In a previous post, I described the tendency of cover versions to bear a sort of subsumation of the identity of the "original" artist - an artistic cross-pollination or personal vampirism at work in the act of "covering" another's song. Although I had mentioned the aspect of the inevitable influence of another's performance of a song upon the popular musician, I have been considering this effect on both cultural and personal levels.Yesterday I did an abstract/spoken-word thing, rather experimental in the way I assembled it, in that I wasn't trying to "make sense" with things, but letting things make their own sense, letting the pieces fall as they may. After I had finished it, I looked at the sound file in the folder, right below this thing I had done a couple days before. Its lyrics were fairly conventional in form - almost the sort of structure as, say, the typical "folk" song, but without a chorus between verses, and that phrasing them over a medium-tempo "dance" beat yielded much the same feel as a early-to-mid-period Prince song. It's a poem recited over a danceable beat - ergo, it's "rap." The thing I did yesterday, on the other hand, doesn't pertain to any particular or definite genre, though it could be tagged as "experimental," but experimental what? "Spoken-word?" Although I don't see it as breaking any new ground, it doesn't conspicuously tread any old ground.
Though I hadn't planned to do something sounding so generic (as in "pertaining to a genre"), I realized that when one is writing a song, it is partly "about" the genre to which it might belong - one's commentary upon or contribution to that genre's canon. It's almost like trying to be a member of a club. Anyone writing a "country" song, for example, is "doing" a song in that genre, in the same sense as someone's "doing" a person in a theatrical or satirical impression of that person. The codes, conventions and characteristics are well-established; all one has to do is quote from them, assemble them by cut-and-paste. The song is assessed not only by its paticular artistry but also by the generic "authenticity" with which it was created - by how well one "does" a "country" song.
Genres of music arise from a specific confluence of time, place and people. For example: punk, from young, loud and snotty white people of New York or London of the mid-'70s; blues, from the American "Black Community" of the 1920s-1950s. The conventions in performing a type of music are further established, and more constrictive, if that music had originated after the invention of sound recording. Recordings tell one "how it's played;" the earlier, the more "original" and "authentic" the example. A really competent musician only has to slip into "blues" or "punk" mode and play-along with a music that almost plays itself.
An interesting aspect of the performance of so-called "early music" - of medieval and early Renaissance European music - on backward to that of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt - is that, when the revival of interest in such music occurred in the early 20th Century, since music from those periods had been eclipsed by classical music of intervening centuries, and the instruments of the "early" periods were not of standardized construction (as were the instruments of later periods, contributing to the standardization of the sound and intonation of later music), there was scarcely any precedent for how the music was to be performed. Modern early-music practitioners have to try to divine from context and intuition the way in which the music must have been played, but in the same way that the nuances of speech defy the written word of a bygone era before sound recording, the subtleties of "authentic" medieval European music are lost to the ages. In the performance of ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian musics, manuscripts are rare, usually incomplete, and much more reliant upon the interpretation of musicologists and historians for their interpretation; there is fierce academic rivalry over "definitive" interpretation and "authentic" performance.
Since no stylistic character of "early music" could had been transmitted from one generation to the next, some players of this music operate from the conclusion that its "authenticity" lies in the here-and-now, playing it with as much passion for its sounds, and respect for its form, as one can. I find among different early-music ensembles' interpretations a much broader variety of phrasing and tempo in the same medieval tunes than I find among blues musicians' renditions of, say, "Stormy Monday," or a punk bands' covering a Black Flag song - though that's hardly saying much, since in the latter examples, there is very little deviation from the recorded precedents of that material. The lack of a performance-precedent in "early music" leaves liberty for interpretation, as much as in jazz, although in jazz, some songs can't be played without allusion to, or concerted evasion from, certain recorded versions of songs (such as the example cited in this post's predecessor, John Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things").
I sometimes wonder how many people "out there" are using Garageband just to make "dance" music or "remixes," and how many others might be trying to do something new - new at least to themselves. Though I could look-up on the Internet examples that musicians have posted, I fear being influenced by them. I just want to do what I do, what occurs to me, and whatever I can push myself to do. However, I am also aware that I have been musically influenced to degrees which I may never be able to eradicate, like unto how childhood experiences can form a person in ways which are irreversible. Part of my motivation to do my so-called Cover Perversions (see the Sidebar) is begging to differ with songs and styles which have stuck in my brain for too long - a sort of mnemonic revisionism. I find great liberty in being able to do "whatever" with the computer, not beholden to, for example, the tradition in the 300-year history of the guitar. It is impossible to make music by conventional means and not be constrained by conventions inherent to those means, and almost as difficult to escape the influence of music that one has known all one's life or enjoyed during one particular era of it.
Perhaps the most that I can hope for making My Music by Me is for it to be the equivalent of the Seikilos Epitaph a couple millennia from now:
- Hoson zēs, phainou
- Mēden holōs sy lypou;
- Pros oligon esti to zēn
- To telos ho chronos apaitei
- While you live, shine
- Don't suffer anything at all;
- Life exists only a short while
- And time demands its toll.
(Listen to it here.)
