Sometimes I get things really wrong. As I did in my last post, when I quoted a tweet about Kendrick Lamar winning the Pulitzer Prize:
Just help me come to grips with the fact that someone can be a good enough musician to win a Pulitzer Prize, but not qualified to gain entry into the undergraduate music ed program at my school.
I more or less took for granted that this tweeter was attacking the award, saying that Lamar has no musical knowledge. I replied to that, as you can see in the post, saying that there were many kinds of musical knowledge, and that people with standard classical music training don’t know what Lamar knows.
The correction
So then the tweeter wrote a comment on my blog, correcting me. He’s Adam Kruse, Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Where (as the school’s website says) he “teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in music education primarily in areas of popular music and music technology.”
Meaning that far from not knowing — or, as I wondered, even knowing about — the musical knowledge Lamar might have, he teaches precisely that knowledge. Since I’d talked about the digital technology used in popular music.
In his words
Here’s what Adam wrote (I’m making a blog post out of his comment, with his permission):
Hello, Greg. My apologies, but you have misinterpreted my message. My problem is with my school and degree program’s admission policies and practices. I am actually well aware that our current settings serve as a barrier to Hip-Hop musicians (and many others, likely the Indian classical musician as well) and I am working every day to change that. In no way am I saying Kendrick doesn’t have musical chops. His chops far exceed those of most (if not all) of my current students. I am thrilled with Kendrick’s award. Almost all of my professional life has been dedicated to better understanding Hip-Hop musical learning; helping music teachers to meaningfully engage with Hip-Hop culture; and working to improve equity, inclusion, and relevance of school music spaces. I don’t disagree with the premise of your blog post, but I do want to point out that my point was basically the exact opposite of how you have interpreted it. My apologies.
To which I replied:
My apologies back to you! And wow — I’m so happy to have been wrong. I tried to write in a way that didn’t absolutely suggest you held views that you’re making clear that you don’t. But I’m sure what I wrote came across as if I thought you didn’t understand the points I went on to make.
Thanks so much for coming here to correct me, and for doing it so gently. Big mistake on my part, and, again — I’m so happy to have been wrong.
He then very graciously said:
I guess it’s a lesson to write with more clarity in social media spaces. I can totally see how one could read my comment in the way you did. Honest mistakes all around. At the end of the day, I’m with you 100%!
So he’s a mensch, and I was hasty. I love when this happens. Two people who start out with a misunderstanding end up with warm communication. All Adam’s doing. I’m grateful to him. And happy to set the record straight.
Well done, all around. Great to hear that this point-of-view is shared by different minds in the field.
A.-
On a deeper level, this argument begs the question of what being a “musician” means. In this case, is an exceptional beat poet/lyricist who integrates the use of simulated (produced vs performed) musical backing tracks a ‘musician’ and a music ‘composer’?
This genre of music fundamentally relies on loops, samples and sequences rather than the expression of interacting human musicians. In this regard, the discussion above seems to equivocate composition with production.
More importantly, has this unexamined equivocation become further reinforced by the selection of a technologically rendered music form (based on a replacement of musicians by technology) as this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music winner; that is, as the most “distinguished musical composition by an American” in 2018?
I wonder if a future clarification will distinguish technologically ‘simulated’ music from ‘authentic’ human musical performance?
Hardly unexamined. I’ve been down this discussion road many times. You have strong feelings about this, which I can respect. My own preference, if these were my opinions, would be to express them with a little less certainty, a little less like they were self-evident truth.
And one response from me, reading what you wrote, could be to gently ask you how much you know about how “production music” is actually made. Could there just possibly be detailed and subtle musical choices involved?
And then, still gently, I could ask if you’re confident you could tell the difference between music entirely played by musicians, music entirely “produced” (putting your terms in quotes, because they wouldn’t be my terms), and — not uncommon — music that’s a combination of both. As really any hiphop album is, because the rapper is live, along with any backup singers.
But that would be confrontational of me. So what I’ll ask instead is whether you know how Lamar’s album was picked by the Pulitzer music jury. I hadn’t known this at first. I like it simply as a story, to start with. The jury discussed a number of pieces they’d looked at that had hiphop influences. That interested them. So then someone asked whether, as long as they were enjoying hiphop influences, whether they’d consider a straight-ahead hiphop.
They said they would. And after listening to Lamar’s album, they thought it was hands down the best music they’d heard. Unanimous decision.
So apparently they didn’t find it lacking in the same musical values they were finding in pieces they considered (which would have been the vast majority) that were performed by musicians. In fact, they apparently found it had more of the musical values they were looking for.
Which means they wouldn’t agree with your feelings about produced music, as you call it. As I don’t. I’ve been around music for quite a few decades, and for me it’s the result that counts. If something goes deep musically, why should I judge it by how it was created?
You might find that a simple-minded view. But then do we think the Pulitzer jurors didn’t know music? Kind of nice, I think, to be open-minded, and not think any of us know all the answers in advance.
The challenge here is trying to clarify and distinguish music which directly involves musicians in the creation and performance of music – with technology used assistively, as tools. This is in stark contrast to a process that is fundamentally reliant on technology with few, if any, musicians necessary to its creation and performance.
For example, looking at the music credits for Lamar’s “Element”:
Composer(s): R. Riera, J. Blake, K. Duckworth, M. Spears
Producer(s): Bekon, James Blake, Ricci Riera, Sounwave, Tae Beast
Additional production: Tae Beast, Bekon
Additional vocals: Kid Capri
Something essential is lost in equivocating being a musician and the process of creating/performing music, by implying an equivalence with ‘music’ as something in which musicians are optional or unnecessary.
We are discussing fundamentally different types of sound arts here, both in process and end product. Further, these glossed over distinctions are becoming even more important in an era of Artificial Intelligence systems which are now being used to ‘compose’ music. Here, the equivocation problem becomes even more salient. In the earlier case, the musician becomes optional/secondary to technology and, in the latter, the composer proceeds down the same road of progressively minimized involvement, leading inexorably toward functional replacement by technological processes.
You’re very certain you’re right. So more power to you — except that someone who (let’s say) is very certain they’re walking down a clear path may not look around as much as they should, and is likely to trip over unexpected obstacles.
I wonder if you’ve had the experience of creating produced music, as you call it, without using musicians. And therefore would know about all the subtle musical choices that you’d make, producing a musical result.
And I see you’re reading information about the Lamar album, not making any comments on how it sounds. On its music. Someone who knows hiphop intimately told me about fascinating tempo changes in the second track, things that involve a dance between live and produced music, producing a result I’d never encountered before. It would be good to deal with musical specifics when we have this discussion, rather than stick exclusively with grand, abstract concepts, in which claims are made without supporting data, and which may in fact (because they’re so total) be unverifiable.
But you know…about your scare conclusion, where we’re “inexorably” walking down a road that leads to (etc)…I have to say I’m reminded of people who say that if gay marriage is legal, then next we’re going to see people marrying horses. Or whatever.
Life doesn’t go in straight lines. There isn’t any logical conclusion. Chemical fertilizers were created, but we still have organic farming. The piano was invented, but we still love harpsichords. Etc. Creating music with technology just gives us another option, without replacing music created by live musicians. Along with electronic dance music and hiphop, both of which do use technologically created sounds, one of the biggest trends in pop music has been singer-songwriters, live musicians who typically make music by singing and playing acoustic guitar. All options are still in play.
This is a discussion of perspectives and awareness of fundamental distinctions, not any right/wrong judgements. Any means of artistic creative expression is valuable in itself.
Technology has vastly increased creative accessibility in different ways for musicians and for those who have not had the experience of practicing/mastering an instrument, the singing voice, or acquiring literacy in various musical nomenclatures (conventional and technological). Each methodology has different strengths and limitations, and these can be better understood with clarification of fundamental distinctions.
The “inexorable path” relates to the ongoing functional replacement of formerly human tasks/skills by new technological processes. Economic criteria (lowering cost and maximizing profitability) are dominant considerations in commodity manufacturing, whether it be new fashions in objects or music.
Interestingly, these increasingly pervasive technological processes can result only in functional replacement, not aesthetic replacement of artistic involvement.
These new technological tools can be used aesthetically without becoming the foundation of sound arts now described as ‘music’; i.e. those requiring minimal direct involvement of musicians or indirect/derivative musical editing processes (loop, sampled, sequenced, computer generated content). As an acoustic and electronic musician, this is the distinction I am trying to express.
So, when the Pulitzer Prize for Music goes to a sound artform which exemplifies an almost complete absence of any direct involvement of musicians, we need to examine the idea of ‘music’ and distinguish it from those emerging sound arts in which ‘music’ can be simulated without the musician. And in turn, this leads to a search for deeper clarifications of what we mean by the idea of ‘musician’.
Fascinating times! Who could have predicted these trends 30 years ago.