Peter Bjorn and John – Nothing to Worry About

“[A] Swedish group using an Australian instrument to produce a 70s/90s sounding song while Japanese bikers wear a ridiculously excessive 50s biker style and 80s break dance.

This, my friends, is the future. Give it a hundred years and pretty much everything’s gonna be made by pulling bits and pieces from different times & places and mashing it together to see what happens.”

World Indie

This is probably the most exciting thing I’ve discovered all year, so bear with me!

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Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a  bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole  session. Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little  incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly.  Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless,  instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try  and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without  preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword.

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Fans of lo-fi and the more musical side of indie rejoice; it’s Beirut and Bon Iver on the streets of Paris.  I can’t remember the last time listening to music felt this good, this real.  It’s the closest anything has ever felt to live performance.  These events have an implicit connection with our project’s theme: the transportation of music across cultures.  My personal favourites from these performances are Andrew Bird and Bon Iver – the first and last videos.

The headings link to the corresponding pages on blogotheque.net, home of The Take Away Shows.

Andrew Bird – Spare-Oh

We’ve seen bands excite young girls, leave onlookers indifferent, embarrass concierges, and rile up crowds. Andrew Bird put the city on pause. His timidity and lightness didn’t make us wait long. It just took a few slides on the violin for him to latch onto the décor, redesign the contours of the space, change time, and sweep into another atmosphere. Andrew Bird passed through the vineyards and we forgot about Paris. Andrew Bird walked down the street and the parked cars seemed not to belong. Andrew Bird passed by clusters of tourists, and it was they who appeared anachronistic. They’re the ones that are walking backwards, right?

Andrew Bird’s songs are small Chinese treasure boxes and little Spanish dressers. Elaborately decorated, embellished with art, rich with a multitude of hidden drawers, and filled with tiny, unexpected boxes and surprises, his songs glide on with episodic advancements. In movements.

múm – Prophecies and Reversed Memories

Lovers stood between each column, gazing out over Paris. Not a single pair turned around, as if being serenaded during their romantic reverie was normal, expected, planned. What wasn’t planned, for us, was seeing Mùm on the return bus, improvising a cover of ‘I’ve Got the Power.’ Icelanders, sometimes, will catch you by surprise.

Beirut – Nantes

Today, Beirut has grown from a solo bedroom project to a band of up to ten people; it’s a band, but not a band. It’s a happy mistake, a mess. A group of noisy, undisciplined, joyful people who took over an entire terrace on Oberkampf, gathering around the tables, spreading their instruments and cases, everyone playing songs in their own world… Such a messy, smiling anarchy that we thought they’d never manage to play the song.

And in the middle, there’s Zach. Frail Zach, with his skinny yet magical arms. These arms that convey his excitement as he communicates to his band through them; a conductor, pointing to instruments as he watches momentum build in the song. This was one of the first times the band had played “Nantes” outside of the studio, and Zach looked as if he was explaining the song to his band as he was singing it, his arms dancing around his body.

Sigur Ros – við spilum endalaust

We don’t go into la Closerie des Lilas. We pass by the front, we see some rich and paunchy people on the terrace meticulously protected by a wall of greenery, we smell the perfume of the oysters, but we don’t go in. Someday, we’ll have the occasion to go in—a family reunion organized by a wealthy old aunt, maybe.

Bon Iver  – For Emma, Forever Ago

Time does fly: thirty people were already waiting in the courtyard when we returned from our little shopping excursion. We couldn’t let them come up—we weren’t ready: Moon and Bon Iver were still shooting “For Emma” in Ethel’s bedroom. In the end, the band came to them… The three guys just popped in without us expecting them, and started singing this newborn version of “For Emma”. It was a divine surprise. The band had already disappeared into the streets, but we were still flabbergasted. We had to make the audience come up and prepare for the show. But this is another story…

MasaMIXES: Transnational Pop Mashups

Mixing grungy Nirvana with Korean pretty-boys is probably tantamount to sacrilege in some circles.  It’s hardly a likely pairing, but it’s the dramatic difference in cultural sound which makes Sorry, Smells Like Easy Ding Dong worth talking about:

Displacing a familiar form in an unfamiliar context is the task of all translators. How successfully does Carlos ‘Masa’ Brandão introduce J-pop / K-pop / A-pop to a mainstream Western audience?  I’m more inclined to listen to these subgenres after listening to a few of his Youtube mixes.  The 200,000+ following on Last.FM would suggest that whilst not popular, Masa certainly has some influence.

I particularly liked Try to Say Aha, which uses elements from Santagold’s Say Aha and 2NE1′s Follow Me.  Both songs share a similar beat and tone, and might broadly be classified as Hip-hop. Masa increases the tempo and alternates between the vocals of both tracks.  It sounds pretty good, providing you already have an appreciation of the genre:

There’s a lot more of his tracks available for free on his website, or at various new-media outlets:

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/mmixes
Last.FM: http://www.last.fm/music/mas4

There’s currently a discussion on Metafilter which is fairly empty currently, but may become populated with interesting commentary in time: http://www.metafilter.com/91484/Apop-Kpop-Jpop

Art and YouTube

The course guide constructs our study as a reaction to ‘ivory tower’ conceptions of Art;

We will consider how the texts we study question, challenge or propose alternatives to powerful theories and assumptions about what creativity or aesthetic practices should entail, what these theories might include or exclude, and what forms they deem legitimate (or illegitimate).

So it seems we might start by asking ourselves what is wrong with the system of analysis currently in place.  The aim of this course directly entails the question: What is this thing called ‘Art’, and how and why should we study it?

I’m happy with the answer to that question being purely subjective.  Everyone has a different take on it after all. But the overly sociological and historical nature of the course so far seems to suggest that decision has already been made for us.  I don’t particularly care whether a musician had to change the release slightly in order to increase sales.  Such details might be important in ascertaining why something happened, but surely it’s all about how a work impacts its audience, and in turn why it fostered such a strong emotional reaction.

Which is pretty easy to say.  I’m pretty convinced that any sentence beginning “Art is…” must have been said before.  Some specifics are in order…

~

I was trying to think of ‘world’ literature / music / cinema which I enjoy, and I came across this video in my YouTube favourites:

The lyrics of the song are made up of YouTube comments, compiled into a song by another YouTuber. The lyrics were released and then YouTubers wrote a melody for the lyrics, and we picked our favourite. We held YouTube auditions via video response to pick the band, found the producer of the song through YouTube, and the music video is made up of literal interpretations of the lyrics, clapping and singing along, by YouTubers! It’s a bit YouTubey.

It’s easy to dismiss things like this because it’s “just for charity”, but it demonstrates some important facts about distribution and release.  Anyone can – and many people have – make a lot of money just by sitting in front of a $50 camera and performing.  But more importantly, there’s no clear ‘author’ behind anything.  The community is what supports and generates publicity, and influences further creation in ways still not fully understood.

Collaborations from internet communities are evidence of a moving towards art created by the people for the people.

I realize the video is very Western, perhaps not ‘world’ in any sense, but whatever.  It’s less about where people come from, and more about what is created.  I’ll finish with a video from Japanese band ‘Sour’. “The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.”