Andrew Jones: "Plunderphonics, 'Pataphysics & Pop Mechanics: An Introduction To Musique Actuelle". SAF Publishing Ltd. 1995.
a book has appeared dealing with a musical scene ignored by serious music research for far too long - a book about a scene too diverse and international to be easily assessed , a music too experimental and fluid to fit existing categories of musicological research. The title promises a conceptual approach, and the contents feature a list of enticing names. It seems like a good buy.
A closer look, however, reveals an entirely different picture. Andrew Jones offers a compilation of personality portraits, mainly assembled from previously conducted and already separately published magazine interviews, strung together with some biographical details. This approach is not unusual, and as such is hardly worth mentioning, but in this book nothing is what it claims to be: The three P-words composing the ambitious title "Plunderphonics, 'Pataphysics & Pop Mechanics" bear - each for itself and in their conjunction - a strong conceptual significance, yet the reader looks in vain for their theoretical impact. Apart from a simple passing attribution - each to a single musician - these terms leave no trace in the book.
Quite as misleading as the title, is the general framework in which the interviews are set. Clearly unhappy with publishing a mere compilation, the author does not permit the individual texts to be what they are - namely interviews -, instead they are marshaled to support an academic claim: to provide "an introduction to" ..."a new musical genre: musique actuelle" (subtitle; p.9) Jones' casual attempt to give this 'new genre' the conceptual validity which the term implies, dissolves into a bland enumeration of characteristics putatively "shared by all the composers, musicians and ensembles covered in this book" (p.9) - such as "an encyclopedic knowledge of music, including a deep appreciation of folk forms; a willingness to juxtapose musical schools and mix improvisation with structure; a desire to experiment with new technology and new media; a healthy irreverence for authority and conformity; and a stubborn resolve to work outside the corporate music system."(p.9) Yet, these criteria neither pass for a genre justification nor are common to all the musicians and groups portrayed. A genre claim in music - if one chooses to enter this musicological game - has to be based on musical parameters, and these have not only to be stated, but also followed through analytically in the concrete works. In this case the claim not only misses the topic - the music under discussion-, but fails the author himself - since he does not even pursue it as an analytical method in his individual 'case studies'. In fact, the only parameter the author does take up and stresses repeatedly is a generalized "pick and mix" mentality, which can neither sufficiently characterize the diversity of the music he writes about, nor give substance to a specific genre claim. Since at least the beginning of the 80's, the appropriation of musical forms and elements from other genre discourses has been a feature in a number of different - if not all - musical genres. This procedure therefore could be understood at best as a phenomenon of the times - of a 'postmodern zeitgeist' - and certainly not one confined to a particular genre. This fact seems to have passed the author by completely. And the crucial question about the particular musical strategies - how the "pick and mix" is realized, namely, how the selection and subsequent adoption of musical units from different genres and their integration into this special musical context is performed - is not addressed at all.
It seems that music is not the issue in this book anyway. Whenever musical aspects appear in the course of the text, the author resorts to superficial comparisons with other musicians and groups. Here, jargon, namedropping and superlatives rule, and a snappy pop journalistic vocabulary covers for the lack of analytical or even descriptive endeavor. For instance, "listening to ... [the music of Fred Frith] is like a ride on the subway" (p.33) is the kind of free floating association we are presented with. This hardly provides a deep insight into the music as such, nor does it clarify Jones' concept of musique actuelle; it rather raises doubts about whether his 'new genre' is not just another arbitrary label for music that does not fit easily into our inventory of existing styles.
Moreover, the grouping of the musicians under six sub-themes, each asserting other similarities - Rock in Opposition, Radical Brass, Fleurs Carnivores, Cut & Paste, Vive le Quebec Libre, We're Only In It For The Money - sheds no further light. On the contrary, even on this smaller scale, general parameters are either not affirmed at all or even musically justified. To file, for instance, Heiner Goebbels convincingly under 'Rock in Opposition' already requires some very good arguments, but to leave out of account most of the work he has done in the last years pulls the factual ground from under musical research. Such carelessness contributes to the general methodological confusion and becomes especially upsetting, when in "Fleurs Carnivores - Woman's Music Actuelle" the author follows the wellworn path of gender segregation in music by singling women out as a special group.
If Jones' genre criteria and subdivisions won't stand up to close examination - and therefore, are unable to serve as common denominators of the music at hand - we are left with the question: What do the artists, assembled together in this book, have in common? On what grounds does the author unite such different musicians as, for instance, Sergei Kuryokhin, Henry Threadgill, Amy Demio and John Oswald under the single umbrella of musique actuelle? The answer is far from obvious, and therefore the selection seems rather arbitrary. In the end one can't help feeling that Montreal based Andrew Jones took whatever came his way - namely, the way of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, where most of the people featured in this book at one time or another happened to play. This may also explain - in the absence of a better elucidation - why he chose to call this 'new genre' Musique Actuelle. Altogether, considering the preponderance of randomness here, perhaps Jones would have better advised to stick to his original book title; "Jigs For An Atomic Bomb".
Leaving unsubstantiated claims aside, and looking at the actual texts, it soon becomes obvious that the book concentrates mainly on the musicians' personas. Relying extensively on direct quotations - which constitute by far the largest part of the book - the author constructs personality portraits, which provide only a very specific and limited insight into the musical field in which his interviewees work. Considering the complexity of this globally scattered musical scene - with its constantly changing pattern of collaborations, its diversity of projects and events, its small scale independent labels and distribution networks, its various emerging and faltering national music scenes, and its more than 25 year history of unorthodox musical and cultural expression, such a limited, personality orientated approach seems to fail not only the music, but also the scene itself. Especially when such an appropriation risks adopting the promotional strategy of the majors - undoubtedly highly effective in its field. This strategy, of course, is not about revealing a complex and multilayered musical culture, but about celebrity. It is about fandom and cultural identification, which are as permanent as freshly fallen snow. Here stars constitute the ultimate focus - be it Madonna or Kurt Cobain - and gossip about their lives is the fuel which drives the engine of an enormous musical machine. This star-cult is, in fact, one form in which the outdated obsession with genius, nurtured by traditional art concepts, has survived into the present day. Adopting such a celebrity approach, and pursuing an uncritical, glorifying journalism, appears particularly inappropriate in view of the avant-garde reputation and nonconformist experimental ambitions of the musicians in question. Uncritical presentations, where private statements are taken at face value and left unexamined and uncontextualised, always lack necessary distance. Interrogating such statements about their backgrounds, the contexts in which they are made, and their hold on reality, constitutes the backbone of all serious art criticism and good journalism, not to mention academic research.
Complex research topics, like this one, need complex methodological approaches - with changing perspectives, multiple cross references between diverse discourses and, not least, a well grounded knowledge of the musical field under scrutiny. I am far from suggesting that to achieve this, would be an easy task here. However, to lure the aficionados of an uncompromising and difficult musical scene with the promise of academic insights into a new genre, and then to fob them off with mainstream promo strategies, cannot be the solution to the problem - despite the undisputed good intentions.
The 24 personality and group stories told in this book vary in substance and originality - depending on the eloquence of each interviewee and the author's access to, and pursuit of information. However, due to the lack of specific focus in each story and the similarities in the author's general approach, these texts make, sequentially, a rather boring read. This not withstanding, the present compilation could still qualify for reference purposes, as a guide to the musicians and groups covered, were it not for the numerous factual errors that many of the texts contain. These should not be repeated or enter common currency.
That this book does no justice to the
musical and cultural ambitions, for which these musicians
stand. Therefore, the history and theory of this scene
remains still to be written.
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