Postmodern music

Research based task:

The focus of your task will be postmodernism in relation to music. Please read
through this sheet carefully before asking me any questions as most of the
answers can be found in this document.

Theories and questions to help

Homage does your chosen artist use other peoples music in a respectful way?
Are they bringing a potentially overlooked or forgotten style to a new audience?

- Used his music as a voice for the struggle throughout Compton. NWA and
the police etc. Black rights. Straight outta Compton film.

- Has a song dedicated to his late brother who was shot dead by the police.
The Message.

- Influenced by Parliament Funkadelic, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Isaac

Hayes, Afrika Bambaataa, Run DMC, Schooly D, Public Enemy

Parody does your chosen artist use other peoples music in order to mock it
and its fans? Are they attempting to damage the authority of a style of music?

Bricolage does your chosen artist use music from different time periods or
genres? Does this change the meaning of the original song?

- Uses a sample from Led Zeppelins When the levee breaks in his song
Lyrical Gangbang

- Many other samples used in his song, refer to whosampled.com

Intertextual References does your artist reference other songs (lyrically,

melodically, stylistically, visually) in their work?

Simulacrum Is your artist real or merely playing a character? For many

mainstream artists, their image is just as important as their sound (if not more
so), postmodern artists play with ideas of image in the way they represent
themselves.

- Uses the stage name Dr Dre, his real name is Andre Young

Consumption how does your chosen artist wish their music to be consumed?
Is there an artefact (object) that accompanies their music?

- Created the headphone brand called Beats by Dr Dre.

Creation how does your artist create their music, are they a musician, a
songwriter, a composer,

- Dre is a Rapper, songwriter and a record producer.

Performance does your artist play live? Is there a show to accompany? Is
there a style to their videos? What if any interaction is there with their
audience? [No strong sense of history or the future. Alienation is
abolished by saying, 'Utopia is now' as in raves or music festivals. Even
a critic of postmodernism like Hans Magnus Enzensburger has observed,
'consumption as spectacle is in parody form the anticipation of a utopian
situation' (1974).]

- Dr Dre performs live; he did with NWA as well as solo with other artists
whom he has collaborated with.

Influence Has your artist influenced the wider world of music (are other artists
keen to collaborate, have mainstream artists appropriated their sound)?

- He has influenced artists like Eminem

- 50 Cent

- The Game

- Pharell/The Neptunes

- Jermaine Dupri

- Jay-Z

- Nas

- Busta Rhymes

For the higher grades you will need to have an understanding of music that
relates to the following areas:

the postmodern sensibility that anything can be considered cool in an

ironic I know its bad, but its so bad its good way

Work that is created based (entirely or in part) on older material.

This incorporates sampling and will take you from the realms of hip hop
culture transporting you finally in todays modern fragmented musical
landscape. You will have to listen to some of the artists to fully appreciate
them and their work.

Audiences that are both niche and mainstream. E.g.: Radio 1, 1xtra, BBC6,
XFM

MUSIC AND POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism celebrates the end of what the French philosopher Jean Franois
Lyotard calls the 'grand narratives' of history - reason, progress and socialism
and the dissolving of semiotics into a merely libidinal 'energetics'. Nothing is
fixed any more, and ideology is in a war of position, a struggle for space
Postmodernist philosophers like Jean Baudrillard emphasise how the barriers
between art, literature and a wider political and social life are now non-existent.
Bono and Chris Martin (both, ageing male rock stars) become authorities on the
environment and development economics). School students know more of the
cultural life of their country (TV, films, and above all the internet and its
applications) than teachers.