Text
Sound Poetry
I
created several pieces using manipulated speech recordings, starting in the
fall of 2003. After creating
several of these pieces, I became aware of a genre called Text Sound Poetry. Charles Amirkhanian gave me a copy of
Other Mind’s re-release of 10 + 2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces and coincidentally, I finally bought the
copy of the re-released OU
archives that had been temping me for months. Phillip Schulze, an exchange student, gave me a copy of Terre Thaemlitz’s album Interstices.
Text Sound seems to be especially well suited to political
expression. Often, a political
work suffers a tension between the political/text content and the musical
content. Either the political
message or the music often must be sacrificed. However, in the Text Sound genre, the text content is the
musical content. Composers like
Sten Hanson, Steve Reich and Terre Thaemlitz are able to create pieces where
complaints about the Vietnam War, gender discrimination and police brutality
form the substance of the piece.
To engage the piece is to engage the political content.
Reich’s
pieces are less obvious than Hanson and Thaemlitz. The loop process he uses it Its Gonna Rain is auditorially interesting, but the
meaning of the piece is not immediately clear to a modern listener. Many discussions of his pieces
eliminate the political content and focus on the process. Before I did research on this piece I
was disturbed by the implications of a white composer taking the words of an
African American and obscuring them until the content was lost to the
process. It seemed as if he was
exploiting the preacher somehow.
However, according to Four Musical Minimalists, Reich was deeply involved in anti-racist
organizing and was collaborating on anti-racist street theatre with the San
Francisco Mime Troop. The
book also stated that Reich was fascinated with deep timbres of African
American voices.
Right
now, speaking for black people and saying that you're fascinated by the timbres
of their voices would be extremely problematic. (I was surprised to see that
the book had a very recent publication date.) But this all took place in the
60's and it's appropriate to judge his intentions only according to what was
considered progressive at the time. He was on the right side of things.
However, when one is trying to learn from this to figure out what to do now, one has to take into account current
notions of progressivism.
Come
Out is an extremely
effective piece of political music. One of my questions was whether or not
"come out" had a possible double meaning at the time the piece was
written. It did not. That phrase as a signifier for visible queer identity
originated in the 1970's or 80's. Instead Reich's sample is made into a very
effective loop where the words "come out to show them" and then just
"come out" are plucked from their original context and by repetition
gain their own meaning of protest. Reich transforms the words from a statement
of victim hood to a statement of protest. (According to Four Musical Minimalists) The words originate from a group of
young African American men who were beat by the police in Harlem. One of them
is describing how he was injured and wanted medical attention but wasn't
visibly bleeding, so had to open is wound to allow some of "the bruise
blood to come out to show them."
Aworks blog points out that the piece was written as a fundraiser for
the victims of the police brutality. (Gable)
Investigating
Reich’s work was influential to me.
I want to be aware of the issues I encountered in his work and keep on
the current left side of progressivism. When someone who has privilege is using
the words of someone who does not have privilege, it seems that extra care
should be taken to avoid distortion.
I have done this thus far by mostly only using the voice of my political
enemies rather than my friends.
However, the transformative nature of Come Out is entirely inspiring. It is one of my favorite pieces of
political music. In his seminar in the fall of 2004, Alvin Lucier warned that
the danger of using text that you admire is the urge to elevate it
somehow. Reich does elevate the
text, but not like a gilded manuscript.
His elevation is sensitive and entirely appropriate to the material.
I
first became aware of Sten Hanson’s piece The Glorious Desertion while listening to the OU archives. It is an excellent piece about American involvement in the
Vietnam War. Hanson is European, yet
the piece eloquently captures a picture of American politics of draft
resistance during the war. It is
made up of interviews of draft resistors.
Although the war is long since ended, the piece is still engaging and
interesting and avoids being dated. What makes it work is that the issues it raises are large and
iconic of an era. There is a clip
within it of men chanting “Hell no, we won’t go.” This chant is still within the national consciousness as an
emblem of a large, long-lasting, successful movement.
I
fear that my own text pieces will not wear so well over time. I believe the key to the longevity of
Hanson’s pieces is his choice of source material. He uses the voices of people
who actually believe in something larger than themselves. If I am going to keep making political
text-based pieces, I need to find voices that stand for something. I need to pick prominent issues. Alas, this is hard to predict. I though prison torture mattered, but
it does not, because it is only a part of a bigger picture. If I want to do anti-war pieces, I
should follow Hanson’s lead and use the words of soldiers or activists.
Instead,
I began my foray into Test Sound pieces by using the voice of President George
W. Bush. I created two pieces
using his voice that are described in the next chapter. Ron Kuivila warned about using the
voices of politicians because of the danger of a short shelf life. As the election approached, I began to
see the wisdom in this caution.
Clearly, I thought, Bush would be removed from office (alas!). I began to look for a source of sound
material that was going to stay current longer, and preferably also from the
right wing.
Fortunately
for me, David Brock, author of Blinded by the Right decided to start monitoring right wing
media for distortions. His book
details how there exists a right wing echo chamber, which he participated in
during the Clinton administration.
Anti-Clinton people would invent scandals, where someone would imagine a
story about Clinton, and the right wing media would repeat the lie. There was virtually no fact checking to
verify the imagined Clinton misdeeds.
One media outlet would report it.
Another would report that the first outlet had reported it. Another would notice that
reporting. Finally, the buzz
created by the right wing would be picked up by the mainstream and by the
endless partisan special prosecutor investigations. The result of this, as we all know, is that Clinton, who was
investigated initially for a land deal that went bad, ended up being impeached
for having a consensual affair. If
Larry Flint hadn't stepped in and exposed the then speaker of the House's
recent affair, Clinton would likely have been removed from office. Larry Flint saved our democracy (at
least until 2000).
Obviously,
something had to be done about this situation. David Brock wrote a confessional memoir and then
enthusiastically switched sides.
Americans love their converts and so the left has enthusiastically
supported Brock, despite his confession of lying in virtually every article he
had written until then.
Fortunately,
his recent efforts are all well documented and verified. In an effort to expose right wing spin
and echo as lies before it becomes part of mainstream political culture, he
began to post outrageous comments by pundits on his website
mediaMatters.org. In addition to
posting the text of offensive comments, he also provides documentary audio and
video clips.
This
documentary evidence seemed to be a goldmine. It was a treasure trove of right wing voices. And what’s more, the offensive content
was already cherry picked. No
longer would I have to do text searches of Bush’s speech transcripts and then
look for a recording of it. I
could find all the pundits I wanted and only have their worst comments to
listen to. I reasoned that pundits
may rise and fall in popularity, but they often last for years. Rush Limbaugh has had a radio show for
more than ten years and has thousands of rabid followers. His voice is iconic. He was the first pundit I downloaded
samples of. However, I found his
voice initially difficult to work with. Limbaugh is hard to pull apart. He is not sound bitey. He says nothing immediately
reprehensible. It takes a few
moments to realize that he's reprehensible. After experimenting with Limbaugh’s
voice, I turned to Ann Coulter. Her
outrageous, short sound bites were much easier to manipulate. Limbaugh requires several minutes to
grok. Coulter requires mere
seconds. My success with Coulter
lead me back to Limbaugh and on to other pundits.
However,
I fear that my pundit music has an even more limited lifespan than my Bush
music. Rabid, right wing pundits
do not focus on broad issues. The
focus on the GOP talking point of the day and on attacking their opponents with
whatever the echo chamber kicks up.
It may turn out to be something that changes the course of history, like
Monica Lewinsky, or it might be later easily forgettable like “Travelgate,”
Howard Dean screaming, or Kerry throwing away combat ribbons during a protest. In a short time, people will have
trouble remembering the name of the losing challenger, let alone the guy who
lost the primary in New Hampshire.
Pundits themselves may outlast these candidates, but if the content of
their speech is made up of dated issues, then the speech also becomes
dated. Pundits only touch on broad
social issues as asides in their focused attacks, except for only
occasionally.
Coulter did say that we should “Invade
their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”, where
“they” are the people of the Middle East.
She touches on the national mood but - one hopes - she does not
represent a mass movement. She represents a political elite, and not even an
elected elite. Her words will not
lastingly resonate unless, God forbid, she wins a prominent public office. These pundits do not stand for anything
larger than themselves. Their
words reflect self-glorification first and everything else second. Michael Savage’s pro-torture remarks
were filled with interjections complaining that other media outlets (aside from
him, of course) were “communists.”
He paused for self-aggrandizing comments. “You like that?!
Go complain to somebody!
See if I care.” Rush
Limbaugh uses silly voices more often than not. He is in love with the sound of his voice. He stands only for himself. Ann Coulter is dazzled by her own
cleverness and never bothers to construct a coherent argument. These pundits are cynical. They only believe in their own
greatness. They do not exist to
convert, but rather to preach to their own choirs.
While
I enjoy Text Sound Poetry, especially what I found in the OU archives, I think that my time working
with pundits is past. In the end,
I’m frustrated. I thought that
people would be appalled at Limbaugh defending prison torture. However, it’s
not an effective political piece because people are not appalled. They don’t care. Someone finally managed to neutralize
empathy. Prison torture was not
enough to cost Bush an election.
It’s only Arabs and terrorists and bad guys that get tortured. When Michael Savage calls Iraqis “sub
humans,” he speaks for America.
Making
leftist experimental music is inherently futile. The politically dominant far right doesn’t like experimental
music and will not listen to it.
If they did listen to it, they wouldn’t be persuaded by my content. They don’t see anything wrong with
defending prison torture. I,
like the pundits themselves, end up preaching to the choir.
On the other hand, as Brock notes, most
centrists and leftist are blissfully unaware of how the far right is changing
discourse. Bringing this to the
attention of the left may hopefully inspire them to fight it. At the least, one hopes that all of the
Alien Others constantly attacked by the right wing would begin to feel
solidarity. Arabs and queers are
often used almost interchangeably. Imus in the Morning described an Iraqi resistance fighter as
“an enemy combatant who had sworn fidelity to some bearded fatwa fairy.” (http://mediamatters.org/items/200411190009)
Queers stand-in for almost any social “problem.” Bill Cunningham said while
discussing classroom discipline on Hannity & Colmes, “In the good old days, back when AIDS
was an appetite suppressant and when gay meant you were happy, back in those
days there was discipline in public schools. But not today.” (http://mediamatters.org/items/200503040003)
Ah yes, back when people knew their place and social norms could be enforced
with lynching, in that mythical golden age, children were well-behaved.
Antebellum logics are a threat to queers,
to people of color, to women, to atheists and to anyone who wants to avoid a
police state. When Bush complains about pop culture and Limbaugh defends prison
torture and Michael Savage calls queer members of the “turd world,” this is a
treat to my future ability to survive in this country. I keep saying that I’m done with
pundits, and then I keep working on just one more piece. I feel compelled to engage these
threats.
This post is Copyright 2005 Celeste Hutchins. All rights reserved. It is not Creative Commons Licensed.
Tag: Celesteh
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