[Dancecult-l] definitions of liveness

[Eliot Bates]

Wow, this discussion of liveness has really taken off! I'd like to offer a
profoundly boring but hopefully productive commentary on the live/non-live
distinction (which I think is an exaggerated one, more below).

While I agree that terms such as "liveness" can be ripe for
problematization, I believe such problematization is sometimes problematic
itself. There is a very simple phenomenon - bands whose major influence is
sequenced/edited/programmed music forms - which maintains one kind of
live/non-live distinction. One obvious example, live drum and bass, takes
programmed drum and bass as an influence but transforms it into a modified
funk band setting (featuring bass, drums, and perhaps horns and guitars or
other instruments). Señor Coconut's album of Latin-dance Kraftwerk covers
is another example...

A related phenomenon is when rave communities expand to include
performances by instrumental acoustic and electroacoustic music forms,
often focusing on musical forms that have been significant and direct
influences on house/techno/EDM producers (funk, rock, and rhythmic world
music traditions).

In both situations, there is a simultaneity between musicians who find
reward in attaining musical competence in acoustic or electroacoustic
instruments, and audiences who find some kind of pleasure in
observing/listening to what can be coarsely considered more "traditional"
style group musical performances, in contrast with more contemporary DJed
"mediated" musical performances (or ones where there is a disconnect
between the visual motions of the performers and the source of sound
production - where is that drum sound coming from when there are no drums
to be seen?). Appreciation or valuation of live and non-live, in this
context, is not mutually exclusive - both the audience and the live
musicians participate in both milieus.

A separate issue is whether or not there is a crisis of performativity
within IDM performance spheres, including issues of liveness, and whether
or not a highly agile laptopist creates as much of a riveting visual
spectacle as Jimi Hendrix on the electric guitar.

The first issue: creating live performed music styles out of electronic
ones, or incorporating live bands into a formerly DJed milieu, isn't
necessarily any kind of comment on liveness, non-liveness, performativity,
or the like, but more a comment on eclecticism in listening preferences
(I've never met a raver who didn't also (secretly) love some kind of rock,
funk, heavy metal, or other contemporary band music form, too) and
cross-pollination of musical influences (electroacoustic band music being
inspired by sampled/sythesized programmed music).

The second issue is mainly a concern of laptop artists and music critics
(particularly in Wire magazine) rather than of EDM communities. It's not
much different than crises that affected academic music composers since
the 1950s, who struggled with limited audience turnout and a paucity of
widespread acceptance of their music. I find that much academic and music
trade magazine writing on EDM/IDM/contemporary music composition (probably
including my own articles) tends to exaggerate the actual extent of this
crisis, though of course for the musicians engaged in entirely
computer-music this crisis could appear to be of tantamount importance.

I acknowledge my analysis is a bit coarse and heavy-handed, but hopefully
it will help myself and others on this list to bracket off areas where
problematization of liveness is most useful to pursue. If it doesn't help
that way, just ignore my comments...

+-+-+-+-+-+
Eliot Bates
PhD Candidate (Ethnomusicology), UC Berkeley
Music of Turkey, recording studios, electronic music practices and cultures
http://www.eliotbates.com/
oud at berkeley.edu


> Mark wrote:
>
>> In following this discussion I've been a little bit surprised to see,
>> on a dance music list-serv, the term "live" and its cognates used in
>> the most traditional sense. The notion of "liveness" is essentially
>> problematic, and not just in EDM. Rather than saying that it doesn't
>> work to speak of EDM as "live" (more on this below), I would say that
>> the extremely high degree of technological mediation in EDM exposes
>> the constructed nature of "liveness" in modern performance in general.
>
> Bingo.
>
> Actually there is a precedent to this discussion which I would enjoin
> anyone
> interested here to read -- conducted around concerns over 'live' in laptop
> performance circa 2000. I also have a PDF of a conference paper that
> debates
> & counters Cascone below if anyone is interested.
>
> Cascone's thoughts on the matter are indispensible, as are Szepanski's,
> both
> of which are influenced by Deleuze, Benjamin and Attali and move on to
> consider the realm of transaction between human & machine, flesh &
> circuit,
> the glitch and the click 'n' cut, areferential sound, resampling &
> remixing,
> sociopolitical value as attached to gestural theater, positioning of the
> player, spectacle, and so on, often taking the historical movements of
> music
> into account. My interventions take place insofar as they attempt to
> counter
> Cascone's reduction of pop music to spectacle and with it, the assumption
> that all rhythm is pop music and thus irrevocably of the spectacle, in
> Debord's sense (a perspective found in the most reductive moments of
> Adorno
> when discussing jazz). For me this obliterates (Afro-diasporic)
> rhythmachines as asignifying forces and thus the construction of live,
> performance, pop and spectacle is rendered much more complex for me than
> Cascone's tendency to polarize spectacular vs. 'non-spectacular' forms of
> sound. For more you'll simply have to dig into the meat of it -- I'd
> recommend checking out the 'Fuck Art Let's Dance' piece for the
> ramifications of Cascone's theory as cultural policy.