Listening: Teaching with “Hallelujah”

I recently taught a class for a few minutes on the concept of “Harmony,” and I used Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” to do so.  It has a simple harmony that is easy to follow, and the song’s presentation is uncomplicated (just a voice and a guitar).  In any case, while working on it, I actually paid attention to the lyrics for once (besides “Hallelujah, etc.”).  The first verse would be perfect for teaching the relationship between music and lyrics:

When David played before the Lord
I heard he had a special chord
But you don’t really care for music do ya?
Well, it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composed his hallelujah.
Hallelujah, etc.

Oddly enough, when Jeff sings “the fourth, the fifth,” the chords he plays are, in fact, the fourth and the fifth (in C major, that would be F and G).  When he sings “minor fall,” he plays an A minor chord, and when he sings “major lift,” he plays an F major chord. Leonard Cohen, who originally wrote and performed this song, was enjoying himself a little when he wrote this.

To be fair, text painting can be exercised on many levels besides just harmonic structure, but this explanation would be a simple and literal introduction to the idea for a basic Music Appreciation class.

 

Greek and Musicology

So I was talking to some M friends today about the fact that “queer” musicology is pretty much the most well known branch of musicology out there.

(Disclaimer: I don’t like the term “queer” musicology, but it’s what the crew is using nowadays. I’ve ranted long and hard against it…but I’m a lowly grad student. I suppose I could call it gay/lesbian/gender/sexual studies musicology. Doesn’t have the same ring, though.)

In any case, last week’s episode of Greek actually referenced “queer” musicology in passing, as part of a joke about obscure academia. It floored me. Musicology doesn’t get much popular press. I felt…like someone knew we existed. Or something.

You know you’ve made a mark in the world when someone makes fun of you.

Well, I’m watching this week’s Greek right now, and one of the frat houses on the show used music to “torture” their pledges. This is a) a bad thing to do. Music can actually be VERY harmful to the psyche if played loudly and for a long time. (Unfortunately, it has been used against POWs recently.) And b) is relevant to this conversation because the musicological world has recently made a big stink against using music for torture (yay, musicology!). It’s a little bit humorous that two references to controversial musicological topics have occured on this show…which has nothing to do with musicology.

I wonder if one of the writers is married to a musicologist or something….

 

Teaching Music Appreciation: Using Hip Hop

(or some other popular musical genre)

I was walking this afternoon from the graduate library to a meeting I had with a professor of mine in the bell tower, when I passed a huge DJ setup on the lawn. I’m not sure what the gathering was about, but they were playing some loud and bass-y hip hop in an attempt to gather some attention.

I thought, while I was passing, “Hmmm. That bass line is really pleasing. Loud is good.” (I actually did think this…I had heard it inside the library and was being rebellious.)

And then I thought, “How could I use a piece like this in teaching music to students?” (Because I’m a geek.)

I’m hugely in favor of teaching people in a manner that starts with what they already know. It’s hard to teach someone how to drive down the street when they don’t yet know how to distinguish red from green. The same goes with asking them to clap out a rhythm when they don’t know how to pick out the musical line from which they’re supposed to copy said rhythm. But most everyone nowadays listens to hip hop, at least sometimes, and its highly repetitive nature can be useful in teaching students–students who have yet to really learn to listen to music and articulate what they hear.

Using a hip hop piece (or for that matter, any contemporary popular genre) could be useful in teaching new students to identify melodies, countermelodies, bass lines and rhythms. The right choice of musical example could provide a simple exercise for identifying each of these musical elements in a manner that is familiar and non-threatening. Most young people can, at least, pick out the bass line and the most prominent driving rhythm.

I imagine that this would leave a better taste in students’ mouths than if I asked them to do the same for, say, Stravinsky.

On a related note, I ran into a blog post that discussed using podcasts in teaching music to high schoolers. It’s a great idea–it at least encourages them to comment intelligently and creatively on the music they hear.

 

Redundant. Predictable.

So, I was reading through a chapter in John Fiske’s Introduction to Communication Studies, when I ran into the following quote:

“The more popular and widely accessible a work of art is, the more it will contain redundancies in form and content.”

 

The term “redundancy” in this usage does not necessarily refer to the degree of repetition (as in, it’s redundant to tell someone your name fifteen times in one hour), but to the degree of predictability in a work of art. The film score for Pirates of the Carribean, for example, was pretty darn redundant. John Williams introduced the currently used form for film music with his score, many years ago, to Star Wars IV. Composers in this genre make use of the entire orchestra with Romantically-inspired orchestration and use various types of musical themes to alert the audience to the return of characters or ideas.  Zimmer of the Pirates soundtrack used this archetype when composing his version of a soundtrack.

 

And while there needs to be a good degree of redundancy in any art in order for us, as the audience, to comprehend it, it is the strategic presence of unpredictability (or entropy, to use Fiske’s term) that really catches us. When we listen to a soundtrack, we’re especially aware of what is different about this particular one, and we deliberate about whether we like it.

 

When I was pondering this, I came back to my question: Why don’t musicologists seem especially interested in strict musical parody? Well, it’s because the music itself is pretty much 100% redundant. Why study something if it’s completely predictable?

 

There isn’t any way, though, for the music to be completely redundant. Even when someone is singing new words to a recorded back-up track, the timbre and intonation of their voice changes the music. And, in fact, the fun in the musical side of parody is making small changes that have some effect on the listener.

 

My favorite filk so far–and I’ll use it as an example here–is the Acts of Parody piece found on the Roundworm CD. (I think I’ve mentioned this before.) The artists didn’t just sing new words to the original music–they actually modified the their presentation of the music. It is only fitting that a song about filk should not be sung solo, as in the original Acts of Creation, but as a group with full harmony and with more complex instrumentation. The addition of solo verses occurs as each member of the group gets to add his or her own twenty-five cents to the topic. This is a highly meaningful and effective musical change, and one that I’m pretty sure the group intended. After all, in the bardic circle, each person in turn gets to sing their own piece.

I suppose that my point here is that strict parody song, and especially popular parody song, can be frustrating to study from a musicological standpoint because of the extremely high degree of musical redundancy. What we have to do is dial up our sensitivity to whatever is musically unpredictable, no matter how small, because that’s where we’ll find the truly interesting material.

 

Popular Parody Phobia

(It’s not a proper alliteration…but I like it.)

 

Greetings, all.

 

Before I get to blogging, I’d like to apologize for my lengthy absence.  I had accepted both a full-time job and an extra online job for the month of August, and while I’d fully planned to continue posting filk-inspired ideas on this page, it turned out that my personal time had been reduced to nearly nothing.  Before that, it did seem that everyone had been enjoying sharing arguments regarding the nature of filk, and I hope that my behavior has not disappointed you so much that you won’t be interested in continuing the discourse.  I’ve certainly been enjoying this, and am of course indebted to you for your input.

 

And now, on to the show.  Er…blog.

 

One of the questions I had to ask myself when working on 18th-century parody song (vaudeville) in France was why more work on the topic hadn’t been attempted by musicologists.  The practice was so pervasive in that particular culture that it permeated anything that had to do with the written word—stacks of vaudeville collections were compiled, and anyone taking a stroll down the market streets would have heard hawkers bellowing them to the crowds.  They were even the basis of the beginning of French comic opera (opéra comique)…and musical theater as we know it, actually, with The Beggar’s Opera in England. 

 

Despite its popularity in its time, few scholars have devoted published words to this genre.  Over the past two hundred years, there are only a handful of individuals who have attached their name to it on paper.  None of these were scholars of music; they were usually literature or communication historians.  Only recently has the musical world taken notice of this practice, with two collections of essays coming out of Europe.  In our current general music history textbooks, vaudeville is usually only given one sentence in the 1.5 pages devoted to French comic opera.

 

I was equally surprised to find that I can locate no writings on filk (a modern folk practice that includes strict musical parody as a tool) by musicologists and ethnomusicologists.  This is not to say that I feel that only writings on music by musicologists matter; on the contrary, I’m adamant that any topic should be studied from as many different angles as possible.  I’m simply bothered by the fact that contemporary popular parody song in general has been neglected by a field of study that should take the topic under its wing as a matter of course.  It has received some serious treatment by Henry Jenkins and several others, as we know, but it has not been a topic on which music scholars have published. 

 

And I have yet to find a book that deals specifically with popular parody song as a musical form.

 

I’d be silly if I didn’t rejoice a little at the fact that my current interest has been largely untouched, and is almost completely unknown by, the musicological world.  Every scholar does a little happy dance when they find such a neglected source of scholarly fun.  But the question still remains: Why has (ethno)musicology tended towards ignoring popular parody song?

 

The answer may be that parody song is, in a large way, mostly a literary form.  The music is not new, and it is not usually complex.  So the main interest in specimens of this type seems to lie in the following: a) The new text that is being shared, b) the relationship between the old and new texts, and c) the relationship between the old music and the new text.  Until recently (somewhere in the last century, with the emergence of ethnomusicology), musicology was not very interested in the study of music in culture, so even this last point wasn’t of much interest to musicologists. 

 

This is a decent answer to my question, but it’s a “surface” answer.  There must be more to it, right?

 

Perhaps (ethno)musicologists are not frequent attendees of SF and Fantasy conventions, and because filk has not become widely known outside of this community, word of the practice has not made it into any semi-interested musicological circles.  Regarding the historical practice, it’s possible that, because vaudeville collections were only sometimes published with music, scholars simply viewed it as more of a literary practice than a musical one.  Perhaps these scholars would simply rather spend their time pursuing thoughts of Monteverdi and Stravinsky—or of the Indian Diaspora and the Balinese gamelan—all of which are perfectly pleasant and interesting tracks of scholarship.  And, of course, we can wonder whether a lack of imagination—of being able to creatively question just how uses music uniquely—has contributed to its barely-sideline status in musical scholarship.

 

I hope that I don’t sound accusatory; that’s certainly not my intention.  Every scholar must choose what he/she wants to spend a lifetime pursuing.  I simply believe that the reasons for this phenomenon run deeper than a simple lack of interest, and I’m curious as to what those reasons may be.

 

In any case, I do feel that popular parody song has been underrepresented in the (ethno)musicological world, whether as a historical or contemporary practice. 

 

Thoughts?  Do you think that I’ve missed an important idea in this ramble?  I’m certain that you guys would know if an (ethno)musicological survey of filk (or popular parody song) has actually been undertaken in the last several decades.  Certainly do flame call me on it, if that’s the case.

 

Cheers!

 

 

Filk as Folk

This is the first installment of the “ethno/musicological” discussion of filk that I promised everyone several days ago. I have to tell you that I was incredibly encouraged by the number of responses to that post, the insightfulness of these comments, and by the depth of passion displayed for this genre (or “movement,” as I’ve been corrected). Please keep the ideas and the criticisms coming, friends!

I figured that I would start out my musings on filk with a discussion of folk music influenced by Simon Frith’s 1981 article in Popular Music, “‘The Magic That Can Set You Free’: The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community.” I’ll also be drawing from the chapter, “‘Strangers No More, We Sing’: Filk Music, Folk Culture, and the Fan Community,” from Henry Jenkins’s book, Textual Poachers (1992). Jenkins, as many of us know, is one of the few scholars to have devoted considerable time and pen space to filk as a genre–work that has been published in several important books on fan culture.

The purpose of Frith’s article is to debunk rock’s status as a folk art and at the same time to discuss how rock is, despite this, “used by its listeners as a folk music.” In spinning out his argument, Frith gives several definitions of filk from figures such as Jon Landau (the Rolling Stone), Sir Hubert Parry (a late-19th-century English composer), and A.L. Lloyd (an early 20th-century English folk singer and folk song collector). When considered together, these definitions highlight several important aspects of folk music that, when compared to what we (the collective “we” that really means “I”) know about filk, fully endorse Jenkins’s assertion that filk is a true folk art.

Jenkins spends a good portion of his article on filk discussing its folk status, giving several qualities, endorsed by scholars, common to all folk music: “oral circulation rather than fixed written texts, continuity within musical tradition, variation in performance, and selection by a community that determines which songs are preserved, which discarded.” He also explores the practice of communities’ refashioning and recreating of folk music to continually serve the current identity of each community. He very clearly and effectively presents filk as an authentic folk music based on these qualifications.

Moving beyond Jenkins’s discussion of folk music, though, we find presented in Frith’s article several other ideological qualities of this art. As part of his argument, Frith intimates that folk music should rise from the creativity of folk who are related by experiences other than music. Frith frowns on rock’s status as a folk genre because the “community” it serves is not tied together by anything other than the music it claims. While we might argue with this claim, it does not preclude filk as a folk music.

According to all the accounts I have read on the emergence of filk from the midnight creativity of fan cons, it is music made by a community that is already tied together by their dedication to their fan interests. Jenkins affirms that filk pulls together this group, “resolving the differences separating them, providing a common basis for interaction.” The SF&F community is not built on its music making–its music making reinforces its existing foundation.

More important than folk music’s role as a tool for already-built communities is the fact that, within it, there is no elite. The lines between performer and audience are minimal or nonexistent. A.L. Lloyd stated that “the main thing [in folk music] is that the songs are made and sung by men [sic] who are identical with their audience in standing, in occupation, in attitude to life, and in daily experience.” While within rock, the audience is encouraged to believe that their stars have risen from their ranks and have remained there in some small fashion, in filk the audience is the performer, and the performer is a member of the audience. They share attitudes, interests, and a dedication to media culture. Filk celebrates the in-references found in SF&F fandom, the sense of ownership that the fans feel over their preferred media, and the right of the fans to comment upon and critique these texts. Elitism is minimized within this community.

By far the most striking requirement for folk music, as related by Frith, is its “authenticity.” According to Landau, authentic music “articulates an attitude, style or feeling that is the genuine reflection of the performers’ experience….” In a “true” folk music, emotions are not faked and the situations of the community are sincerely (if sometimes farcically) related. In acting as the voice of the fans, filk distinguishes itself as a music that authentically expresses the attitudes and desires of those fans.

Sir Hubert Parry presents a lovely, somewhat idyllic view of folk music: it “grew in the heart of the people…because it pleased them to make it, and what they made pleased them; and that is the only good way music is ever made.” This is another, admittedly optimistic, view of music making that makes the requirement of “authenticity” nearly impossible to reach. The motives of the music must be pure–the music must be made simply for the joy of making it.

And, incredibly, filk seems to meet this difficult requirement. Filk is made because fans enjoy it. It was not created–and still is not created–to make a significant income or to gain significant fame, but for its specific community’s pleasure.

As I mentioned, Jenkins provides a more exhaustive discussion of filk as folk. In Frith’s article, however, we have found several more requirements of folk music that identify filk even more securely as a denizen of folk culture. At its heart, filk’s authentic nature, its edification of an already-existing community , and the equality it celebrates between performer and audience have identified it as a folk music in a society and time in which true folk music is rare.

The discussion of the classification of filk as folk could fill a book, and this poor blog would bend under the weight of all that info, but lets discuss this. Criticism and commentary are welcome!

And in the meantime, happy TTOs to all! 
mh

(This entry has been cross-posted at my WordPress site.)

 

Filk Studies

This summer starts my descent into fandom, or more specifically, filkdom. As a bit of background, I’m a musicologist who has done some work on parody song (contrafacta) in the French eighteenth century, a practice dubbed vaudeville. At the time, it was a common hobby to match self-written lyrics with folk songs or especially catchy dance tunes by well-known composers (such as Lully). This diversion spanned all social classes and was an important part of the establishment of French comic opera—opéra comique. Opéra Comique was a very distant forerunner of what we now call American Vaudeville.

Spending so much time studying historical parodic practices piqued my interest in contemporary contrafacta, and as I started to google “musical parody,” the term “filk” caught my eye.

Filk is a genre of music in which lyrics celebrating Science Fiction and Fantasy fan culture are set to existing tunes. It is the musical folk practice of creative fandom, parallel in many ways to fan fiction and fan art, birthed over half a century ago at science fiction conventions around the US. For a clear, basic introduction to this art, see M.A.S.S.F.I.L.C.’s definition.

So here I am, delighted to begin a new branch of study on my never ending quest to enjoy music making and to become a more knowledgeable musicologist. I hope that the writings that I post in the future, whether directly related to filk or to music and musicology in general, find use in both the fan community and the musical community.

My musicological shorts will be cross-posted at my WordPress site and my LiveJournal site.

Look for my first thoughts in the next few days.

Best to all,
jg