Does Recycling of Styles and Imitation Art Stimulate the Diffusion of Innovations in Popular Art?
To me, yes, it is.
(This short piece was written by yours truly, on 17 February 2020, for The Changing Social and Economic Position of the Arts in Society (CC4121) course at Erasmus University Rotterdam, with a little bit of modification.)
Looking at the “recycle” word, this reminds me instantly of Baz Luhrmann’s Netflix hip-hop series, “The Get Down,” centred around the musician Grandmaster Flash, the historical figure of hip-hop and DJ culture in America. In hip-hop music, sampling has become one of the most prominent methods in creating new music until today. It is renowned as the foundation that underlies in hip-hop genre since the 1980s. I find that the sampling method in music was an innovative way for how the community was able to express the art through remixes of many tracks, as it was told in the Netflix series. It is also proven to be a tool for black community political act, creating an innovative way to voice their vernacular thoughts (McNamee, 2008).
Relating to the serious art phenomenon, hip-hop nowadays can be said a popular art. However, if we imagine ourselves living in the 1980s, we might have asked ourselves to what category are the newly invented method of hip-hop in the era that was created by Grandmaster Flash counted. Does it count as serious art or popular art? Grandmaster Flash himself can be said as one of the avant-garde cliques in the late 1970s. Within the hip-hop scene and community, he was one of the DJs that created diversification of hip-hop style in 1981. His famous single, “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” consists only of ten sampled tracks from other musicians. Since his hit single created a new term and has become a guru in turntablism, this new method can be said as a sacred object, or even the opposite, a premature success (Abbing, 2019). However, this is not the case as we must have heard many samples in music along the way in history until today, making it not very much…sacred.
With the rising sampling phenomenon in the 1980s started by New York DJs, electronic music equipment producers began creating new products. Before, the DJs did the sampling by manual method, using several turntables to play lots of songs to be sampled. Thus, in the late 1980s, the equipment producers make the tools to make more accessible samples such as AKAI MPC and E-Mu SP-1200 (The Economist, 2011). The rising number of DJ sampling creates overall recycling that enhances innovation for the musicians and music technicians. With soaring entrants of hip-hop musicians who want to create new music with similar methods, the sampling occurrence creates more genres, sub-genres, or even sub-genres throughout the year. This creates a useful endless feedback loop for musicians, but at one end, it can also create mainstream art instead of inventive ones.
Nowadays, sampling has become one of the most imitated methods, in the right way, as it has become the footstall in the music industry, and not just in hip-hop. This makes sampling that might have been said to be the foundation of serious art become typical in music that can be categorized in popular art, such as “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice, notably sampling “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie. Sampling innovation might have been perceived as a disruptive one, as it can be seen as glorifying nostalgia or stealing it. To the community and hip-hop lovers, sampling might have come as an organic process when it was born. With samples, the scene or the community can get a chance to be a part of the evolution of the music that they love and be linked with it as it becomes something new again (Ronson, 2014).
Source:
Abbing, H. (2019). The Changing Social Economy of Art. London: Palgrave.
McNamee, D. (2008, February 16). When did sampling become so non-threatening? Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/feb/16/whendidsamplingbecamesono
Ronson, M. (2014, March). How sampling transformed music. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_ronson_how_sampling_transformed_music/detaislanguage=en
The Economist. (2011, December 17). Seven seconds of fire. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2011/12/17/seven-seconds-of-fire
