My academic Curriculum Vitæ (pdf)
With its almost exclusive focus on the economics of the music industry, the early-21st century debate over digital music piracy has obscured other vital areas of study in the relationship between popular music and the Internet. This thesis addresses some of these neglected areas, specifically issues of agency, representation, discipline, and authority; it examines each of these in relationship to the formation and maintenance different online music communities. I argue that contemporary online trends related to music promotion, consumption, and criticism are, in fact, part of a much larger socio-cultural re-envisioning of the relationships between artists and audiences, artists and the music industry, and among audience members themselves. The relationship between music and the Internet is not only subversive on the level of economics.
I examine these issues in three key areas. Independent women’s music communities challenge patriarchal authority in the music industry as they use online discussion forums and websites to advance their own careers. The tension that exists between the traditional for-profit music industry and the developing ethic of sharing in the filesharing community creates the conditions whereby we can imagine alternative ways that music can circulate in culture. “Citizen media,” such as blogs and open source encyclopædias, allows for those who otherwise had no avenue for presenting their thoughts and ideas to engage in public discourse. Traditional understandings of authority and expertise are subject to revision as new ways of assessing authority develop for online sources. This is also evident in the struggles of old-media groups in reconciling their established publishing and editorial practices with emergent online practices.
This thesis foregrounds the work of individuals by drawing extensively from interviews, personal blogs, and online discussion forums. In this way, the monolithic “grand narratives” of the Internet, such as the filesharing “battle” or the democratic potential of online discourse, are shown to be the product of many individual subjectivities, each of whom contribute to authoring the online environment.
Through Foucault’s and Barthes’s questioning of authorship, I suggest that there is no stable “Internet.” There is no one “thing” that makes it so, and there is no one “creator” or “author” of the Internet. The “thing” that is the Internet is an event borne of a community of “authors” each with an unstable identity of their own who create ever-changing content that exists in a fluid temporal environment. Foucault’s vision of “a culture where discourse would circulate without any need for an author,” is, I believe, very much in evidence as users experience the aggregation of heteroglottic Internet content. Users experience the Internet as a relatively authorless, or at the very least, a multi-authored environment. It is the relative lack of single authorship that I believe leads us to objectify (or attempt to stabilise) “the Internet” and a failure to acknowledge its temporality. Much more useful is the understanding that the Internet, much like Barthes vision of a “text,” is “[…] made up of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation […]”
In an effort to establish a useable strategic paradigm for understanding the effects and affects of Internet participation, I present three unique conceptions of Internet culture. Pippa Norris, examines Robert Putnam’s notions of “bridging” and “bonding” communities, Donna Haraway expands on Chela Sandoval’s “oppositional consciousness” thesis, presenting “affinity” as a key concept in postmodern feminist studies, and Manuel Castells presents a four-fold concept of Internet structure which establishes a workable taxonomy of types of Internet participation.
The Internet provides many opportunities for changing the way music is promoted to fans and potential listeners. The use of the web in this way changes the existing relationship between artist and audience member. The Internet opens up a unique space for women artists to challenge the established patriarchical framework of the music industry.
It is useful to see the Internet not as a communications device (there is no one thing that is the Internet) but rather as a dialogic event (or series of events) or relationship (or series of relationships). Thus, the event itself is a dialogic phenomenon, the result of multiple, distinct, and simultaneous communicative happenings. Understood as such, the Internet is a dynamic process in which meaning is created through the interactions between Internet “users” and between the user and online content. This last distinction is somewhat blurry, as I shall show, because the line between user and content is precisely that which is constantly crossed as Internet users participate in the constant (re)production of Internet content. This essay also features sections from “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves.”
“A Man”, from Alanis Morissette’s Under Rug Swept (2002), finds the artist involved in an intriguing form of lyrical cross-dressing. While Morissette is no stranger to foregrounding gender roles and conflict in her songs, with “A Man” she is in decidedly unfamiliar territory – she is singing from a male perspective.
“The Hendrix Chord: Gender performance in ‘Foxey Lady’ and ‘Purple Haze’”, March 2005 (PDF, 22kb)
Two disparate aspects of Jimi Hendrix’s gender identity and relationship with power are represented in these two songs. Furthermore, the tonal ambiguity of the 7#9, or “Hendrix chord”, serves to underscore these aspects.
John Zorn is an enigmatic figure in the world of avant garde jazz. This paper explores transtextual elements present in the recording “Black Chamber” from the “Thrash/Jazz” trio Painkiller’s album Buried Secrets.
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