LYSLOFF_Ethnomusicology - Tehnology and the Politics of Representation

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Mozart in Mirrorshades: Ethnomusicology, Technology, and the Politics of RepresentationAuthor(s): Ren T. A. LysloffReviewed work(s):Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 41, No. 2, Special Issue: Issues in Ethnomusicology (Spring -Summer, 1997), pp. 206-219Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852603 .

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VOL. 41, NO. 2 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY SPRING/SUMMER997

Mozart in Mirrorshades:Ethnomusicology, Technology,and the Politics of RepresentationRENET. A. LYSLOFF UNIVERSITY F CALIFORNIA, IVERSIDE

T ime travel is perhaps one of the most widely encountered themes inscience fiction and, in the cyberpunk sci-fi story "Mozart n Mirror-shades"(Sterlingand Shiner 1985), the idea of changing history is given anironic postmodern twist. In this irreverent tale of the collision of Europeanhighbrow and American lowbrow cultures, time is not a single thread run-ning from the past through the present and into the future. Instead it is mal-leable, with infinite possibilities: changing the past simply creates an alter-native thread of time while our own remains unaffected. Thus, timetravelers could do whatever they wanted, altering and corrupting the pastwithout the dangerof a temporal paradox or some other threat to their ownpresent. In such a scenario, history itself is the object of economic exploi-tation and expansion, offering a virtually limitless supply of natural andcultural resources while also providing an abundance of cheap industriallabor as well as a vast marketfor inexpensive and disposable manufacturedgoods. In a nutshell, the past becomes the future's third world.To summarizethe story, Mozart's ife is radicallyand irrevocablyalteredwith the arrival of rapacious time-traveling technocrats (ostensibly fromAmerica's near future). With their considerably superior technology andscientific knowledge, the time travelers proceed to extract the natural andcultural resources of 1775 Europe. In two years, they build several giganticpetrochemical refineries with pipelines reachingoil reserves throughouttheplanet, bringingtheir own heavy equipment from the future and employinglocal labor fromthe past. Inexchange, they offercheap manufacturedgoods,commodifiable technology, and limited scientific knowledge to the natives.The past thus becomes "modernized"with electricity, electronic gadgetry,mass media, popular culture, and twenty-first-century ashion.? 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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Mozart in Mirrorshades 207Along with many other young natives, Mozartis profoundly influenced

by the media technology and popular music brought by the time-travelers.Indeed, he falls in love with the musical possibilities of the future andmanages to purchase various kinds of electronic audio equipment. Listen-ing to the radio and numerous cassette tapes acquired from the time trav-elers, he quickly teaches himself the rock idiom. Discarding his powderedwig, velvet waistcoat, and knee breeches, Mozart now sports a bristlinghedgehog haircut, faded jeans, camo jacket, and mirrored sunglasses. As ahashish-smoking rock musician, Mozart is soon the rage of Salzburg.Oneof his concerts is described in the story as follows: "Minuetlikeguitar ar-peggios screamed over sequenced choral motifs. Stacks of amps blastedsynthesizer riffs lifted from a tape of K-Telpop hits. The howling audienceshowered Mozartwith confetti stripped from the club's hand-paintedwall-paper" (Ibid.:229).Indeed, Mozartenjoys far greater success in the hi-tech popular musicscene than he does seeking court or church patronage with his more tra-ditional compositions. In any case, the many pieces he was to have writ-ten later in his life are now alreadyavailable on commercial cassette tapes.Furthermore,he learns from the history books provided by one of the timetravelers that, for him, classical music is a far too dangerous profession andpursuing it would assuredly mean his own eventual death in poverty. As aclever young man, Mozart thus modifies his musical interests to alter thecourse of his own destiny. In the end, "Wolf"as he is now called, is givena "green card" and allowed to emigrate to the future where his music hasalready hit the charts.Music and Technoculture

I use "Mozart n Mirrorshades"o illustrate an aspect of culture that hasbeen largely ignored by ethnomusicologists. Although the general issue ofcultural imperialismwas introduced several decades ago, it was as recentlyas 1986, when this story first appeared, that music scholars (mostly thosespecializing in popular music) were beginning to discuss in earnest theglobal impact of Anglo-Europeanmass media and popular culture.Yet, mostof these studies have tended to focus on the software of media technology(that is, the "industry"and its products).1While remainingwithin the general discussion of cultural imperialism,I want to shift attention toward the widely distributed electronic hardwareof media technology: the radios, microphones, amplifiers, cassette taperecorders, stereo systems, CD players, and so forth, that are now so mucha part of our everyday lives that it would be difficult to imagine being with-out them. At this point I want to introduce the term "technoculture" and



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208 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997define it according to severalessays by Andrew Ross (see, for example, Rossand Penley [1991] and Ross [1991]). Ross argues that the recent media andinformation technologies have given rise to new communities and formsof cultural practice. The term technoculture, according to him, describessocial groups and behaviors characterized by creative strategies of techno-logical adaptation,avoidance, subversion, or resistance. Furthermore,Rossargues that "itis important to understand technology not as a mechanicalimposition on our lives but as a fully culturalprocess, soaked through withsocial meaning that only makes sense in the context of familiar kinds ofbehavior"(1991:3). Technology, then, is not simply the social andpersonalintrusions of big science made manifest; it also permeates and informs al-most every aspect of human experiences."Mozartn Mirrorshades"brings this argument closer to home. With apostmodern juxtaposition of nostalgia for the past and cynicism about thefuture, old world tradition and "brave new world" technoculture arebrought into direct conflict in the body of Mozart. The story thus drama-tizes the often adversarialrelationship between technology and culture,particularly he new media technology and what is considered "traditional"culture. Extending Ross's concept of technoculture further, I want to ar-gue that changing technologies implicate culturalpractices and epistemolo-gies involving music-and not only popular music. It is important to notethat, even while we may deny its power over us, electronic technology israpidly becoming the primary means through which we experience mu-sic. Increasingly,the CD or cassette (or phonograph) recording is no longersupplemental to the experiencing of live musical performance. More oftenthan not, it is the reverse: mediated performance has now become theoriginatingsource for experiencing a given music. Furthermore,a great dealof music is now more commonly conceived with this same audio technol-ogy in mind, created to be experienced through the home stereo or theradio rather than through live performance.As PaulTheberge argues, "elec-tronic technologies and the industries that supply them are not simply thetechnical and economic context within which 'music' is made, but rather,they are among the very preconditions for contemporary musical culture,thought of in its broadest sense, in the latter half of the twentieth century"(1993:151; my emphasis).Thus,because of the far-reachingmplicationsof musical technoculture,we must consider a broad spectrum of practices and epistemologies-notonly techno-musical sub- and countercultures, but behaviors andknowledges ranging from traditional institutions on the one hand to con-temporary music scholarship on the other. By examining technoculturesof music, we can overcome the conventional distinction, even conflict,between technology and culture, implicit especially in studies of "tradi-tional"musics in the field of ethnomusicology.



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Mozart in Mirrorshades 209Representing the Other

Common sense tells us that technology, rather than being part of ourlived experience, only mediates it. Until recently, this view has been ap-parent in much of the ethnomusicological literature and the various record-ing methods used to represent the soundscape of the musical Other. Ethno-musicologists are allowed, even encouraged, to use technology in research,bringing to the field cameras, cassette tape players (or now, digital audiorecorders), microphones, handycams, and so on. Upon return from thefield, we listen to our material on our stereos, view it on our VCRsand colortelevisions, and write about it on our personal computers. Some research-ers edit, analyze, and recontextualize recorded material with sophisticatedelectronic studio equipment. Others, if their recordings are marketable,might even distribute their field materialsthrough commercial record com-panies. We might say, then, that technology privileges researchers, distanc-ing them from the object of research-whether musical or human-andallowing them to control it. Indeed, the sound document becomes a trueobject: isolated from the noisy chaos of real life in the field it becomesanalyzable, frameable, manipulable, and ultimately... exploitable.The technologically privileged position of the ethnomusicologist islargely assumed in the literature.After all, the history of ethnomusicologyis closely linked to the history of audio recording. Writing on "field tech-nology" in the widely used graduate textbook, Ethnomusicology: an In-troduction, Helen Myerscomplains about the declining standardsof record-ing in the field: "In the 1990s we face the danger that professionalethnomusicologists, by opting for convenience, are preserving the sightsand sounds of music of our time on domestic equipment designed origi-nally as dictation machines or for amateur enthusiasts to make home mov-ies" (1992:84). Myers continues by asserting that pedestrian recordings,presumably made with mediocre equipment, result in "equallypedestrianstandards of writing" (ibid.). This privileging of recording technology andthe curatorial positioning of ethnomusicology was not lost on RichardMiddleton, who viewed it as "yetanother result of the colonial quest of theWestern bourgeoisie, bent on preserving other people's musics before theydisappear, documenting 'survivals'or 'traditional'practices, and enjoyingthe pleasures of exoticism into the bargain"(1990:146). After noting thatethnomusicologists focus almost exclusively on the music of "Oriental" ighcultures and folk or "primitive"societies, he continues with the followingcritical observation: "The primary motives for ethnomusicological exoti-cism, then, obviously lie in value judgments about 'authenticity' in musi-cal culture" (ibid.).Indeed, assumptions about Western technological preeminence andscientific know-how-rooted in past colonialist notions of social (and even



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210 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997racial) superiority-invest ethnomusicology with the authority to validatea given music. Yet, in practice, evaluation of musical authenticity gener-allyis informed by the need for both ethnographic legitimacy and aestheticinterest.2The whole matter becomes politically charged when it is appliedto recorded musical Others: that is, the argument that an "authentic"per-formance is a good thing often becomes conflated with the idea that a goodperformancesounds "authentic."The technologically privileged ethnomusi-cologist is thus caught in a web of conflicting notions of aesthetics, ethno-graphic truth, acoustical reality, cultural legitimacy, and specific intellec-tual interests. Consider the following passage from the same essay by HelenMyers:The ethnomusicologist'soncern for context shouldextend even to record-ingtechniques.Infieldwork, t is essential o rememberone is recordingnotonly a sound source but also its context, the sound field. The ethnomusi-cologist'sdreamof placingallthe performersn aprofessional ecording tu-dio (oftendone by nationalcultural nstitutesatgreatexpense) robsthe per-formance of its naturalambiance:audience, traffic, animals,conversation,discussion,cooking, eating,drinking-life (1992:53).

In this passage, an aesthetics of authenticity blurs with a quasi-anthro-pological discourse on contextualized realism.The researcher must decidebetween the musicological "purity" f studio production and the ethnologi-cal "realism"of the field recording in a "natural" etting. My point here isnot to debate the merits of one kind of recording over another but toproblematize the ethnomusicologist's position vis-ai-visaudio technology-and to suggest the implicit and often contested notions of authenticity andauthority related to such technology when recordings are read as cultural"texts."On the other hand, when "natives" use electronic devices or enjoymediated performances, technology is now considered intrusive and oftenrendered invisible by the researcher. An example of this is a documentaryfilm made several years ago of Javanese shadow theater. The film crew in-sisted on the use of an oil lantern, instead the usual electric lamp, for pur-poses of "authenticity."Another example took place in the 1970s, when aresearcher recorded Javanese court gamelan music in Yogyakarta andSurakartafor a commercial recording company. The researcher did notplace microphones in such a way to featurethe female vocalists, asJavaneseengineers usuallydo in studio recordings and radiobroadcasts,but, instead,placed them in such a way that the vocal parts remained simply anotherlayer in the complex texture of traditionalJavanese music-according tocurrent American views of "authentic"gamelan sound-rendering invisibleany suggestion of electronic amplification of the female voice. This roman-ticized notion of "authenticity,"along with the concurrent hostility toward



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Mozart in Mirrorshades 211

technological intrusion, is not far from the kind of view held by fans of folkmusic who booed at Bob Dylanwhen he "went electric" in 1966. As SimonFrithnotes in reference to popular music, "the implication is that technol-ogy is somehow false or falsifying,"that it is "unnatural"creating artificialpresence in performance) "alienating"(coming between performers andtheir audiences) and somehow "opposed to art"(emptying musical perfor-mance of creativity and expressiveness) (1986:265-66). This may explainwhy ethnomusicologists have, at least until very recently, been reluctantto concern themselves with mass-mediated and experimental or contem-porary musics. Even as we use media technology in our everyday lives, wemay often fail to recognize that these devices-the radio, the stereo sys-tem, the television-have all become heavily loaded with ideological andcultural baggage. It is especially easy to forget that across cultural bound-aries technology can take on differentmeanings and be used in entirely newcontexts. For example, while the radio might be dismissed in the West asan alienating and consumer-driven medium of culturally-drainedpost-capi-talist corporate society, it has another set of meanings in the Islamic worldwhere it is used to broadcast the call to prayer and maintain traditionalethnic and religious community in modem urbanized settings.From Schizophonia to Plunderphonics

New technology has elevated sound reproduction beyond realism intoa kind of audio hyper-reality.New digital recording and editing techniquesin fact now allow us to create acoustical environments that could not pos-sibly exist in live contexts-but which, nonetheless, seem real. While ear-lier media technologies have extended our eyes and ears, the new digitaltechnologies are now extending the imagination-and, in turn, the imagi-nation itself is, to a large extent, determined by the mass media that em-ploys these new technologies. The issue of authenticity becomes furtherproblematizedin this age of what Dick Hebdige calls "versioning" 1987:12-6). In other words, the recording is no longer the end-product in the docu-mentation of musical performance;it is now only a particularversion, opento expropriation, remix, resequencing, and recontextualization.This leads us to another issue in technoculture. The discussions sur-rounding cultural imperialism have tended to focus on the influence ofWestern mass media on the music of the Other (See, for example, Goodwinand Gore [1990] and Laing[1986]). Unique traditions and practices, somebelieve, will eventually disappear in a process of culturalgrayingout in theglobalization of mass media and communications technology. (Formore onculturalgrayout see Lomax 1968 and 1977.) The discussion becomes morecomplex and problematic, however, with the advent of digital technology.



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212 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997It is no longer simply a matter of the impact of such media on the musicalOther but also what media are takingfrom and doing with world music-that is, how media are re-presenting the Other. Through the magic of digi-tal technology, traditional musics captured on earlier sound recordings arenow availableas source materialfor new recombinant musical forms.Thus,the technological innovations that first resulted in schizophonia-the sepa-ration of sound from its originating source-continue to be further devel-oped, leading to another technocultural phenomenon, what John Oswaldcalls "plunderphonics" 1992:116-125)-the art and compositional preroga-tive of audio piracy.3

When MurraySchafer introduced the term schizophonia over two de-cades ago, he intended it to be a "nervous"word because audio technol-ogy "creates a synthetic soundscape in which natural sounds are becom-ing increasinglyunnaturalwhile machine-made substitutes areprovidingtheoperative signals directing modem life" (1980:91). Inspired by the wordschizophrenia, the term is meant to raise anxious questions about the im-pact of audio technology not only across cultures but within our own cul-ture. Plunderphonics is also a nervous word, perhaps. On the one hand, itquestions the idea of ownership and the notion that acoustic materials,suchas sound samples used to inspire composition, could themselves be con-sidered compositions (Oswald 1992:116). While a piece of music, a per-formance, or even a melody may be legally protected from copyright in-fringement, should the same laws be used to protect individual tones orrhythms, or even timbres?As audio technology becomes more sophisticatedand interactive, the line between rightfulownership and legitimatecreativeappropriation grows increasingly blurred. On the other hand, uniquesoundscapes and musical traditions of the world are now routinely becom-ing compositional grist for commodity culture, open to versioning. Mostof us are aware of past debates over musical projects by Paul Simon, DavidByrne, and Mickey Hart as well as other popular music artists who havefound themselves in the ambiguous role of being both curators and exploit-ers of world music.An example of versioning is a recent popular recording by the 1996grammy award-winningambient techno group called Deep Forest.In theireponymous 1992 album, the music of the Pygmies (more correctly knownas the Mbuti people) of the Ituri Forest in Zaire became transformed intoan industrialized dance music known as techno. Instead of simply appro-priating Pygmy music, the group uses digital technology to create whatappears to be a collaborative effort with the Pygmiesin a largertransculturalproject. Sampledand sequenced songs of the Pygmies are melodically andrhythmically incorporated into the overall musical texture throughout thealbum. Overall, the result is impressive but troubling. In the title track



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Mozart in Mirrorshades 213("Deep Forest"), over thick, synthesized Western harmonies, a deeply reso-nant male voice intones: "somewhere-deep in the jungle-are living somelittle men and women-they are our fossils-and maybe-maybe they areour future." In another track called "Night Bird," traditional Pygmy singingis seamlessly layered over environmental sounds, lush drawn-out New Age-like harmonies, and a driving ambient-techno-dance beat.In the liner notes, the members of Deep Forest attempt to contextualizetheir project in a romantically phrased and somewhat garbled rhetoric ofglobal ecology and endangered cultural practices (Sanchez 1992):

Imprinted with ancestral wisdom of the African chants, the music of DeepForest immediately touches everyone's soul and instinct. The forest of all civi-lizations is a mysterious place where the yarn of tales and legends is wovenwith images of men, women, children, animalsand fairies. Not only living crea-tures, but also trees steeped in magical powers. Universal rites and customshave been profoundly marked by the influence of the forest, a place of powerand knowledge passed down from generation to generation by the oral tradi-tions of primitive societies. The chants of Deep Forest, Baka chants ofCameroun, of Burundi, of Senegal and of Pygmies, transmit a part of this im-portant oral tradition gathering all peoples and joining all continents throughthe universal language of music. Deep Forest is the respect [for] this traditionwhich humanity should cherish as a treasure which marriesworld harmony, aharmony often compromised today. That's why the musical creation of DeepForest has received the support of UNESCOand of two musicologists, HugoZempe and ShimaAron [sic], who collected the original documents.Here, as in the recording itself, the Pygmies are unknowing collabora-tors in an Orientalistic narrative of cultural exoticism commodified throughthe trope of musical universalism, of authentically "primitive" animism colo-nized by New Age mysticism, and of primal nature salvaged through high

technology. Note the discursive strategy of invoking UNESCO along with thenames of scholars Hugo Zemp and Simha Arom (whose names are both mis-spelled in the original text) to add academic and political authority to theproject. In these textual and musical narratives, Pygmies disappear into whatDonna Haraway calls "a political semiotics of representation."

Permanentlyspeechless, forever requiringthe services of a ventriloquist, neverforcing a recall vote, in each case the object or ground of representation is therealization of the representative's fondest dream. ... The effectiveness of suchrepresentation depends on distancing operations. The represented must bedisengaged from surroundingand constituting discursive nexuses and relocatedin the authorial domain of the representative. Indeed, the effect of this magi-cal operation is to disempower those.., .who are 'close' to the now-repre-sented 'natural'object.... The represented is reduced to the permanent sta-tus of the recipient of action, never to be a co-actor in an articulated practiceamong unlike, but joined, social partners (1992:311).



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214 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997In the case of Deep Forest, the musical and texted narratives "speak"for the expropriated and muted Pygmies, disempowering them as discur-sive objects but, at the same time, enrolling them as rhetorical allies andpassive musical collaborators. With Western state-of-the-artechnology, theartists and producers have positioned themselves as curators of a docile

Pygmy culture-they even vow to donate partof theirprofits to "ThePygmyFund"and urge their fans to do the same-and high-tech plunderphonia isnow justified in the names of global ecology and cultural preservation.Everyone is happy! The Pygmies are the recipients of post-colonial West-ern concern and munificence, the recordingartistsandproducers gainfameand fortune, and the listener is transformed into a social activist throughthe simple act of consumption.Deep Forest defines itself not as a band but as "aconcept, a state ofmind." Meditative music like that of Deep Forest and romantic sentimentstoward disappearing ecology and peoples are usually the domain of NewAge artists and aging rock stars. Indeed, it is astounding that such ideas arefound on this album considering that the Deep Forest project arose out ofthe Euro-Americanurban techno-dance scene. One can hardly imagine acommunity further removed from traditional culture and the concerns ofrainforest ecology. Yet recordings like Deep Forest, with an emphasis onsoothing and often exotic sound sculptures, are increasingly popular amongtechno fans. Such recordings are identified as "ambient" echno, intendedoriginally as music for cooling down from the hypnotic effects and physi-calityof techno rave events and dance clubs. Generally,world music is nowpart of the technological "primitivism"of both New Age and techno ambi-ent music, both often appropriatingthe musical Other for exotic, medita-tive sound sculpturing. Another album, entitled Ethnotechno (1993, WaxTrax! Records Inc), is made up of a collection of various techno-music art-ists combining sampled world musics with a synthesized techno beat. Inthe liner notes, the compiler, Scott Taves, defines ethnotechno as "ethnol-ogy and technology" and the collection is described as: "Worldmusics andancient cultures interface with state of the artmusic machines in the elec-tronic underground. Nothing too precious or academic will be allowedhere. A global outlook and a lust for futuristic groove is the bottom line.Welcome to Ethno-Techno, Sonic Anthropology Volume 1."In this case, the artists are not presented as advocates for endangeredcultures and ecologies but as travelers in a rich world of musical diversitymade accessible through the technology of digital sampling. There is nomoralizing over disappearing forests and musical traditions. Instead, the"authentic" sounds of traditional world music are incorporated into thetechnological artificialityof synthesizer and drummachines to create "sonicanthropology" where the listener can "travel" o exotic acoustical spaces.On the cellophane wrapper is a sticker stating, "75 minutes of pan-global



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Mozart in Mirrorshades 215electro bliss."The various cuts, similarto the Deep Forest project, employnon-Western sampled sounds and music in new compositions but with theoriginal material left recognizable to the untrained ear. That is, a listenerwith basic world music background will likely be able to identify, for ex-ample, the Tuva throat-singingin the piece "Alash When I GrazeMyBeau-tiful Sheep)" by Juno Reactor.4The pleasure of listening to recordings likethese is not in cultural advocacy, despite the rhetoric of the Deep Forestproject; nor is it to provide the listener with a kind of "authentic"aestheticexperience, as with many New Age music compositions employing worldmusics and/or natural sounds. Instead, the pleasure of such techno ambi-ent music lies in the technological artifice itself-in "natural" ounds (andmusic) being made "un-natural"hrough sequencing in the context of syn-thesized rhythms and sounds.Digital sampling is also heard increasingly in non-Western popularmusic. In Indonesia, for example, digital technology and sampled sound-bytes from American television, radio, and pop music, are often used insometimes ingenious and startlingways. Technology often carries a differ-ent, often ambiguous, set of meanings, usually related to the fear of West-ernization and secularization (particularlyin Islamic societies) along witha desire for modernization. InJavanese shadow theaterperformances in theregion of Banyumas, musicians sometimes use a Cassio keyboard in addi-tion to the gamelan, for creating sound effects to accompany action scenes.Interestingly, they refer to this as musik (referring to Western music) todistinguish it from the music of the gamelan (known as krawitan). In In-donesian popular music, sampled sounds andhigh-tech musical instrumentsare used in the creation of a recent sub-genre called disco-dangdut. Whatidentifies the parent genre, dangdut, is the instrumentation (featuring anIndian tabla-likesound), the musical influence from both Indian film mu-sic and American rock, and most importantly, the stressed fourth and firstbeats in a four-beat meter. Disco-dangdut continues to have most of thesecharacteristics but with a faster beat along with the addition of synthesizedsound and digital sampling. Particularlyinteresting is the playful use ofsampled material, usually voice sounds (ranging from simple vocables towhole phrases as well as hissing and sighs), to add a complex texture ofinterlocking vocal parts-very much like the traditional practice ofsenggakan (non-texted vocal calls) in ruralgamelan music performance.In this case, technology has provided local artists with the means for rede-ploying traditional ideas in new musical contexts.Audio Simulacra

For better or worse, sampling technology has stimulated a great dealof creativity among artiststhroughout the world who are becoming as much



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216 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997sound engineers as they are musicians; in appropriating acoustic materialfrom both near and far away, such artists enhance and expand the soundpossibilities of their own compositions and reinscribe new meanings overpast traditions. Sold in compact disk or cassette tape format, new record-ings are increasingly conceived and produced with stereo high-fidelityau-dio technology in mind and range from exact reproductions of naturalsoundscapes and other found sounds to complex compositions made upof sequenced or otherwise digitally-manipulatedsound and music samplescombined with the synthesizers and studio-performed acoustical instru-ments. Many such recordings often employ remixed and resequencedsounds appropriated from other recordings, making it difficult to trace oreven recognize the originating source material.They range from exact butselective reproductions of natural soundscapes (or virtual sonic realities)to complex compositions made up of sequenced or otherwise digitally-manipulated sound samples combined with the music of synthesizers andstudio-performed acoustical instruments. Such recordings are truesimulacra-perfect copies whose originals never existed. Examples ofmusical simulacraare abundant in particulargenres of popular music"hip-hop, reggae, techno, and ambient, to name some.5

In the field of ethnomusicology, one of the best known examples ofaudio simulacra is the now familiar Voices of the Rainforest recorded byStephen Feld in PapuaNew Guinea and released by Rykodisc in 1991. Likethe time travelers in "Mozart n Mirrorshades,"Feld came to New Guineawith state-of-the-art echnology, not to exploit the Kaluli but to study theirmusic. Using pioneering field-recordingand studio-editingtechniques, Feldprovided a superb compact disk of a "typical" wenty-four-hourday in thelife of the Kaluli,made up equally of both environmental sounds and localmusical performance. However, with the use of superior audio technologyboth in the field and later in the studio, Feld was able to intervene in Kalulirealityby omitting the sounds of... technology. Feldadmits thathis record-ing presents a rather unusual soundscape day, "one without the motorsounds of tractors cutting the lawn at the mission airstrip, without thewhirring rhythms of mission station generator, washing machine, or saw-mill. Without the airplanes taking off and landing .., or the local radios .., or cassette players with run-down batteries. ... Andwithout the recentlyintensified and almost daily buzz of helicopters and light planes..."(1991:137 and later in Feld and Keil 1994).Feld himself addresses the representational politics behind his record-ing, posing the troubling question of whether "Voices"is a deceptive orromanticizedportraitof the Kalulisoundscape. He answers that it is a highlyspecific portrayal,"asound world that increasinglyfewer Kaluliwill activelyknow about and value, but one that increasingly more Kaluli will only hear



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Mozart in Mirrorshades 217on cassette and sentimentally wonder about" (ibid.). Feld's dilemma is infact now (or soon will be) the dilemma of all ethnomusicologists. Evokingthe cyberpunk story I described earlier, the ethnomusicologist, with hisenlightened attitudes toward technology and ecology, and his romanticviews of the native, has become the sympathetic "time-traveler"who bringsthe irrevocably changed Mozartrecordings of his own never-to-be createdsymphonies. Indeed, like the cyberpunk Mozart,the Kaluli are nostalgic fora lost past that, as a result of the impact of technology, can now only bevicariously experienced through technology.Conclusions

One of the reasons I especially enjoyed the story "Mozart inMirrorshades"was the ambiguous ending. From one perspective, Mozartcould be seen as a tragic figure, his destiny as the world's greatest classicalcomposer preempted by the arrival of the exploitative time-travelingtech-nocrats. From this perspective, we might view the advent of technologywith the kind of suspicion and cynicism found among thinkers like NeilPostman, who see a growing "technopoly"that slowly but inexorably emp-ties the world of symbolic meaning, replacing it with the free-floatingsignsof advertisements and fashion (1993). The post-colonial eramight be viewedas a time of virtual colonization: traditionalcultures are not protected undercurrent copyright laws and their musics (and other practices andknowledges) are thus open to electronically-basedcommercial colonizationby the firstworld mass media. Indeed, it is a time when an entire name fora people and their practices could become appropriated to signify a com-puter networking programand registry (as, in fact, is the case of "Java"nd"Gamelan,"now copyrighted by EarthWeb LLCand Sun Microsystems).However, Mozartmight also be understood as a kind of hero or trick-ster. Adapting to the reality of his situation he cleverly manages to avoidimminent death in poverty and even become a wealthy rock star of thefuture. Thus, ethnomusicologists might learn several lessons fromthe story:(1) that the "native"s not necessarily a naive and passive recipient of mediatechnology; (2) that media technology may be especially empowering forthose people with little or no political and economic power; (3) thatpeoplemay use media technology in radicallynew and surprisingways, and infuseit with meanings specific to such use; and (4) the social meanings associ-ated with particular technologies often change as these technologiestraverse cultural boundaries.

Using the story as a twisted allegory we might conclude that the me-dia technologies are far from neutral. Nor are they ever fully controlled byany single constituency. They are sites of continuous social and political



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218 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997struggle-in the realm of world music, the struggles are acted out in termsof culturalownership, musical authenticity,and intellectualauthority.Whileit is true that media technologies were developed in the interests of indus-try and corporate profit, and for the purposes of domination and exploita-tion (Penley and Ross 1991:xii), they are also becoming more standardized,accessible, and widely disseminated-and the corporate control over theiruse increasingly decentralized.6 In other words, although the media tech-nologies may be a facet of largerhegemonizing and homogenizing forces,their accessibility and availabilityprovide people with more means to copewith, even to resist or subvert those same forces.

In this article, I have proposed some new understandings of musicalculture where the concept of "culture" itself is radically reconfigured interms of ever-expanding,increasinglysophisticatedmedia and informationaltechnology. What we need is an ethnomusicology of technoculture, theethnomusicological study of such reconfigured cultures. Mypurpose is tobreak from past conventions of examining only folkish or high art "tradi-tions" of music. As world music (whether popular or folk or high art) be-comes increasingly implicated in the globalization of advanced audio tech-nologies, the field of ethnomusicology will have to adapt to changing ideasof musical authenticity, cultural representation, and intellectual authority.It will be the work of the ethnomusicologist to analyze and explain thecultural negotiations involved with the global intersections of traditionalmusics, popular desires, and technological possibilities.Notes

1. One of the earliest studies to address music and technology specifically is Keil 1984(reprinted with a brief postlude by the author in Feld and Keil 1994).2. See, for example, Bruno Nettl's remarks (1983:316): "Theconcept of the 'authentic'for a long time dominated collecting activities, became mixed with 'old' and 'exotic' andsynonymous with 'good."'3. Oswald coined the term in 1989 when he named his now-outlawed album Plunder-phonics, a recording made up of various, often parodic, manipulationsof music by well-knownperformers and composers ranging from Michael Jackson, the Beatles, and Dolly Parton toStravinskyand Beethoven. Although his sources were scrupulously credited and copies of thealbum were not sold but simply given away, Oswald was threatened with a lawsuit by theCanadianRecording IndustryAssociation. In the end, he was forced to stop distribution anddestroy all remaining copies. He now uses the term to refer to the problems of musical cre-ativity in the age of electronic (digital) reproduction.4. The Tuva throat-singing was sampled off the Smithsonian-Folkwaysrecording, Tuva:Music from the Center of Asia.5. For a detailed discussion of hip-hop technoculture, see Rose 1994.6. For a fascinating discussion of the media technolgies, particularly in relation to therecording industry in India, see the Introduction to Peter Manuel's important work, CassetteCulture (1993).



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Mozart in Mirrorshades 219ReferencesClifford,James. 1988. ThePredicament of Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity.Druckery, Timorthy, and Bender, Gretchen. 1994. Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Tech-

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Technology. New York: Vintage Books.Price, Sally. 1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of Chicago.Reynolds, Simon. 1990. Blissed Out: the Rapture of Rock. London: Serpent's Tail.Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press.Ross, Andrew. 1991. Strange Weather:Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Lim-its. New York:Verso.. 1992. "New Age Technoculture." In Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg,CaryNelson, and Paula Treichler. New York: Routledge.[Sanchez, Michel.] 1992. "Deep Forest." Liner notes to audio recording, compact disk. CelineMusic/Synsound (manufactured by 550 Music):BK57840.Schafer, R.Murray.1980. The Tuning of the World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Sterling, Bruce, and Lewis Shiner. 1985. "Mozart in Mirrorshades," in Mirrorshades: theCyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling. New York: Ace Books.Taves, Scott. [1993]. "Ethnotechno." Liner notes to audio recording, compact disk. Wax Trax!Records, Inc. (manufactured and distributed by TVTRecords): TVT7211-2.Theberge, Paul. 1993. "RandomAccess: Music, Technology, Postmodernism."In The LastPost,edited by Simon Miller. Manchester, UK: Manchester University.

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