Final paper: Music technologies and cultural authenticity
Course: Music, culture, and technology class
Deadline for submission: June 16, 2025, by 23.55. Upload to moodle, Topic 12 (don’t send to email)!
Format: 7-9 pages, double space, font 12, word doc format (not pdf, not open doc, or other); plus proper bibliography (not included in page count).
Articles (13 + 1 video, discuss at least 7-8): Kenney (gender/phonograph), Kerney (gender/guitars), and Marsh/West (gender/Bjork/Madonna); Frith (authenticity), Auslander (liveness), Gilbert and Pearson (EDM), Brown (global pop/race), Weheliye (race), Taylor (authenticity), Taylor (technostalgia), Hogarty (retro), McLeod (copyrights), Gunkel (remix) + Video: Everything is a remix (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc).
Main question for the essay. Discuss and problematize (critically) the notion of authenticity and music technology, as related to the following topics (there are 7 topics, but you should only discuss 5 in depth; necessary to discuss all the texts/videos in bold):
1 Establish main theoretical framework on authenticity (define, problematize the concept, synthesize theories): refer to Frith, and Tim Taylor’s definitions and types of authenticity (necessary to discuss the issue of construction of authenticity, and the importance of perspectives, in other words, provide a critique of the notion of ‘authenticity,’ and problems and contradictions related to it). In addition, you have to discuss these theoretical considerations in relation to music technologies (refer to them in each point you are making)! You can also refer to other authors from the reading list for this task.
2 Instruments/technologies perceived as authentic/inauthentic (folk/rock/EDM/pop, acoustic/electric/electronic, analog/digital, low/high, old/new, production/reproduction, etc); always write from which cultural perspective; within and/or between genres) (Frith, Gilbert and Pearson, Taylor/technostalgia, Hogarty/retro)
3 Live vs mediated as forms of authenticity (Auslander, Frith)
4 Retro technologies and authenticity (Gilbert and Pearson, Taylor/technostalgia, Hogarty/retro)
5 Authenticity and technology in world music vs global pop (Brown, Taylor/authenticity of primality, race)
6 Sampling, remixing/mash-ups and the notion of authenticity/originality/authorship—discuss relations between all three concepts as related to remix, DJing, and sampling phenomena (Gunkel, McLeod, Everything is a remix video)
7 Authenticity as related to social categories of class, gender, race. age/generation. Incorporate (more substantially) only two of the following authors/articles: Kenney (phonograph), Kearney (guitar), and Marsh/West (Madonna/Bjork) on gender; Talyor/technostalgia), Brown (global pop, race), Weheliye (on race). Here it is important to establish the notion of authenticity of gender/class/race (in relation to technology) as a social construct (vs gender or race as social construct, e.g., perceptions of authentic vs inauthentic femininity, etc).
o Each of these topics have to always be related to music technologies!
Central to discussions has to be critical examination of 1) assumptions (ideologies) and 2) constructions (and perspectives) of authenticity (i.e., contradictions)!
Further guidelines:
compare articles, and find important relations and distinctions between them.
For each article/topic/idea, provide sufficient examples/details from text. Explain relevant theories as related to author’s main arguments. Provide enough data about social context for each case. All articles/videos in bold should be included in discussion (each of the articles should be examined in substantial measure, not only briefly mentioning it).
Also, avoid summarizing whole articles (you have already done that in your assignments), unless this would be directly related to the issues of authenticity/technology (focus only on these issues). Follow more synthesis of theory approach (see here) http://explainwell.org/index.php/table-of-contents-synthesize-text/summary-and-synthesis-what-is-the-difference/ (discuss only issues related authenticity and technology from each text, and combine those passages into broader argument you are making).
It should be clear from your paper that you understand all the complexities and contradictions related to the concept of authenticity/music technologies.
Structure of the paper, include introduction with thesis statement/main argument, and add conclusion, plus discuss at least 5 sections (not necessarily in order given above).
Grading criteria:
Include a least 7-8 required articles (examine substantially), and discuss (and explain) theories from these articles, as related to the main question/authenticity/technology (+ context + critique). Demonstrate competent and critical understanding of main concept (authenticity/technology/contradictions, in all its aspects). 50%
Examples/details from articles. 25%
Originality of comparisons (added value). 5%
Form, clarity of arguments. 20%
Articles:
Readings: Libin, Laurence. 2000. “Progress, Adaptation, and the Evolution of Musical Instruments.” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, 26: 187-208(213) [3-19(22)]. Available here: https://amis.mircat.org/jamis/2000_187.pdf
Readings: Kenney, William Howland.1999. “The Gendered Phonograph: Women and Recorded Sound, 1890—1930,” 88–108 (you can skip pages 98-100, and 107-108) (In Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890–1945).
Readings: Katz, Mark. 2004. “Capturing Jazz.” In Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pages 72-84. Millard, Andre. 2000. “Tape Recording and Music Making.” In Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Braun, Hans-Joachim, ed. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 158-165 (skip last, Third World, section, 165-166).
Readings: Wicke, Peter. 2009. “The Art of Phonography: Sound, Technology, and Music.” Read only pages 151-165: skip intro, and start with “The Simulated performance,” and then skip the last section: “Simulated Sound” (in The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology, 147-168). Frith, Simon: “Art Versus Technology,” read only 263–274 (from Media, Culture, and Society, 1986). Frith’s reading available here: https://cuni.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/420CKIS_INST/1pop0hq/cdi_sage_journals_10_1177_016344386008003002
Readings: Auslander, Philip. 1999. “Is it Live, or…?” In Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized World. London and New York: Routledge, readpages24-31, 34-39(43).
Readings: Brown, Jayna. 2009. “Buzz and Rumble: Global Pop Music and Utopian Impulse.” 125-143 (you may skip pages 138-139, a section “Represent the world town,” about M.I.A.; you can also skip [or only skim] the theoretical section about utopia, on pages 128 [starting in the second paragraph], and 129 [full page]; article was published in Social Text 102: Politics of Recorded Sound). Taylor, Timothy, 1997: “Authenticity,” read only page 21 (basic definition of authenticity), and section “Authenticity as primality,” pages 26-28 (in Global Pop: World Music, World Markets). Brown’s reading available here: https://www.academia.edu/9392213/Buzz_and_Rumble_Global_Pop_Music_and_Utopian_Impulse
Readings: Gilbert, Jeremy and Ewan Pearson. 1999. “Metal Machine Music: Technology, Subjectivity, and Reception.” In Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound. New York: Routledge, read only the following pages: 110-113 (Intro + “Technology and visibility”), 115, 116 (beginning of “We are the robots,” skip the rest of it), only first full paragraph on page 118 (folk authenticity), 121-127 (“Low technologies”), 131-136 (“Empire of the senses,” abridged, read until second paragraph on p. 136—to finish the “Hacienda” section).
Readings: McLeod, Kembrew, 2015: “Autorship, Ownership, and Musical Appropriation.” In SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, pp. 598-612. Gunkel, David J. 2008. “Mash-up and Remix: The Art of Recombinant Rock’n’Roll’” (published in Popular Music and Society). Read only pages 10-12, and 13-14 (only parts marked with red in the article). McLeod’s reading available here: https://cuni.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/420CKIS_INST/1ustijj/alma9925371323506986 Watch: Everything is a remix (37 minutes; link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc).
Reading: Weheliye, Alexander Ghedi. 2023. “Hypersoul,” read only pages 54-60, and “Desiring Machines in Black Popular Music,” read pages 60-74, and skip pages 65-70 (from Chapter 2, from Feenin: R&B Music and the Materiality of BlackFem Voices and Technology).
Visit of hereandthere venue, exact date and time to be specified later in class (website: https://ra.co/promoters/127072); topics of the visit: (1) feminist and queer approaches to music technologies/spaces/events; (2) demonstration of EDM technologies. No class this week, as we go to the hereandthere venue, but you have to submit the assignment before the visit, by Wednesday, at 19h).
Readings: Kearney, Mary Celeste, 2017: “Gearing Up: Rock Technology”, read only pages 133-145(151) (in Gender and rock). Kearney’s text available here: https://cuni.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/420CKIS_INST/1ustijj/alma9925692737206986 Marsh, Charity, and Melissa West. 2003. “The Nature/Technology Binary Opposition Dismantled in the Music of Madonna and Björk.” In Music and Technoculture. Lysloff, René T. A. and Leslie C. Gay, Jr., eds. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 182-203. Read only the following pages/sections: 182-185 (intro sections), 188-189 (“Bjork’s reltionship with her co-producers”), 192-195 (“Implementing Iceland with Electronica: Bjork’s Homogenic”), 196-198 (“Conclusions”). March and West’s text available here: https://cuni.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/420CKIS_INST/1ustijj/alma9925211806206986
Readings: Taylor, Timothy D. 2001. “Technostalgia.” In Strange Sounds: Music, Technology, & Culture. New York, London: Routledge, read only 96-111 (skip last part: 111-114). Hogarty, Jean, 2016: “The technological determinism of retro culture and hauntology”, read pages 43-48 (in Popular Music and Retro Culture in the Digital Era).
Optional reading: Fisher, Mark, 2014: “The slow cancellation of the future,” read only from pages 12 (end of page) to 22 (from Chapter 0/Introduction, from Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures); Bluemink, Matt. 2021. “Anti-Hauntology: Mark Fisher, SOPHIE, and the Music of the Future.”Blue Labyrinths Link: https://bluelabyrinths.com/2021/02/02/anti-hauntology-mark-fisher-sophie-and-the-music-of-the-future/. Schrey, Dominik, 2014: “Analogue Nostalgia and the Aesthetics of Digital Remediation”, pages 27-36 (in Media and Nostalgia, edited by Katharina Niemeyer).