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 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