack’s song “There are Giants in the Sky,” the melody from the Witch’s “Stay With Me” makes an appearance (a song we haven’t heard yet in the musical). But it’s deeper—“Stay With Me” is a song about the witch wanting her adopted daughter to be close to her, and the melody shows up in “Giants in the Sky” at the exact moment that Jack sees his mother at his house. One of the reasons why I like Into the Woods so much is that these little melodic moments happen throughout the musical.

Now that’s out of the way, there was one thing that bothered me as I watched the movie (and this applies to the musical, too): numerous times Sondheim disregards the basic creative writing guideline “Show, Don’t Tell.” In other words, people in Into the Woods are singing exactly what they feel fairly often (“Agony, beyond power of speech,” “And you’re really scared that you’re all alone, and it’s then that you miss all things you’ve known,” “And he made me feel excited, well, excited and scared”), instead of just showing us what they feel by their actions. And this from one of my favorite pieces of art?!?

So, I present three reasons why Sondheim can disregard “Show, Don’t Tell” in Into the Woods and get away with it:

1. It’s a musical. Characters are allowed to tell what they are feeling through a song in ways that wouldn’t work with dialog. That’s what songs are for: presenting feelings (though it helps to be creative; think of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid—it’s classical example of creative broadcasting of emotions in first person).
2. We know these fairy tales, but the versions we know don’t include explorations into the character’s psyche. In other words, we already know the showing part. So we don’t mind the character just telling us, as it’s something extra.
3. Because the characters in fairy tales (and by extension, Into the Woods) are allegories of real life people and situations, we are already doing the work of mapping what happens in the story (getting eaten by a wolf) to what that might signify in real life (getting abused or raped, etc.). That already takes a lot of brainpower (not to mention processing the music, too), so having characters say something straightforward, like “I really got scared,” makes the task of mapping to real life easier.

Moral of the story: add music (and a little creativity) and maybe “Show, Don’t Tell” isn’t all that sacred.

Secret of Mana: great melodies, varied repetition, and…Indonesian music?

Last week, I critiqued a couple of video blogs about video game music. One of the truest things said from these video blogs was: “A great game with an awesome theme song? That’s going to stick with you.”

One game like that is Secret of Mana (SNES, 1993). It was ported to Andriod last year and I just re-played it on my phone. When I mention that game in conversation, the first comment usually is “such good music.” The music is by Japanese composer Hiroki Kikuta, who was about 30 when he wrote it. What I thought I’d do this week is look at some of the individual pieces (or music cues) in Secret of Mana and analyze why they are effective (although I could probably talk about the game mechanics for a while, but that’s not what this blog is for). There’s a lot of music in this game, especially for a fairly short game of 20-30 hours, so I’m just going to pick a few pieces to analyze—and I’ll really only scratch the surface on those cues.

Into the Thick of It

Now, video game music, especially from this era of video games, is built on repetition. The trick is to make something that is repetitive 1) reward repeated listening so it doesn't get old, and 2) fit the character of the on-screen action. Let’s start with “Into the Thick of It,” a traveling piece early on in the game. The music needs to be inviting and fun, but also characterize traveling through a new and strange forest. The music is built on a repeating pattern, or vamp, that runs throughout the piece. Although this pattern repeats throughout, the (at least 4) surrounding parts keep changing. There are three main sections, which I’ll call A, B, and C. A has the harpsichord-like vamp with some high flutes; B keeps the same harpsichord pattern, but the harmony rises and changes. In C, the music returns to the first harmony, but with new melodies on different instruments. The countermelodies and orchestration on this section (and the previous two sections) are subtle meticulous. After one round through, the all three parts repeat. Now, the differences between these three sections generates enough interest for the music cue’s purpose, but here’s where the genius comes in: after two full cycles of ABC, a fourth section (D) comes in. This D section still has the same driving tempo and the same bass part (though thrown up into a different register), but also several new interlocking vamps in new orchestration. It’s really interesting, but it also feels rewarding when the music cycles back to A again. As for matching the character of play, the driving vamp moves along like a walking traveler, while the moderately-paced flutes match a woodland feel. The harmonic rise in the B section provides a little bit of tension to mirror the unfamiliarity of the situation, but the harmony soon settles back.

Let’s look at another music cue: “A Bell is Tolling,” the music for the ice forest area. This music also has three parts (again, I’ll label ABC), and once again all three parts have shared musical elements: the harmony and the tempo is the same for all three. However, almost everything else changes. The A section is spare, with a crystal-like high melody over a legato chords, reminiscent of ice or coldness and also the solitude of a forest of dead-looking trees. The B section is a big contrast—three different very busy melodies all stacked on top of each other, the middle one staccato, the top one using a very effective echo between L and R speakers; the echo hints again at solitude and emptiness. The C section begins in a surprising percussion rimshot, and harsh percussion is added along with four new parts that all have very different timbres than the previous parts. This C section with its gritty percussion and increased dissonance seems to hint more at the danger of the situation (which the ice forest is). Finally, an extra few measures are added to the section and harmony to transition back to the placid A section, and the listener feels like they’ve made a journey or are at least reminded they are in an empty, dead forest.

So, there’s a brief analysis. Kikuta does a great job at creating something that is very repetitive also very interesting by sandwiching in lots of melodies and changing up the orchestration, all with keeping some musical unity; the music also matches the game action. I could go on and talk about the Buddhist-inspired music cue with two overlapping melodies that don’t seem to fit together (“Whisper and Mantra”), or the cue where the percussion take the lead and has an almost YES-like guitar solo (“Steel and Snare”), or the modern-tech cue with a the time signature of 11 (“Prophesy”), but in the time I have left I want to write about Indonesian music.

Indonesian music?

In 1993, when I first played the game, I didn’t know about traditional Indonesian music. But now, having played in an Indonesian ensemble for a year (and having recently joined another one), I realized two of music cues were inspired by Indonesian music. The first is Thantos’s theme, or “Ceremony,” which draws on classical gamelan, an Indonesian percussion ensemble. Just like a gamelan, this cue features gongs, a slow moving melody played in multiple octaves, and a second, faster elaboration of the melody. There’s some extra stuff, too, but it all fits in the character of gamelan music. The second musical cue (“Oracle”) uses kecak, which is an Balinese theatrical vocal form developed in the 1930s featuring interlocking vocal chants. This cues also features a very gamelan-like percussion melody.

Now that I recognize the influence, I’m torn between two responses: on the one hand, I’m impressed that Kikuta knew and borrowed from esoteric Indonesian music for a kids’ video game. But I’m also a little distressed that both these music cues are for the main evil villain, Thantos; the first cue for the areas he’s in, the second for when you fight him. Kikuta is using this strange, different, other music to scare us—the first cue in a “this is weird” way and the second in a more conventionally scary way, as people are shouting quickly at you while you are fighting a big skeleton that is on fire. Really, this music is just from a different culture, and I hope that others who heard this don’t associate mind-sucking liches with Indonesians. I lean toward my first response, though.

The awesome theme

But getting back too the beginning quote, what about the awesome theme song? This game had me at the opening credits. To end, here’s the opening theme, a.k.a “Fear of the Heavens,” presented without analysis. Enjoy!

(The theme is less than 2 minutes long, but this version just repeats a few times, because the listener always want to listen to it again)

Vocab: vamp, melody, harmony, legato, rimshot, gamelan, kecak

Why is classic video game music better?

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about video game music. Today, I’m going to tackle one of the questions that came up in that post: why is classic video game music considered better than more recent video game music?

This is a popular question when talking about video game music, as evidenced by two video clips. First, from the game design video blog Extra Credits (10 minutes)

And second, this interview from Sami Jarroush on from the website Consequence of Sound (start at minute 12 if you don't want to watch it all).

More melody!

The main arguments both these video clips make is that the older music is simpler, more hummable, and therefore more memorable. And I think this point rings true, in most cases. Video game composers back then had almost only one tool—melody. So the composers HAD to create melodies. Some of the composers created good melodies, and those melodies are easier to remember than much of the video game music presently composed. Today, with the orchestras and technological bells and whistles, composers have the choice of creating more atmospheric music, or slower-moving music where the interest is more in texture than melody, than they did with just 8-bit technology. While the atmospheric approach is often used effectively, the lack of melody does not lead to memorable music.

But not just melody

But besides the melody issue, both videos miss another major reason these classic video game themes endure. It wasn’t just the melodies that made the music great—it was the orchestration. Even when a console can only produce three notes a time, orchestration and accompaniment matters. Try to imagine how the Super Mario or Zelda themes would sound with only the melody. The truth is the arrangements of the earlier 80s tunes, as 8-bit as they were, actually did enhance the melodies and made them more memorable. I would postulate that if the composers had written the melody without the cleverly-composed and orchestrated accompaniment, these melodies would not be as well-remembered as they are now. Case in point: Extra Credits claims that John Williams is famous for his movie music melodies, which is true. But he is just as famous for the orchestration of his melodies.

What do I mean by orchestration with only three notes at a time? First, like any good composers, they wrote melodies that fit the instrument. These melodies had mostly short, quick notes, because those sounded better coming from their synthesizers. The composers also had effective accompaniment that added to melody. While timbral options were limited, the composers made important timbral choices when they could. Timbre is affected by how high or low a pitch is, and so the range of the melodies was also very much an issue these composers considered. And those accompaniments are often pretty complicated.

I do like Sami’s point about video game music as a trigger for memory (minute 13). I think if Super Mario Brothers had been a supremely bad game, we would not remember the music. However, because it was a good game, and because the music matched what actions were happening in the game (another huge issue that I’m skipping here), the music and the game elevated each other.

Some minor notes

There were a few other minor problems I had the with videos:

• Extra credits makes the mistake of comparing video game music to movie music. There are major differences: Movie music is meticulously crafted and timed, while video game music for the most part is built on repetitive loops and is calculated evoke feelings and moods over times, and these moods change as the player interacts with the game. Sami’s guest Danny (minute 16) explains well the distinction between movie and video music (though Sami doesn’t seem to get it).
• Extra Credits’ analysis of the Halo theme music doesn’t actually help prove their point. Actually, the analysis does more to support the [strong melody + strong orchestration] argument than the solely strong melody argument. And I don’t think the male chorus line or string parts are actually that hummable.
• While I think that this is probably the case, neither video proves that there aren't as many memorable melodies in video games today as the 80s. As Extra Credits mentions, the people that composed good 8-bit music continued to compose effective music when they got more resources and some still write today. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the video game audience is more fragmented, with a huge choice in what they play, and so not everyone experiences the same melodies as they did in the 80s.

Anyway, good ideas in both videos, but also some big holes. I do think Extra Credits' final point is well made, though: we do have good video game music today. But if video game composers want their music to be remembered years from now, they might put a little more effort into their melodies and accompaniments.

Next week, I’ll continue my video game music discussion and talk about Secret of Mana (1993, Super NES), and why I think that music is so effective.

Vocab: melody, atmospheric, texture, orchestration, timbre

Good idea: using musical examples ("All I Want For Christmas")

I spend a fair amount of blog space pointing out bad music journalism—specifically, journalism that fails to use musical examples to back up their argument. While Christmas isn’t yet the distant past, I thought I would share an article that effectively uses musical examples about a Christmas song. The article from Slate by Adam Ragusea attempts to explain why Mariah Carey and Walter Afanaseiff’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” has become a holiday classic, while so many other new holiday songs in the last 40 years have drifted into obscurity. While I’m not sure I totally buy Ragusea’s argument that “All I Want For Christmas is You” sounds Christmassy only because it uses chromatic-rich chords similar to Christmas standards in the 1920-1950s (for instance, there are other songs that use these chords that don’t evoke Christmas, so there must be something else going on, too; also, plenty of songs today feature more than 3 or 4 chords suggested here), I salute his use of theory and specific musical examples to prove his point and attempting to make the writing accessible to non-specialists. Here’s an example:

The song also includes what I consider the most Christmassy chord of all—a minor subdominant, or “iv,” chord with an added 6, under the words “underneath the Christmas tree,” among other places. (You might also analyze it as a half-diminished “ii” 7th chord, but either interpretation seems accurate.) The same chord is found, in a different key and inversion, in Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”—on the line “children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow,” specifically under the word listen, among other spots.

While many people don't know what a "iv chord" means, he does link it up sonically with an aural cue most people can recognize. Enjoy the rest of the article and have a happy new year!

Vocab: chords, minor, subdominant, half-diminished

Bad X-ray: failing to describe music of "Since U been gone"

Every so often, NPR does a segment that analyzes a hit pop song to see how it ticks. This week, the lens turned on Kelly Clarkson's "Since U been gone," and I think failed in a spectacular fashion. Notice that the article never features musical descriptions or mentions what the music actually sounds like. Instead, it stumbles into two major pitfalls of music criticism: band comparison and genre labeling. The article name drops Pavement, Parquet Courts, the Smashing Pumpkins, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as if those bands always sound the same in each of their songs, and if we could figure out which of their sounds we are suppose to hear in this particular song. The article genre labels this song as punk, indie, R&B, rock, emo, and pop. I know the point is that the song is a mix of many things, but these two tactics by themselves do not help the reader understand what is going on.

Chris Molanphy’s Soundcloud snippet embedded in the article (which is featured in the radio version of the article), however, actually gives a few musical specifics (I could have used more). The distorted, repetitive guitar intro is the indie-punk part, the electronic beat is the pop part, and the restraint in Clarkson’s big voice is the R&B part (which I think is a stretch, but fine). Don't get me wrong, band comparisons and genre labeling can be useful—but only when accompanied with some musical specifics to back up the broad, general brush strokes.

Besides the lack of musical description, I also think the article does a disservice in not mentioning the possible influence of Avril Lavigne. I'm not saying that Lavigne (and the Matrix) were the first to mix pop and punk, but she did, and I think we can draw a pretty solid line from them to Max Martin and Clarkson. Lavigne co-wrote the opening and title track of the album on which "Since U been gone" was released, Breakaway. The song "Breakaway" was originally planned for Lavigne's first album, Let Go (2002), and produced in advance of Clarkson's album. I think that Clarkson and/or her production team did a fair amount of listening to Lavigne's album in the interim. The relatively bare first verse of "Since U been gone" is followed by an electric guitar-fueled explosion with a powerful, bratty, punk-style, multi-tracked female lead—this formula was also featured on many tracks from Lavigne's freshman album, especially "Unwanted" and "Losing Grip." Some of the same brash, dissonant guitar effects are also present in both to herald the big chorus. Now, "Since U been gone" arguably has overall better production, better pop panache than those two songs from Lavigne, with a remarkable building in the complexity of the music from the beginning to end. But the similarities are there for all to hear. Can I prove this connection? No. But I think the musical elements and circumstantial evidence is much stronger for this connection than, for example, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Mouth Music for the People: Capercaillie, Scots-Gaelic Culture as a National Symbol, and the Global Celtic Stage, Part 2

This is part two of a two-part series. Read the first part here.

Last week, I discussed the history of Scottish nationalism and the rise of Scots-Gaelic culture as an alternative national symbol in the 20th century. Into this scene in the mid-1980s stepped Capercaillie, a traditional band born of the folk revival and composed at its inception mostly of musicians from the Gaelic-speaking west coast and islands, including organizer Donald Shaw and frontwoman Karen Matheson. They drew their name from their own land, after a type of pheasant that lives only in Scotland. Similar to Altan in Ireland, their native Gaelic-speaking birthplace was their inspiration. Though drawing from specifically local sources, Capercaillie’s sound was a musical hybrid, using contemporary Irish models as much as Scottish ones for their instrumentation and musical arrangement. Their inclusion of bouzouki, an instrument of Greek origin introduced into Irish music in the 1970s, is indicative of their connection to the folk revival as opposed to older traditions. Noticeably lacking were the tartans and Highland bagpipes. 

Taking traditional to a new place, in a new way

Capercaillie’s early albums, Cascades and Crosswinds, consisted entirely of traditional dance music and locally specific Scots-Gaelic language songs. To get an idea of where Capercaillie started musically, here’s a “Puirt a Beul” (Scot-Gaelic for mouth music) from Crosswinds, a traditionally unaccompanied vocal genre to which Capercaillie has added instrumentation, included limited synthesizers (mostly as drones). 



A stylistic turning point for Capercaillie came when the group was asked to write music for The Blood is Strong in 1988, a television series about the worldwide legacy of the Scottish Gaels. For this production, Capercaillie added electric bass, drumset, and heavy use of synthesizers to their usual repertoire of Scots-Gaelic songs and dance. They were probably following the example of the Irish family group Clannad and Clannad’s wayward sister Enya, who had just produced her own very popular television soundtrack The Celts. Clannad at the time had mostly abandoned traditional melodies and production, and was on their way to helping create the New Age music scene and culture.

Why did both Capercaillie and Clannad adopt popular styles and the English language? Most likely, it was the lack of sufficient support base for them at home. Gaelic speakers were few, but produced a disproportionate number of musicians (1). As a result, artists and their labels sought to reach out first across the Scottish and Irish diaspora, especially in North America, and then onward. This complex negotiation of style resulted in local artists catering to international tastes. According to Martin Stokes and Philip Bohlman, white America has played the most significant role in the shaping of musical output of these small music-rich fringes of the Gaelic-speaking world (2). Instead of a pub, the community is now a virtual one, into which the listener projects themselves onto the Celtic musical imagery. This new musical product, developed on the world stage, is then marketed locally and globally as a symbol of the nation, perhaps as much an invented tradition as kilts. Meanwhile, the non-diaspora-specific “New Age” culture, describing an imaginary ancient past connected with an alternative spirituality, fed on the Celtic folk movement and claimed anyone who wished to participate.

Capercaillie, however, did not go in Clannad and Enya’s New Age direction, at least musically. Instead of abandoning Scot-Gaelic songs and traditional dance music entirely, they connected to the middle-class Celtic world by updating their sound with modern production and instruments. Additionally, in 1991 for their fourth studio album Delirium, they added a third type of song to their repertoire—original songs in English written in rock-popular style. Perhaps their use of English was inspired by the success of the Scots-Gaelic rock band Runrig, which achieved international success only when they switched to mostly English for the album The Cutter and Clan in 1987. Scotland’s taste in music was actually not that different than the UK’s, and the Scottish spoke mostly English. This strategy seems to have worked— four of Delirium‘s thirteen tracks have English lyrics, and the album was their first major financial success. Capercaillie’s choice of audience is made clearer by the content of the original songs on Delirium—they were all overtly political, timed just before the 1992 elections when Scottish autonomy was making a renewed effort. For Capercaillie, the United Kingdom shaped their aesthetic more than the global Celtic sound.

Examples

“Waiting for the Wheel to Turn” from Delirium ties the oppressions of the political moment in the 1990s with oppressions in Scottish history. It makes reference to the Highland clearances of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, suggesting that once again the rich men from the south are taking away Scottish (and specifically Scots-Gaelic) land and culture. Scottish rural town culture has special emphasis, referred to as the “soul” of the land, and the lyrics suggest that the rich landlords are “taking it all away”, “pulling the roots from a dying age.” The song is a call to action, as the lyrics suggest that the Gaelic people “feel the breeze of the storm to come,” and that these dispossessed people living on the rocks of the coast may finally get the better of their oppressors, when the “wheel” comes around.



We would be hard-pressed to find any musical connection to Scots-Gaelic tradition in “Waiting.” That is, at least until a brief whistle and fiddle duet at the end (about the 4-minute mark). This was new. The inclusion of traditional-dance inspired instrumentals is the most interesting and novel element of these English-language songs, and the importance and complexity of these interludes grew as Capercaillie continued to produce recordings through the 1990s. These high-energy solos replace what would normally be a pop-style electric guitar or saxophone solo. They serve as a powerful reminder of locality and roots that differentiate Capercaillie from Clannad, who preferred pop-style solos. Capercaillie’s folk-style instrumentals, in turn, may have influenced the Irish popular group the Corrs, as this type of instrumental became a major characteristic of the Corrs’ style.

The Scottish autonomy movement had a major setback in the 1992 elections, but the political fire was still charged, and Capercaillie continued to produce English-language political music in their next albums, the bluntly-titled Get Out and Secret People, alongside the dance medleys and Scots-Gaelic songs. Examples include and “Four Stone Walls” and “Outlaws” which treat the common situation of poor Gaelic speakers who are deprived of their traditional jobs and forced out of their ancestral houses when they can no longer pay the rent, and “Black Fields” which deals specifically with environmental and economic destruction resulting from the exploitation of Scottish oil, a major cause of the political rift between England and Scotland. The common underlying theme is anti-modernization, a theme that plays both to the middle-class New Age Celticism and the lower-class Scots-Gaelic political movement.

Capercaillie’s album To the Moon brought the influence of New Age spirituality to their Scottish nationalist music. “Claire in Heaven” from To the Moon exemplifies all of the features of Capercaillie’s topics in this period: a mix of neo-pagan and Christian religion, anti-modern economics, and environmentalism. “Claire” is told from the point of view of a girl who has died and gone to heaven after living for only a few days; from her perch, she surveys the world, lamenting its dismal state but hoping for improvement when she is reincarnated. The lyrics criticize the modern lifestyle, epitomized by economic competition: “you tear, you part, you claw.” There is also a stab at the oil industry and Europe’s nuclear waste dumps in Scotland: “I gaze from poison sea to poison land.” The idea of reincarnation is harder to place, and is probably drawn in from the Eastern religious current in New Age spiritualism. Ultimately, this is not a pessimistic song; Claire still smiles because she sees that things can be brighter in the future, another call to political action. As you can hear, the popular and traditional musical elements are increasingly seamlessly intertwined.


 
“Claire” also demonstrates Capercaillie’s musical hybridity, despite their Scottish nationalistic image—the songwriter is bouzouki player Manus Lunny, who joined the band at time of the production of Delirium and who is actually Irish. Lunny brought to the band (and this song) the rhythm-heavy percussive style of string playing from the Irish folk revival. The Irish bagpipes are also prominent in “Claire.” 

To conclude: paving the road for the resurgence of Gaelic culture

The 1990s, during Scotland’s political turmoil, was the height of Capercaillie’s creativity and popularity. Their most recent albums Roses and Tears in 2008 and At the Heart of it All in 2012 seem to be step back to the days before Delirium with an emphasis on acoustic instruments and traditional tunes. Even the few original songs are in a more traditional style than the 1990s songs, though still very political.

Still, Capercaillie’s music and image, though devoid of kilts and Highland pipes, articulates Scottish nationalism in a new way. Their overall style is one of global Celtic culture, which has been reflected back to Scotland and embraced as authentic. Their juxtaposition of different genres of music—English rock songs, traditional Scots-Gaelic songs, and traditional dance tunes—enables them to communicate their nationalistic views while tying them to the oppressed Scot-Gaelic, their symbol for Scotland as a whole. With the English-language songs, they make political, modern connections; with the Scots-Gaelic language songs, they make connections with a past culture; and with the dance songs they connect the past with the transnational present. They’ve taken their esoteric “mouth music” and made it accessible to the rest of the UK and the world. Perhaps the recent official revival of Scots-Gaelic language as a cultural symbol with bilingual road signs and language education initiatives would have never happened without the popularity of musical groups such as Capercaillie, who managed to lift a dying language and music out of obscurity and into the national and international consciousness. Maybe the wheel is turning.

Vocab: bouzouki, track, drone

(1) Simon Frith, “Popular music policy and the articulation of regional identities: The case of Scotland and Ireland,” Soundscapes: Journal on Media Culture 2 (July 1999).
(2) Martin Stokes and Philip Bohlman, ed., Celtic Modern: Music at the Global Fringe (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2003).

Mouth Music for the People: Capercaillie, Scots-Gaelic Culture as a National Symbol, and the Global Celtic Stage, Part 1

This blog post was originally given as a paper presentation at the Singing Storytellers Symposium, 11 October 2014, in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. Part 1 of 2.

When the Scottish band Capercaillie produced their first album Cascade in 1984, they were considered a “traditional” folk group, born from the folk revival and built on the same super-group model as Planxty and the Bothy Band. They played for concert audiences, used traditional acoustic instruments, and their repertoire was drawn from traditional dance tunes and songs in the Scots-Gaelic language. However, seven short years later, their sound was markedly different and they had broken into the UK top 40 charts. What had changed? While not abandoning their Scots-Gaelic songs and traditional dance medleys, Capercaillie had infused that music with popular stylings. They also added to their repertoire a new type of song, English-language and rock-style, usually with nationalistic political overtones. Why did they do this? What led them to construct this unique sound and identity?

Capercaillie’s music is a product of two negotiations: first, between local, national, and transnational audiences, and second, between traditional and modern styles. These negotiations resulted in the articulation of the dispossessed Scots-Gaelic speakers in Scottish nationalist discourse, using a transnational commoditized Celtic aesthetic. The dichotomy between local and global forms the heart of Capercaillie’s nationalistic music: on the one hand, they work to break down class barriers and promote a feeling of unity in their own country, while on the other, they market their own small rural culture to the world as distinctive and timeless. 

What is Scottish nationalism?

Scottish nationalism is basically the idea that the Scottish maintain themselves as culturally distinct, a nation without a country. Anthony D. Smith suggests that the traditions or languages that define a country are not as important as its persistence as a separate identity, and he gives Scotland as an example of his concept of an “ethnie” which survives despite multiple cultural groups and languages. More important for creating a separate identity are one, shared cultural symbols and two, conflict with other groups (1).

Scotland’s specific symbols and conflicts, however, have changed over time. Scottish culture may have initially been Irish culture, but after Scotland became a colony of England in the fifteenth century, the Scottish nobles went to England and assimilated, thereby increasing the marginalism of the majority of Scottish people. Later, the Scottish upper class instigated a revolt against English cultural supremacy, first declaring that Scotland was really the cradle of Gaelic culture and second claiming several “invented national traditions” such as adopting the Highland bagpipes as their national instrument instead of the harp and wearing tartan clan kilts, invented by an English Quaker industrialist and capitalized upon by English textile companies (2). While the upper class was creating their own proud national identity based on a Romanticization of the Highland culture, they continued to oppress the lower classes, instigating a series of mass evictions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries collectively called the “clearances,” which affected mostly the poorest and predominantly Gaelic-speaking populations, who either emigrated overseas or resettled on the rocky west coast. Approximately fifty thousand of those evicted ended up on Cape Breton Island.

Globally-made local symbols

   
Cultural symbols do not always come from within an ethnie, however. According to Veit Erlmann, cultural products can be defined and created in a negotiation between the nation and world stage (3). In other words, perceptions of a nation can be adopted as true expressions of their local culture. This phenomenon is called global imagination, or “glocalization,” and Desi Wilkinson gives as an example the Celtic tourism of French Brittany, where neither the tourists nor the local inhabitants care if the music comes from Brittany as long as it fits into their imagined local aesthetic (4). Something similar has occurred in Scotland.
   
Music has been for many years part of the global image of Scotland. Across Romantic Europe, people were already familiar with the upper-class version of Scottish music, an indicator of a vibrant native culture full of “highlanders" and "tender lassies.” This version of Scottish music was popularized by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Berlioz and the military Highland Regiments. At the beginning of the 1800s, as Gaelic-speakers were being driven from the their lands, the poetry of upper-class nationalist poets Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott was put to music, further defining Scotland’s culture across the world. The music of the Scot-Gaelic lower class, however, was until recently neglected in the annals of Scottish history.
   

Scot-Gaelic as national, political culture: a new thing

With the decline of the English-assimilated upper class during the twentieth century, Scottish nationalism finally moved to the middle and lower classes, as the Scottish once again found themselves perceived as a backwater nation, this time a nation of oppressed blue-collar workers upon which the rich English (and the rest of Europe) depended. Only in the twentieth century did this nationalism become political and not just cultural. This political fervor peaked first in the 1990s with the first move for Scottish autonomy, and of course again a few of weeks ago. While the Scottish still do not have their own country, they continue to push toward greater autonomy. Earlier in the twentieth century, as part of the national identity crisis, some called for  deconstruction of Scottish tartany myths, now seen by some as oppressive and belittling. This search for new identity coincided with the folk revival, which had started in the United States and soon spread to Ireland and Scotland. With the elevation of folk music explicit in this movement, Scotland finally turned its attention to its few Scots-Gaelic-speakers for production of a new national culture, as these people symbolized Scotland’s own state of repression. This old cultural capital could be used to redefine the Scottish people against the English hegemony, with a new emphasis on autonomy.
   
By the time of this crisis, the Scot-Gaelic culture had been dying a slow death for some time. Casualties of Scots-Gaelic soldiers in World War I had effectively halved the number of Scot-Gaelic speakers, and that number has dwindled to around sixty thousand today, about 1% of Scotland’s total population. Considered one of the poorest in the country, this small population lives almost entirely on the west coast and islands. They have kept alive, however, a vibrant and distinct music tradition, especially with regard to Scots-Gaelic songs.

Next week, I’ll delve more into Capercaillie’s music and how they specifically tapped Scottish tradition and the global Celtic culture. Read part 2 here.

(1) Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (New York: Routledge, 2009).
(2) Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: University Press, 1983): 15-42.
(3) Viet Erlmann, Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination: South Africa and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
(4) Desi Wilkinson, “‘Celtitude,’ Professionalism, and the Fest Noz in Traditional Music in Brittany,” in Celtic Modern: Music at the Global Fringe, ed. Martin Stokes and Philip Bohlman (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2003).

Clean Bandit, classical music's influence in pop, and Japaneseness in music

Classical crossover?

Last week I mentioned new artist Megan Trainor and her slow-ish rise on the Billboard charts. This week, I’d like to talk about another new artist whose song is still climbing up near the Billboard top 10, even though it was released last January. This artist is Clean Bandit, and they are a British band whose membership grew out of a classical string quartet. Their heavily-played single is “Rather Be”, and features another British singer Jess Glynne.

When I heard “Rather Be” on the radio for the first time, the classical-sounding opening motive grabbed my attention as something you don’t hear on a top-40s station.

But, though this BBC article about Clean Bandit describes a mixing of classical music and pop, “Rather Be” is not really a classical approach to music—it’s a pop approach that utilizes classical instrumentation and texture. The music is riff-based like pop, formally constructed like a pop song, and uses a pop singer. The riff themselves, however, feature classical instrumentation and stylings (especially the piano and strings) and are heavily layered, probably influenced by classical counterpoint. I think it’s a wonderfully written and produced pop song (unlike their other main song, “Mozart’s House”, which, with its depressingly confined string parts, doesn't really work).

Besides the classical texture with a pop sensibility, something else about “Rather Be” caught my attention. I thought the song sounded Japanese (even before I heard the word “Kyoto” in the lyrics), and so I was almost unsurprised when the music video was Japanese-themed, too. But the group and singer are British. What made music sound Japanese? I think precisely the same reasons that people want to talk about mixing classical music with pop: the mix of electronic sounds and classical, acoustic instruments. In this song’s case, especially the classical piano that sits on top of the electronic and string texture, which is common in Japanese movie and video game soundtracks.

Metal, baby?

Speaking of Japaneseness in music, I also recently found out about the band Babymetal, an attempt to mix metal music and Japanese culture. Check out "Gimme Chocolate!!" here. Unlike “Rather Be”, I’m not sure the “fusion” really works; it seems that any moment, the music is either metal or J-pop, not a mixture of the two. I enjoy the juxtaposition of the innocuous lyrics with the crazy metal distortion, though. “Megistune” is a little bit more successful in creating a fusion, using "Sakura" and traditional instruments, but still seems more like a one-time gimmick than a fertile, sustainable musical platform. We’ll have to see if the group has a future.

I do this both of these cultural hybrids is more interesting, subtle, and flattering than the appropriation of Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” video, perhaps because the others are attempts to mix the musical as well as as visual.

Vocab: riff, texture, metal, J-Pop