Re: (ot) (Slightly) Politics + electronic Music

[kyle jones <kyle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tad, I actually have the email you sent in another mail program not 
available to me right now so I hope that I answer the questions you asked.

They did not play the Woodie Guthrie tune you mentioned, but did play an oft 
changed verse from "this is your land, this is my land" that makes the song 
somewhat more controversial. 

What disappointed me was that it seems that the progressive political 
community is tunnel vision about what constitutes political music, namely 
that if it is not folk music, it at must at least have politically charged 
lyrics.  This kind of irritates me in a way because even if I agree with the 
points the musician is making, I feel that it comes from a kind of cult of 
personality, or snide position that turns me off. 

More than anything I guess I focus more on the democratic possibilties 
inherent (possibly) in the computer music creation process.  Also the fact 
that creating this music free's you from having to play an instrument in 
real time.  Physical talent takes a back seat to your ideas, though I guess 
in a way you have to learn things about synthesis or at least how to use 
software.  Maybe this whole argument falls down under scrutiny, but I still 
feel like there is something to computer music that makes the strength of 
your ideas more important than your wealth, or your physical talent.  I 
guess ultimately this has nothing to do with Democracy other than the 
widening access to tools.  I suppose in my mind it sits somewhere in the 
pantheon of two turntables for the urban black dj in the seventies, or the 
pawnshop guitar for the disillusioned punk in the late seventies.   Maybe 
these things did not ultimately make a more democratic society, but they 
shaped it quite a bit and had a political statement with it.  Anyway, I am 
not a cultural anthropologist, I am more prone to armchair musings. 

I will say that you could make tracks with an average computer, i used buzz 
for about a year and a half on a pentium 133 and sold all of my hardware 
because I was so pleased with it and the music I made with it.  Buzz was and 
may still be free. 


I don't make political music myself, I have been thinking about ways of 
doing it non-lyrically and from a more open-ended discussion way of it doing 
it.  Things that have occurred to me are playing benefits for worthy 
charities, and giving other people information that I have learned about 
making music and any technical resources I can provide.  I guess ultimately 
I feel that this technology has opened so many doors and opened the 
possibilties, down to the fact that I am writing this email to people I 
never would met, that I want to share the pro's with my political community 
instead having it simply be a discussion about technology being a tool of 
the man to keep people down.  The personal computer revolution was somewhat 
political in the beginning and egalitarian in some respects (i am refferring 
to the homebrew computer club), I feel that computer music in this time 
period is the same way. 


I don't personally make microsound, but if you are still interested, my 
tracks are located  at http://www.inetarena.com/~kylej 


Thanks for the discussion,
kyle