BeatGen Series: Introduction

I’ve been intrigued with contextualizing BeatGen with the history of western music for some time now.  For me, the music that is coming out of this generation of musicians raised on the beat, is not only exemplary of the modern age in sound, but also in how that sound is related to the broader history of music.

A few months back I wrote a piece titled “What Would My Composition Professor Think of the Beat Generation?“¹ after listening to Prefuse 73‘s² Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian³and Hudson Mohawke‘s”⁴ EP Polyfolk Dance.⁵ In particular I contrast the difference in form between them.  One stays closer to the more traditional song structures while the other figures it self like a beattape on crack, and yet both show a sign of life in form that for me exemplify the musical changes now being put forward by this movement.

The above excerpt excluded, what threw me off listening to Ampexian the first few times (I’ve since gone back and completely changed my opinion), was the lack of ‘songs’ in the 29 track piece (most unlike the above example under 2 minutes in length).  This makes it notably different, even in the beattape format, though not necessarily to a fault.  As I say:

“If you string a bunch of those genius thoughts together and call it an album, who am I to knock you for not finishing a song. I guess that’s why it’s called the beat generation and not the song generation.”

But my concept of song then was so fixed on popular traditions in my initial reactions I completely missed the point.  Thankfully Prefuse later clarified things in an interview:⁶

“I wanted the whole thing to be one continuous piece called Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian. But, due to the fact that it’s on a label, you have to index songs and separate them and have them on iTunes for download. It’s something that I was told to do, and I did. It’s not a bad compromise; it’s something that you just agree on. But, at the same time, I feel like it confuses people. It makes people think that you have these 30-second songs that don’t go anywhere, when they’re really parts of a continuum”

Within this context the complete work takes on a shape more closely aligned with classical  composition forms (though not necessarily traditional), with their musical movements, than popular ones that emphasize the ‘song’ fundamental.  Upon revisiting the album later I started to hear it like an epic poem or vocal-less opera.

Compared to Polyfolk, with its deconstruction of popular motifs, its easy to separate the two modes into different categories.  Indeed were we speaking of traditional musical forms, pieces of such distinction would be shoved in opposite corners to be analyzed on their own terms.  Yet these pieces and the many others being born from the BeatGen are definitive markers of a transition period in the history of music in which the form isn’t the unifier but rather the techniques.  Every aspect of the production of music, from instrument to structure and forms have become modular, making the form itself a function of the creativity not just the canvas.

“The essence of art is form: it is to defeat oppositions, to conquer opposing forces, to create coherence from every centrifugal force, from all things that have been deeply and eternally alien to one another before and outside of this form.”

This quote is attributed to philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukåcs in Alex Ross’ excellent history of 20th Century music in the west, The Rest is Noise.⁷ It is doubtful Lukåcs could even imagine a music like that being produced by BeatGen, and yet almost a century after making the quote it still holds its weight.  For the BeatGen, the form is both the opposition and the answer.  Working with it in a mutable manner makes them the alien of modern music.  But if sci-fi has taught us anything it is that when we look deep, the alien is just like us.  Within this series I aim to look closely at the rise of BeatGen within a historical context as a means of showing how they are helping to usher in the new musical paradigm.

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Audio

• Prefuse 73 “Simple Loop Choir” from the album Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

• Hudson Mohawke “Velvet Peel” from the Polyfolk Dance EP

References

¹ Primus Luta “What Would My Composition Professor Think of the Beat Generation” Small Pro’s MySpace Blog, 5 May 2009 <http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=13064015&blogId=487486144>

² ”Prefuse 73,” MusicBrainz <http://musicbrainz.org/artist/fc61dd75-880b-44ba-9ba9-c7b643d33413.html>

³ ”Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian,” MusicBrainz <http://musicbrainz.org/release/76031375-3002-4be5-bce6-683ebdd02b1f.html>

⁴ Hudson Mohawke,” MusicBrainz <http://musicbrainz.org/artist/3d403d44-36ce-465c-ad43-ae877e65adc4.html>

⁵ “Polyfolk Dance,” MusicBrainz <http://musicbrainz.org/release/d1e1c7a9-d686-43a7-a297-c4cca22549f6.html>

⁶ Trevor Hunter, “Guillermo Scott Heron: Cut Through the Noise” New Music Box, 1 June 2009 <http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=6017>

⁷ Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise (New York, 2007) 84.

You May Want To Read:

• BeatGen Series: BeatGenealogy
• BeatGen Series: First Principles
• Vanguard – The Sound of Tomorrow, Today