Spotlight MacArthur Foundation

1: Tom Hoffman at 1:38 pm on Monday, August 20, 2007

I agree that music’s role in this “digital media” regime is problematic.  As far as I can tell, if I sing a song, I am not creating digital media.  If I put out a 7” single, I’m not creating digital media.  If I record myself on my computer singing a song, I am one of the 57% (or whatever) of young people “creating digital media.”  It isn’t a very meaningful distinction in regards to music.

Also, the framing argument that kids used to be passive consumers of media and now they are active and engaged pretty much discounts the history of popular music in the second half of the 20th century.

2: Dilan Mahendran from Digital Youth - UC Berkeley at 6:40 pm on Monday, August 20, 2007

Tom thanks for the comments. I agree that there is alot of music making out there that is not mediated by digital technology. However much of the “Do It Yourself” youth Hip Hop music making community uses beat making and production software. The digitizing of music making and production has created new opportunities and at the same time presented new challenges for music making by young people. One of the first things I observed in my ethnographic study of DIY Hip Hop in the SF Bay Area is that the low cost digital production environments lowered the barrier to access to near professional level music production environments. Ten years ago it was much harder for novice rappers and beat makers to gain access to comprehensive music production that is now available on home desktop computing platforms. A significant challenge that digital music production presents for youth music making is that the technology has now placed the role of production at the center, meaning that arranging, mixing, and processing music is critical and in effect decentered the role of the artist or in the case of Hip Hop, the rapper.

I am glad you brought up the issue of youth as “passive consumers”. I strongly agree that there is a notion that the youth of today and yesterday are constructed as passive consumers. In the quotidian sense this notion of passive consumption revolves around music listening. What I argue is that music listening and appreciation is already an act of production. I have a more in depth article on this subject here http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/node/75

3: Tom Hoffman at 12:49 am on Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I would just be interested in looking at this question with longer historical sweep.  I’d like to know how a young Bay Area African-American’s access to music-making and performance today compares to, say, the 1940’s and 1950’s, particularly in terms of social capital.  This isn’t really a relevant question for the other forms of digital media (film, tv, publishing written work), but it is for music.

4: kkothman at 1:41 pm on Tuesday, August 21, 2007

As a composer and educator, I appreciate this issue being brought up. Certainly image deserves a certain amount of privileged status, but too often sound and music is less than an afterthought. Considering that a music player, the iPod, has been one of the most significant culture-changing technological inventions, ignoring music and sound becomes even harder to explain.

Sadly, I would offer that typical music education as practiced at most universities (and in K-12 schools) contributes to the situation. Mahendran notes that we hesitate to talk about music unless we can represent it as notation and composition. This is very true. No matter how forward thinking, or how much involved in digital music creation a segment of a music department may be, there is usually quite a bit of friction between traditional music scholars/traditional music composers, and musicians/composers working with digital media. (If it isn’t just ignored.)

And the divide is even more fundamental than sound versus visual representation. The whole focus on “genius” and the “inevitable” developments of western classical music force the study of music as a social practice to the periphery. Within the discipline of musicology, people who actively pursue social and cultural contexts as part of their research have to be burdened with additional descriptors (“ethno"musicology, or “new” musicologists) that devalue their work within the broader field of musical study.

5: dilanm@sims.berkeley.edu at 8:24 pm on Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Keith,
Thanks for contributing your perspective as a musician and educator.
I think several of my ethnomusicologist friends would agree your points. What’s exciting about the DIY Hip Hop scene in the SF Bay and other parts of the U.S. is that many times these youth are hitting the ground running once they gain access to the music media making technologies (mostly at afterschool art and tech programs) and most have little or no formal music training. What I have learned is that they draw upon there existing immersion into Hip Hop and other genres of music. What I mean here is that some are able to draw upon those layers of past music listening experience and have developed a musical sensibility that works for themselves and their peers.

6: Rob Rosenthal from Salt Institute for Documentary Studies at 10:42 pm on Friday, August 31, 2007

Friends,

Dilan’s comments are very much on target. There *is* a “primacy of vision” especially when talking about digital media and learning.

Dilan asks where is sound in the discussion then suggests music should be included. But I wonder if music is too narrow a focus when it comes to sound especially when thinking about learning and digital communication.

For instance, in the last decade,youth radio blossomed in the States. High school students around the country are grabbing up microphones and digital recorders and taking to the airwaves—both broadcast and on-line. They are producing talk shows, commentaries, poetry, news features, theater, and even sound art.

Young people learn valuable skills participating in youth radio projects: interviewing, public speaking, narrative, writing, media literacy, collaboration, civic responsibility, and much more.

Humans have been communicating in sound for… well… a long time, long before books, movies, the Internet, etc.  Indeed, we taught and learned largely using sound—and still do. To ignore that history, to disregard what I believe is a primal means of communicating in favor of the visual is to abandon a large part of what it means to be human—to communicate with sound.

Thanks for this conversation. I look forward to reading more.

Rob Rosenthal
Director, Radio Program at the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies