Distortion: The Saga of the Obfuscation of African Music

Distortion: The Saga of the Obfuscation of African Music

dis·tor·tion                (disˈtôrSHən)

1. the action of distorting or the state of being distorted.

2. the action of giving a misleading account or impression.

3. change in the form of an electrical signal or sound wave during processing.

-- Distortion, as defined by Google Search

We are all familiar with the music we grew up with. Some of us grew up listening to our parents’ classic rock. Some of us grew up listening to country. Some of us were raised by rap, some were suckled by swing, some were parented by pop. Maybe a few of us moved to reggae. Perhaps one or two danced the samba. Once in a blue moon we find a disciple of Bollywood showtunes or Cantopop. We are connected in our differences. They bespeak our histories, our genealogies, our origins. We each start our journeys into the sonic landscape from somewhere.
But we age. The world around us ages. Things become less clear than they were when we were children. Old scenes lose their majesty. New ones excite and frighten us. The music we listen to changes as we search for ways to free emotions we have never had to express before. We become adults, and the world fades from black and white to a muddy gray. Lines blur. Genres blur.
Things become distorted.
In the eyes of the West, Africa was a child in 1885. Thanks to the Berlin Conference, the entire continent save Liberia and Ethiopia had been given over to the administration of European countries (Aronson 1999). European perception of “The Dark Continent” may not have mattered before, but it certainly had a direct impact on the African consciousness once Europeans were in control of the political landscape.
For seventy years, Africa was treated as a child. It was raised on the foreign nectar of civilized music, struggling to stomach new values and customs and scales. Its composite cultures were forced to claw just to maintain their identities. And in 1945, with dreadful slowness, Africa began to enter puberty (“Decolonization”).
Things became distorted.

1. The Action of Distorting or the State of Being Distorted

To distort is to actively make something harder to perceive truthfully. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to accidentally distort something - I’m sure many a tale of wild nights past has picked up enhancements in the telling. But it does mean that no distortion can happen through inaction. For example, let’s take Steven Feld’s account of an interview of jazz singer Leon Thomas: “Q: Have you been to Africa? A: Naw. Africa is where I am. The most primitive people in Africa sing like me” (Feld 1996: 8)

Thomas gives a misleading account here - we’ll get into that later. What’s important is what question was asked. “Have you been to Africa?” A simple yes or no question. An absolutely minimal amount of distortion would have occurred had Thomas just answered “No.” But he opted to elaborate; in other words, he took unnecessary action in an area he was unqualified to speak authoritatively on. In doing so he distorts the African music traditions by equating them simply to himself. Any nuance has been lost. Which brings us to the second half of the definition - the state of being distorted. Being distorted. Receiving the distortion. It is a perfectly passive state. Even though something can distort itself, the self as a whole must still be acted upon by some discrete force to be distorted. In this scenario, African music is being distorted. It has no voice with which to deny or nuance Thomas’ claim with. Over and over we find Africans in a situation where they are powerless to influence how people perceive their music - the shoddy attributing of Sublime Frequencies (Novak 2011: 611), the lack of African names among the curators of African music blogs in Simonini’s catalog; without musical agency the African musician is forced to rely on his decontextualised produce to speak for itself, providing him with considerably less freedom to experiment due to the necessity of remaining comprehensible to the uninformed.

2. The Action of Giving a Misleading Account or Impression

To the casual American listener, British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A.’s music is just another glorification of gangster culture. It’s replete with “gunfire, bombs, and random explosions of electrified sound” (Brown 2010: 139) and by her own admission

All I wanna do is

(BANG BANG BANG BANG!)

And (KKKAAAA CHING!)

And take your money

(M.I.A., “Paper Planes”). But further examination of her lyrics contextualises its violence and criminality within the violence and criminality of a war zone, and makes “Paper Planes” seem more like a parody of attitudes towards immigration than a hustler’s ethic (M.I.A, “20 Dollar”) . Already Western popular culture has distorted the meaning of music. But this music is of a decidedly Western form, and M.I.A. herself isn’t African, even though she references it in her music (Ibid.). Indeed, upon even deeper examination of her lyrics we stumble across this interesting tidbit - “Somewhere in Angola we're still craving for a goat” (M.I.A., “Shells”). She refers to Angolans as “we” even though she’s never lived there. It would be disrespectful to claim that she hasn’t stimulated discussion about the plight of refugees in Africa, but this co-optation of experience is precisely the kind of distortion that prevents primary sources from presenting authentic African experiences. M.I.A. causes her audience to perceive her as the voice of Africa, wittingly or unwittingly. And it distorts their perception of the African perspective.

We find similar distortions in the work of Herbie Hancock - “brothers, we’re all making African music” (Feld 1996: 6) and American blogger John Beadle - “it can be cheesy and derivative...but this is the sort of music that the masses in Africa listen to.” Partaking in such distortion requires a declaration, a statement which implies that the speaker understands perfectly that which he is discoursing on. And declarations are decidedly one-way transactions. While the declarer might have taken influence from her subject, as M.I.A. has through Angolan kuduro culture (pictured left), she claims ultimate domain over it through her declaration regardless of her actual involvement. (Brown 2010: 140)

Perhaps the best example of M.I.A.’s unsuitability as an Angolan spokesperson is found in an examination of the kuduro culture she draws on. Kuduro dancers are often amputees, and “kuduro is a specific celebration of the broken body” (Brown 2010: 141). Angola is in fact a war-torn country, and has been for “at least two generations.” (Ibid.) Although M.I.A. experienced some of the realities of war in Sri Lanka, she can hardly be portrayed as as familiar with war as an Angolan amputee. Their accounts are the ones missing from the record. They must filter their stories out to the world through an intermediary. And it inevitably distorts them.

3. Change in the Form of an Electrical Signal or Sound Wave During Processing

“Distortion is a crucial proof of world music’s authenticity...first, it verifies that regional popular music is still ‘raw’ and therefore unintegrated into the fidelities of the music industry. But second, and equally important, distortion echoes the local sonic aesthetics of the North American underground.” (Novak 2011: 627)

Physical distortion of media is often unavoidable. In environments as technologically primitive as Africa tends to be, it most certainly is. For Africans, “Some of this distortion is taken for granted, rendered invisible to people by its ubiquity.” But some of it echoes an aesthetic just as powerful and unique as the one it evokes in America. Nigerian cassette hawkers often play samples “at such a high volume that the signal degenerates into the pure vibration of the machine.” This isn’t done to achieve an underground aesthetic; on the contrary, it is meant to evoke the sounds of Nigerian concerts and their overtaxed sound equipment (Larkin 2004: 307). Instead of attempting to compensate for the relative inferiority of their equipment, the Nigerian music scene has simply constructed an aesthetic around it. And this phenomenon is hardly limited to Nigeria or even to Africa; Novak speaks briefly of it as a general circumstance (Novak 2011: 627). But the most compelling implementation of physical distortion happens in Africa, completely by accident.

Konono No. 1.

    Congolese group Konono No. 1’s 2005 album Congotronics found international appeal as an iteration of experimental electrofolk. Their Belgian record label insisted that the distortion produced by the jerry-rigged amplifiers the album was recorded on was “the product of local conditions and not aesthetic intention” (Novak 2011: 628) Potential Western motive distortion aside, Congotronics achieved a mix of sounds that managed to “slip somewhere between underground and world music” (Ibid.) This is perhaps the most important distortion of all: the distortion of boundaries. This is the kind of distortion that opens doors instead of closing them. Every genre that has ever existed could be expressed as a distortion of another. Physical distortion, then, is not as much an obfuscation of African music; or at least, it does not have to be. It can be an extension. It can be an expression. It is undoubtedly part of the African sonic landscape, just as much as Congolese guitar or Tanzanian hip-hop.
It would be improper to speak of the “maturation” of African music. There are well-developed musical cultures in Africa that predate European contact by centuries. But it is also improper to speak of the development of African music without acknowledging that it developed in relation to the dominant cultural force - Western culture. The assimilation, then, of African music into the global sonic landscape is a story told in distortions. Curated by non-Africans (Simonini 2008), presented to a community with little to understand it with and little incentive to try, personified in mysterious, dusty, warped cassettes and unlabeled disks. And yet, a personality has struggled through. Stories have certainly been told. Sounds have been defined and popularized. African music is there for the finding, if one only knows where to look. And each of us will receive it differently: for perhaps the greatest distortion of all lies in interpretation.

Works Cited

Aronson, Goran. "The Berlin Conference." Conference of Berlin: 1884. http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/africa/berlinconf.html (accessed April 28, 2014).

Brown, Jayna. 2010. “Buzz and Rumble: Global Pop Music and Utopian Impulse.” Social Text 28, no. 1: 125-146. Accessed April 24, 2014, doi: 10.1215/01642472-2009-063.

Feld, Steven. 1996. “Pygmy POP. A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 1-35. Accessed April 24, 2014, doi: 10.2307/767805

Larkin, Brian. 2004. “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy.” Public Culture 16, no. 2: 289-314. Accessed April 24, 2014, http://muse.jhu.edu.revproxy.brown.edu/journals/public_culture/v016/16.2larkin.html.

M.I.A. "'20 Dollar' Lyrics." AZLyrics. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mia/20dollar.html (accessed April 28, 2014).

--- "’Paper Planes’ Lyrics." AZLyrics. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mia/paperplanes.html (accessed April 28, 2014).

--- "'Shells' Lyrics." AZLyrics. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mia/shells.html (accessed April 28, 2014).

Novak, David. 2011. "The Sublime Frequencies of New Old Media." Public Culture 23, no. 3: 603-634. SocINDEX with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed April 24, 2014).

Simonini, Ross. "Mining African Blog Riches." Village Voice. N.p., 19 Aug. 2008. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-19/music/mining-african-blog-riches/full/.

"Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 - 1945–1952 - Milestones - Office of the Historian." Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 - 1945–1952 - Milestones - Office of the Historian. http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asia-and-africa (accessed April 27, 2014).

Ethnographic Description Mark Deux

I attended an African Dance workshop at the Rhody Center on 3/20/2014, thanks to RIPTA difficulties preventing my attendance of a Sidy Maiga event on the 19th. The dances here are singluarly undulatory. Much focus is put on the outspreading of arms and the flowing of shoulders and hips. One dance is seated, with mannerisms akin to a blooming flower. There was also an exercise performed in a tight circle with the instructor in the middle. The instructor remains still and loose and the dancers in the circle pass him around to each other by way of light pushes. The music shows no reserve about completely changing its affect and rhythm at a moment's notice. Drums are highly prominent. Some of the melodic and rhythm instruments show a distinctly Western influence and even stray into electronica. The social environment is extremely open -they're learning a dance called "lady butts" as far as I can tell, and this does not seem to be a source of anxient for anyone here. The dancers are all women except for the teacher, between the ages of 12 and 50 or so by my measure. The physical environment is a straightforward European-style dance studio. There's a piano in the corner but it is not used for this class. As this is a class and not a true performance (but certainly a performative event) there isn't really an audience aside from me, but then again, in some African viewpoints, the learners are the audience since "audience" is an interactive terms for many African societies. They are a willing and excited crowd save the youngest, who looks a little out of her element. The audience is fairly diverse, with two white women, a black woman, a Hispanic woman, and an Indian or Pakistani girl. The instructor has a slight Ethiopian accent. There was an instance where the youngest sat out to the side for a period - this was not acknowledged nor was it condemned. This speaks of a free-flowing performance environment where the "audience" is invited to take part in whatever ways they wish. Important to note I think is that the music is canned - there can be no interaction between the dancers and the musicians because the musicians are not present. This provides quite a significant cultural disjoint for me, since it feels very much tailored to outsiders. The audience-performers engage with varying degrees of zeal - the oldest here gets quite into the whole thing and pays rapt attention to the instructor, while the youngest, as I mentioned before, is much more reserved.. The instructor maintains a very effective balance between businesslike and friendly. His motions are especially flowing and calculated. The overall experience is extremely welcoming - my entry was treated as normal, and there is much laughter and dialogue between the dancers themselves and the instructor. One of the dancers' suggestions was even incorporated into the circle exercise, that the center person cross their arms over their chest so as to feel more natural. The end was extremely organic, with the conclusion signalled with a single clap of the hands and a "Thank you."

CRITICAL REVIEW: DAVID LOCKE 3/6/2014

CR/DQ: Locke explores his role as a Caucasian who's chosen to spend his life on African music and the culture surrounding it. Part of this exploration deals with the validity of his teaching from that role and an examination of the impact the African musical enigma undergoes when subjected to the harsh light of Western scholarly discourse. The most interesting duality the Locke examines is that between the African method of teaching and the Western method. Locke talks about this distinction with a keen eye to the effect it has on the actual performance and style of the music, noting that African musicians are taught the music in relation to other parts while Western musicians are taught their respective parts as complementary to other parts. And when performing, Locke points out that that value system is evident in the more heavily communal, intuitive stylings of Ewe drumming. Locke mentions various African drum teachers throughout this excerpt, but the most interesting quote he includes from them portrays the African music school in a very ambiguous light - when Lunna admonishes his students "Don't play jazz!" when the students stray beyond the confines of "the drum language," there's a heavy undertone of traditionalism - a sense that the Ewe drumming world is less dynamic and innovative that might initially appear. Locke isn't by any means short of praise for the compelling method of Ewe drumming, so this sentiment seems a little out of place. Locke is understandably concerned about the plight of Ewe drumming, especially fearful that it might be lost, but why does this extend to the idea that no other musical stylings can be incorporated into the Ewe method? Is the style not distinctive enough to be recognizable with such tinges?

HOLY COW LOOK AT THOSE SOURCES

Wassup my musical homies.
So I read the comments you guys left me (shoutout to Ana and Chelsie)

and after some deep soul-searching

I figured you guys were probably right about my proposal being too broad. I was too excited.

So bearing that in mind, I've amended my initial proposal to the following. I will attempt to analyze the underground of hip-hop specifically, it being the genre most likely to accurately reflect Western influences, precisely because it's a Western art form. The West's contribution to rap is very clearly defined, and thus it becomes easier to strain out the purely African characteristics present in the African version. I don't want to narrow down my geographical scope, though - I feel it's appropriate for a final project.

SICK SOURCE GAME ENGAGED

African Hip-Hop Web Exposure - This one is awesome. It pointed me to africanhiphop.com, which is basically a live feed of exactly what I'm researching. The guy who runs it seems really cool, too - I might try and hit him up for an interview via email.
The Hip-Hop Generation - This will sprinkle some social awareness in here. Evaluating music in its own right is all well and good, but to understand it I need to know the environment it was created in.
African Underground Vol. 1: Hip Hop Senegal - Unorthodox as a scholarly source, I know - but this topic calls for hands-on research. Limited to the Senegalese scene, sadly, but it appears to be a vibrant one.
Power of Unity This 2000 Pan-African Movement hip-hop compilation is probably the strongest primary source I've found. Also tenuous as a scholarly source, but too good to pass up. I've already requested it, so hands off.
The Hiplife In Ghana - Interesting in its promise of an evaluation of the hip-hop culture that tends to be inseparable from the music itself - here I can research all the ancillary bits of African hip-hop and how they (break boys and DJs, particularly) used the new forms to showcase what they already had.

Bundle up.

RESEARCH IS COMING.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

WELCOME TO MY BLOG.

It is about African music and I hope that appeals to you.^{let's be real tho if you're reading this you're probably in the class too}
So introductions aside.

I had a preliminary research project proposal due on Tuesday which I didn't do due to extreme levels of I forgot to, so here's a makeup proposal that's serve as my final proposal.
The thing that's stuck out the most to me about the African music we've studied so far is that it is inexorably linked to America. It occurred to me relatively shortly after that that that was because I'm studying it...in America.
So I thought - if all the music that comes to America's attention is already tainted by the consumerist pandering it takes to get America's attention, then if I want to get at the heart of what African music is about...
^{Which I do.}
...then I need to get at the music that America hasn't gotten its grubby little hands on.
Which leads me to my proposal.
I'm going to research the African underground. Every artist, in every country, in every genre that the Internet has access to. And when I'm done, I'm going to depict it as a landscape however I think will represent it best. So.

HERE WE GO.